See Delphi and Die

XXXI

I heard you had gone to Cythera."

– L "Oh – some other man took that group!" Phineus spoke dismissively; I could not decide whether he was looking down on the man, the group, or both. Maybe the other escort had pinched the Cythera commission from under Phineus' nose – and with it, the tips.

We were walking. The bar had been too intimate; neither of us wanted this conversation to be overheard by its nosy keeper and residents. Corinth had plenty of squares and colonnades to stroll in. We made our way to the main forum. It was so grandiose I for one felt anonymous there. But those multiple shops, arranged in neat sets of six or so, bunched along every facade of the frieze-bedecked piazza, could be full of ears. Corinth must have its version of Roman informers – if nothing else there would be street spies put in place to report to the governor on the activities of cults like the Christians.

"I need you to give me some background," I said.

"Background on my clients?" Phineus enquired meekly.

"On your operation first, please. How long have you been running these escorted trips?"

"Since Nero's Grand Your. That was the first big year for visitors; I could see things could only get better."

So he had been on the road with tourists for the past ten years. I put him at close to forty. "What did you do before that, Phineus?"

"This and that. I come from the south."

"Of Greece?"

"Of Italy!"

"I've been there." I had been to Croton, home of the original wrestling champion Milo. I found the south hostile to Romans, its towns full of staring eyes and resentful faces. Helena's first husband came from Tarentum and he was bad news. My tone automatically went sour. "What part?"

"Brundisium." A port. Always liable to produce men with low

morals. A major embarking point for Greece, however, so a good home for a man who had ended up arranging travel.

I gave up on his past. "Who decided to set up an overseas consultancy? Is the business yours, or do I need to know about higher management?"

"It's mine." He sounded proud. Judging by the current tour, customer satisfaction was not his goal. That saved him feeling depressed when he reviewed his lack of praise from clients; it was enough for him to count up his bank balance.

"You call it Seven Sights. So I guess you go to all of them?" I tried showing off. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – you go to Babylon?" Phineus laughed contemptuously. "So you offer to go, and hope nobody asks for it… the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pharos and Library at Alexandria, the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza."

"I try to avoid Halicarnassus too," Phineus told me, confidentially. "That's halfway to Hades." When it came to remote exploration, he liked a soft life, it seemed.

"Still, you've had clients scribbling Tiberius was here on some of the best cultural hotspots."

"And they do it! Latninus saw this monument and was amazed… Septimus had a good shit at this inn, and enjoyed the barmaid. All right for them, Falco, but I have to return to those places. Last thing I want is furious temple priests who know that my previous customers defaced five-hundred-year-old pillars. Come to that, last thing I want is bitter barmaids who remember my old customers as lousy tippers!"

"You hand out hints on etiquette, surely? "Be discreet; pay what the bill demands; don't brag about the Circus Maximus or the new Flavian amphitheatre…"

"Pee when you can; don't steal votive offerings; souvenir-sellers want you to barter; money-changers don't. Never forget, Athens was a world-wide power when Romulus was sucking milk from the wolfie. – oh yes. Doesn't stop the bastards standing before the monument at Thermopylae, when their hearts ought to be broken, and sneering, "But Leonidas and the Spartans lost\. "

"Doesn't stop them continuously moaning?" I threw in.

Phineus favoured me with a caustic glance. "Now what have you heard, Falco?"

"No Games at Olympia?"

He sucked air through the hole between his front teeth. "They have no idea!" he shook his head mournfully. "Great gods, Falco! Don't

these fools know about the old story? – one man used to threaten his slaves that if they misbehaved, their punishment was to be sent to the Olympic Games."

"That bad?"

"Worse! Oh I have taken tours there during the contests. Then you get some moaning! It's a nightmare. Even if they think they know how it will be, they reel when they come up against the actual experience. They can't move, they don't see anything, they get bitten by flies and are laid low, they sweat like pigs in the heat, they collapse from dehydration, they are robbed by incense-sellers and street entertainers and prostitutes.. – " All this was now familiar. I was unimpressed by the blather. Phineus glanced at me to see how I was taking it, then carried on insistently. They are packed so tight, people faint away. Once I get the men into the stadium we are stuck there until closing time. The Games are violent events, long days of being squashed together under a baking sun, tumult all around.

"And you cannot take women?"

"I wouldn't take women even if I could!"

We had stopped in front of the southern stoa, a long colonnade cut from the rock on two levels. Above us reared the Temple of Apollo, hundreds of years old, on its spectacular bluff. It had a long and serenely confident array of the wide, slightly squat Greek columns with which I had become familiar at Olympia; to me, not so refined as our taller Roman temple pillars. Helena always said Apollo was handsome enough, but she wouldn't invite him home to dinner. He would be bound to bring his lyre with him and would want to start a music contest. Like Nero, Apollo was known to sulk and turn nasty if he was not allowed to win.

"So, Phineus," I said quietly. "Does your prohibition against women date from the year you took Marcella Naevia and her missing niece?"

Phineus breathed out, puffing his cheeks. "That again!"

"Again. nothing. It never went away."

"Look, Falco. I do not know what happened to that girl. I really do not know." The way he said it almost implied there were other things he claimed not to know, where some different measure of truth applied. I wondered what they were.

"And Valeria Ventidia, the bludgeoned bride?"

"How could I know anything about her either?"

He and I cooled off below a statue of a prowling lion, taking shelter from the sun's glare in the shade of its enormous plinth. A tattered stall

was selling drinks. Without comment on Phineus' last remark, I bought two cups of honeyed wine. Well, it passed for wine. We stood to sip them, so we could return the beakers afterwards.

"I was with the men," Phineus reminded me. "I had taken the men to a mock-feast of victory. When the bride died," he insisted.

I sampled my drink again, longing for more familiar street fare. "And when the girl went up the Hill of Cronus, where were you then, Phineus?"

"Gods, I can't remember!" His voice was low and full of irritation. I lifted my mouth from the sticky cup, and gazed at him. He must have had an answer at the time – and I wanted to hear it. "It was the last day," he remarked, in his dismissive way.

Young Glaucus had told me the programme. As Phineus and I moved on, towards the Forum's massive triple entrance arch, beside the huge complex of the Peirene Fountain, I counted off the events. Day One. swearing in competitors, contests for heralds, sacrifices, orations. Day Two. Equestrian events (chariots and horse races, the pentathlon. Day Three. sacrifice of the hundred oxen to Zeus, foot races. Day Four. the contact sports – wrestling, boxing, pankration."

"And race-in-armour," Phineus added. Pedantic bastard.

"Day Four would be particularly trying for any women present, I imagine. Penned up, with nothing much to do, waiting for their male companions to come home, knowing the men would talk obsessively about blood and battery."

"The way I see it," Phineus said, pompously and without much sympathy, "if these rich women agree to accompany their men on an athletics tour, they must know what they are letting themselves in for."

"I think my wife might say, all women underestimate what men will impose on them!"

We were at the fountain now. We stood on the busy flight of steps, buffeted by people coming and going from the pools. It had six dramatic arches above gloomy cisterns, which lay some way below the level of the modern Forum. I wondered if that represented the old foundation level, before the brutal destruction wreaked in Rome's name by Corinth-conquering Mummius. "Marcella Naevia is well travelled, I am told, but she and her young niece may have known little about the world of sport. Perhaps they were not prepared, Phineus. Was the aunt single, married, or widowed?"

"She was trouble," said Phineus. "Always raising protests. Always having a go." A typical Seven Sights client, then.

"She took against you?" It was a guess, but accurate.

"She did."

"Why?"

"Absolutely no idea." I could have provided suggestions. Once more he closed off. Once more I waited. "The woman was unreasonable."

"The woman lost her niece, Phineus."

"Nobody knew the girl was dead. She could have run off with a one-legged sprinter, for all anybody knew."

"Do virgins run off with athletes or otherwise frequently on your tours?"

Phineus laughed coarsely. "No, they usually just end up pregnant. My job is to spot the bulge in time to ship them back to Rome before they actually have the child – then my company washes its hands of them!"

"That must save you a lot of trouble," I said. He took it as a compliment.

After a while, we moved down the wide fountain stair ourselves, into its water-cooled open courtyard. The pools were still below our level, reached by a few further steps. We could hear the water cascading from six lion-headed spouts. Overshadowed by the enclosing walls, we trod carefully on the wet slabs. I glanced up to admire the elegantly painted architecture, then reminded Phineus of where we left off. So – Day Four, three years ago. what happened, Phineus?"

"The men had a really good day at the contact sports, then I had arranged to take them to a feast."

"You can't get them in to the official winners' banquet, presumably? The Prytaneion is reserved for competitors. So you fixed up an alternative – like the one you arranged this year for the current group?" That would be a dreary night with execrable refreshments, according to the angry group member Sertorius. "Any good?" I could not resist the chance to be satirical.

"Of course. Then next morning, the bloody girl went missing, her damned aunt raised an outcry, and just when we were due to leave, we spent a day fruitlessly searching for darling Caesia. I'll never forget. It was bloody pouring with rain.

"She had vanished overnight?"

"The aunt reported it when we were ready to go. I think she waited until morning." Phineus saw me looking sideways. "In case darling Caesia had just found herself a boyfriend and wanted to stay with him."

"Did you have any reason to think that she had?"

"Found a boyfriend? I wouldn't think so. She was a prim little mouse. Jumped, if anybody so much as looked at her. Didn't seem to like men."

That was new. Inaccurate too. Her father had said there was an episode with a man at home in Rome. "You thought she had no experience?"

"She hid behind the skirts of older women on the trip." Hid from what, I wondered.

"Who was making advances?"

"Nobody." Phineus looked annoyed. "Don't twist my words. I never said that."

I changed tack. "Did you meet her father – afterwards?"

Now it was Phineus who jumped. "Why? What's her father said, Falco?"

"Touchy! It was a straight question."

"I met him," stated Phineus. "I was polite to him. He had lost his child and I sympathised. There simply wasn't anything that I could do to help the man. I know nothing about what happened to Marcella Caesia." He paused then. I could not tell what he was thinking – but once again I felt there were things Phineus kept hidden. "Except this, Falc o- if Caesia really disappeared the night before we left, this is a certainty. none of the male clients on that tour harmed her. It would have been impossible. All of them were with me all Day Four, from when we left the women in the morning – with Caesia among them, perfectly all right."