Poseidon s Gold

LVIII

Later the same day, for the first time in history, my father had himself brought over to Fountain Court. When he arrived Helena was wrapped in a blanket, reading, while I scrubbed a bucket of mussels. He expected her to vanish so we could enjoy a manly chat, as happens in normal households, but she waved to him graciously and stayed where she was. He then expected me to shove the bucket away shyly under the table, but I carried on.

'Gods! I'm killed by the stairs: She's got you hard at it then?'

'This is how we live. No one asked you to turn up and criticise.'

'Marcus is the cook,' said Helena. 'He likes to feel he's supervising my domestic education. But I would be allowed to make you some hot honey if you want?'

'Got any wine?'

'Only for those who are stopping to dinner,' I snapped. My father was incorrigible. 'We're nearly out. I can't feed casual inebriates; I want it for the sauce.'

'I can't stop. Expected at home. You're a hard-hearted host.'

'Have the honey. She does it with cinnamon. You'll have sweet breath, a pleasant temper, and it will ease your poor old chest after the stairs.'

'You're living with a bloody apothecary, girl!' Pa grumbled at Helena.

'Yes, isn't he wonderful? Like a human encyclopaedia,' she answered, with evil insincerity. 'I'm going to lease him to Marponius:' Then she smiled and made sensible drinks for all of us.

My father gazed slowly around our outer room, deduced there was another just as awful behind the curtain, dismissed the balcony as a disaster waiting to send us to an early death, and turned up his nose at our furniture. I had acquired a pine table. We liked the fact it had all four legs and very little woodworm, but by his standards it was plain and pitiful. Apart from that we owned the mean stool I was sitting on, the chair Helena gave up for him, another she fetched from the bedroom for herself, three beakers, two bowls, one stew-pot, some cheap lamps, and a mixed set of scrolls containing Greek plays and Latin poetry.

He was looking for ornaments; I realised that we had none. Perhaps he would send us a chestful next time he did a house clearance.

'Olympus! Is this it then?'

'Well in the next room there's the scallop-end bed you sold me, and a rather nice movable tripod Helena picked up from somewhere. Of course our summer villa at Baiae is a haven of unconfined luxury. We keep our glass collection and the peacocks there: So what do you think?'

'It's even worse than I feared! I admire your courage,' he said to Helena, visibly moved.

'I admire your son,' she answered quietly.

Pa still looked wounded. The horror of my living quarters seemed a personal affront to him. 'But this is awful! Can't you get him to do something?'

'He's trying his best.' Helena sounded terse.

I went out and peed off the balcony to avoid any need to contribute. An angry shout arose from the street below, cheering me up.

When I came back in, I told my father what I had learned from the centurion about the statue of Zeus. 'It makes things neat, anyway. First we have one statue and one ship-now there are two ships and two statues.'

'But it's not quite symmetrical,' Helena commented. 'One of the statues was lost in one of the ships, but the Zeus came ashore with Festus and presumably still exists somewhere.'

'That's good,' I said. 'This one is lost, but we can find it.'

'Are you going to try?'

'Of course.'

'You've had no luck so far!' remarked my father gloomily.

'I wasn't looking until now. I'll find the Zeus-and when I do find it, even if we repay the centurions' syndicate their share of the investment, there's still a chance for the rest of us to get rich. In addition to big brother's agreed percentage of the proceeds, we have four blocks of genuine Parian marble. We can do what Festus must have been planning, and have four copies made.'

'Oh surely you wouldn't sell fakes, Marcus!' Helena felt shocked. (At least I assume she did.) Pa gazed at me with a whimsical expression, waiting for me to answer her.

'Never entered my mind! Good copies can fetch a wonderful price in their own right.' It sounded almost sincere.

Helena smiled. 'Who would make your copies?'

'Orontes-who else? We were clambering all over his stuff at the studio; he has a sure touch with replicas. It's my belief that was all Festus wanted to ask him the night he was looking for the bastard so urgently. Orontes was petrified that Festus wanted a fight with him, when in fact my het-up brother was quite innocent of the Carus fraud, and was just offering Orontes work. Festus had received his military orders. He had to go back to Judaea. It was his last chance to fix the deal.'

'And is Orontes really good?'

Pa and I consulted each other, remembering again what we had seen of his work at Capua. 'Yes; he's good.'

'And after the trick he pulled on Festus, he owes us a free commission or two!'

Helena tried it out: 'So Festus was simply wanting to say to him, "Come and look at this Phidias Zeus I've just brought home, and make me four more of them":' She jumped in her seat. 'So Marcus, this means the original must have been somewhere it could be viewed! Somewhere Festus could have shown it to the sculptor that very night-somewhere here in Rome!'

She must be right. It was here. It was worth half a million, and as my brother's heir and executor, part of it belonged to me. It was here, and I would find it if it took me twenty years.

'If you can find it,' said Helena quietly, 'I have an idea how you two could get your own back on Cassius Carus and Ummidia Servia.'

Father and I pulled our seats closer, and gazed at her like attentive acolytes at a shrine.

'Tell us, my darling!'

'To make my idea work properly, you will have to pretend you believe they really did lose their money on the Poseidon. That means you will have to put together the half-million sesterces and actually pay over the cash-'

We both groaned. 'Must we?'

'Yes. You have to convince them that they've beaten you. You have to lull them into a false sense of security. Then when they are full of themselves for cheating you, we can make them over-reach and fall for this proposal of mine:'

That was when Helena, my father and I sat together around my table, and hatched the scheme that would give us our revenge. Father and I put forward some refinements, but the basic plan belonged to Helena.

'Isn't she bright?' I asked, hugging her with delight as she explained it.

'She's beautiful,' agreed my pa. 'If we bring this off, maybe you'll use the proceeds to let her live somewhere more appropriate.'

'We have to find the missing statue first.'

We were nearer to that than we thought, though it took a tragedy to bring us near enough.

It was a good afternoon. We were all friends together. We had schemed, and laughed, and congratulated ourselves on how clever we were and how skilfully we were planning to turn the tables on our opponents. I had given in over the wine, which we poured into beakers for toasting each other and our scheme of revenge. With it we ate winter pears, laughing again as the juice ran down our chins and wrists. When Helena took a fruit that was going brown, my father reached for a dinner knife and cut off the bruised portion for her. Watching him hold the fruit in one sturdy hand while he pared off the bad part, stopping the knife-blade against his blunt thumb, a pang of reminiscence took me back a quarter of a century to another table, with a group of small children clamouring to have their father peel their fruit.

I still did not know what we had done to drive him away from us. I would never know. He had never wanted to explain. For me that had always been the worst part. But perhaps he simply could not do it.

Helena touched my cheek, her eyes quiet and understanding.

Pa gave her the pear, cut in slices, popping the first piece into her mouth as if she was a little girl.

'He's a demon with a blade!' I exclaimed. Then we laughed some more, as my father and I recalled how we had rampaged against the painters as the dangerous Didius boys.

It was a good afternoon. But you should never relax. Laughter is the first step on the road to betrayal.

After Father had gone, normality resumed. Life reasserted its usual grim messages.

I was lighting a lamp. I wanted to trim off the burnt wick. I was thinking about nothing as I tried to find the knife I normally used. It was missing.

Pa must have walked off with it.

Then I remembered the knife that had stabbed Censorinus. Suddenly I understood how a knife which had once been my mother's had arrived at the caupona. I knew how my mother, who was so careful, could have lost one of her tools. Why when Petronius Longus had asked her about it, she had chosen to seem so vague-and why when Helena tried to question members of the family, Ma had almost feigned disinterest. I had seen her being vague and unresponsive on the same subject scores of times. Ma knew exactly where that 'lost' knife had gone twenty years ago. Its discovery must have placed her in a terrible dilemma-wanting to protect me, and yet aware that the truth itself would not spare our family. She must have put the knife in my father's lunch-basket, on the day he left home. Either that, or he had simply picked it up for some job or other and carried it away with him the way he had mine today.

My father had been in possession of the murder weapon.

Which meant that the main suspect for killing Censorinus would now appear to be Didius Geminus.