“Where are you going?” he asked Gaius Rubrius sharply, in Latin.
“Down to the main road, sir,” Gaius Rubrius replied. He sounded anxious. “The way we come before, up through the back streets—tha’s good for the day, but now it’s evening, and you don’ wan’ta go that way in the dark. We’ll go down the Via Collatina to the Julian Forum, an’ then across to the Sacra Via an’ up to your friend’s house. It’s a lot longer, sir, but it’s safe.”
“Yes,” he agreed, letting out his breath with a shudder. “A good idea.” Getting caught in the back streets after dark by some of Rufus’s men was a very bad idea indeed. If his body were to be found mutilated in an alley behind some insula, who was going to accept that a consul had been responsible? He told Phormion what Gaius Rubrius had said.
“I don’t trust those buggers,” Phormion muttered, but he relaxed. Hermogenes hunched over in the chair, trying to think.
I do not see why repaying a debt is so disgraceful a thing that it needs this! he had said to Macedo. Doesn’t he have the money?
It was true: Rufus’s response to his demand was, and always had been, excessive. However arrogant the consul was, however much he resented being forced to pay by a mere Egyptian, he risked so much now by not paying that it simply wasn’t worth it. He clearly did have enemies who would be glad of a chance to disgrace him—and it stood to reason that he would, since he was, as Crispus had said, a “nobody by birth” who had achieved the supreme honor over the heads of a proud and jealous aristocracy. So why was he still refusing to pay—unless he didn’t have the money?
How could he not have the money? Crispus’s guests had agreed that he had acquired a hundred million through his military services to the emperor, and that he had invested it all in real property—in land.
Hermogenes shivered, remembering what the financier had said at the banquet: Everyone always says land is safe, but one bad harvest, and where are you? A farm can ruin you as fast as a ship, if you don’t manage your investments right.
Say that Rufus had not managed his investments right. Say that, in his new wealth and his eagerness to become the biggest landowner in Picenum, he had bought run-down farms at inflated prices, and that he had spent everything he had on the land itself, without keeping anything back to invest in it. Say that he had then discovered a whole raft of improvements he needed to make to get a profit from his land, and borrowed to pay for them, using the land as security for the loan—borrowed not from a man like Nikomachos, whose demands he could ignore, but from a member of his own circle. Interest rates had been low since Rome acquired the wealth of Egypt, but the standard rate for a business loan would still have been 5 or 6 percent. Profit on land was usually only 2 or 3 percent of the land’s value per annum. If the land had been replanted with olives or vineyards, which needed time to grow, then there would be no return on it at all for years.
Say that Rufus was, in fact, deeply in debt, unable to pay off the loans he had taken out without selling land, and at risk of losing much of that land if his creditor decided to press him. Say that he had carefully concealed this from the world, because he was afraid his powerful creditor might press him. Say that that Esquiline mansion was perched on top of a cliff of debt, and that the base of the cliff was crumbling.
Say that then an Alexandrian businessman turned up trying to recover his uncle’s money … an amount too great for Rufus simply to pay out of his ordinary expenses.
Rufus would be bound to sell one of those properties he had mortgaged, and that would inevitably alert his other creditor to the true state of his finances. His total assets were still far in excess of his liabilities, but if he tried to realize them, they would collapse like a mud bank undermined by a flooding river. One or two farms in Picenum might fetch a good price, but half Picenum coming onto the market at once would see good land selling for a song.
The normal course for an important man in such a strait would be to turn to his rich friends—but the emperor was absent from Rome, and so was his second-in-command, Marcus Agrippa. Rufus had no one to turn to and no way to pay Hermogenes without exposing himself—and Hermogenes had just pointed out to him that the consequences of not paying were even worse. If Rufus were summoned for debt he would not only be exposed to his creditors but he would also become a laughingstock.
Hermogenes gripped the shafts of the sedan chair hard, biting his lip. Was this analysis correct? He had no evidence for it, except Rufus’s extraordinary reluctance to pay. Crispus’s friends in business had heard no rumor of any insecurity in the consular finances.
That meant nothing. Crispus’s friends would not know such a thing. Rufus wouldn’t have borrowed from merchant bankers and middle-class financiers but from his own circle, the fabulously wealthy intimates of the emperor Augustus. Men like Maecenas or Vedius Pollio, who cultivated the wealth of kingdoms, had very little to say to men like Fiducius Crispus.
If the analysis was correct, what was the best course for Tarius Rufus to take?
That question had suddenly become the most urgent question in the world, because Rufus might well answer it, “Get the Alexandrian’s papers and kill him before he can expose me”—and if Hermogenes was to survive, he needed to provide an alternative.
Hermogenes picked his head up and stared out at the city, seeking some distraction from the rising tide of panic. They had descended from the Esquiline while he wrestled with the problem, and now they were moving briskly along a main road into a small public square, where an aqueduct ended in a lavish public fountain. The long June dusk was finally beginning, and street and square both were shadowy and deserted. The last of the sunset turned the water of the fountain red as blood. The only human figure in sight was a woman who sat on the edge of the fountain. She was dressed simply, in the gray-brown tunic of a slave, but the long hair tied behind her head was the color of fire. Something about the way the red light caught her, and the way she sat staring into the depths of the bloody water, made her seem frightening and unearthly, like some creature from the Underworld waiting for the hour of an appointed death. Hermogenes shivered and looked away from her. He told himself that she was only a slave fetching water—or, perhaps, given the hour and her solitude, a whore waiting for custom. There was no reason to feel this superstitious horror of her.
The sedan chair moved on across the square, the bearers walking very quickly now, as if they too found something disturbing in that solitary women. The main road resumed beyond the square, and Hermogenes could see another open space a few blocks distant, the columns of public buildings pale in the dusk—the Julian Forum, undoubtedly, where they would turn left to find the Sacra Via.
The sedan chair turned right as it left the square.
Hermogenes sat bolt upright. The Rubrii were now hurrying into a narrow alley, black in the gathering dark and stinking of dung. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Their only answer was to quicken their pace. The chair jolted as they broke into a jogging run.
Several things seemed to jump into a sharp pattern, like a landscape revealed by lightning: Gaius Rubrius’s silence on the way up the hill; his distrust of foreign moneylenders and loyalty to Roman consuls; Phormion, who’d been left in Rufus’s stable with the chair bearers saying, “I don’t trust the buggers.” Hermogenes yelled “Phormion! Help!” grabbed the left shaft of the sedan chair, and swung himself out.
The chair tipped and swung over even as he jumped: the Rubrii had felt him move and thrown it off. Unbalanced, he landed heavily, twisting his right ankle, and sprawled into the filth of the alleyway. The chair fell bruisingly on top of him. Behind him there was the sound of blows, but he had no attention to spare for it: Gaius Rubrius was rushing at him out of the dimness, shouting loudly.
Hermogenes grabbed the sedan chair with both hands and swung it at the bearer with all his strength. There was a crack and an impact that jarred his arms to the shoulders. He struggled to get to his feet, striking again, blindly. His right ankle flared
with pain when his weight came on it and he staggered. He was aware of shouts coming from further down the alley—the men Gaius had been calling to, the ones to whom he had intended to deliver his passenger.
He dropped the chair and began to stagger toward the entrance to the alley. Phormion caught his arm and helped him, which had to mean that Quintus Rubrius was the heap on the ground; he had no idea whether he himself had downed Gaius or whether the man had simply given up the attack because reinforcements were about to arrive. Menestor caught his other arm, and between them he managed to hobble out into the square.
It was still empty, apart from the solitary woman. All the shops were closed and shuttered for the night. Hermogenes blinked at tears of pain, looking frantically around for some way out. He could not run, he was unarmed, and from behind him came the sound of men running—several of them. He pulled his arm from Menestor’s.
“Run!” he ordered the boy, shoving him. “Get help!”
“I won’t leave you!” wailed Menestor, and tried to take his arm again.
“Run!” he shouted furiously. It was almost too late: already the pursuers were almost upon them. He glanced round again, saw the woman watching, apparently unafraid.
“Help!” he shouted at her. “Robbery! Murder!” There was no response, and he checked himself and shouted again, forcing himself to use Latin this time. “Help! I beg you, fetch help! Tell them I will pay a hundred denarii to anyone who comes to help me now!”
Phormion let go of him and turned to face their pursuers. Hermogenes staggered, then turned as well, dropping to one knee and casting desperately around for a branch, a loose cobblestone, anything to use as a weapon.
There were four of the men, all plainly dressed, all carrying knives. They had seen that he couldn’t run, and slowed to a walk, wary of Phormion, who faced them in a boxer’s stance, his knees flexed and his hands high.
“Get out of the way,” one of the men warned him. “It’s your master we want.”
Even if Phormion had understood the Latin words, he would not have moved away: he had always been a fighter. He roared an obscenity in back-street Greek and shifted his feet eagerly, waiting for his attack.
Hermogenes found no weapon but a handful of dung. He threw it in the face of the first man who rushed forward.
Blinded, the man missed his thrust, and the knife that had been aimed at the bodyguard’s chest slid helplessly past it. Phormion’s fist connected with his jaw with a resounding crack and the attacker flew backward onto the cobbles. It was only a momentary triumph, however: the second attacker was only fractionally behind, and his knife caught Phormion in the side. The slave screamed, lashing wildly at his assailant; the knife came out and went in again, and Phormion collapsed onto the cobblestones.
Hermogenes shoved Menestor again. “Run!” he ordered despairingly; but the lead attacker was shouting, “Get the boy alive, too!” He had, Hermogenes saw with dread, sheathed his knife. They didn’t mean to kill their victim until they had tortured him into telling them where to find the documents—and if he didn’t tell them, Menestor would.
Menestor didn’t even try to run; he threw dung, as his master had,then launched himself shrieking at the leader as the man rushed forward. The attacker brushed him aside almost casually; Hermogenes tried to dodge the onslaught, but his ankle gave way, and he found himself back on the cobblestones with the other man on top of him. A blow against his ear half stunned him, and then a powerful hand seized his wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. He tried to struggle, then screamed as his arm was jerked savagely upward. More blows thudded against his ribs.
“What are you doing?” asked a woman’s voice.
Hermogenes twisted his neck and saw that the red-haired woman had not run for help, as he’d begged and hoped: she had come over, and now stood calmly looking at the scene. In despair, he’d realized that he’d begged help of the local lunatic.
“Stay out of it, bitch!” one of the attackers told her. He was holding a knife to Menestor’s throat; the third man was seeing to the fourth, the man Phormion had hit, who was lying on his back on the cobbles groaning.
The woman looked directly at Hermogenes. “A hundred denarii,” she said—and strolled over to kick the third attacker as he crouched over his injured companion.
There was nothing rational or restrained about the kick: the woman pivoted on one heel and brought the whole weight of her body and all her strength onto the opposite toe, angling it in and upward and smashing it directly between the man’s legs, which were slightly splayed as he squatted over his friend. The force of it lifted him a foot into the air and flung him head over heels screaming onto the cobbles. There was never any question that he was going to get up and hit back: he was blind with agony and probably maimed for life. Casually, almost leisurely, the woman bent and picked up the fourth man’s knife from the pavement. With the same casual air she strode toward the man who held Menestor.
The man hesitated, uncertain whether to let go of the boy to face this unheard-of monster. The woman did not hesitate in the slightest: she shoved her knife smoothly into the man’s side, twisted it, and pulled it out again. He was already falling as she turned to face the fourth attacker.
The fourth man thrust Hermogenes facedown onto the pavement and leaped to his feet. There was a scuffle, a rasp of metal, and then silence.
Hermogenes picked his head up, shook it. The woman was wiping her knife on the fourth attacker’s cloak. The man she’d kicked was lying curled up around his groin uttering awful, thin sobs; the man Phormion had downed was still groaning and only semiconscious.
“You owe me a hundred denarii,” the woman told Hermogenes.
“She’s a goddess,” whispered Menestor in awe. “She’s Pallas Athena.”
Hermogenes did not believe in goddesses who kicked men in the balls and wanted a hundred denarii. He struggled to his feet and hobbled over to Phormion. It was growing too dark to see the slave’s face clearly, but his fingers found no trace of breath, no pulse. He bowed his head.
“What happened to the chair bearers, rich man?” asked the woman, coming over to have a look herself. She spoke Latin with a strong accent he could not identify. “Or weren’t they part of it?”
“They were,” he replied numbly. “I don’t know. Phormion knocked one of them down, the other … I don’t know.” He tried to pull his wits together. “They were trying to take me down there.” He waved toward the black mouth of the alley. “I think they meant to question me. There may be more of them somewhere. We’ve got to get away.” He got to his feet again, wincing, “Menestor!”
The young man stumbled over and caught hold of him like a frightened child. Hermogenes shook him loose. “We’ve got to get away,” he told him, in Greek.
“I said he would kill us!” quavered Menestor. “Oh, Isis, they’ve killed Phormion!”
“We will send someone to fetch Phormion’s body in the morning!” Hermogenes snapped. “Now we must go.” He caught the boy’s shoulder to keep his balance, then looked back at the woman.
She was standing watching him, the knife now thrust through her belt. She was, he thought, possibly the most frightening individual he had ever encountered—but she had saved him.
“I owe you a hundred denarii,” he told her. “I will pay you at the house of my friend Titus Fiducius, on the Via Tusculana, and add another fifty denarii if you take me there now.”
She grunted. “Agreed. It’s quickest that way.” She pointed down a narrow side street on the left of the square.
It was black as the alley where the Rubrii had been taking him. He shuddered. “Is it safe?”
She grinned, her teeth white in the dimness. “It is if you’re with me.”
The walk back to Crispus’s house seemed endless. Hermogenes stumbled through it doggedly, one arm over Menestor’s shoulders, leaning on the boy heavily and gritting his teeth every time his weight came down on his right ankle. The narrow back streets were uneven, often unpa
ved, full of potholes and littered with rubbish, so that he stumbled often. He kept listening for the sound of footsteps behind them, but the only ones he heard belonged to the woman, and she walked quietly, with a steady tread.
“Who were they?” she asked abruptly, after the first crossroads. “They weren’t robbers.”
He gave a sobbing laugh. “They were from a man who owes me money.”
“Huh. So why do they want to question you?”
He didn’t answer at once, and she persisted, “You said they wanted to question you. I saw how they wanted you alive. I want to know who I killed, rich man.”
“My name is Hermogenes.”
“What is that? Greek?”
“Yes. Those men … I have some documents which prove my right to collect a debt. They wanted to know where I put them. Once they knew, they would have killed me.”
“So you’re a moneylender?” She sounded disappointed. “It’s all a money matter?”
“Yes. My uncle was foolish enough to lend more than he could afford.” He hadn’t said that before, but suddenly the rage at Nikomachos was overpowering. “He was stupid enough to give that barbarian almost the sum of all his assets, the sum! I would never have done that, no matter what he threatened me with!”
“What barbarian?” the woman asked suspiciously.
His foot slipped just then on a patch of something slimy and stinking, and his weight crashed down on his right foot. He gasped and stood clutching Menestor while the pain burned white hot. The young man’s flesh was warm, damp with sweat, and he could feel tremors going through it, but whether they came from Menestor or from himself, he couldn’t tell.
“What’s wrong with your foot?” demanded the woman.
“I twisted my ankle when I jumped from the chair,” he told her, and began to limp grimly on.
“Huh,” said the woman, following. “Far to your friend’s house?”
He gave another sobbing laugh. “I thought you knew the way!”
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