Poseidon s Gold

XXXVIII

Manlius and Varga came swinging back home in the dead of night, arguing at the tops of their voices with a gang of other artistic delinquents as if it was broad daylight. I heard a shutter crash open and someone screamed at them; they answered with an innocent calm that hinted this was a regular occurrence. They had no sense of time. They had no sense of decency either, but having seen them cadging drinks off Festus I already knew that.

The other crowd went on, leaving my two to lurch upstairs. I sat, listening to their uneven approach. Informers dread this moment: sitting in pitch-darkness, waiting for a problem.

I already knew quite a lot about them. Anyone who broke into their room stumbled over discarded amphorae. Their room smelt sour. They owned few clothes, and paid fewer laundry bills. They lived such abnormal hours that by the time they thought of washing, even the public baths had closed. As well as their own odours, which were plentiful, they lived among a complicated waft of pigments: lead, palm resin, galls, crushed seashells and chalks, together with lime, gypsum, and borax. They ate cheap meals, full of garlic and those artichokes that make you fart.

In they fell, all paint-stains and dirty politics. The smoke from a resinous torch added itself to the other smells that lived here. It enabled me to see I was in a communal room. A small space crammed with beds for three or four people, though only these two appeared to be renting at present. The painters showed no surprise at finding me sitting there in the dark. They did not object: I had brought them an amphora. Well, I had met creative types before.

One was tall and one short, both of them bare-armed, not from bravado but because they were too poor to own cloaks. They both had beards, mainly to strike a defiant social attitude. They were aged about thirty, but their manners were adolescent and their habits puerile. Under the grime they might both have been good-looking in different ways. They preferred to make their mark through personality; a kind friend should have advised them their personalities needed sprucing up.

They stuffed their torch into a narrow oil jar: some tasteful Greek's funeral urn. I guessed the Greek was still in it. That would be their idea of fun, making a lampstand out of him.

Neither of them remembered me.

'Who's this?'

'I'm Marcus-' I began, intending full formality.

'Hey, Marcus! Wonderful to see you!'

'How's your life, Marcus?'

I refrained from saying that only select members of my family were permitted to use my personal name. Etiquette is lost on free spirits; especially ones who are habitually drunk.

Manlius was the designer. The tall, sleepy-eyed one, he wore what had once been a white tunic and had a fringe of dank black hair. Manlius squiggled and doodled in miniature. He had drawn neat little columns, swags and flower vases all around his corner of the room.

Varga's short legs were compensated for by a wide moustache. His tunic was a brownish manganese colour, with rags of purplish braid, and he wore sandals with gold thongs. Ma would have reckoned him untrustworthy. He was the one who could paint. He preferred ambitious battle scenes with bare-chested mythological giants. He had a good line in tragic centaurs; one five feet high reared up in agony above his bed, gorily speared by an Amazon.

'I'd like to meet your model!'

'The girl or the horse?'

'Oh the horse-amazing fetlocks!'

Our quips were satirical; the Amazon was startling. I pretended to admire her sensitive skin tones so we could all leer at her shape. Her body owed something to the girl who had posed for the picture, though more to Varga's fervent lust. He had improved her until she was almost deformed. I knew that. I knew his model; had seen her, anyway. His painted fighting maid was based on a luscious bundle whose proportions in real life would make a man gulp, yet not despair. The Amazon was for wild dreams.

The original model was a ripe brunette with wide-set daring eyes, eyes that had fallen on my brother once, almost certainly by design. She was the girl he had sat next to at the Circus, the night he dumped Marina on me. The night, I now felt certain, when he had roamed through our city on the lookout for someone though for once, I reckoned, the girl was only a messenger.

'Who owns the body?'

'Rubinia-though I made some adaptations! She often sits for us.'

I was in the right place. That night, Rubinia must have told Festus he would see the painters at the Virgin. (She had probably told him her address too, though that was now irrelevant.)

I laughed, easily. 'I think she knew my brother.'

'More than likely!' chortled Manilus. He must be commenting on the girl; he had not asked me who my brother was.

Maybe he knew.

Probably not yet, I thought.

While I wondered how to work around to my enquiry, we lay on the beds with our boots on, drinking steadily. (Artists do not have mothers who bring them up nicely-or at least, they do not have to acknowledge them.)

My reference to Festus was forgotten. The painters were the casual type who would let you mention an acquaintance, or a relation, without further curiosity. They knew everyone. If he was carrying an amphora or sitting in a bar with a full purse on him, any stranger was their friend. Trying to remind them of one past patron among so many could prove difficult.

Our encounter tonight became as bad as I expected: they started talking about politics. Manlius was a republican. I was one myself, though wary of mentioning it in this loose-tongued company. Too serious a hope of restoring the old system implied removing the Emperor. Vespasian might be a tolerant old buffer, but treason was still a capital offence, and I try to avoid such hobbies. Being set up for a soldier's murder was unpleasant enough.

Manlius definitely wanted to dispose of Vespasian; Varga hated the entire Senate. They had a plan to turn Rome into a free public gallery, stocked by grabbing patrician collections and raiding the public porticoes, and financed from the Treasury. The plan was highly detailed-and completely impractical in their hands. These two could not have organised an orgy in a brothel.

'We could do it,' declaimed Varga, 'if the establishment were not protected by the mailed shirts and hidebound mentality of the Praetorian Guard.'

I decided against mentioning that I sometimes worked as an imperial agent, in case I was found decapitated in a public square. Artistic people have no sense of proportion-and drunks have no sense.

'This is a city run on fear!' Manlius slurred. 'For instance-here's a for instance, Marcus-why do slaves all wear the same clothes as the rest of us? Why do their masters make sure of that?'

'Because they work better if they're warm?'

My answer produced a huge guffaw. 'No! Because if they all wore a slave uniform, they would realise that there are millions of them, controlled by a mere handful of bastards they could easily overthrow if they put their minds to it-'

'Thank you, Spartacus!'

'I'm serious,' he mumbled, making serious efforts to pour himself another drink.

'Here's to the republic,' I toasted him gently. 'When every man tilled his own furrow, when every daughter was a virgin, and every son stayed at home to the age of forty-nine, saying "Yes, Father" to everything!'

'You're a cynic!' commented Varga, evidently the astute one of this rollicking pair.

I mentioned that I had a nephew who had apprenticed himself to a fresco painter on the Campanian coast. Actually Larius was on my mind now because I was thinking he might have attached himself to sume useless degenerate like these two. He was embarrassingly sensible, but I should have checked before I left him there.

'Campania's a dump!' Manlius grumbled. 'We were there; it was dreadful. We went for the sun and the women and the precious grapes-plus the stupendously rich clients, of course. No luck. All snobs, Marcus. Nobody wants you unless you're a Greek or a local. We came home again.'

'Are you in work at the moment?'

'Surely. Good commission. Varga's doing The Rape of the Sabine Women for aristos to gaze at while they stuff themselves silly on peacocks in aspic. He creates a nice rape, Varga:'

'I can believe it!'

'I'm doing them a pair of rooms: one white, one black. Either side of the atrium. Balanced, see? Balance appeals to me.'

'Doubles your fee?' I grinned.

'Money means nothing to artists.'

'This generous attitude explains why you had to descend to painting rude sketches at the Virgin-settling a bill, I presume?'

Varga winced. 'That thing!'

'You were slumming,' I said, looking at the quality of what he painted for himself.

'We were, Marcus. The need to drink is a terrible thing!'

I was tired of this. My feet had warmed up enough to start hurting; the rest of me was stiff, tired and bored. I was sick of drinking; sick of holding my breath against the unsavoury atmosphere; sick of listening to drunks.

'Don't call me Marcus,' I said abruptly. 'You don't know me.'

They blinked at me blearily. They were a long way from the real world. I could have tripped them up merely by asking for their names or when their birthdays were.

'What's up, Marcus?'

'Let's go back to the beginning: I am Marcus Didius Falco,' I resumed, from an hour earlier. Thanks to the effects of my amphora their bravado was extinguished and they let me finish this time. 'You knew Marcus Didius Festus. Another name; another face; believe me, another personality.'

Manlius, the one who rescued them from trouble perhaps, waved a hand, managed to place it on the bed, and propped himself half upright. He tried to speak, but gave up. He lay down flat again.

'Festus?' quavered Varga, staring at the ceiling. Above his head, nicely positioned for gazing at while nearly insensible, he had painted a small, exquisite Aphrodite Bathing, modelled not by Rubinia but some small, exquisite blonde. If the painting was accurate, he would have done better luring the blonde to bed, but they do expect regular meals and a supply of glass-bead necklaces. No point investing in the hair dye otherwise.

'Festus,' I repeated, struggling to organise something sensible here.

'Festus:' Varga rolled himself sideways so he could squint at me. Somewhere in those puffy eyes a new level of intelligence seemed to glimmer. 'What do you want, Falco?'

'Vargo, I want you to tell me why, on a certain night five years ago when I saw you with him at the Virgin, Marcus Didius Festus wanted to meet with you?'

'He can't remember who he met at the Virgin five days ago!' Manlius responded, gathering the shreds of his critical faculties. 'You don't want much!'

'I want to save my neck from the public strangler,' I retorted frankly. 'A soldier called Censorinus has been murdered, probably for asking just this sort of question. Unless I can shed light on events, I'll be condemned for the killing. Hear that, and understand me: I'm a desperate man!'

'I know nothing about anything,' Varga assured me.

'Well you know enough to lie about it!' I rasped good-humouredly. Then I lowered my voice. 'Festus is dead; you cannot harm him. The truth may even protect his reputation-though I'm honestly not expecting it-so don't hold back to avoid offending me.'

'It's a complete fog to me,' Varga repeated.

'I hate people who pretend to be idiots!' I spun off the bed where I was lying, and got hold of his right arm. I twisted it enough to hurt. As I sprang at him I had whipped out my knife; I laid it against his wrist so the slightest movement would make him cut himself. 'Stop messing me about. I know you met Festus and I know it's relevant! Come clean, Varga, or I'll slice off your painting hand!'

Varga went white. Too drunk to resist, and too innocent to know how to do it anyway, he stared up at me in terror, hardly able to breathe. I was so frustrated by the enquiry, I almost meant what I said. I was frightening myself, and Varga could tell. A vague sound gurgled in his throat.

'Speak up, Varga. Don't be shy!'

'I can't remember meeting your brother-'

' I remember you meeting him,' I declared coldly. 'And I wasn't even in on the conspiracy!'

His friend shifted anxiously. At last I was getting somewhere.

'There was no conspiracy involving us,' Manlius burst out from the other bed. 'I told that to the soldier when he came!'