'You mean you bought the item sight unseen?' I floundered wildly.
'"Antique marble"' intoned Carus, evidently quoting from this bill of sale which I preferred not to examine. '"A Phidias Poseidon, heroic proportions, expression of noble placidity, wearing Greek dress, heavily coiffed and bearded, height two yards four inches, one arm raised to hurl a trident"… We have our own shippers,' he informed me in a biting tone. 'The Aristedon brothers. People we trust. We would have made our own arrangements. Then it would have been our loss. Not this way.'
Festus could have let them take the shipping risk. He would have known that. He was always well up on customers' backgrounds. So why not? I knew without even thinking about it. Festus was bringing the statue home himself because he had some extra wrinkle up his grubby tunic-sleeve.
This was not my fault. It was not even Pa's.
That would not stop Carus and Servia.
'Are you taking us to court?'
'Litigation is not our philosophy.'
I managed not to comment, No; only thuggery. 'Look, I only recently came upon this problem,' I began again. 'I am trying to investigate what happened. After five years it is not easy, so I ask you to be sympathetic. I give you my word I will endeavour to illuminate the issue. I ask you to cease harassing my elderly father-'
'I'll take care of myself!' scoffed the elderly Didius, ever to the fore with a pointless quip.
'And give me time.'
'Not after five years!' Carus said.
I wanted to fight. I wanted to storm out, telling him he could do his worst and we would resist everything he did.
There was no point. I had already discussed it with Father on the way here. We could provide muscle at the auctions. We could barricade the office and the store. We could guard both our homes and never step outside without a train of armed guards.
We could not do all those things, however, every day and every night, for years.
Carus and Servia had the grim insistence of people who would persist. We would never be free of the worry, for ourselves, our property-our women. We would be smothered by the cost of it all. We would never escape the inconvenience, or the public doubt that soon attaches to people who are trailing disputed debts.
And we could never forget Festus.
They were growing tired of us. We could see they were about to have us thrown out.
My father was the first to acknowledge the deadlock. 'I cannot replace the Phidias; no similar piece is known. As for finding half a million, it would wipe out my liquidity.'
'Realise your assets,' Carus instructed him.
'I'll have an empty storehouse, and a naked house.'
Carus just shrugged.
My father stood up. With more dignity than I expected, he simply said, 'Selling everything I have, Cassius Carus, will take time!' He was no longer requesting favours, but laying down terms. They would be accepted; Carus and Servia wanted to be paid. 'Come along, Marcus,' Pa ordered quietly. 'We seem to have plenty of work to do. Let's go home.'
For once I abandoned my insistence on stating in public that he and I honoured different versions of 'home'.
He strode out with a set face. I followed. I was equally in despair. Half a million was more than I had already failed to assemble for my own most cherished purposes. It was more money than I really hoped to see. If I ever did see it, I wanted the cash so I could marry Helena. Well I could kiss goodbye to that idea for ever, if I became embroiled in this.
Yet even if it broke me for ever, I realised I could not leave my father to shoulder the whole burden of my feckless brother's debt.
XLIV
We had walked to the collectors' house. We walked back.
Well not quite: my father strode, at a ferocious pace. I hate to intrude upon another man's trouble-and when a man has just failed to escape paying out half a million sesterces, he is certainly in trouble. So I marched along beside him, and since he wanted to fume in complete silence, I joined in loyally.
As he steamed down the Via Flaminia my father's visage was as friendly as Jove's thunderbolt, and my own may well have lacked its usual winsomeness.
I was thinking hard as well.
We had almost reached the Saepta when he wheeled up to a wine-bar counter.
'I need a drink!'
I needed one too, but I still had a headache.
'I'll sit here and wait.' Monumental masons were removing my skull on a tombstone hoist. 'I spent last night oiling two painters' vocal chords.'
Pa paused in the midst of ordering, unable to decide which of the wines listed on the wall was sufficiently strong to create the oblivion he needed. 'What painters?'
'Manlius and Varga. ' I paused, too, though in my case there was no real wrench to the brain cells; I had only been applying my elbow to the counter and staring vaguely round me like any son accompanying his father out of doors. 'Festus knew them.'
'I know them! Go on,' urged my father thoughtfully.
On I went: 'Well, there's a disappearing sculptor who used to lodge with them-'
'What's his name?' asked my father.
The barman was growing anxious. He could sense a lost sale approaching.
'Orontes Mediolanus.'
My father scoffed. 'Orontes never disappeared! I ought to know; I use that idle bastard for copies and repairs. Orontes lodged with those loafers on the Caelian until at least last summer. They took your drink and twisted you!' The barman lost his sale.
We raced off to find Manlius and Varga.
We spent most of the afternoon on the chase. My father dragged me round more sleepy fresco artists-and more of their burgeoning models-than I could bear to think about. We toured horrid hired rooms, freezing studios, teetering penthouses, and half-painted mansions. We went all over Rome. We even tried a suite at the Palace where Domitian Caesar had commissioned something elegant in yellow ochre for Domitia Longina, the dalliance he had snatched from her husband and installed as his wife.
'Nothing like it!' muttered Father. There was plenty like it actually; the Flavian taste was predictable. Domitian was only toying at that stage; he would have to wait for both his father and his brother to die before he could launch into his master plan for a new Palatine. I said what I thought about his decorating clich 'Oh you're right!' agreed Pa, grovelling to the inside knowledge of an imperial agent. 'And even adultery with the pick of the smart set is a convention nowadays. Both Augustus and that repulsive little Caligula acquired wives by pinching them.'
'That's not for me. When I grabbed a senator's daughter, I chose one who had divorced herself in readiness for my suave approach.'
'Quite right!' came a rather sardonic reply. 'You would hate to be publicly criticised…'
At last someone told us the address where our quarries were working. We made our way there in silence. We had no plan this time. I was angry, but saw no need to elaborate. I never enquired what Father felt, though I did find out quite soon.
The house in question was being done over completely. Scaffold hung threateningly over the entrance where old roof-tiles were flying down from the heavens into a badly placed skip. The site foreman must be a dozy swine. We clambered in, through a mess of trestles and ladders, then tripped over a tool-bag. Pa picked it up. When the watchman raised his head from a game of draughts scratched in the dusty base of a half-laid tessellated floor, I called out, 'Have you seen Titus anywhere?' and we rushed past, pretending to follow his vaguely raised arm.
There is always a carpenter called Titus. We used him several times to bluff our way around. Even a fat fusspot in a toga, who was probably the householder, let us evade questions, merely frowning fretfully when we barged past him in a corridor. His property had been in the hands of louts for months. He no longer complained when they knocked him aside, peed on his acanthus bed or took naps in their filthy tunics on his own favourite reading-couch.
'Sorry, governor!' my father beamed. He had the knack of sounding like an unskilled pleb who had just put his pic
k through a water-pipe and was shuffling off out of it quickly.
I knew Manlius would be working near the atrium, but there was too much going on there when we first arrived. We left him, and started working through the dining-rooms, looking for raped Sabines. It was a big house. They had three different feeding areas. Varga was touching up his Sabine ladies in the third.
The plasterer had just left him with a new section. For frescos, the trick is to work extremely fast. Varga was facing a huge new stretch of smooth wet plaster. He had a sketch, with several writhing bottoms on it. He had a kettle of flesh-tone paint already mixed. He had a badger-hair brush in his hand.
Then we came in.
'Whoa, Varga. Drop the brush! It's the Didius boys!' That harsh command, which startled both the painter and me, came from Pa.
Varga, slow on the uptake, clung on to his brush.
My father, who was a solid man, grasped the painter's arm with one hand. He gripped the painter bodily with the other, lifting him off his feet, then he swung him in a half-circle, so that a bright pink streak from the brush scraped right across three yards of plaster, just smoothed over by an extremely expensive craftsman. It had been a perfect, glistening poem.
'Mico could learn something here! Well don't just stand there, Marcus, let's fetch that door off its pinions. You nip into the kitchen alongside and pinch the rope they hang the dishrags on-'
Bemused, I complied. I never willingly take orders-but this was my first game of soldiers as one of the Didius boys. Clearly they were hard men.
I could hear Varga moaning. My father held him fast, sometimes shaking him absent-mindedly. On my return he threw the painter down, and helped me lift an ornamental folding door off its bronze fastenings. Gasping for air, Varga had hardly moved. We picked him up again, spread-eagled him, and lashed him to the door. Then we heaved the door up against the wall, opposite the one Varga was supposed to paint. I coiled the spare rope tidily, like a halyard on a ship's deck. The rope still had the damp cloths on it, which added to the unreal effect.
Varga hung there on the door. We had turned it so that he was upside down.
Good plasterwork is very expensive. It has to be painted while it's wet. A fresco painter who misses his moment has to pay from his wages for redoing the job.
Pa flung an arm across my shoulders. He addressed the face near his boots. 'Varga, this is my son. I hear you and Manlius have been singing false tunes to him!' Varga only whimpered.
Father and I walked across to the new wall. We sat down, either side of the wet patch, leaning back with our arms folded.
'Now, Varga,' Pa chivvied winningly.
I grinned through wicked teeth. 'He doesn't get it.'
'Oh he does,' murmured my father. 'You know, I think one of the saddest sights in the world is a fresco painter watching his plaster dry while he's tied up…' Father and I turned slowly to gaze at the drying plaster.
For five minutes Varga lasted out. He was red in the face but defiant.
'Tell us about Orontes,' I suggested. 'We know you know where he is.'
'Orontes has disappeared!' Varga spluttered.
'No, Varga,' Father told him in a pleasant tone, 'Orontes has not. Orontes was living at your dump on the Caelian quite recently. He repaired a Syrinx with a missing pipe for me only last April-his normal botched effort. I didn't pay him for it till November.' My father's business terms were the unfair ones that oppress small craftsmen who are too artistic to quibble. 'The cash was delivered to your doss!'
'We pinched it!' Varga tried brazenly.
'You forged the pig off his signet-ring for my invoice then-and which of you was supposed to have done my job for me?'
'Oh shove off, Geminus!'
'Well if that's his attitude-' Pa hauled himself upright. 'I'm bored with this,' he said to me. Then he fiddled about with a pouch at his waist and pulled out a large knife.
XLV
'Oh come on, Pa,' I protested weakly. 'You'll frighten him. You know what cowards painters are!'
'I'm not going to hurt him much,' Pa assured me, with a wink. He flexed his arm as he wielded the knife. It was a stout kitchen effort, which I guessed he normally used to eat his lunch. 'If he won't talk, let's have a bit of fun-' His eyes were dangerously bright; he was like a child at a goose fair.
Next minute my father drew back his arm, and threw the knife. It thonked into the door between the painter's legs, which we had tied apart-though not that far apart.
'Geminus!' screamed Varga, as his manhood was threatened.
I winced. 'Ooh! Could have been nasty…' Still amazed at Pa's aim, I scrambled to my feet as well, and whipped my own dagger from my boot.
Pa was inspecting his shot. 'Came a bit close to castrating the beggar… Maybe I'm not very good at this.'
'Maybe I'm worse!' I grinned, squaring up to the target.
Varga began to scream for help.
'Cut it out, Varga,' Pa told him benignly. 'Hold on, Marcus. We can't enjoy ourselves while he's squalling. Let me deal with him-' In the tool-bag he had snaffled was a piece of rag. It stank, and was caked with something we could not identify. 'Probably poisonous; we'll gag him with this. Then you can really let rip-'
'Manlius knows!' wailed the fresco painter weakly. 'Orontes was his pal. Manlius knows where he is!'
We thanked him, but Pa gagged him with the oily rag anyway, and we left him hanging upside down on the door.
'Next time you're thinking of annoying the Didius boys-think twice!'
We found Manlius at the top of a scaffold. He was in the white room, painting the frieze.
'No, don't bother coming down; we'll come up to you…'
Both Father and I had nipped up his ladder before he knew what was happening. I grasped him by the hand, beaming like a friend.
'No, don't start being nice to him!' Pa instructed me curtly. 'We wasted too much time being pleasant with the other one. Give him the boot treatment!'
So much for auctioneers being civilised men of the arts. With a shrug of apology, I overpowered the painter, and pushed him to his knees.
Here there was no need to go off looking for rope; Manlius had his own for hauling up paint and other tools to his work platform. My father unwound this rapidly, hurling down the basket. Snarling horribly, he sawed through the rope. We used a short piece to tie up Manlius. Then Pa knotted the longer remaining length around his ankles. Without needing to consult one another we picked him up, and rolled him over the edge of the scaffold.
His cry as he found himself swinging in space broke off as we held him suspended on the rope. After he grew accustomed to his new situation, he just moaned.
'Where's Orontes?' He refused to say.
Pa muttered, 'Someone has either paid these nuts a fortune, or frightened them!'
'That's all right,' I answered, gazing over the edge at the painter. 'We'll have to frighten this one more!'
We climbed down to the ground. There was a plasterer's lime bath, which we dragged across the room so it was directly under Manlius. He hung about three feet above it, cursing us.
'What now, Pa? We could fill it with cement, drop him into it, let it set and then heave him into the Tiber. I think he'd sink-' Manlius was holding out bravely. Maybe he thought that even in Rome, where the passers-by can be frivolous, it would be difficult to carry a man who was set in concrete through the streets without attracting attention from the aediles.
'There's plenty of paint; let's see what we can do with that!'
'Ever made plaster? Let's have a go…'
We had wonderful fun. We tipped quantities of dry plaster into the bath, poured in water, and stirred madly with a stick. Then we stiffened it with cattle hair. I found a kettle of white paint, so we tried adding that. The effect was revolting, encouraging us to experiment more wildly. We hunted through the painter's basket for colourings, whooping as we made great swirls in the mixture of gold, red, blue and black.
Plasterers use dung in their devious mysterie
s. We found sacks of the stuff and tipped it into our mud pie, commenting frequently on the smell.
I climbed back up on to the scaffold. Pausing only to pass a few well-informed comments on the riot of garlands, torches, vases, pigeons and bird-baths and cupids riding panthers from which Manlius had been creating his frieze, I unfastened the rope holding him. Leaning back on my heels, I let it slip slightly. Pa stood below, encouraging me.
'Down a bit! Few more inches-' In a nerve-racking series of jerks, Manlius sank head first towards the plasterer's bath. 'Gently, this is the tricky bit-'
The painter lost his nerve and frantically tried to swing himself towards the scaffold; I paid out rope abruptly. He froze, whimpering.
'Tell us about Orontes!'
For one last second he shook his head furiously, keeping his eyes closed. Then I dunked him in the bath.
I dropped him just far enough to cover his hair. Then I pulled him out a few inches, refastened the rope, and nipped down to inspect my achievement. Pa was roaring unkindly. Manlius hung there, his once black hair now dripping a disgusting goo in white, with occasional red and blue streaks. The ghastly tide-line came up as far as his eyebrows, which were bushy enough to hold quite a weight of the thick white mess.
'Couldn't be better,' said Pa approvingly.
The painter's hair had formed itself into ludicrous spikes. Grasping his inert body, I spun him gently between my hands. He turned one way, then lazily came back. Pa halted his progress with the stirring stick.
'Now, Manlius. Just a few sensible words will get you out of this. But if you're not going to help us, I might as well let my crazy son drop you right into the bath
Manlius closed his eyes. 'Oh gods…'
'Tell us about Orontes,' I said, playing the quiet one of our pair.
'He's not in Rome-'
'He was in Rome!' Pa roared.
Manlius was cracking. 'He thought it was safe to come back. He's gone again-'
'What was he frightened of?'
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