I felt for a crack, applied the cleaver like a chisel, and tapped it gently with the meat-hammer. Plaster shattered and dropped to the floor, but I had not been fierce enough. I had to use more force, though I was trying to be neat. I did not want to crash into the hidden room in a great shower of rubble. What was there might be delicate.
By pulling off the upper skim of plaster, I managed to trace the edge of the lintel and frame. The doorway had been blocked with fireclay bricks. The infill had been poorly done, hurriedly no doubt. The mortar was a weak mix, most of which crumbled easily. Starting from near the top, I tried to remove the bricks. It was dusty work. After much effort I freed one, then lifted out more, bringing them towards me, one at a time. Helena helped pile them to the side.
There certainly was another room. It had a window, matching the one where we were, but was pitch-black, unlit and filling with dust. Peering through the hole, I could make out nothing. Patiently I cleared a space in the old doorway that would be wide enough and tall enough to step through.
I stood back, recovering, while the dust settled a little. Helena hugged my damp shoulders, waiting quietly for me to act. Covered with dirt, I grinned at her excitedly.
I took the pottery lamp. Holding it ahead of me, I squeezed an arm through the narrow gap and stepped sideways into the tomblike stillness of the next room.
I had half hoped to find it full of treasure. It was empty, apart from its single occupant. As I pulled my shoulders through the gap and straightened up, I met the man's eyes. He was standing by the wall exactly opposite, and staring straight at me.
LXIII
'Oh Jupiter!'
He was not a man. He was a god. The lord of all the other gods, unmistakably.
Five hundred years ago a sculptor with divine talent had breathed life into a massive marble block, creating this. The sculptor who was later to ornament the Parthenon had, in the days before his greatest fame, made for some small anonymous island temple a Zeus that must have excelled all expectations. Five hundred years later, a gang of cheap priests had sold it off to my brother. Now it stood here.
It must have been an awesome task hauling this upstairs. Some of the tackle my brother had used lay abandoned in a corner. I wondered if Epimandos had helped him. Probably.
Helena had ventured into the room after me. Clutching my arm, she gasped, then stood with me staring in rapture.
'Nice piece!' I whispered, aping Geminus.
Helena had learned the patter: 'Hmm! Rather large for domestic consumption, but it does have possibilities…'
Zeus, naked and heavily bearded, surveyed us with nobility and calm. His right arm was raised in the act of hurling a thunderbolt. Set on a pedestal in the darkened inner sanctum of some high Ionic temple, he would have been astonishing. Here, in the silent gloom of my brother's abandoned glory hole, he quelled even me.
We were still standing there, lost in admiration, when I heard noises.
Guilt and panic struck us both. Somebody had come into the caupona below us. We became aware of furtive movements in the kitchen area, then feet approaching up the stairs. Someone looked into the soldier's room, saw the mess and exclaimed. I dragged my attention from the statue. We were trapped. I was trying to decide whether there was more to be gained by extinguishing the lamp or keeping it, when another light was thrust through the gap in the brickwork, with an arm already following.
The arm wriggled frantically, as a broad shoulder jammed in the narrow space. Someone cursed, in a voice I recognised. The next minute loose bricks tumbled inward as a sturdy figure forced its passage, and my father burst through into the hiding-place.
He looked at us. He looked at the Zeus.
He said, as if I had just produced a bag of apples, 'I see you've found it then!'
LXIV
His eyes devoured the Phidias.
I asked quietly, 'What are you doing here?' Pa let out a small groan of ecstasy, ignoring my question as he lost himself in admiration of the Zeus. 'Did you know this was here, Pa?'
For an instant Geminus blinked unreliably. But he cannot have known for much longer than I had, or the statue would not have been left here. He must have been starting to guess as he came up the stairs. I tried not to believe he had run into the caupona at top speed, intent on breaking down the wall himself.
He walked around the Zeus, admiring it from all sides. I amused myself wondering whether, if he had found the statue first, he would ever have told me.
My father's expression was inscrutable. I realised he looked just like Festus, and that meant I shouldn't trust him.
'We should have known, Marcus.'
'Yes. Festus was always hanging around this place.'
'Oh he treated it like home!' agreed Pa, in a dry tone. 'We should have guessed. And what's more,' he declared, 'this won't be the end of it. Your precious brother must have had hideaways packed with treasure everywhere he ever went. We can find them,' he added.
'Or we can tire ourselves out looking!' I commented. Euphoria dies very quickly. I felt tired already.
'He will have had a list,' said father, hanging his lamp on the statue's thunderbolt and coming back round to us.
I laughed. 'That would be madness! If it was me, the details would be locked only in my own head!'
'Oh me too!' agreed Pa. 'But Festus was not like us.'
I saw Helena smile, as if she enjoyed thinking that my father and I were alike. With half a million sesterces' worth of Phidias standing opposite, I allowed myself to smile back at her.
We all stood about for as long as possible, gazing at the Zeus. Then, when it became ridiculous to stay in that dark empty space any longer, we squeezed back to the comparative luxury of the furnished room beyond.
Pa surveyed the rubble from my demolition work. 'You made a right mess here, Marcus!'
'I was as tidy as I could be, in a hurry and without proper tools-' While the others gawped and marvelled, I had been planning. 'Look, we need to move fast. We'll have to cover up this rubble as best we can. It would be better to remove the statue before anybody sees it. Horrible-but we must shift it. We are sure it belonged to Festus, but explaining that to the owner of the building may not be so easy-'
'Relax,' interrupted my father graciously. 'Nobody's coming here tonight.'
'That's where you're wrong. Will you listen to me? I've been left here on guard while the owner is informed by Petronius that the waiter's dead. Any moment we're expecting to be joined by the mysterious Flora, and she won't be pleased to discover this great hole in her wall-'
Something made me stop. Nobody else was coming. Pa had said it in a flat voice. Even without a reason given, I understood.
'Thanks for looking after things,' my father chirruped wryly. I was still trying to ignore the implications, though already aghast. He reassumed his shifty look. 'Flora's not coming. Acting as watchman is man's work; I volunteered.'
Then I groaned as I realised what I should have worked out weeks before. I knew why my brother had always treated this place as if he owned it; why he had found jobs here for runaways; why he had made free with the rooms. It was all in the family.
Petronius was right. Flora existed. And right, too, that I would have preferred not to discover it. Flora's Caupona was the business my father had bought for the woman who now lived with him, to stop her interfering in his own. Flora was Pa's ladyfriend.
LXV
The first part of our plot against Carus and Servia was the most painful: my father raised half a million sesterces by auctioning his chattels. A friend of his called the bids on the day, with Gornia from the office supervising the rest of the sale. Father went to Tibur for a couple of days while it happened, presumably taking the redhead. I had gone to the Campagna, to fetch one of our blocks of Parian stone.
We closed the caupona, on the excuse of Epimandos's death. We made a space in the kitchen area, installed the marble block, brought Orontes over from his lodging with the painters on the Caelian, and set him to wo
rk.
'Can you do it?'
'If it will get you awkward beggars off my back… Oh I'll do it; just leave me in peace to get on with it!'
Using the Zeus as a copy, together with his memory of its brother the Poseidon, Orontes was to redeem his betrayal of Festus by making us a new Phidias.
While this was in hand, we lulled the collectors into a false sense of security by paying off our supposed debt.
It was just before dawn.
We drove up the Via Flaminia in an open cart, during the last hour that wheeled vehicles were allowed into Rome. Mist hung above the Campus Martius, clothing all the silent public buildings with a wintry chill. We passed the grey stone of the Pantheon and the Saepta, heading towards the elegant gardens and mansions up in the north of the city.
All the streets were still. The revellers had gone home; the robbers were busy hiding their swag under floorboards; the prostitutes were sleeping; the fire brigade were snoring. Door-porters were so deeply asleep visitors could have banged for half an hour and still been left out on the step.
We were ready for that.
When we reached the peaceful middle-class lane where Cassius Carus dwelt with his lady, we backed our cart up against their front portal. As if on cue, one of our oxen lowed. My father sat up on the cart, blurred in the light of smoking torches, and solemnly began to bang an enormous copper bell. A great cloud of starlings rose like a dark curtain from the pantiled roofs and circled anxiously. I and two helpers walked along the street pounding massive gongs.
It was a refined middle-class area where the inhabitants liked to keep their heads down on their pillows whatever excesses were going on outside, but we roused them. We kept up the noise until everyone took notice. Shutters flew open. Watchdogs were barking. Tousled heads appeared everywhere while we carried on banging in a slow, deliberate manner as if it were some dread religious rite.
Finally Carus and Servia burst from their front door.
'At last!' roared my father. The helpers and I gravely made our way back to him. 'The vultures appear for the reckoning!' Pa informed the audience. 'Now hear me: Aulus Cassius Carus and Ummidia Servia maintain that my son Didius Festus-who died a national hero, in possession of the Mural Crown-owed them half a million sesterces. Never let it be said that the Didius family reneged!' It was brilliant. After years of observing puzzled punters in the auction ring, he had the knack of sounding like a man who believed he had probably been cheated, though he could not quite see how. 'Here's the cash then! I call on all those present to be my witnesses.'
He walked to the edge of the cart. I joined him there.
'Here's your money, Carus! It's been counted!'
We raised the first lid together, up-ended the chest on the edge of the wagon, and let its contents spill out on to the roadway. The first consignment of our half-million tumbled at the collectors' feet. With an anguished cry they fell on it, vainly trying to catch up the cash as the coins bounced and spun over pavement and gutter. We shoved aside the empty chest and heaved forward another. Helped by our companions we continued this until a mound of twinkling coinage filled the entrance to the Carus home, chest-high, like a great pile of winter grit left beside a steep road.
It was all in small change. Box after box of mixed coppers, ancient bronze bits and silver fell like the mica chips that spangle the sand in the Circus Maximus. We emptied the entire amount into the road. We had no need of a receipt: the whole street could bear witness to our delivery. In fact, as we turned the cart and drove away, many of the collectors' extremely helpful neighbours were rushing up, still in their slippers and nightwear, eager to help gather up the money from the road.
'Enjoy it, Carus,' was my father's parting shot. 'That little lot should see you all right at a few public latrines!'
LXVI
Some weeks later, the fine-art world was humming with news of a forthcoming private sale.
At the gallery of Cocceius stood an interesting marble.
'I can make no claims,' said Cocceius, who was an honest kind of dealer, 'for its artist, or its antiquity.'
Collectors soon heard about the statue's striking features, and flocked to gawp. It was a Poseidon: nude, one arm poised and throwing a trident, and with a rich curly beard. Very Greek-and quite magnificent.
'It has an intriguing history,' Cocceius informed enquirers in his comfortable way. He was a quiet, reassuring man, a pillar of the Auctioneers' Guild. 'The illustrious Senator Camillus Verus found this rather nice piece in the attic when going through his late brother's house…'
That old tale!
People all over Rome went rushing home to look in their attics.
Nobody else had one.
Two people, a man and a woman heavily wrapped in cloaks and veils, came to view the statue incognito. Cocceius gave them a familiar nod.
'What's the provenance, Cocceius?'
'None, I fear. We can make no guesses. Though it's certainly Parian marble, as you can see.' That was evident. This was no Roman copy in limestone. Even fine Carrara would be noticeably more grey in the vein…
'What's the reason for selling?'
'It seems a convincing story. I understand the Senator is trying to raise cash to put his second son into the Senate. I dare say you can ask around their neighbours for confirmation. The bright young thing has made an unexpected name for himself, and with Daddy having Vespasian's ear, his path is now clear to the top. Finance is their only problem. So offers are invited for this rather handsome sea god, though you'll have to use your judgement as to what it is…'
'Where did it come from?'
'Absolutely no idea. The noble Senator's brother imported things. But he's dead, so we can't ask him.'
'Where did he trade?'
'All over. North Africa. Europe. Greece and the East, I believe…'
'Greece, you say?'
'There does appear to be some minor damage to one shoulder…' Cocceius was completely open, a model of neutrality.
'It's excellent. But you make no claims?'
'I make no claims.' Cocceius was certainly honest; such a refreshing change.
There are many ways of making claims-and not all of them involve direct lies.
The closely swaddled collectors went away to think about it.
Next time they came, the owner was apparently considering withdrawing the statue from sale. Alarmed by this news, the cloaked man and woman stood in the shadows and listened. Maybe other people were in other shadows, but if so they were invisible.
The Senator's noble daughter was explaining to Cocceius that her father might be having doubts. 'Of course we do need the money. But it's such a lovely thing. If it commands a large price, that's wonderful. But we're tempted to keep it and enjoy it at home ourselves. Oh dear! Father doesn't know what he should do for the best… Could we ask an expert to have a look at it?'
'Certainly.' Cocceius never pushed his clients to sell against their will. 'I can arrange for an art historian to give you an authoritative opinion. How much are you prepared to pay?'
'What can I get?' asked the noble Helena Justina.
Cocceius was honest, but a humorist. 'Well, for a small fee I can get you a man who will close his eyes and say the first thing that comes into his head.'
'Forget the small fee,' she answered.
'For a little bit more I can get you a proper expert.'
'That's better.'
'Which sort would you like?'
Helena looked surprised-though not so surprised as she might have looked before she met me. 'Which sorts can I have?'
'Either Arion, who will tell you it's genuine-or Pavoninus, who will maintain it's a fake.'
'But they haven't seen it yet!'
'That's what they always say.'
Apparently Helena Justina was now growing tense. 'How much,' she demanded at her most crisp (which was about as crisp as toasted bread when you answer the door and forget it until you smell smoke), 'how much would we have to pay for the ver
y best?' Cocceius told her. Helena drew a sharp breath. 'And what will we get for that exorbitant amount?'
Cocceius looked embarrassed. 'You will get a man in a slightly peculiar tunic who stares at the statue for a very long time, drinks some herb tea in a thoughtful manner, then tells you both of the possible verdicts and says that frankly he cannot say for certain which is correct.'
'Ah I see! He,' said Helena, collapsing with a smile, 'is the really clever one.'
'Why is that?' asked Cocceius, though he knew all along.
'Because without putting his own reputation at risk, he leaves people to convince themselves of what they want to hear.' The noble Helena reached a decision in her usual swift manner. 'Let's save our cash! I can speak for Papa.' Obviously they were a free-thinking, liberal family. (And the women were very forceful.) 'If we can establish my brother's career the sale will be worth it. People will recognise quality. If anybody offers a good figure, Papa will sell.'
The collectors in the cloaks hurriedly sent both Arion and Pavoninus to look at the Poseidon; then they also paid for the man in the odd tunic, who had very peculiar diction too, and who said that they must make up their own minds.
They decided their need for the Poseidon was desperate.
The question of money was discreetly raised.
Apparently, in order to put young Justinus into the Senate, the illustrious Camillus would need a very large amount. 'The figure which has been mentioned,' said Cocceius in a hushed voice, like a doctor announcing a fatal disease, 'is six hundred thousand.'
Naturally the collectors offered four hundred. To which the owner replied that that was an outrage; he could not possibly settle for less than five. The deal was struck. Half a million in gold aurei (plus the commission to Cocceius) was exchanged for the unknown statue.
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