Arms of Nemesis

XVII

'Where will we find the boy Meto?' I wondered aloud. The atrium, which that morning had been thronged with funeral guests and their attendant slaves, was deserted. Our footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty space. The incense and the flowers were gone, but their odour, like that of the decaying corpse of Lucius Licinius, lingered behind.

I followed my nose to the kitchens. Long before I found them I heard the din of activity. There was much preparation still to be done for the funeral feast.

We stepped through a great wooden door and found ourselves swallowed up by noise and heat. Their tunics spotted with stains and soot, the kitchen slaves scurried about. Hoarse voices cried back and forth, heavy knives chopped against blocks of wood, kettles boiled and hissed. Eco covered his ears to protest the din, then pointed at a figure across the room.

Little Meto, standing on a stool, was reaching into a deep clay pot atop a table. He looked around to see that no one was watching, then pulled out a handful of something and stuck it into his mouth. I walked across the room, dodging to avoid the hurrying slaves, and grabbed the neck of his tunic.

He gave a squawk and looked over his shoulder at me. His mouth, covered with a paste of honey, millet, and crushed nuts, opened in a cry of distress, then turned abruptly into a grin when he saw my face – and as abruptly twisted into a howl of pain when a wooden spoon came down on his head with a crack.

'Out of the kitchen! Out! Out!' screamed an old slave whose superior dress and manner marked him as the chief cook. He seemed ready to strike me as well, then saw the iron ring I wore. 'Forgive me, Citizen, but between Meto pilfering sweets, and the slaves of all these guests sneaking in to steal food, we can hardly do our work. Could you please find an errand for the little pest?'

'Precisely what I came for,' I said. I gave Meto a sharp slap on the rump as he hopped off the stool and scurried across the crowded room, licking the honey from his fingers and tripping cooks and helpers in his wake. Eco caught him at the door and held him for me.

'Meto!' I cried, catching up and closing the door behind us. 'Just the man I was looking for. Are you a swimmer, Meto?'

He looked up at me gravely, licking the sweet mash from the corners of his mouth. He slowly shook his head.

'No?'

'No, sir.'

'You don't swim at all?' 'Not a stroke,' he assured me.

I shook my head, vexed. 'You disappoint me, Meto, though it's no fault of your own. I had convinced myself that you must be the offspring of a faun and a river nymph.'

He was perplexed for a moment, then laughed out loud at my foolishness. 'But I know who swims better than anybody!' he offered.

'Yes? Who would that be?'

'Come with me, I'll show you. He's with the others in the stables!' He began to run down the hall, until Eco caught up with him and grabbed the neck of his tunic like a leash. We followed his lead to the centre of the house, through the atrium and out into the courtyard. He broke from Eco's grasp and hurried towards the stables. We came to the open doors, where the cooler air from within carried the mingled scents of hay and dung. Meto hurried on.

'Wait! You said you were leading us to the stables!' I protested.

'Not those stables!' he called over his shoulder. He pointed ahead and ran around the corner of the building. I thought he must be playing a game with us, until I turned the corner and saw the long, low wooden annexe attached to the stone stables.

'Is there no end to this villa?' I muttered to Eco. Then I saw the soldiers who guarded the doorway to the annexe.

The six of them sat cross-legged in a small clearing beneath the evergreens. They failed to see us, until a shrill whisde pierced the air. I looked up and saw a seventh guard atop the red tile roof of the annexe, his spear in the crook of his arm and his fingers in his mouth.

The six were on their feet immediately, their swords drawn and their dice abandoned in the dust. Their chief officer – or at least the one with the most insignia – stepped towards me, brandishing his sword and scowling through his grey-streaked beard. 'Who are you and what do you want?' he asked gruffly. He ignored Meto, who stepped past him and hurried to the annexe door. I gathered that Meto was already known to the guards; one of them even reached down and ruffled his hair affectionately.

I held my hands at my sides, a bit away from my body, in clear sight. Eco glanced at me nervously and did the same. 'My name is Gordianus. I'm a guest of Gelina and of your general, Marcus Crassus. This is my son, Eco.'

The soldier narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then put his sword away. 'It's all right, men,' he called over his shoulder. 'He's the one Marcus Mummius told us about. Calls himself the Finder. And what do you expect to find here?' He no longer seemed like a fierce warrior ready to kill, but instead appeared quite affable and polite. More than anything else, he looked like an extremely bored man glad for any interruption to break the monotony.

'The slave boy led us here,' I explained. 'I had forgotten that the stables had an annexe.'

'Yes, the stables hide it from the courtyard; you can't see it at all from the house, I'm told, not even from the upper storey. Which makes it the perfect place to hide them all, nicely out of sight.'

'Hide whom?' I said, forgetting what Gelina had told me regarding the whereabouts of most of the slaves.

'See for yourself. It looks like little Meto is quite eager for you to follow him. It's all right, Fronto,' he called to the guard who had ruffled Meto's hair. 'You can open the door.'

The guard produced a large brass key and fitted it into a lock which hung on a chain. The lock opened and the door swung outward. The guards stood at a distance, their hands on their hilts and their eyes alert. Meto ran inside, waving for us to follow.

The smell that came from within was quite different from that which came from the stables. There was the sweet smell of straw, to be sure, but the odour of urine and waste came not from animals but from men. The stench of human sweat was heavy in the air as well, along with the smell of women in period and the mingled odours of rotting food and vomit. It reminded me of the smell below the deck of the Fury – not as acrid with the stench of men on the verge of collapse, but not relieved by fresh salt breezes, either; it had the foul, closed, musty stench of the slaughterhouse rather than the slave galley.

Eco balked at stepping within, but I took his arm. The door closed behind us. 'Bang on the door and call out when you're ready to leave,' yelled the guard through the wood. The chain rattled and the lock snapped shut.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. There were only a few barred windows near the roof, admitting beams of sunlight thick with dust. 'What is this place?' I whispered.

I didn't expect an answer, but the boy Meto was nearby. 'The master used it to store all sorts of things,' he said, pitching his voice low to match mine. 'Old bits and saddles and blankets, and broken chariot wheels and ox carts. Sometimes, even swords and spears, and shields and helmets. But it was almost empty when Master Lucius died. When Master Crassus came the next day, this is where he put the slaves, all but a few of us.'

The place had fallen silent when we entered, but now voices began to murmur in the darkness. 'Meto!' I heard an old woman call out. 'Meto, come here and give us a hug!'

The boy disappeared into the shadows. As the room lightened, I saw the woman who embraced him. She sat on the straw-littered floor, her white hair knotted in a bun, her long, pale hands trembling in the dim light as she fondled the boy's hair.

Everywhere I looked I saw more and more of them – men, women, and children, all the slaves who had been gathered up from the fields or released from unnecessary tasks in the house and locked away to await the judgment of Crassus.

They sat huddled against the walls. I passed between them, walking the length of the long, narrow room. Eco followed behind me, gazing wide-eyed from face to face and tripping against the uneven floor. The smell of urine and waste grew stronger at the farther end of the room. The slaves forced to sit nearby huddled as far as they could from the stench. Exposed to it day after day, they must have grown used to it, enough to bear it. I covered my face with a fold of my heavy funeral garb, and still I could hardly breathe.

I felt a tug at my knee. Meto gazed up at me gravely. 'The best swimmer there ever was,' he assured me with a whisper. 'Better than Leander, and he could swim across the Hellespont. Better than Glaucus when he swam after Scylla, and Glaucus was half fish!'

No good it will do us if he's locked away here, I thought. Then I saw the young man at whom Meto pointed. The youth knelt on the straw, holding an old man's hands in his own and speaking in a low voice. The pale light gave his face a marmoreal smoothness, so that he looked more than ever like a statue come to life, or a living youth turned to stone.

'Apollonius,' I said, surprised to see him here.

He gave the old man's hands a final clasp, then stood and brushed the straw from his knees. The simple motion was as elegant as a poem. There is the haughty, manmade aristocracy of patricians like Faustus Fabius, I thought, and then there is the natural aristocracy of specimens such as this, which proceeds from the gods without regard to earthly status.

'Why are you here?' I asked, thinking Crassus must have banished him from the house simply to spite Mummius. But his explanation was simple.

'Most of the slaves have been locked away here since the day the master was found dead. A few of us have been allowed to stay at our posts, sleeping in our usual quarters between the stables and the house. Like Meto, I come here as often as I can, to see the others. The guards know me and let me pass.'

'Is he your father?' I said, looking down at the old man.

Apollonius smiled, but his eyes looked sad. 'I never had a father. Soterus knows herbs and poultices. He tends the other slaves when they're sick, but now he's sick himself. He craves water but can't drink, and his bowels are loose. Look, I think he's sleeping now. Once when I had a bad fever he tended to me night and day. He saved my life that summer. And all for nothing.'

I could discern no bitterness in his voice, no emotion at all. It was like the voice of his namesake, dispassionate and mysterious.

I held the cloth to my face and tried to catch a breath. 'Can you swim?' I asked, remembering why I had come.

Apollonius smiled a genuine smile. 'Like a dolphin,' he said.

There was a path which started just south of the annexe and led down to the boathouse, switching back and forth down the steep hill below the southern wing and the baths. The path was largely invisible from the house, hidden by high foliage and the steep angle of the hillside. It was a cruder path than the one I had taken down from the terrace at the north wing, but it was well-trampled and in most places wide enough for two to walk abreast. The boy Meto led the way, leaping over tree roots and scrambling down rock shelves. Eco and I descended at a more careful pace, while Apollonius followed deferentially behind us.

It was the warmest, sleepiest hour of the day. As we neared the boathouse I gazed up toward the hills, thinking of the funeral congregation forced to stand for hours while the flames slowly disintegrated all that remained of Lucius Licinius. I could see the tiny column of smoke rising above the treetops, thick and white but quickly blown into tattered streamers by the sea breeze, vanishing altogether as it dispersed into the blue above.

The little navy of boats moored at the pier knocked quietly against one another. As we stepped onto the pier, I noticed only a few dozing figures lounging in the boats, their feet dangling in the water and their faces covered by broad-brimmed sailors' hats. Most of the ferrymen and slaves had gone off scavenging for food, following the scent of roasting meats from the kitchens above, or else had slipped off to nap between the trees on the shady hillside.

'What did you lose?' asked Apollonius, peering down into the clear water in the open space between two of the boats. 'It's not exactly that I've lost something…' 'But what am I to look for?'

'I don't really know. Something heavy enough to make a loud splash. Perhaps several such objects.'

He looked at me dubiously, then shrugged. 'The water could be clearer, but I suppose most of the silt stirred up by all these boats arriving will have settled by now. And I could use more sunlight; all these boats together cast a great shadow over the bottom. But if I see anything that shouldn't be there, I'll bring it up to you.'

He unbelted and stripped off his tunic, then pulled his undertunic over his head and stood naked, his tousled hair glinting blue-black in the sunlight while lozenges of light, reflected off the water, danced across the sleek muscles of his chest and legs. Eco looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and envy. From beneath a broad-brimmed hat, one of the sailors made a crude but appreciative whistle. Apollonius lifted an eyebrow, but otherwise he ignored die sound; long ago he must have grown used to having others take note of his appearance.

He squared his shoulders and drew several deep breaths, then found a spot with room enough to dive into the water between two boats. The surface barely rippled behind him.

I strode up and down the jetty, peering into the green depths and catching glimpses of his naked whiteness as he darted amid the mossy stones and the wooden beams. In the water he propelled himself as gracefully as he moved on land, kicking with both legs in unison and using his arms as if they were wings.

A gull flew overhead. The column of smoke from the faraway funeral pyre continued to rise above the trees. Still Apollonius remained beneath the water. At last I saw his face gazing up at me from the murky bottom, then grow larger and larger as he propelled himself upward and at last broke through the surface.

I began to ask him what he had seen, but he gasped and held up his hand. He needed to breathe, not speak. Gradually his breathing grew slower and more regular. Finally he opened his mouth – to speak, I thought, but instead he sucked in a deep breath, bent his body double, and plunged beneath the surface again. His kicking feet left a spume of tiny bubbles behind.

He dived straight down, disappearing into the darkness. I walked up and down the pier, gazing over the edge. The gull circled, the smoke rose, a cloud rolled across the sun. By now the dozing figures in the boats had all awakened and were curiously watching us from beneath their hats.

'He's been under a long time,' one of them finally said.

'Very long,' said another, 'even for such a big-chested-boy.'

'Ah, it's nothing,' said a third. 'My brother dives for pearls, and he can stay down twice as long as this one's been under.'

'Even so…'

I looked between the boats, trying to see if he had come up in a hidden spot, wondering if he had struck his head. It had been a bad time to demand this task of him, with so many boats moored at the dock. Apollonius himself had complained of the dark shadow covering the bottom; even dolphins must need light to swim by. No matter what the pearl diver's brother might claim, it hardly seemed possible that a man could stay underwater as long as Apollonius had been gone.

I began to fret. Eco was no swimmer, and neither was the boy Meto, by his own admission. The idea of plunging into the water myself made me think of my ordeal of the other night; I tasted seawater in my throat and felt it burn my nostrils and experienced a tremor of panic. I looked at the scattered chorus of sailors' hats and the shadowy faces beneath them.

'You men!' I said at last. 'There must be a good swimmer among you! I'll pay any one of you five sesterces to take a look under the pier and tell me what's happened to the slave.'

There was a commotion among the scattered hats. Feet were drawn from the water, faces appeared, hands sought for balance.

'Hurry!' I shouted, looking into the bottomless green darkness and feeling a cold fear grip my throat. 'Hurry! Dive from where you are! Ten sesterces-'

But at that instant I was silenced by the bizarre apparition that emerged from the water at the end of the pier. The ferrymen froze in their places and stared as a long, gleaming blade soared straight upwards into the air. Wrapped in seaweed, the sword glittered silver and green beneath the sun. A long, white, muscular arm followed it, and then the broad shoulders and gasping face of Apollonius, smiling in triumph.