Poseidon_s Gold

XLVI

We had been in the far north of the city; we made our way gloomily south. This time we walked at merely a brisk pace. My father was still not talking.

We reached the Saepta Julia. Pa carried on. I was so used to marching alongside him into trouble that at first I said nothing, but eventually I tackled him: 'I thought we were going back to the Saepta?'

'I'm not going to the Saepta.'

'I can see that. The Saepta's behind us.'

'I was never going to the Saepta. I told you where we were going when we were at the Carus house.'

'Home, you said.'

'That's where I'm going,' said my father. 'You can please your pompous self.'

Home! He meant where he lived with his redhead.

I did not believe this could be happening.

I had never yet been inside the house where my father lived, though I reckoned Festus had been no stranger there. My mother would never forgive me if I went now. I was not part of Pa's new life; I would never be. The only reason I kept walking was that it would be a gross discourtesy to abandon a man of his age who had had a bad shock at the Carus house, and with whom I had just shared a rumpus. He was out in Rome without his normal bodyguards. He was under threat of violence from Carus and Servia. He was paying me for protection. The least I could do was to see he reached his house safely.

He let me trudge all the way from the Saepta Julia, past the Flaminian Circus, the Porticus of Octavia and the Theatre of Marcellus. He dragged me right under the shadow of the Arx and the Capitol. He towed me on reluctantly, past the end of Tiber Island, the old Cattle Market Forum, a whole litter of temples and the Sublician and Probus Bridges.

Then he let me wait while he fumbled for his doorkey, failed to find it, and banged the bell to be let in. He let me slouch after him inside his neat entrance suite. He flung off his cloak, peeled off his boots, gestured brusquely for me to do likewise-and only when I was barefoot and feeling vulnerable did he admit scornfully, 'You can relax! She's not here.' The reprieve nearly made me faint.

Pa shot me a disgusted look. I let him know it was mutual. 'I set her up in a small business to stop her nosing into mine. On Tuesdays she always goes there to pay the wages and do the accounts.'

'It's not a Tuesday!' I pointed out grumpily.

'They had some trouble there last week and now she's having some work done to the property. Anyway, she'll be out all day.'

I sat on a coffer while he stomped off to speak to his steward. Someone brought me a pair of spare sandals and took my boots to clean the mud off them. As well as this slave, and the boy who had opened the door to us, I saw several other faces. When Pa reappeared I commented, 'Your billet's well staffed.'

'I like people round about me.' I had always thought having too many people around him was the main reason he had left us.

'These are slaves.'

'So I'm a liberal. I treat my slaves like children.'

'I'd like to riposte, and you treated your children like slaves!' Our eyes met. 'I won't. It would be unjust.'

'Don't descend to forced politeness, Marcus! Just feel free to be yourself,' he commented, with the long-practised sarcasm peculiar to families.

Pa lived in a tall, rather narrow house on the waterfront. This damp location was highly desired because of its view across the Tiber, so plots were small. The houses suffered badly from flooding; I noticed that the ground floor here was painted plainly in fairly dark colours. Left to myself, I looked into the rooms attached to the hallway. They were being used by the slaves, or were set up as offices where visitors could be interviewed. One was even stuffed with sandbags for emergency use. The only furniture comprised large stone coffers that would remain unaffected by damp.

Upstairs all that changed. Wrinkling my nose at the unfamiliar smell of a strange house, I followed my father to the first floor. Our feet trampled a grand Eastern carpet. He had this luxurious item spread on the floor in regular use, not hung safely on the wall. In fact everything he had brought home-which meant plenty-was there to be used.

We marched through a series of small, crowded rooms. They were clean, but jammed with treasures. The wall paint was all elderly and fading. It had been done to a basic standard, probably twenty years ago when Pa and his woman moved here, and not touched since. It suited him. The plainish red, yellow and sea-blue rooms with conventional dados and cornices were the best foil for my father's large, ever-changing collection of furniture and vases, not to mention the curios and interesting trinkets any auctioneer obtains by the crate. It was organised chaos, however. You could live here, if you liked clutter. The impression was established and comfortable, its taste set by people who pleased themselves.

I tried not to get too interested in the artefacts; they were astonishing, but I knew they were now doomed. As Pa walked ahead of me, sometimes glancing at a piece as he passed it, I had the impression he was secure, in a way I did not remember from when he lived with us. He knew where everything was. Everything was here because he wanted it-which extended to the scarfmaker, presumably.

He brought me to a room that could be either his private den or where he sat with his woman conversing. (He had bills and invoices scattered about and a dismantled lamp he was mending, but I noticed a small spindle poking out from under a cushion.) Thick woollen rugs rumpled underfoot. There were two couches, side-tables, various quaint bronze miniatures, lamps and log baskets. On the wall hung a set of theatrical masks-possibly not my father's choice. On a shelf stood an extremely good blue-glass cameo vase, over which he did sigh briefly.

'Losing that one is going to hurt! Wine?' He produced the inevitable flagon from a shelf near his couch. Alongside the couch he had an elegant yard-high gilded fawn, positioned so he could pat its head like a pet.

'No thanks. I'll go on tending the hangover.'

He stayed his hand, without pouring for himself. For a moment he gazed at me. 'You don't give an inch, do you?' I understood, and glared back silently. 'I've managed to get you inside the door-but you're as friendly as a bailiff. Less,' he added. 'I never knew a bailiff refuse a cup of wine.'

I said nothing. It would be a striking irony if I set out to find my dead brother, only to end up making friends with my father instead. I don't believe in that kind of irony. We had had a good day getting ourselves into all sorts of trouble-and that was the end of it.

My father put down the flagon and his empty cup.

'Come and see my garden, then!' he ordered me.

We walked back through all the rooms until we reached the stairs. To my surprise, he led me up another flight; I assumed I was about to partake in some perverse joke. But we came to a low arch, closed by an oak door. Pa shot open the bolts, and stood back for me to duck my head and step out first.

It was a roof-garden. It had troughs filled with plants, bulbs, even small trees. Shaped trellises were curtained with roses and ivy. At the parapet more roses were trained along chains like garlands. There, between tubs of box trees, stood two lion-ended seats, providing a vista right across the water to Caesar's Gardens, the Transtiberina, the whale-backed ridge of the Ianiculan.

'Oh this is not fair,' I managed to grin feebly.

'Got you!' he scoffed. He must have known I had inherited a deep love of greenery from Ma's side of the family.

He made to steer me to a seat, but I was already at the parapet drinking in the panorama. 'Oh you lucky old bastard! So who does the garden?'

'I planned it. I had to have the roof strengthened. Now you know why I keep so many slaves; it's no joke carrying water and soil up three flights in buckets. I spend a lot of my spare time up here…'

He would. I would have done the same.

We took a bench each. It was companionable, yet we remained distinct. I could cope with that.

'Right,' he said. 'Capua!'

'I'll go.'

'I'm coming with you.'

'Don't bother. I can rough up a sculptor, however devious. At least we know that he's devious before I start.'

'Sculptors are all devious! There are a lot of them in Capua. You don't even know what he looks like. I'm coming, so don't argue. I know Orontes, and what's more, I know Capua.' Of course, he had lived there for years.

'I can find my way round some two-mule Campanian village,' I snarled disparagingly.

'Oh no. Helena Justina doesn't want you being robbed by every low-season pickpocket and picking up floozies-'

I was about to ask if that was what had happened when he went there, but of course when Pa ran off to Capua, he took his own floozie.

'What about leaving the business?'

'Mine is a well-run outfit, thanks; it can stand a few days without me. Besides,' he said, 'madam can make decisions if any snags arise.'

I was surprised to learn the scarf-maker commanded so much trust, or even that she involved herself. For some reason I had always viewed her as a negative figure. My father seemed the type whose views on women's social role were stiff and traditional. Still, it did not follow that the scarf-maker agreed with him.

We heard the door open behind us. Thinking about Father's redhead, I looked round quickly, afraid I should see her. A slave edged out with a large tray, no doubt as a result of Pa's talk with his steward. The tray went on to a bird-bath, creating a makeshift table. 'Have some lunch, Marcus.'

It was mid-afternoon, but we had missed other refreshment. Pa helped himself. He left me to make my own decision, so on that basis I conceded the issue and tucked in.

It was nothing elaborate, just a snack someone had thrown together for the master when he came home unexpectedly. But as snacks go, it was tasty. 'What's the fish?'

'Smoked eel.'

'Very nice.'

'Try it with a drop of damson sauce.'

'Is this what they call Alexandrine?'

'Probably. I just call it bloody good. Am I winning you round?' my father asked evilly.

'No, but pass the rolls, will you.'

There were two strips of eel left; we jabbed at them with our knives, like children fighting over titbits.

'A man called Hirrius had an eel-farm,' Pa began obliquely, though somehow I knew he would be working around to discussing our own precarious position. 'Hirrius sold his eel-farm for four million sesterces. It was a famous sale; I wish I had handled it! Now you and I could do with just one pool like that.'

I breathed slowly, licking sauce from my fingers. 'Half a million… I'll come in with you, but that's not much of an offer. I've been trying to raise four hundred thousand. I suppose I may have collected ten per cent so far.' That was optimistic. 'I refrained from pricing up your lovely chattels, but the picture's bleak for both of us.'

'True.' My father seemed surprisingly unworried, however.

'Don't you care? You have obviously assembled a wealth of good things here-yet you told Carus and Servia you would sell.'

'Selling things is my trade,' he answered tersely. Then he confirmed, 'You're right. To cover the debt means stripping the house. Most of the stuff at the Saepta belongs to other people; selling for customers is what auctioneering is about.'

'Your personal investment is all in this house?'

'Yes. The house itself is freehold. That cost me-and I'm not intending to mortgage it now. I don't keep much cash with bankers; it's vulnerable.'

'So how healthy are you on the sesterces front?'

'Not as healthy as you think. ' If he could seriously talk of finding half a million, he was filthy rich by my standards. Like all men who don't have to worry, he liked grousing. 'There are plenty of demands. Bribes and easements required at the Saepta; I pay my whack to the Guild for our dinners and the funeral fund. Since the store was raided, I've some big losses to cover, not to mention compensating the people whose auction was knocked apart that time you were there.' He could have added, I still give your mother an annuity. I knew he did. I also knew she spent his money on her grandchildren; I paid her rent myself. 'I'll have a bare house when I finish with Carus,' he sighed. 'But I've had that before. I'll come back.'

'You're too old to have to start again.' He must be too old to feel sure he could manage it. By rights, he should now have been able to retire to some country farm. 'Why are you doing it? For big brother's reputation?'

'My own, more likely. I'd rather sneer at a stick like Carus than let Carus sneer at me. What about you?' he challenged.

'I was the hero's executor.'

'Well I was his partner.'

'In this?'

'No, but does it matter, Marcus? If he'd asked me to come in on a Phidias I would have leapt at it. Let me handle the debt. I've had my life. You don't need to ruin your chance of making things legal with your senator's daughter.'

'Maybe I never had any chance,' I admitted dismally.

Another of the discreet house slaves paddled up, this time bringing us a steaming jug of honey and wine. He poured for us both without asking, so I accepted the cup. The drink was headily laced with Indian spikenard. My father had come a long way from the days when all we drank at home was old wine lees, well watered down, with the odd vervain leaf to disguise the taste.

Light clung to the distant sky with a fragile grip as the afternoon drew in. In the grey haze across the river I could just see the Ianiculan Hill running away to the right. There was a house over there which I once dreamed of owning, a house where I had wanted to live with Helena.

'Will she leave you?' Pa must have read my thoughts.

'She should.'

'I didn't ask what she ought to do!'

I smiled. 'She won't ask it either, knowing her.'

He sat quiet for a time. He liked Helena, I knew that.

Suddenly I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, cradling my cup. Something had struck me. 'What did Festus do with the money?'

'The half-million?' Pa rubbed his nose. He had the same nose as me: straight down from the forehead without a bump between the eyebrows. 'Olympus knows!'

'I never found it.'

'And I never saw it either.'

'So what did he tell you about it when he was mentioning the Phidias?'

'Festus,' drawled my father, with some exasperation, 'never gave me any idea the Phidias had been paid for by the collectors! That I only learned from Carus and Servia well afterwards.'

I sat back again. 'They really did pay him? Is there any chance this receipt of theirs is forged?'

Pa sighed. 'I wanted to think so. I looked at it very hard, believe me. It was convincing. Go and see it-'

I shook my head. I hate to pile up misery.

I could think up no new queries. Now Orontes Mediolanus was our only lead.

We spent some time (it felt about two hours) arguing about arrangements for getting to Capua. By Didius standards this was fairly refined. Even so, all my sensible plans for lessening the agony of a long, tiring journey were overturned. I wanted to ride down there at the fastest speed possible, do the business, then pelt home. Pa insisted his old bones were no longer able to endure a horse. He decided to arrange a carriage, from some stable he vaguely specified as a meeting-place. We came near to agreeing terms for sharing expenses. There was some discussion about a departure time, though this remained unclear. The Didius family hates to upset itself by settling practicalities.

Yet another servant appeared, on the excuse of collecting the tray. He and Pa exchanged a glance that could have been a signal. 'You'll be wanting to leave soon,' hinted my father.

Nobody mentioned the woman he lived with, but her presence in the house had become tangible.

He was right. If she was there, I wanted to disappear. He took me downstairs. I pulled on my cloak and boots hurriedly, then fled.

Luck was against me as usual. The last thing I felt able to cope with happened: not two streets from Father's house, while still feeling like a traitor, I ran into Ma.