Family Commitments (Marcus Corvinus Book 20)

by David Wishart

  6.

  For a start, perforce, at least where the next day was concerned, it brought the fulfilment of my promise to Mother re the erring Priscus. Not a job I was looking forward to, particularly at that early hour.

  To make matters worse, Homer’s Rosy-Fingered Dawn had taken the morning off and handed the weather side of things over to whatever god or goddess specialised in having it piss down hard from first light onwards. So there I was, breakfastless barring the roll I’d chewed on coming over, huddling under the shelter of my hooded cloak, and cached behind the wayside shrine opposite Mother’s gate waiting for our lad to sally forth on his nefarious errand. Feeling a right fool about doing it, what was more. You don’t normally get many passers-by in Mother’s cul-de-sac off the main Head of Africa drag, especially at that time of the morning and in that kind of weather, but in the half hour or so that I’d been hanging around I’d been eyeballed suspiciously by two door-slaves, an itinerant knife-grinder, a home-going Lady of the Night, and a wall-eyed dog of indeterminate breed who evidently viewed the shrine as his own personal toilet and was clearly miffed to find it otherwise occupied. As a result, I was feeling distinctly jaundiced.

  Given the weather conditions, I’d been doubtful whether Priscus would shove his nose outside his own front door at all that day; but sure enough the sun couldn’t have moved by all that much above the lowering clouds when his caped and hooded figure came through the gate. I let him get three-quarters the way up the cul-de-sac, then fell in behind. At the junction with Head of Africa proper he turned left towards the centre of town, and I closed the gap slightly: now we were into the morning as such the streets were busying up, and I couldn’t afford to lose him at this stage.

  I needn’t have worried. Priscus wasn’t a fast mover at the best of times, and the wind blowing rain into our faces slowed him down even more. All the same, I almost missed it when he took a sudden right onto the Sacred Way and ducked into one of the little shops just past the crossing.

  I didn’t follow him in, of course, but it would be simple enough to hang about on the other side of the narrow street and watch events through the opening above the stone sill. Antique shop would’ve probably dignified the place – for pricey establishments like that you generally have to go to chi-chi shopping areas like the Saepta – but it looked pretty much typical of a lot of the businesses on the Sacred Way, particularly the ones on the Subura side of Head of Africa junction: a slightly seedy concern that stocked items that just made it out of the junk category into the curio bracket. Not Priscus’s style at all, in other words, because the old guy was an antiquities snob. Maybe Mother was right to be suspicious...

  Which was when I caught sight of the proprietor. Or proprietrix, rather, because she was definitely female: an olive-skinned, dark haired little stunner, maybe late twenties or early thirties. As I watched, she moved towards Priscus, enveloped him in a hug, and kissed him.

  I moved quickly back into the shelter of a doorway, my mind spinning. Gods, this I just did not believe! No way did I believe it!

  I looked again. They’d broken from the clinch, and the woman had stepped back and was holding both of Priscus’s hands in hers, not letting go, pulling him towards the back of the shop, the part that I couldn’t see. She laughed and said something, and Priscus nodded...

  Jupiter!

  To say that I was shocked wouldn’t be the half of it, and deciding what to do next really, really needed thinking about. Reporting straight back to Mother as promised wasn’t a viable option, for a start, because Mother would kill him out of hand. That was sure as tomorrow’s sunrise. Also out was marching in there with all the righteous indignation of a stepson who’s just caught his seriously-age-challenged stepfather intertwined with a woman who could’ve been his daughter; or rather – scrub that – with a woman who could’ve been his sodding granddaughter. And daughter-stroke-granddaughter the lady most emphatically was not, of that I was cast-iron certain. Priscus had been a widower when he and Mother had got hitched, sure, but the marriage had been childless, and it had been Priscus’s only one; while given the man’s observed character, interests and ingrained habit of total domesticity all the time I’d known him the chances that she was the product of a clandestine extramarital affair were so remote as to be practically non-existent. So bugger that theory for a game of soldiers.

  All the same, the absolute bottom line, as Perilla had said, was that it was none of my business. Although I might stand back and goggle at the thought of Priscus engaging in an illicit sexual liaison what he got up to outside the confines of his own home was no concern of mine. And for the same reason getting him alone for a man-to-man, heart-to-heart talk in the hope of squaring things before Mother found out what was happening and reached for the disembowelling knife was out as well...

  On the other hand, when Mother did find out, as she certainly would eventually, she’d assume, correctly, that I’d been covering up for the two-timing old bugger and add my guts to his. Accordingly, much as I would’ve liked just to turn a blind eye and let the pair of lovers get on with things wasn’t a viable option either.

  All of which left me, as far as I could see at present, with absolutely zilch where a possible future course of action was concerned. What we had here was definitely a no-win situation.

  Fuck.

  Well, whatever the answer might be there was nothing to be gained by hanging around here any longer. We’d just have to hope that, in the course of time, inspiration might strike. And that there would be a flock of flying pigs.

  The rain was getting worse. I pulled the hood of my cloak further down over my face and headed for the Subura and Damon’s tenement.

  Sure enough, as Bathyllus had told me he would be, Damon was in residence, although when he opened the door at my third knock I had the distinct impression he wasn’t exactly over the moon about seeing me. Which, under the circumstances, was completely understandable: if I’d told my long-lost brother’s master, who was the only person standing between me and an extremely painful and unpleasant death as a runaway slave and murderer, a load of absolute porkies and he turned up unexpectedly on the doorstep practically first thing the day after then I’d feel a bit jittery myself.

  Not that he showed it, the jitteriness, that is. I was beginning to have a healthy – and wary – respect for Brother Damon’s ability to keep the head.

  ‘Valerius Corvinus, sir,’ he said. ‘What a pleasure.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ I pushed past him, went inside and sat down on the bed while he closed the door behind me. ‘So tell me what the situation here really is.’

  He looked blank. ‘Come again?’

  I sighed. ‘Look, pal, I may be willing to break a few rules to help the brother of a much-valued major-domo out of a jam, but I’m neither especially gullible nor a complete brain-dead moron. First, I’ve talked to the Aventine Watch, who tell me that prior to being stabbed your master was given a serious going-over and the place torn apart stick by stick. Obviously you didn’t actually notice those little details when you got back from the cookshop, because if you had, being the truthful little bunny that you are, you’d’ve mentioned them, right?’ He said nothing. ‘Second, when I’m up having a look at the place I notice a pair of very doubtful characters hanging about outside obviously taking a keen personal interest in things, and who cut and run when I try to have a word with them.’ Still no reaction. ‘So my guess, based on this and other evidence, is that your simple-wool-merchant story is a load of fucking hogwash; that your Oplonius – and by extension you – had something valuable you wanted to hide and a certain party or parties unknown took serious exception to the fact. Now, shall we start again with the truth or should I just hand you over to the Watch and let them sort it out? Go ahead; your decision.’

  He sat down on the stool. ‘Fair enough, squire,’ he said. ‘Maybe I didn’t tell you the whole truth after all.’ Hah! Our master of the understatement here could’ve given Perilla lessons on that score. �
��I’d my reasons, believe me.’

  ‘Is that so, now?’ Damn right he did; that much I would believe. ‘The floor’s yours, sunshine. Convince me.’

  ‘There’s a –’ He stopped, took another deep breath, and started again. ‘Look, Master was from Padua, and he was a wool merchant, okay? That’s straight up, I told you no lies there, gods’ truth, right?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s just the problem right there, you see. It’s the going on bit that’s tricky. There’s someone else involved, someone besides me and the master who can be hurt bad if things go wrong. And that’s the last thing he’d’ve wanted.’

  ‘You’re breaking my heart, pal,’ I said. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘You mind if I have a drink first?’ He reached for the wine jug on the table, poured and drank. I waited until he’d put the cup down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it is. There’s this young girl. In Padua. Name of Postumia Matronilla.’

  ‘Is that so, now?’

  ‘Corvinus, this is all above board, I swear to you by every god there is, right?’ I said nothing. ‘Only it wasn’t my secret to tell, see. Not just for the asking. This girl and the master, they were planning to marry, only her family weren’t having none of it. The father – well, he’s one of the local magistrates and rich as Croesus. He wanted better.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I kept my face expressionless.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl, Mistress Postumia, and she loved the master. So they were going to run away together, secret, like. Only the father, he finds out and stops them.’

  Yeah, well, that was understandable, I suppose: no rich daddy with political and social ambitions wants his daughter hitched to a low-grade no-account merchant, and Paduans as a rule have a reputation for being pretty strait-laced.

  ‘So how come Oplonius ended up in Rome?’ I said.

  ‘Him and the mistress made the plan together. He was to go ahead, she’d get away as soon as she could give her parents the slip and come and join him. They’d arranged a place to meet up – the Temple of Saturn on Market Square, she’d heard of that – and he’d be sure to be there at mid-day every day to check. Which he was. She gave him a necklace to sell so they’d have something to live on while they waited for her father to come round.’

  Right. Now we were getting to the nitty-gritty. ‘A necklace,’ I said.

  ‘I told you, old man Postumius is rolling. She had it from him for her fourteenth birthday. How much he paid for it I don’t know exactly, but it must’ve been fifty thousand at least.’

  I whistled: fifty thousand sesterces was serious, serious gravy. Even if Oplonius got only half of that – which he probably would’ve done, at most, because without evidence of provenance no reputable jeweller would touch the deal, even in Rome – the two of them could get along pretty well until Daddy could be suitably worked on. Despite myself – and I really, really mean that, here, considering that I knew the slippery bastard, even on short acquaintance, as well as I did – I was beginning to be convinced. At any rate, so far, it all hung together.

  ‘And then Pappa Postumius tracked Oplonius down, right?’ I said.

  ‘That’s it. How exactly I don’t know. The mistress wouldn’t’ve told him, that’s for sure, but somebody did. Probably one of her maids. Anyways, all he needed to know was that the master had gone to Rome and that he’d be at Saturn’s temple every day at noon, and that was that. He sent a couple of his people here, they hung around the temple until they spotted him, then followed him back to the flat and killed him.’

  ‘So who were those people, exactly?’

  Damon shrugged. ‘Dunno. Could’ve been her brothers. She has two, both older than her. But that doesn’t really matter, does it?’

  Maybe not; still, he wasn’t off the hook quite yet. ‘So tell me about this necklace,’ I said. ‘I’m assuming they didn’t find it.’

  ‘No. No, they didn’t.’

  ‘So you’ve still got it?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘The master sold it a couple of days before he died.’

  ‘Who to?’

  Another shrug. ‘Search me. I wasn’t there at the time, and he didn’t tell me nothing. Me, I’m just a slave, after all. Maybe to a jeweller, maybe he did a private deal with someone he met.’

  ‘Okay. So what happened to the money?’

  ‘Can’t help you there either. He didn’t bring it back with him, ’s all I know.’ Yeah, well, at least that made sense: you don’t hide twenty-odd thousand sesterces under your mattress, not if you’re putting up in an Aventine tenement and want to hang on to it. As events had proved. ‘He most like lodged it with the banker that was holding his travel money.’

  ‘Which was who?’

  His fist came down on the table, hard enough to make the empty wine-cup topple.

  ‘The hell with this!’ he said. ‘You’re just not listening to me, are you? Look, I don’t fucking know, right? If I did I’d tell you, and at the least we could get it back to the mistress. But I don’t, because like I say the master kept that side of things to himself. He’d a business near Market Square, that much I do know, but that’s as far as I go.’

  Not exactly helpful: the streets around the centre have been the main stamping-ground for bankers ever since the first one set up his table in the Square itself centuries back. Well, we’d just have to hope that what Watch commander Pudentius had said about the honesty of bankers was true, and the guy would come forward of his own free will.

  Meanwhile...

  ‘Something I still don’t understand, though,’ I said, ‘is the circumstantial stuff.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He frowned. ‘I’m not with you there.’

  ‘You claim you got back after your master was dead, right? And that the guys who’d done it were gone.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He was definitely wary now.

  ‘Okay. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, if that was the case then we have three possible scenarios.’ I counted them off on my fingers. ‘First, they’d got what they came for, one way or another, and left. Only that can’t be right, because you say Oplonius had already sold the necklace and the money – presumably – was with his banker and out of their reach. Plus the fact that, six days down the line, they’re out there watching the place. Why should they bother?’ He said nothing. ‘That gives us scenario two.’ I held down the second finger. ‘Oplonius holds out to the end, tells them nothing, and despite the fact that they’ve searched the place thoroughly and not found a bean they still think it’s hidden on the premises. That’d explain the stake-out, sure, to some degree at least, but not the fact that the flat’s been empty for five days and they haven’t had the gumption to come back and do a thorough job. Not to mention that if they knew about him then they sure as hell knew about you. Which leads us to scenario three.’ I bent the third finger. ‘They’re waiting for you to come back in your turn because they think you’ve either got the necklace yourself or that you know where it is.’

  ‘Why in hell would I come back? If I had the thing already there’d be no –’

  ‘No point in coming back at all. Right; agreed. And the same goes for if you knew the hiding place all along, because you’d already have picked the thing up and be heading for the tall timber. With, no doubt, the most honourable of intentions re returning it to sweet little what’s-her-name, granted, but still. Staking the place out would be a complete waste of time and effort. So that scenario’s a bummer as well. You see the problem? So what we need is a fourth scenario. One that actually works.’

  His face shut. ‘Yeah, well, maybe so,’ he said. ‘But I can’t help you there, sir, because that’s how it happened.’

  Hell’s bells; I was flogging a dead horse here, and no mistake. ‘Okay, pal,’ I said. ‘Have it your own way. But something is screwy, I’m certain of that much, at least. Somewhere along the line for some reason you’re still lying through
your fucking teeth, and we both know it.’ He shot me a nasty look, but said nothing. ‘We’ll get there eventually, don’t you worry.’ I stood up. ‘I’ll see you around. Have a nice day.’

  There wasn’t anything I could constructively do at present, so I went home. Bathyllus met me at the door.

  ‘There are two...men...to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘In the garden. They arrived just after you left, but they insisted on waiting.’

  ‘Is that so, now?’ I handed him my cloak. ‘Men, eh?’ In Bathyllus-speak, particularly when the word was sandwiched between distinct pauses, that meant plain-tunic tradesmen at best. And this time not even that: the fact that they were twiddling their thumbs out in the garden rather than inside the house implied that he thought that as soon as his back was turned the buggers would have it away with whatever they could lift.

  I went through to see what new joys fate had in store for me. Well, at least he’d gone the length of taking them out a couple of wicker chairs to sit on. Ever the conscientious major-domo, Bathyllus, even when the visitors didn’t fit within his parameters of social acceptability.

  I knew who they were the moment I’d cleared the portico. My two incompetent watchers from the Aventine tenement.

  My feet slowed, and the two guys stood up. Yeah, just as I remembered them; we had a pair of prime heavies here, and no mistake. No wonder Bathyllus had put the bastards in virtual quarantine.

  So not, I would think, candidates for well-born young Postumia Matronilla’s brothers. Still, as Damon had said, their precise identity wasn’t important.

  ‘Uh...you’re from Postumius in Padua, right?’ I said. ‘You can start by explaining–’

  ‘Who the fuck’s Postumius?’ the guy on the left said. ‘Come on, Corvinus, don’t play games. You know perfectly well who we are.’

  I stared at him. Sure, now I came to look more closely his face was familiar, but I couldn’t place it at all. Even so, the very fact that he’d –