He used the latrines at the bathhouse, had a shave at one of the barbershops in the portico, and they set out back to the lodging house. Cantabra still had an air of disapproval. Highly improper in a hired attendant, he thought irritably, and wondered about the offer he had made her earlier. Would he have made it if she’d been a man?
Yes, he decided. If a male ex-gladiator had come to his rescue in the Subura, asked for a job afterward, then proven his loyalty and ability in the escape from Pollio’s house, he would have offered him a permanent job and taken him back to Alexandria if he were willing to come. The fact remained, however, that Cantabra was not a male, and that his feelings toward her were increasingly different to what they would have been if she were. He found himself watching her out of the corner of his eye, liking the way her hips moved with each long step, liking the proud way she held her head, and the bright color of her hair. He wondered if mere proximity really was enough to make a man begin to want a woman.
He remembered the attacker curled up on the cobbles in the Subura, and remembered what she’d revealed the previous night—that men had had to tie her up or beat her senseless before they raped her; that she had been willing to starve rather than prostitute herself. He remembered the way she’d wiped off her hand after he pressed it, as though he’d dirtied it. It did not seem likely, he admitted to himself, that he would get what he was beginning to want. This being the case, was it wise or kind to invite her to Alexandria, a strange city where she knew no one and could not speak the language, and where she would inevitably discover that her employer wanted to take her to bed? She would probably see it as both a betrayal and a threat.
He would worry about her, though, if she stayed in Rome. What sort of job could she get, even with the help of Titus Crispus? If she found a place bodyguarding another rich man, she was likely to run into lust in authority sooner or later, if not from the man himself then from a subordinate of his or fellow guard. Bodyguard to a rich society lady might be a better possibility, but how would Cantabra, with her fierce, forthright manner, fit into the household of a noble Roman matron? There would probably be some disaster. He sighed.
Cantabra scowled at him. “What?”
“I am trying to think what sort of job I could get you if you decide not to come to Alexandria,” he replied honestly.
“You should think about your own future,” she advised him severely. They were almost at the lodging house, and she paused to scan the street. The sound of loud voices could be heard from nearby—from Gellia’s insula, he realized. The landlady had, indeed, invited all her friends round to share his bounty.
“I know my own future,” he objected. “Either I lose, and die within the next few days—or I win, and go home, where I have a house and a daughter and a business to look after. It’s your future that worries me.”
“Why should you worry about me?” she demanded, glaring at him. “I am as good as most men, better than many. I survived two years in the arena. You are not my master or my keeper: it is my job to protect you!” She stalked on to the alley and beat on Gellia’s door.
He limped after her, feeling, once again, slighted and indignant. He glared at the barbarian, who ignored him and beat on the door again, then again. At last it opened.
“Oh, there you are!” Gellia exclaimed happily, giving them a glazed smile. “Do you want to come have some wine? I told my friends what you wanted, and we’ve come up with a list of names. Not very long at all, you were right!” She punched Hermogenes on the arm.
He was not ready for this news. He realized that he did not want to know the name, not yet. Once he knew the name, he would have to act, and if he’d got it wrong there would be no more hope. He did not believe that if he went to Taurus with an accusation against a friend the prefect would simply allow him to walk free again. Far more likely that the man would hand him over to Rufus. Then there would be nothing left but death in one shape or another.
He smiled insincerely. “If it truly is not a long list, perhaps you could just tell it to me now.” He was shaken, and still angry at the woman beside him: the last thing he wanted was to join the drunken gathering he could hear talking loudly at the back of the house;
“Well,” said Gellia, pulling herself up, “the only friend of the emperor anybody knows of with the first name Titus is Statilius Taurus, like I thought. There’s an ex-consul called Titus Peducaeus, though, and a Titus Cornelius Messala who’s a senator and a member of the Arval Brethren, and a couple of rich businessmen called Titus-something-Balbus and Titus Salvidienus—”
“The man I want is not a businessman,” Hermogenes interrupted. “Do you know anything about the second two you named—the ex-consul Peducaeus or the senator?”
“Oh, you’ll have to ask the others!” Gellia exclaimed genially. “Come on, come have some wine with us.” She cackled. “You paid for it, after all!”
He glanced uneasily at Cantabra, then forced a smile and followed Gellia into the ground-floor apartment.
It was immediately apparent that this was where Gellia herself lived. It was a comfortable, well-furnished apartment, though not much cleaner than the rest of the building. He was ushered into a central dining room with a floor paved in plain tiles; there was a curtain to the right that probably concealed a sleeping cubicle, and a kitchen just visible through an open door. Gellia’s friends consisted of three women and a pair of old men. One woman and one old man reclined side by side on the couch, and the others perched on stools or cushions around the room. There was a mixing bowl half full of wine in the center of the floor, and everyone had a cup.
“This is the Greek I was telling you about!” Gellia told her drinking companions cheerfully. “The one who thinks his partner cheated him, Herapilus son of somebody I can’t pronounce. He’s a real gentleman, and he’s only here because he hired my friend Cantabra after she helped him when he was being robbed.”
The drinking party obligingly cheered for him, and the couple on the couch made space for him to lie down. Cantabra, her face expressionless, sat down on the floor by the door, the rolled-up cloak still in her lap.
It took a little while to get the drinking party to talk about Romans called Titus: they were far more interested to hear about the robbery, and eager to recount their own stories on the same subject. Eventually, however, he managed to turn the conversation and learn that Titus Peducaeus had been consul many years before (“oh, it was before the war of Actium!”) and had not been active in public affairs since. The senator Titus Cornelius Messalla, in contrast, was young, not yet thirty and still ineligible for the consulship. Nervous and unhappy, he chased up further Tituses—the two businessmen, a couple of praetors, a minor military figure, and even, in desperation, a Marcus Titius—but there was no real competition to the dark and bloodily reputed prefect of the city.
“Well, it sounds like you want General Statilius Taurus, then!” exclaimed Gellia triumphantly.
He forced a smile. “So it does. I shall begin my inquiries in the morning. Thank you.”
“Let’s have another drink to celebrate!” cried Gellia.
The wine, however, was all gone. Gellia asked Cantabra to fetch more, and gave her a couple of sestertii to pay for it. One of the old men suggested that she buy some food as well. There was a collection among the guests to pay the cookshop and the wineshop, and the old man whose suggestion it had been went along to help carry things.
“A dinner party!” cried the other old man enthusiastically. “Now all we need is some music!” He gazed at Hermogenes with an expression of slightly nervous hope. “I heard once that Greeks all learn to play music when they’re in school.”
Hermogenes shrugged. “I can play a little on the kithara.”
“My Sentia has a kithara,” the old man said at once, nodding at the middle-aged woman at his side. “Maybe she could fetch it.”
Sentia, a plump shapeless woman in a shapeless brown tunic, giggled, said she wasn’t sure it still had all its strings, and w
ent off to fetch it.
She arrived back at about the same time Cantabra returned with the other old man, the wine, and food consisting of a pot of lamb and bean ragout and a basket of bread. The food was dished out, the cups were filled and the party got under way.
The kithara had two broken strings, but Sentia had found spares. Hermogenes restrung the instrument and tuned it between bites of bread and ragout. When he played a scale, the Romans all fell silent, their drink-flushed faces suddenly quiet and eager. He felt his mild contempt for them dissolve: they were not the drunkards he’d been considering them, but working people, middle-aged and older, struggling to make a living in a harsh and dangerous city. They had been enjoying a rare and unexpected party, and the chance to hear some music made it a real occasion. They did not hear much music in their lives.
He played the first song that came into his head, an ever-popular drinking catch:
“Boy, bring me wine by the bowlful,
so I can drink without pausing for breath!”
The third string of the kithara slipped and played slightly flat by the end, and he knew that his voice was merely an indifferent tenor, but the Romans applauded loudly when he finished, and asked him what the Greek words meant. When he’d explained, everyone laughed and had more wine. The old man informed him proudly that Sentia could sing cantica most beautifully. Before long Hermogenes found himself playing a makeshift accompaniment as Sentia launched into a canticum, which, it seemed, was the term for an aria from a Latin mime. Rather to his surprise, the shapeless woman revealed herself to possess a beautiful voice, a clear sweet soprano which managed the difficult cadences of the music without straining. Her husband watched her proudly, nodding at intervals, his eyes alight with love.
After that, they took turns singing, until the wine was all gone and it was growing dark. Then Gellia’s friends reluctantly said good night, all of them thanking their hostess for the wine and Hermogenes for the music. It had been, he thought as he struggled up the stairs, quite a good party. He had certainly enjoyed it more than he’d enjoyed the dinner Titus Crispus had given him, and it had kept his mind off Statilius Taurus, for which he was grateful.
Cantabra went into the room ahead of him, very silent. The dusk through the open shutters showed that the room had, as expected, not been cleaned. Hermogenes went to the window, gazed out and down into the narrow smelly alleyway, and realized that he’d forgotten to use the tub downstairs.
“Titus Statilius Taurus,” he said out loud, and pissed out the window. When he’d finished he turned to say something to Cantabra, and found that she wasn’t there.
He went to the curtained alcove at the side and found her sitting on the floor under the window, hugging her knees. He hadn’t known that she not only had no bed but no mattress either. When he appeared in the doorway she picked her head up and looked at him, her face shadowed in the half-light from the window behind her.
“Is something the matter?” he asked hesitantly.
“You are such a very strange man,” she replied. Her voice was thick.
“You keep saying that,” he told her. “Have I done something which hurt or offended you?”
She caught her tail of hair with one hand and twisted it around her fingers. “No. I am sad because of the music. Leave me alone.”
He came over very quietly and dropped to one knee beside her. “Why?” he asked softly. “Most of it was happy music.”
“Just that it … that it made me … to remember being at home. We took turns singing sometimes in the evening there. Just it made me sad.” She let go of her hair and added abruptly, “You didn’t need to play for them. They’d already told you what you wanted to know. You didn’t need to treat them like friends.”
“You sound like my father!” he exclaimed, in unhappy surprise.
She wiped at her eyes. “What?”
“My father was always telling me things like that.”
“Oh. Yes. Because you were brought up to be a gentleman.” She peered at his face through the gathering dark. “To be a rich man and a master, who gives orders and expects to be obeyed. Instead, you are always liking people, and trying to make them like you. Even me. That is not the way a gentleman behaves, is it? What is Alexandria like?”
The abrupt change of subject made him blink. “A lot like Rome, I suppose,” he said, after a moment. “It, too, is a very big city, and parts of it are dangerous. That is why I had a bodyguard to begin with. I suppose in some ways Alexandria is even worse than Rome—there are riots sometimes, between the Jews and the Greeks, or Romans and Egyptians, and I think that does not happen here. The city is more beautiful than Rome, though. It didn’t just grow, one little street on top of another: it was founded to be great, and laid out with wide avenues. The Canopic Way is wide enough for four carriages to drive abreast of one another, and it is lined with porticos and public buildings for almost its entire length. There is nothing like that here in Rome.”
“And you, you have a house there.”
“Not on the Canopic Way. In the harbor district, not too far from the Heptastadion—that is the causeway that divides the two harbors, and goes out to the Pharos, the lighthouse that is one of the wonders of the world. It’s a good big house, about the size of my friend Titus’s. There would be space for you, if you wanted to come.”
“If you are not killed,” she said grimly, and rubbed at her eyes again.
“I thought you said that would not happen,” he replied after a moment.
She caught at her hair again. “You are going to try to see Statilius Taurus tomorrow, yes?”
“I will write him a letter asking for an appointment.”
“I have been thinking,” she said slowly. “What if he does not believe what you tell him, and sends you to his friend Tarius Rufus?”
So she’d seen that now. “That is a danger. I can only hope that he does not.”
She made no reply, only sat staring at the floor in front of her feet.
“The other choice is to go to Maecenas.”
“No. That way you would be sent back to Pollio.”
“If you can think of a better course,” he said impatiently, “please tell me!”
“You should have abandoned the fight before it came so far!”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Men!” she exclaimed, in fierce disgust. “It is always honor with you, and freedom, and other fine, brave, empty words! You never care for your families, for the people who will suffer when you are gone!”
“That’s not true! And you are a fine one to complain. If bare life is so important that we ought to preserve it at the cost of honor and freedom, why didn’t you do what Gellia urged, and prostitute yourself?”
“I would have done it, for my babies,” she said in a tight voice. “I would have. But when the soldiers came and threw me on the ground, my son tried to fight them, to protect me, and they killed him. He was seven. They ran him through with a spear, and he screamed, and tried to pull it out, and kicked at the ground, and then he died. And then my little girl cried and cried, so they killed her, too, because she would not be quiet. She was only three, and they killed her with swords; her little head was broken, and there was blood and brain all over the blades, all over her beautiful hair that I used to comb. After that I didn’t care. It didn’t matter what happened to me, after that; I fought them. They said, ‘Since she is so fond of fighting, send her to the arenas.’”
“Oh, Lady Isis!” He touched her shoulder in the darkness. “Ai, talaina!”
She began to cry, and knocked his hand away. “This is your fault!” she said bitterly. “Playing music, and making me think of it again. Leave me alone!”
He knelt next to her in the darkness, looking at her unhappily. She hugged herself, rocking back and forth a little and swallowing the sobs now. “Go away!” she ordered him.
He got up, then stared at her a moment longer where she sat huddled on the bare floor. He took off his cloak and draped i
t over her shoulders. “You’ll sleep more comfortably with that,” he told her. “I’ll use my other one.”
He had to feel around the couch for the bundle that was his good cloak and his letters of credit: it was now almost completely dark. Eventually, however, he draped the Scythopolitan linen over himself and lay down on the flea-infested bed. He imagined the soldiers raping Cantabra and murdering her children, and opened his eyes wide, staring up into the darkness. He felt suddenly that the power of Rome was a vast cloud of choking smoke, a gas which had erupted from this dark city and covered the whole earth. How did he expect to get free of it?
Taurus owned the gladiatorial school which had owned Cantabra. She hadn’t made any comment on the fact that the current plan involved saving his life, but she must have noticed. He wondered how she felt about that.
Probably they would not succeed. Statilius Taurus sounded no better a man than Tarius Rufus or Vedius Pollio. Either he would refuse to listen to the warning of a despised Egyptian, or he would hear the warning but abandon the man who delivered it. There wasn’t really much hope. Perhaps he’d do better to try Maecenas, after all: the diplomat at least had the reputation of being a gentleman.
Cantabra did have a point, though, with her gladiatorial advice against making the move a stronger opponent would anticipate. She had some knowledge of Taurus, too, and she seemed to think he constituted an acceptable risk: honest and honorable, she’d called him, if bloodthirsty. He would have to trust that. Probably, though, they would not succeed.
He thought of Myrrhine. Menestor had thought to write his family, and probably such a letter would be a comfort to them if he never came back. He ought to write to Myrrhine. He ought to explain that he loved her, and that he hadn’t decided to risk his life because he didn’t care about what happened to her but because he couldn’t endure feeling that she was the daughter of a slave.
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