As an assembly of five, we fell naturally into two sub-groups. Helena attached herself to the widow and was soon discussing Helvia's travelling. To go overseas we knew she must possess funds, though not as lavish as those enjoyed by Cleonymus and Cleonyma. A decent friend used to accompany her, a woman her own age who spoke several languages, but after an unfortunate experience in the souk at Alexandria, that ended. Now Helvia brought instead a little slave girl, who was always the first in any party to be struck down by the foreign food, and who lost Helvia's luggage every time they hit a new port.
Helvia had chosen to travel with Seven Sights because she wanted to meet new men. She came right out with this. Helena wondered whether the married ones might be a problem – or those travelling alone, who were married but failed to mention it? Helvia seemed surprised by this suggestion. When she glanced in alarm at Indus and Marinus, they were much amused. I guessed that already on this trip each had made it plain to Helvia that he was not interested in her (or thought he had.) With that cleared up, they had convinced themselves it was safe to be friendly with the widow. I would not have felt so confident.
Marinus fancied his chances as a raconteur. This was a real nuisance. We were trying to elicit cold facts from people who were unused to being questioned and my patter was geared to stop them telling lies. I was less efficient at interrupting this stream of anecdotes about lost participants (got up late, missed the mule train, missed the boat, just lost their way, locals handing out wrong information, guides who were ignorant, abusive, too clingy, or who reneged and left hapless travellers on their own in the middle of deserts, earthquakes, civil wars, or simply in the middle of Arcadia, which, despite its reputation for temples and a pastoral ambience, apparently contains nothing of interest.
We had already taken in a great deal of information, and a seafood lunch; I was helpless. Soon Marinus was even sidetracking himself, with a long, shocking tale of an innocent family, who had never been abroad before, being abducted by a psychopath (on a dark night on a remote mountain pass, naturally. When he launched into an incident with a crocodile, even Indus joined in. He was a hunched man, with long, lank hair and dark skin lesions. He had kept quiet until that point, perhaps because of the aspersions that Aulus had cast. If he was on the run for some sort of fraud or political disgrace, he would not want to attract my attention. But now he too set off on reminiscences.
'The worst thing I've seen is feeding time at Crocodilopolis. The poor chief croc there is supposed to be a god. You bring him hampers of stuff-bread and cakes, and wine to wash it down. He waddles out all covered with perfumes and jewellery, though looking apprehensive, if you ask me. The keepers wrench his jaws apart and force in the goodies – and sometimes he has hardly gobbled up one load when a new crowd arrive and bring him more to gorge on. When I saw him, he was so fat, he could hardly move. Can't say the priests were exactly slender either!'
'Of course they have their teeth drawn. declared Marinus.
'Do you mean the priests?' Looking over from where she sat with Helvia, Helena found her voice, stopping the flow of stories with this deadpan jest. 'Marcus, did Indus and Marinus have any intimate conversations with Statianus? Were they able to entice anything out of him?'
'Sadly, not much there to entice,' Marinus apologised, giving in and returning to our real subject. 'Nice boy – but when the brains and spirit were handed out in that family, they must have passed him by.'
'Sad for Valeria?' Helena asked Helvia.
'No, they were well matched, in my opinion. Valeria was a sweet little thing, but scatty.'
'A bit lacking in judgement?'
'Utterly. She was fresh from the nursery, Helena. I don't think her mother can ever have taken her on so much as a morning drive to meet a friend and drink mint tea.'
'Her parents were dead. She had a guardian, Helvia, but you know how that works – so often a formality. I suspect she was brought up solely by slaves and perhaps freedwomen.'
Helvia sighed. 'With hindsight, I feel dreadful that I never took her under my wing.' More tartly, she added, 'Well, she would not have wanted me. In her eyes she was a married woman, travelling with her husband; she knew nothing, but thought she knew everything.'
'Was she rude to you? Not give you the respect due a widow?'
'A little dismissive.'
'She was rude to you, Helvia!' Indus spelled it out. 'She was rude, at one time or another, to most people.'
'But probably had no idea she was doing it,' Marinus defended Valeria. The scatty girl must have been his type, I reckoned. Was it significant? 'She was outspoken even to her husband. She had a sharp tongue. If her killer propositioned her, she would have straightaway let rip with a riposte.'
'Perhaps that helped madden him?' I suggested.
'She could be a superior little madam,' Indus agreed. 'What was she? Nineteen, with no background and no real money. Neither of them had any clout. As newly-weds, they attracted a lot of attention; we made a fuss of them. They could have sat back and enjoyed it, and had a really good time. Instead they rubbed people up the wrong way; they insulted the guides, irritated us, and were fractious with each other. It was nothing too much, but just what you don't want when you are on the road in uncomfortable conditions.'
'So,' I said, 'they had alienated people. When the girl first went missing, Statianus had to look for her himself; then when he was accused of her murder…?'
'Oh that was when we rallied. It was not his fault. That idiotic magistrate needed a kick up the posterior.'
'So do you people know where Statianus has gone now?' Helena asked them, still hoping for news of her brother too. But they all shook their heads.
We seemed to have extracted as much as they could tell us, so we enquired about the two men themselves. Marinus owned up immediately that he was a widower, on the lookout for a new wife. We joked that since Helvia was in the same position, many would think that a neat solution.
'Oh Marinus is out of the question. He talks far too much!' Despite her wispy hair and uncontrolled drapery, Helvia was absolutely blunt.
'I do,' Marinus admitted without rancour. 'And I am hoping for a ladyfriend who owns half of Campania!' Helvia cast her eyes down, as if defeated.
'What about you, Indus?' Helena slipped in. 'Are you on the lookout for a wealthy new wife, or looking over your shoulder for some over-officious auditor?' She made it humorous. Indus took it that way – apparently.
'Oh I like to be a man of mystery, dear lady.'
'We all think he is a runaway bigamist!' giggled Helvia. So the rumours about Indus were openly mentioned – and he liked to let those rumours hover.
'You know the old maxim; never confess – and you'll never regret.'
'Deny and you'll get a black eye!' I retaliated.
After a few moments' silence, Helena sat up slightly. 'Statianus and Aelianus are missing; so is someone else,' she said. 'We were told you had a third man travelling by himself – whom nobody has mentioned at all. Wasn't there a Turcianus Opimus in your group? Our information is that he says this is 'his last chance to see the world.'
The silence lingered.
'Has nobody told you?' Helvia seemed wobbly.
The two men glanced at each other. It was rather ominous. Indus puffed out his cheeks, blew air awkwardly, then said nothing. Helvia by now was twisting her transparent stole between both hands, apparently distressed. We looked to Marinus, who always had too much to say, and screwed out of him the fatal words. Turcianus has died.'
XXVII
Helena drew herself up, then slowly let out a breath. 'I hope,' she said softly, 'you are not going to tell us there was anything unnatural about his death?'
'Oh no,' Helvia assured her, a little giddily. 'We just are – well, I can see that news would have been rather a shock, after you came here to investigate Valeria. It's just that for all of us – well, of course, we really hardly knew the man.
'He was ill.' I made it a statement.
Hel
via calmed down. 'Well, yes he was. Very seriously, it turned out. But none of us had realised.'
Helena was still wary, thinking that this might turn out to be yet another untoward death. 'Was it true then, when he said he was travelling while he could – he knew that he had very little time left?'
'Apparently so,' Marinus replied. 'Without being cynical – ' Which we gathered he always was. 'I doubt whether Phineus would have accepted Opimus on the tour, had he been aware of the true situation.'
'So much trouble…' Helena responded. 'Having to repatriate the ashes. So bad for his reputation, sending clients home in funeral urns.'
'The rate this tour is going,' Marinus quipped, 'Phineus will end up taking more urns back than people!'
'Oh Marinus!' Helvia reproved him. She turned to Helena and confided the story. 'Opimus seemed such a nice man. But he was very ill, we discovered, and he badly wanted to go to Epidaurus – where the Temple of Aesculapius is, you know.'
'I didn't know Epidaurus was on your itinerary,' I said.
'No, it wasn't originally. But we are doing Tracks and Temples, after all, and Epidaurus has a very famous temple with a fascinating history. In fact there is even a stadium.'
'And a good theatre?'
'An astonishing theatre. When we found out how Opimus was suffering, we all took a vote. Most of us were happy to go to the medical sanctuary and let him seize his chance for a cure.'
'How did Phineus take this vote for a detour?' I asked. Marinus and Indus laughed heartily. 'I see! Still, you are the clients, so you persuaded him.'
'It was no loss to bloody Phineus!' Marinus said crisply. 'We pay for it if we want a new itinerary.'
'And this was after Olympia?'
'Yes,' said Helvia. 'We were all feeling shaken by Valeria's death, and perhaps a little kinder towards our fellow humans. When Opimus revealed how ill he was, we all felt it very deeply. You know, I think the shock of what happened to Valeria contributed to his decline; while we were at Olympia he deteriorated rapidly.'
'You were on good terms with him?'
Helvia blushed demurely. I imagined her disappointment if she had lined up Opimus as a possible new husband, only to lose him after she had spent much effort making friends.
Helena drew on her usual fund of knowledge. 'Is Epidaurus where people sleep in a cell near the temple, and hope for a dream that night, which will produce a cure?'
'Yes. It is a wonderful site,' said Helvia. 'It is set in a marvellous grove, all very spacious, with many facilities, some medical and some where people obtain help for mind and body purely by rest and relaxation. For the sick, the centre contains the Temple of Aesculapius, and not far away a huge building called the dormitory. There you sleep for a night, among tame snakes and dogs who are sacred to Aesculapius. They wander around, and some people dream they are licked by the creatures, which leads to them being healed.'
The sacred dogs must be more fragrant than Nux, then. (Nux had been left with Albia that afternoon.) 'So what happened?' I asked.
'One or two of us had little ailments we wouldn't mind alleviating, so we went with Opimus and slept in the dormitory that night.' Helvia looked slightly disapproving – the classic face of a tourist who knows she has been cheated, but who paid good money for the experience and still wants to believe. 'It did not help my rheumatism. None of us seem very much better since then, I'm afraid to say…'
'Somebody must get well. There are tablets hung up everywhere, praising the dream cures,' Marinus told us, in his sceptical tone. 'Lepidus dreamed that a snake licked his arse and with the assistance of the god he woke up absolutely cured of his piles… Of course they don't say Lepidus had actually gone there with a goitre on his neck! Then people make pottery offerings in the form of the limb or organ that Aesculapius mended – lots of little wombs and -'
'Feet? asked Helena adroitly.
'Feet – and hands and ears,' Indus assured her, with a smile.
Marinus leaned forward. 'I have all the luck. I was singled out for a special honour. I got bitten by a sacred dog!' He pulled back a bandage on the leg he had previously put up on the seat to ease it. We inspected the bite.
'No doubt they told you he was just being friendly, and nothing like it had ever happened at the sanctuary before?' Marinus stared at me suspiciously, as if he thought I might be a dog-owner. 'Seems to be healing, Marinus.' I grinned.
'Yes, I tell myself a friendly snake must have come along afterwards and licked it better.'
'Did you dream?' asked Helena, mock serious.
'Not a thing. I never do. As for Turcianus Opimus, whatever he dreamed turned into his nightmare, poor fellow.'
'Well?' prompted Helena. Marinus shook his head, looking sombre, while Indus sighed and sank into himself.
The widow was made of stouter stuff. It was left to her to tell us. 'He passed away peacefully during the night. Oh don't worry!' Helvia assured us quickly. 'He had the best medical attention in the world. After all, the healers at Epidaurus go back in a direct line to the teachings of Aesculapius, the very founder of medicine. The one thing you can be certain of is that Turcianus Opimus would have died wherever he was. It was unavoidable and absolutely natural.'
Oh really? Doing my job for twelve years had tainted my ability to trust. Simple statements about 'unavoidable' happenings now sounded unreliable. Any reference to a 'natural' death immediately aroused suspicions.
XXVIII
Helena looked good for more questions, but I was flagging. Since we had now tackled everyone who came to the courtyard for lunch, we packed up and returned to our own lodgings.
With a recommendation from a quaestor, you might suppose this travel lodge would rank with the best in Corinth. Any visitors of note arriving at a provincial capital go straight to the governor's palace, in the hope of being offered luxurious rooms there. Lesser mortals will more likely be told that a great train of ex-consuls has just arrived unexpectedly – though then they should be sent to hotels where at least the bedbugs have been to charm school and the landlord speaks Latin.
Well, that's the ideal. Sorting out accommodation falls to the young quaestor; he is quartered at the residence, so he has never slept at any of the run-down lodgings to which he sends people. He only knows of them because their fawning landlords have given him presents, probably something that comes in an amphora; he's so inexperienced he can't even tell if the free wine is any good. The quaestor is just twenty-five, in his first post, and has only ever been travelling before with his father, a bossy senator, who organised everything. He knows nothing about booking rooms.
Our guesthouse was called the Elephant. It could have been worse. It could have been much better. It had more rooms than the Camel up the street and, according to the manager, fewer mosquitoes than the Bay Mare. Nobody was leasing out cubicles to floozies on an hourly basis, but that was mainly because most of the rooms had desultory builders renovating them. Beds were stacked in the courtyard, so its fountain was turned off and breakfast had to be taken at the Bay Mare, where we interlopers from the Elephant were served last, after the honey had run out. At our rickety hostel, a pall of dust hung everywhere. Gaius had already fallen over a pile of tiles and gashed his leg. Luckily he liked looking scarred and bloodstained. A huge extension with premier grade rooms was being added at the back, but this was still unfinished. I could have accepted rooms that had no doors, but I felt that we needed a roof.
The afternoon sun was still pleasant. The builders had gone home, as builders do. We knew from experience they would return around midnight, to deliver heavy materials while the streets were quiet.
Helena and I brushed dust from a stone bench and sat down gingerly. Nux was asleep in a patch of sunlight, a relaxed bundle of mix-and-match fur colours, curled up so tightly I could not tell which end was her head. Albia had perched on a plasterer's trestle, to watch Glaucus doing weight training. Apart from one of the smallest loincloths I had ever seen, he was naked. Albia gestured to him and exclaimed
, 'The beautiful boy!' This was a phrase she had picked up from the pederasts at Olympia, who had it painted on vases they gave to young lovers. How pleasing to see travel had had an educational effect. And how nerve-racking, the way Albia gazed at him…
Glaucus ignored the compliment. Soon he stopped training and sat hunched against a pile of dismantled shutters. When a big strong man becomes unhappy, it is disconcerting.
'What's up, champion?' I was afraid Albia's attentions were too much for him. Teenage girls always hassle shy young men (well, the girls I had known on the Aventine hassled me) and Albia had not forgotten she grew up in Britain, where determined red-haired warrior queens were apt to seduce handsome spear-carriers the minute their husbands glanced away. It was not that, however. (Well, not yet.)
'Falco, I am worried about what I did to Milo,' Glaucus confessed, frowning.
'Contact sports are always a risk; your father must have told you. Spectators are hoping for blood and death.' My reassurance overlooked the fact that throwing the discus is not supposed to be a contact sport.
'I had never hurt anyone before, Falco.'
Helena broke in. 'Glaucus, don't be concerned about this. We suspect Milo of Dodona was drugged and suffocated later – to silence him.'
'In case he said something unwelcome?'
'At this stage we don't know,' I said. 'But you merely chipped him with the disk. He should have been up and grumbling in a few hours. It's good to have a conscience, lad, but don't waste it.'
Glaucus evaluated what I said. 'Have you ever killed a man in this work of yours, Falco? My father gives the impression that you might have done.'
'What we are doing here isn't dangerous. Helena and I just met the people involved – and they seem as meek as lambs.'
Glaucus gave me a long look. 'Never mind the people involved! I was wondering about you,' he said.
I could not be offended; sometimes I wondered about myself.
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