I drank my water thoughtfully, and let events take their course.
‘We’re trying to find a priest,’ the large one growled.
‘You don’t strike me as devoted types’
Taking my advice from Laesus about changing my appearance, I had snugged into an old dark-blue tunic after my bath. With my open-backed felt slippers, this indigo disaster completed a comfortable ensemble for a night staying in for a good read. I probably looked like a sloppy philosophy student who was thrilling himself silly with a collection of racy legends. Actually I was dipping into Caesar on the Celts, and any interruption was good news for my sore gut because the lofty Julius was beginning to enrage me; he could write, but his sense of self-importance was reminding me why my crusty ancestors so distrusted his high-handed politics.
It seemed unlikely these visitors wanted to discuss Julius Caesar’s politics.
‘Who’s this priest you’re after?’ I offered.
‘Some fool of a foreigner,’ the big terrorist shrugged. ‘Caused a commotion in the marketplace.’ His small friend sniggered.
‘I heard about that,’ I admitted. ‘Used a naughty word for liquorice. Can’t imagine how. Liquorice is a Greek word anyway.’
‘Very careless!’ the strong man groused. He made it sound as if being casual with language was a crucifixion crime. That’s one opinion though not mine and not, I thought, a debating point this monster himself chewed over by a roaring country fire on long winternights. ‘You’ve been asking for someone we know; what do you want with Gordianus?’
‘What is it to you?’
‘I’m Milo,’ he told me proudly. ‘His steward.’
Milo stood up. I decided Gordianus must have something to hide: his household steward was built like the door porter of an extremely shady gambling hall.
Croton is famous for its athletes, and the most famous of all had been called Milo. The Gordianus steward could easily have modelled for the souvenir statuettes I had resisted in the market. When Croton captured Sybaris (the original sin city, further round the Tarentine Bay), that Milo had celebrated by sprinting through the stadium with a bull across his shoulders, killing the beast with one blow of his fist, then eating it raw for lunch…
‘Let’s go inside,’ this Milo told me, looking at me as if he quite fancied half hundred weight of uncooked sirloin.
I smiled like a man who was pretending he could handle the situation, then let myself be led indoors.
XVI
Milo told shrimp-features to keep watch outside.
The steward and I crammed into my allocated cell; I certainly would have enjoyed myself more enduring a sleazy night out in Croton with some light-fingered, moustachoed dancing-girl. There was no doubt what was going to happen to me here; the only question was when.
There were three beds, but few tourists could face a summer excursion to Croton so I had the room to myself. At least it saved anyone else getting hurt. Milo filled most of the extra space.
I found this Milo something of a trial. He was big. He knew he was big. He spent most of his time enjoying how big he felt crowding ordinary people in small rooms. His heavily greased muscles gleamed in the light of my rush. Close to, he had an oddly washed-out, antiseptic smell.
He pressed me down onto a three-legged stool with the effortless pressure of two massive thumbs which were itching to inflict more intimate pain. To worry me he prodded at my stuff.
‘This yours?’ he demanded, fingering my Gallic Wars.
‘I can read.’
‘Where did you steal it?
‘Auctioneer in the family. I get first pick of the secondhand stalls in Rome-‘
I watched unhappily. The volume had seemed a real bargain, though I would have to sell it back to obtain the next scroll in the set. It had well-cut edges and cedar oil still protecting the paper, while one of the bosses on the roller retained traces of gilt. (The other boss was missing originally, but I carved a replacement myself.)
‘Caesar!’ Milo noted, with approval.
I felt lucky I was reading military history, not some soft subject like beekeeping. This oaf used his massive body for moral crusades. He had the cold stare of a brute who had convinced himself it was his private vocation to snuff out the lives of prostitutes and poets. Just the sort to idolise a dictator like Caesar - too stupid to see that Caesar was a proud snob with far too much money who would despise Milo even more than the Gauls (who at least had sensational rites of human sacrifice, druids, and Atlantic-going boats).
Milo set my Caesar down awkwardly, like a thug who had been housetrained not to damage expensive things - except perhaps when his master specifically told him to frighten some victim by smashing a priceless ceramic in front of his eyes.
‘Spying pays!’
‘I doubt it,’ I told him patiently. ‘It doesn’t pay me. I’m not a spy; I’m a dispatch carrier. All I get is a sestertius a day and the chance to find out the hard way how the magistrates in Bruttium never repair their roads…’
Still mooning over Caesar, Milo turned away. I rescued my scroll, then winced as my oil flask cracked onto the floor when he tipped out my luggage from its two frugal mule panniers. He called himself a steward, but I would not have trusted him to fold a pile of tablecloths. Six snarled tunics, one distressed toga, two neck scarves, one hat, one sponge, one bathscraper and a box of writing stuff later, he found the knife I had worked into the wicker of one of the panniers.
He turned to me. Drawing my knife from its scabbard, he tickled my chin with it. I jerked uneasily as he yanked the thong round my neck so he could pull out my petty cash and travel pass. Then he had to put down the knife, to hold the pass with both his stubby paws while he slowly studied it.
‘M. Didius Falco. Why have you come to Croton?’
‘Message for Gordianus.’
‘What message?’
‘A private one.’
‘Spit it out.’
‘It’s personal; from the Emperor.’
Milo grunted. In Croton this probably passed for an elegant expression of logical thought. Gordianus won’t see a hick courier!’
‘He will when he knows what I’ve brought him.’
Milo rounded on me again. It was like being menaced by an overplayful plough ox who had just noticed that a hornet had stung him five minutes ago. Patiently I lifted my gaze to a shelf where the landlord had left some extra fleas nesting in rolled-up counterpanes. The shelf was close to the ceiling, which stopped you banging your head but meant you could waste a lot of time on a freezing southern night trying to find spare bedding in the dark. Up there now stood a fine porphyry vase, over a foot high and topped by a prettily fluted lid which I had secured with a spider’s web of twine; knowing what was inside, I did not want the contents leaking out among my underwear.
‘Get it!’ Milo said.
I straightened slowly, then reached above my head. I seized the two handles, steadying my grip. The vessel was expensive green stone from the Peloponnese, and solid stuff; its contents weighed next to nothing, though your shoulders know when they are supporting a porphyry vase overhead like an unstable male caryatid. The stone is almost impossible to work, but Vespasian had paid a great deal for this; it was a smoothly-sculpted masterpiece and if it slipped through my grasp it would make quite a dent in the floor.
‘Look!’ I grunted, still with my arms up, ‘this is something personal for Curtius Gordianus. I don’t recommend you to uncover what’s inside-‘
Milo had a simple approach when anybody told him not to do something; he did it.
‘What have you brought him?’ He lunged closer, intending to look.
‘His brother,’ I said.
Then I crashed down the funeral urn on Milo’s head.
XVII
About twelve miles south of Croton a headland called Cape Colonna rounds off a long stretch of desolate coastline at the north end of the Gulf of Scylacium. Right on the shore, in a typical Greek location, stands a huge Temp
le of Hera with an uplifting view straight over the aching dazzle of the Ionian Sea. It is a grand sanctuary in classic style - or to a man in trouble (say Curtius Gordianus, hotfoot from a narrow brush with the Praetorians), a good safe spot, a long way off from Rome.
Gordianus held the title of Chief Priest here. Great temples often have local patrons who sweep the poll at elections for their priesthoods. Until I terrified Milo’s shrimp at the mansio, I had not expected to learn that the hereditary Chief Priest had lodged himself in active residence. For a senator, trimming up altars in person is hardly the point.
Even in glaring sunlight the cold clear air raised goose-bumps on my arms, while the fierce ocean atmosphere stretched the skin across my cheekbones and a strong breeze tore my hair back from the scalp. The Temple stood glazed with light from sea and sky. Entering the hot stonework of the Doric colonnade, its overpowering quiet nearly flattened me.
In front of the portico, at an altar in the open air, a veiled priest was conducting a private sacrifice. The family whose birthday or good fortune he was celebrating clustered round in their best clothes, pink-cheeked from the strong sun and the wind off the sea. Temple servants held fine boxes of incense and glittering censers to burn it in; sparky boy assistants who had been chosen for their handsome looks wielded bowls and axes for the sacrifice while they flirted thin moustaches at the family’s young male slaves. There was a pleasant scent of apple wood to attract the goddess’s attention, plus a nasty whiff of goat hair which the priest had just ritually singed in the altar fire.
They had a white she-goat standing by, with garlanded horns and a bothered expression; I winked at her as I jumped down from the colonnade. The goat met my eye; she gave vent to a frantic bleat, then bit her adolescent handler in his sensitive young groin and bolted down the shore.
Milo’s shrimp launched himself after the nanny. The priest’s assistants tumbled cheerfully after him. The heartbroken pilgrims whose great occasion lay in ruins propped their expensive laurel wreaths against the altar where they would not be stepped on, then streamed away along the beach as well. The goat had already spurted a stadium’s length. I was wearing my religious robes; it would have been undignified to cheer.
It was going to be some time before the cavalcade returned. The Chief Priest exclaimed in annoyance, then walked to the Temple steps. I followed, though his attitude was discouraging; a poor start for my new diplomatic role.
Aulus Curtius Gordianus was in his late forties, slightly taller than me, with an untidy, ill-tended build. Like an elephant, he had large webby ears, small reddish eyes, and bald wrinkled skin with an unhealthy greyish tinge. We both sat on the edge of the platform hugging our robed knees.
The pontiff sighed irritably, shading his eyes as he squinted after the circus that had by now diminished into skirmishing dots a quarter of a mile away.
‘Oh, this is ridiculous!’ he fumed.
I glanced at him briefly, as if we were two strangers brought together by an amusing accident. ‘The sacrifice must come willingly to the altar!’ I reminisced helpfully. (I had been through a seriously religious phase when I was twelve.)
‘Quite!’ He was acting the cheerful social manner of a temple professional, but the tartness of an off-duty senator soon showed through. ‘You have the air,’ he remarked, ‘of a messenger who expects his arrival to have been foretold to me in a dream!’
‘I imagine you heard about me from the busybody on a donkey I just passed riding back to Croton. I hope you thanked him with a denarius. I hope when he gets back to Croton he finds it’s a forged one!’
‘Are you worth a denarius?’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But the eminent personage who sent me rates quite a few.’
I waited until Gordianus swivelled to look at me properly. ‘Who’s that? Who are you? A priest?’
He was very abrupt. Some senators are. Some are shy; some were born rude; some are so weary of dealing with the ditherers in politics they sound intolerant automatically. ‘Let’s say I’m serving my turn at the altar for the state.’
‘You’re no priest!’
‘Every man is chief priest in his own household,’ I intoned piously. ‘What about you? Self-exile at your rank is not allowed!’ I could feel the sun’s heat burning into me from the great stones behind as I continued to taunt him. ‘Chief Priest here is a fine, honourable sinecure - but no one expects a senator with a million in his bankbox to carry out the daily grind of skinning goats in the raw sea air! Not even if serving the Lady of Olympus was bequeathed to you along with your family olive groves - or did you and your noble brother buy these priesthoods outright? Tell me; what’s the premium now for a corking post like this?’
‘Too much,’ he interrupted, visibly restraining himself. ‘What do you have to say?’
‘Senator, with a civil war just ended, your place is in Rome!’
‘Who sent you here?’ he insisted coldly.
‘Vespasian Augustus.’
‘Was that his message?’
‘No; that’s my opinion, sir.’
‘Then keep your opinions to yourself”’ He moved gathering his robes. ‘Unless divine intervention trips up that goat, I see nothing to stop her fleeing north round the whole Tarentine Gulf; we can discuss your business now.’
‘Is it proper to interrupt a sacred occasion, sir?’ I demanded sarcastically.
‘The goat has done that,’ he capitulated with an air of weariness. ‘Assisted by you! These unfortunate people will need to start again tomorrow with another animal-‘
‘Oh, it’s worse than that, senator.’ In most temples a death in his family is held to pollute the priest; I told him quietly, ‘Curtius Gordianus, they will need another priest.’
Too subtle: I could tell from his expression that he completely missed the point.
XVIII
The Chief Priest at Colonna had a house adjoining the Temple. It was a simple affair - in a spacious, sun-lit, well-appointed, seaside way. Outside, the stonework looked bleached and the balustrades weathered. The windows were small and protective; the doors heavily porched. Inside they had gilding on the candelabra, light furniture they could move outdoors on favourable days, and storm lanterns for blustery nights.
When the door slammed several slaves popped their beads out looking flummoxed, as if Gordianus had come home too early for lunch. The bright atmosphere did not reflect the style of the so-called steward Milo, so I guessed these busy females really ran the house. They had the whole place aired, as fresh as lavender. I heard brooms swishing on wet floors and noticed the scent of frying liver - perhaps titbits the pontiff had allocated himself in the course of a previous sacrifice. (Any priest who knows his business captures the choicest cuts: the best reason I know for doing your civic duty as a priest.)
Gordianus led me swiftly into a sideroom. Cushions lay everywhere, with little vases of wild flowers among the silver bowls and flagons on the sideboard displays. The wages of treason: an attractive country life.
‘Sir, I’m Didius Falco.’ No flicker of recognition showed. I presented my passport; he glanced at it. ‘I’ve left your steward in Croton, tied to a bed.’
Gordianus threw of his robes. Still in charge so far, he looked pained. ‘Will somebody find him?’
‘Depends how often the mansio staff count their blankets.’ He became more thoughtful. ‘
‘You overcame Milo?
‘I hit him with a lump of stone.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘He thought I was a spy,’ I complained, letting the priest see that his steward’s incompetence made me seethe with rage. ‘Milo is a credit to his cheap gymnasium, but his brain needs exercise! Being a Palace messenger is a thankless task. I have been set on by the Homeric heroes who sell chickens in Croton market, then assaulted by your dim-witted staff-‘
I was enjoying this tirade. I needed to establish my authority. His noble birth meant Gordianus could always count upon the senate to support him; I worked for Vespa
sian, and if I upset a senator - even a traitor - I could not count on his Caesarship-at all.
‘Milo claims you will not see me. With respect, sir, that is pointless, and insulting to the Emperor. Shall I go back to Rome with nothing to tell Vespasian except that his townships in Magna Graecia need a good stamping on while the pontiff at the Temple of Hera is too stubborn to hear his elder brother’s fate?’
‘What fate?’ Curtius Gordianus was glaring at me with contempt. ‘Is my brother a hostage? Does Vespasian send me threats?’
‘Too late for that, sir. You and your brother picked a quarrel with someone far less delicate.’
Then, having finally achieved his full attention, in one brisk sentence I described the Temple fire.
He was sitting in a long casual chair. His awkward body tended to sag into the nearest place he could prop himself with minimum effort. As I told him Curtius Longinus was dead he jerked involuntarily, swinging his heavy legs to the floor. Then he was crippled by an onslaught of emotion at his brother’s appalling end. He stayed, twisted uncomfortably, unable to absorb the tragedy with a stranger watching him.
Adopting good manners, I went out quietly, leaving him alone while I fetched the porphyry urn. For a few moments I stood outside beside my mule, stroking the beast quietly while I watched the sea and soaked in the sun. The bereavement that had struck this house was nothing to do with me, yet announcing it left me feeling drawn. I removed the twine that was fastening the two parts of the great vase, peered inside, then replaced the lid hurriedly. The ashes of a human being look very slight.
As I re-entered, Gordianus struggled to his feet. I cleared a small table in order to set down his brother’s funeral urn. A flush of anger coloured him but then he readjusted his face to hide his distress.
‘Vespasian’s response?’
‘Sir?’ I was looking round for somewhere to deposit the inkpots and bowls of pistachios which I had shifted to accommodate the urn.
‘My brother was called to Rome to explain our position-‘
Shadows in Bronze Page 8