A Body In The Bath House

XVIII

when i stuck my head around the door of his site hut, the mosaicist looked up from his steaming mug of mulsum and immediately rapped out, "Sorry. We're not taking anybody on." He must think I wanted work.

He was a white-haired man with a trimmed white beard and face whiskers, who had been talking quietly to a younger fellow. Both wore similar warmly layered tunics, belted in and with long sleeves; presumably, they could grow shivery as they spent hours crouched at their meticulous work.

"I'm not looking for employment. I have enough intricate puzzles of my own."

The chief mosaicist, who had seen me earlier at the site meeting, started to remember me. He and his assistant were each leaning their elbows on a table, holding hot mugs between their hands. The same look of detached wariness occupied both faces. It seemed to be routine, not caused by me especially.

"Falco," I explained myself to the assistant, inviting myself in. "Agent from Rome. Troublemaker, obviously!" Nobody laughed.

I found a place on the opposite bench. Between us lay sketches of Greek keys and elaborate knots. I could smell the low-grade mulled wine, its vinegar base mildly spiced with aromatics; none was offered to me. The two men were waiting for me to take the initiative. It was like facing a pair of wall plaques.

We were in a fenced-off area of site offices, outside the main plot, in the north-west corner near the new service buildings. Today I was tackling decor. The mosaicists neatly inhabited one of a double set of temporary hutments, the other of which was the chaotic province of the fresco painters. Here they could all work on drawings, store materials, try out samples and while they waited for the builders to give them rooms to decorate- they could sup beverages and think about life. Or whatever interior designers fill their brains with when the rest of us would be forgetting work and dreaming of home make overs

In the other hut, the painters had been having a loud argument as I passed. I might have barged in, hoping this was evidence of problems on the site, but I could hear it was all about chariot racing. I left the raucous painters for later. I was feeling limp, after the effort of moving my family here at short notice yesterday. Halfway through unpacking last night, Verovolcus had dropped in on us; he was aiming to inspect my women but they knew how to vanish and leave me to entertain him. Now I was nursing a headache, just from weariness. Well, that was my story.

Inside here, the mosaicists' quiet refuge, all the wall space was hung with drawings, some overlapping haphazardly. Most were mosaic designs in black and white. Some showed complete room layouts with their interwoven borders and tiled entrance mats. Some were small trial mo tits They went from the simplicity of plain corridors with straight-line double edgings, to numerous geometric patterns composed of repeated squares, cubes, stars and diamonds, often forming boxes within boxes. It looked simple, but there were elaborate crenellations, interlinked ladders and latticework such as I had never seen before. The profusion of choice argued huge talent and imagination.

The plan was for every room in the palace to be different, although there would be an overall style. Two large floor designs stood out as special, prominently nailed up in clear wall space. Among the few in colour, a preliminary mock-up had a fabulous complex guilloche of intertwining threads, which formed a centre roundel. That was currently blank. No doubt some handsome medallion was planned- with the King's choice of mythological subject still to be supplied. Within the twined border ran a ring of rich, autumn-tinted foliage, eight-petalled rosettes and elegant tendrils of leaf predominantly in browns and golds. Outside, the corners were in filled with alternate vases and, for some reason, fish.

"North wing," said the chief mosaicist. Bleating so expressively almost finished him. He did not explain the marine life. I was left to theorise that it was to decorate a room for fish suppers.

The other grand design was fully worked out. This was black and white, a stunning carpet of dramatic squares and crosses, some of its patterns devised from arrowheads, compass rosettes and fleursdelys. The images had been put together so the effect was three dimensional, but I realised that irregularities made the patterns seem to shift. As I moved position, the perspective changed elusively.

"His "flickering floor'1, said the assistant proudly.

"North wing grunted the chief mosaicist again. Well, skilled repetition was his art.

"People will love it," I flattered them. "It you run out of work here, you can come to my house!" Being slow men, whose lives ran at the restrained pace of their work, they did not quip back the obvious retort. I said it for them: "I don't suppose I can afford you."

Nothing gave.

I tried again: "Not a lot for you to do around here at present."

"We'll be ready when they are." The chief spoke dourly.

"I can see you're a cut above the average. This client won't be fobbed off with apprentice work and a few preformed panels, cut in at the last moment." Again, he did not deign to comment.

"Your most important activity takes place before you're even on site," I mused. "Creating the design. Choosing the stones I assume it's to be mostly stone here, none of those glass fragments or sparkly gold and silver particles?"

He shook his head. "I like stone."

The too. Solid. Cut well, there will be plenty of light reflected back. You can achieve a gleam without gaudiness. Do you make the tesserae yourself?"

"When I have to."

"Done it in your time?"

"I use a team now."

"Your own? You trained them?"

"Only way to get good colour matches and consistent sizing."

"Do you lay your own screeds?"

He scoffed. "Not any more! Those days are behind us."

He had put down his beaker. His hands dipped automatically into the baskets of tesserae that littered his table, running the matt miniature tiles through his fingers like embroidery beads. He didn't know he was doing it. Some of these samples were minute, at least ten to the inch. Setting them would take for ever. He had a trial block in front of him, with a band of tight interwoven border in four colours- white, black, red and yellow- executed exquisitely.

"Audience chamber."

This was a fellow who saved himself. He let time pass by calmly; he would live long yet his joints would go, despite the use of padded kneelers, and his eyes must be doomed.

The younger man must be his son. He had the same body weight, face shape and manner. These were archetypal craftsmen. They passed their skills from generation to generation, developing their art to suit the times. Their world had a tight circle. Theirs was solitary work. Limited by a man's private concentration, constrained by the reach of his arm.

These were workers who, in the course of their daily life, rarely looked up at what was going on nearby. Apparently they lacked curiosity. They had an air of ancient, honest simplicity. But I already knew from my study of this oversized building scheme, the mosaic workers were a bugbear. They wasted time, kept no proper records of supplies and overcharged the Treasury more relentlessly than any other trade. The chief knew I was on to it. He defied me silently.

I, too, examined a bunch of black stones. I let them clatter slowly back into their basket. "Everyone else I have interviewed so far told me who they hate. So who annoys you?"

"We keep to ourselves."

"You come along at the end of the job, the last finishing trade and you know nobody?"

"Nor want to," he said complacently.

Loud guffaws sounded through the thin walls from the volatile fresco painters. I was starting to think they would be more fun. "How do you get on with them next door?"

"We work it out."

"Tell me when a room has an elaborate floor, something like your "flicker" design, then it needs quiet walls. You want people to admire it without distraction. And vice versa: when there is flamboyant painting or the occupants plan on using a lot of furniture the floor needs to be restrained, in the background. So who chooses the primary design concept each time?"

"The architect. And the client, I suppose."

"You get on with Pomponius?"

"Well enough." If Pomponius had kicked him in the privates and stolen his lunch-basket, this button mouth would never get excited about it to me.

"When they pick a style, do you have any input?"

"I show them layouts. They choose one, or a general idea."

"And is there conflict?"

"No," he lied.

If he completed his floors to the fine standard in his artwork, he was a high achiever. That did not alter the fact, this man was as surly as they come.

"Have you come across anyone called Gloccus or Cotta?"

He thought about it, taking his time. "Sounds familiar…" He shook his head, however. "No."

"What line are they in?" enquired the son. The father glared, as if it were a rash question.

"Bath-house construction." Pa's wonkily tiled Neptune had nothing in common with the cool sophistication that had been ordered up for the palace. "They do lay floors sub-contracted but nothing of your quality."

Reluctant to say that the last time I stood on a new floor mosaic, I had put a pick through it and then my father squelched his tool into a corpse, I ended the interview. It had hardly advanced my knowledge. Still, I had formed some thoughts about how I would like my dining room at home re laid

One day. One day when I was really rich.