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 mysteries. 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 scaffo
ld. 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?’
‘I don’t know…’ We let him swing round in another circle; being upside down must have become quite painful by now. ‘Of people asking questions-‘
‘Who? Censorinus? Laurentius? Us?’
‘All of you.’
‘So why is he frightened? What has he done, Manlius?’
‘I really don’t know. Something big. He never would tell me-‘
A feeling was growing. I grabbed Manlius by the ear. ‘Was my brother Festus annoyed with him?’
‘Probably
‘Something to do with a lost statue, was it?’ asked Father.
‘Or a statue that was not lost at all,’ I growled. ‘From a ship that never sank-‘
‘The ship sank!’ croaked Manlius. ‘That’s the truth of it. Orontes told me when he was getting out of Rome to avoid Festus. The ship with the statue sank; that’s the honest truth!’
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘Nothing! Oh cut me down-‘
‘Why did he tell you nothing? He’s your chum, isn’t he?’
‘Matter of trust…’ Manlius whispered, as if he was afraid even to mention it. ‘He’s been paid a lot of money to keep quiet…’ I could believe these romantic politicians would actually honour such a trust, even if the villains who bribed them were the worst kind of criminals. This lot probably lacked the moral scepticism to recognise true villainy.
‘Who paid him?’
‘I don’t know!’ His desperation told us this was almost certainly true.
‘Let’s get this straight,’ Geminus nagged ominously. ‘When Festus came to Rome looking for him, Orontes heard about it and deliberately skipped?’ Manlius tried to nod. It was difficult in his position. Paint and wet plaster dribbled from his hair. He blinked his eyes fretfully. ‘After Festus died, Orontes thought he could come back?’
‘He likes to work…’
‘He likes to cause a heap of shit for the Didius family! And now every time anyone else starts asking questions, your wily pal does another bunk?’ Another feeble nod; more turgid drips. ‘So answer me this, you pathetic runt-where does the coward run off to when he leaves Rome?’
‘Capua,’ groaned Manlius. ‘He lives in Capua.’
‘Not for long!’ I said.
We left the painter hanging from his scaffold, though on our way out we did mention to the watchman that there seemed to be something odd going on in the Sabine triclinium and the white reception room. He muttered that he would go and have a look when he had finished his game of draughts.
Pa and I walked into the street, kicking pebbles morosely. There was no doubt about it; if we wanted to sort out this mystery, one of us would have to go to Capua.
‘Do we believe that’s where Orontes is?’
‘I reckon so,’ I decided. ‘Manlius and Varga had already mentioned that they stayed in Campania recently-I bet they went down there to visit their pal in hiding.’
‘You’d better be right, Marcus!’
In March, the long flog down to Campania just to wrench some sordid tale from a sculptor held no promise that appealed to this particular member of the rampaging Didius boys.
On the other hand, with so much at stake in my promise to Mother, I could not allow my father to go instead.
XLVI
We had been in the far north of the city; we made our way gloomily south. This time we walked at merely a brisk pace. My father was still not talking.
We reached the Saepta Julia. Pa carried on. I was so used to marching alongside him into trouble that at first I said nothing, but eventually I tackled him: ‘I thought we were going back to the Saepta?’
‘I’m not going to the Saepta.’
‘I can see that. The Saepta’s behind us.’
‘I was never going to the Saepta. I told you where we were going when we were at the Carus house.’
‘Home, you said.’
‘That’s where I’m going,’ said my father. ‘You can please your pompous self.’
Home! He meant where he lived with his redhead.
I did not believe this could be happening.
I had never yet been inside the house where my father lived, though I reckoned Festus had been no stranger there. My mother would never forgive me if I went now. I was not part of Pa’s new life; I would never be. The only reason I kept walking was that it would be a gross discourtesy to abandon a man of his age who had had a bad shock at the Carus house, and with whom I had just shared a rumpus. He was out in Rome without his normal bodyguards. He was under threat of violence from Carus and Servia. He was paying me for protection. The least I could do was to see he reached his house safely.
He let me trudge all the way from the Saepta Julia, past the Flaminian Circus, the Porticus of Octavia and the Theatre of Marcellus. He dragged me right under the shadow of the Arx and the Capitol. He towed me on reluctantly, past the end of Tiber Island, the old Cattle Market Forum, a whole litter of temples and the Sublician and Probus Bridges.
Then he let me wait while he fumbled for his doorkey, failed to find it, and banged the bell to be let in. He let me slouch after him inside his neat entrance suite. He flung off his cloak, peeled off his boots, gestured brusquely for me to do likewise-and only when I was barefoot and feeling vulnerable did he admit scornfully, ‘You can relax! She’s not here.’ The reprieve nearly made me faint.
Pa shot me a disgusted look. I let him know it was mutual. ‘I set her up in a small business to stop her nosing into mine. On Tuesdays she always goes there to pay the wages and do the accounts.’
‘It’s not a Tuesday!’ I pointed out grumpily.
‘They had some trouble there last week and now she’s having some work done to the property. Anyway, she’ll be out all day.’
I sat on a coffer while he stomped off to speak to his steward. Someone brought me a pair of spare sandals and took my boots to clean the mud off them. As well as this slave, and the boy who had opened the door to us, I saw several other faces. When Pa reappeared I commented, ‘Your billet’s well staffed.’
‘I like people round about me.’ I had
always thought having too many people around him was the main reason he had left us.
‘These are slaves.’
‘So I’m a liberal. I treat my slaves like children.’
‘I’d like to riposte, and you treated your children like slaves!’ Our eyes met. ‘I won’t. It would be unjust.’
‘Don’t descend to forced politeness, Marcus! Just feel free to be yourself,’ he commented, with the long-practised sarcasm peculiar to families.
Pa lived in a tall, rather narrow house on the waterfront. This damp location was highly desired because of its view across the Tiber, so plots were small. The houses suffered badly from flooding; I noticed that the ground floor here was painted plainly in fairly dark colours. Left to myself, I looked into the rooms attached to the hallway. They were being used by the slaves, or were set up as offices where visitors could be interviewed. One was even stuffed with sandbags for emergency use. The only furniture comprised large stone coffers that would remain unaffected by damp.
Upstairs all that changed. Wrinkling my nose at the unfamiliar smell of a strange house, I followed my father to the first floor. Our feet trampled a grand Eastern carpet. He had this luxurious item spread on the floor in regular use, not hung safely on the wall. In fact everything he had brought home-which meant plenty-was there to be used.
We marched through a series of small, crowded rooms. They were clean, but jammed with treasures. The wall paint was all elderly and fading. It had been done to a basic standard, probably twenty years ago when Pa and his woman moved here, and not touched since. It suited him. The plainish red, yellow and sea-blue rooms with conventional dados and cornices were the best foil for my father’s large, ever-changing collection of furniture and vases, not to mention the curios and interesting trinkets any auctioneer obtains by the crate. It was organised chaos, however. You could live here, if you liked clutter. The impression was established and comfortable, its taste set by people who pleased themselves.
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