'Do you and Phineus know the governor, Polystratus?' Nothing would surprise me.
'Oh, you are supposed to be the man with heavy contacts, Falco! Do you know the governor?'
'No,' I said sadly. I left it for a beat. 'I only know the Emperor.'
We were getting on superbly. We were the best of friends now. Sharing a drink; gazing at the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Corinth; considering whether to indulge in a plate of crispy whitebait; each wondering just how much the other knew.
'You must have spent several days across the Gulf,' I said. 'When Statianus refused to accompany you back,' I asked, 'what were your movements?'
'I went to a local village,' replied Polystratus. 'Things to organise on my own account. Things to buy. Sidelines, you know.'
'In the big jars?'
'Salted tuna. Want a taste? I've kept one open in case anyone asks for a sample. I'd rather sell on out here and save the shipping costs, if I can manage it.'
I agreed to taste. It was an easy way to check his story. He borrowed a spoon from the men at the other table, who looked bemused but surrendered the implement as if they thought he was somebody important. Like Phineus he had that air; he expected to get his own way.
I stayed where I was. Whistling, Polystratus walked over to his cart, where he fiddled with one of the globular amphorae. He brought me a spoonful of fish, not too salty. I doubted it would travel well, but I had tasted worse.
'Not bad.' I challenged him about the containers. Most you see in Greece are the tall slender type. 'Last time I saw those fat, round-bellied amphorae, they were in Baetica, used for olive oil. I didn't know that shape ever came east for other commodities.'
Polystratus immediately nodded. 'Recycled. The miser I buy from doesn't even supply new jars… Can't interest you? I'll keep trying. Someone may like the stuff. I'll have to lug the whole consignment around with me, when we move.'
'You are planning to restart the tour?'
'Oh haven't you been told?' Polystratus enjoyed being ahead of me. 'Aquillius can't hold up our clients indefinitely. We threatened him with an injunction and he's released them. We'll be shifting them to Athens – sniff at the Pnyx, give the Spartan girls the eye on the Erechtheion – are you a caryatids man? – scuttle up the Parthenon to pay respects to Pallas Athena, then sail off from Piraeus across the wine-dark sea.'
I hid my disappointment – knowing he could see it. I noticed he said 'we'; did that mean he and Phineus were in contact, even though Phineus was an escapee?
'Apart from Delphi, did you only go to the salt-fish village?'
'You're fixated, Falco!' Polystratus gave me the street scoundrel's look of surprise. 'Here and there. This and that. What's the big issue? You'd be surprised how long it takes to persuade some lousy Greek fish-bottler to sell you a few amphorae. A day to roust him out of his hut and wake him up. Another day arguing about the price. A day while you buy him drinks to celebrate him ripping you off…' Without appearing to challenge me, he asked, ' What were you up to over there, Falco?'
'Same as you. Trying to lure Tullius Statianus back to civilisation.'
'No more luck than me?'
'No, after you met him, he left. He went straight off to Lebadeia.' Polystratus again feigned not to have heard of the place. 'Trophonius,' I prompted. 'Statianus knew it had another oracle.'
'Oh it's one of those Boeotian shrines!… Phineus takes trippers. We include Trophonius in our Oracle Odyssey route – something a bit different – but there's not much take-up.'
'I can understand that.' If Phineus and Polystratus knew Trophonius was 'a bit different', presumably they knew all about the ritual. Maybe they even knew how the oracle was really worked. 'I'd avoid that place in future. Statianus, for one, seems to have discovered that your 'infinite journey plan' stopped being infinite in the underground chasm. He vanished, complete with two barley cakes. At least it saves you having to repatriate him in yet another funeral urn.'
'What are you saying, Falco?'
'He's probably dead.'
'Not another one!' Polystratus groaned dramatically – then tackled it head on. Are you suggesting Seven Sights Travel may be at the back of this?'
'It looks bad.'
'You have just made a very serious accusation against us.'
'Have I?'
'Prove it!' cried Polystratus, with the forthright indignation of a businessman who was no stranger to serious accusations. 'Produce the body – or otherwise, leave us alone!'
LII
'I don't like releasing them any more than you do,' blustered Aquillius. Furious, I had accosted him that same evening at the governor's residence. He flared up in response. 'Falco, we can't show that any of these travellers had a hand in what happened to the bride at Olympia. They are menacing me with a lawyer. Your brother-in-law has put them in touch with his damned tutor in Athens, apparently.'
'Aelianus?' That seemed unlikely. I had taught him not to intervene in unsolved cases, lest he muddy the clues. Once I thought him positively unhelpful; now I would call him more of a dry observer. But not a meddler.
'He is studying with Minas of Karystos!' snorted Aquillius, impressed.
'Clearly a cretin.'
'Steady on, Falco. Minas has a stupendous reputation.'
'You mean he charges astronomical fees!'
Aquillius blinked nervously. 'I just think you may have overstated the case, Falco. Valeria Ventidia may have been killed by a passing stranger, whom we will never trace.'
'Lampon, the poet, saw who she was with.'
Aquillius kept going. 'You raised that query about the sick man – well, I've had a medical orderly here from the Temple of Aesculapius, and he swears blind Turcianus was already at death's door when he arrived at Epidaurus. The doctors knew he would be lucky to last out the night, and in fact he was not left alone in a dream cell but was nursed at their hospital through his dying ordeal. Somebody sat with him the whole time; he was not harmed by any third party.'
'Did he say anything?'
'He was beyond speech, Falco.' Aquillius was sounding more and more harassed and annoyed. 'I never managed to trace anyone who fits the description you gave me of the 'expensively dressed man' who allegedly attacked Cleonymus. Maybe he just fell down the hill accidentally. Face up to it: the travellers are in the clear. To tell the truth, I am relieved Phineus managed to escape; we had no real reason to charge him, either. The governor does not want a reputation as a harsh disciplinarian.'
'Why not? Most of them think that's a compliment.' Roman rulers came to steal antiques and tax provincials to Hades; the provincials expected nothing else. 'When Vespasian was praised for his just rule as governor in Africa, that was said with bewilderment. If you ask me, the townsmen of Hadrumetum, who pelted him with turnips, hated him for being too soft.'
'Don't joke, Falco. Our role in a province is to prevent local discontent. As for your claim that Statianus has met a bad fate, you simply cannot prove it. Without a corpse, this story is going nowhere. For all we know, he is perfectly safe. He could just have got bored with oracles, given up on everything, and sailed off home.'
'I don't think so, and neither do you. You are abandoning him.' Aquillius, who had always been good-natured, looked regretful. Still, we were back where we started. After a brief flirtation with honest enquiry, the authorities were once again trying to bury the problem. The fact that more people had died in the intervening period made no difference. 'Time will tell, quaestor.'
'No; time is what we don't have, Falco.'
The quaestor's new sense of purpose astonished me. That was until Helena worked out its cause. The governor must be coming back from counting milestones. His residence was stiffening up for an onslaught of aggravation. The governor was bound to think his staff had slacked in his absence. That is what governors do. Unwanted questions would be bouncing down the official corridors like boulders off a mountain in a storm. Aquillius Macer had been warned by a clerk in his office that his work output
had better start showing improved cost/benefit ratios. No-hopers like this murder investigation were being put out to graze.
'Can I see the governor?'
'No, you bloody can't. He has noticed how much I've charged the kitty on your account – and he's livid, Falco.'
So I was paying my own way in future.
It was all going wrong. I could feel the whole investigation closing down on me. Even with Statianus missing, there was no new impetus. The enquiry scrolls were being filed in library canisters. My hopes of reaching a solution were being dashed.
I wondered if the disappearance of Statianus would one day be chased up like that of the young girl, Marcella Caesia. Had I lost hope too easily? I had believed the search we carried out with the assistance of the people of Lebadeia was thorough – but was I wrong? Would someone more persistent have discovered more? If Statianus came from a family as determined as Caesius Secundus, Caesia's father, maybe in a year's time some angry relative would arrive in Greece and find a corpse lying on a hillside, even though I had failed…
No. No other search would ever happen. I had seen his mother, and deduced what kind of man his father was. His parents wanted to duck away from tragedy, not to lose their wits seeking answers. That young man's one hope of justice now, for himself and for his bride, lay in me.
But I was proving useless.
Wearied by our sea journey and by dealing with men who would not see my point of view, I accepted the inevitable. The travel group would be released from custody; no further enquiries would be possible.
Helena bore the brunt of my frustration. As usual, she came up with a plan that would keep me quiet when she was trying to read in bed. If the travellers are moving on to Athens, let us go there as well. At least we can see Aulus – which is what we came out here to do, remember. We can ask him about this interfering tutor. Perhaps while we are there, Marcus, something new will come out.'
I doubted that. The mood I was in, I reckoned the killer had succeeded. It had taken several extra deaths, but he had covered his tracks and left my investigation stranded.
'Aquillius made me promise not to report to the Tullius family that we think their son is dead.'
'That's right, Marcus. You can't upset them needlessly. We don't for certain know his fate.'
'How many years will go by, do you think, before those trouble-shy bastards notice that their cherub has not written home? Will they just assume he went abroad and liked it so much he stayed?'
'It can happen.'
'It would never happen in your family. Julia Justa was looking for a letter from Aulus when we could still see his ship sailing away. Dear gods, even my father would one day start wondering why I wasn't there to be pushed around!… Helena, this is how killers get away with it.'
Helena put a marker in her scroll and let the ends roll together.'It does make you wonder just how many clients Seven Sights Travel have shed over the past ten years, with nobody noticing… Settle down and rest. You often reach a low point like this in an enquiry, Marcus.'
Hearing Helena trying to comfort me, Nux climbed up on the bed between us, licking my hand. I looked down at her dark eyes peering at me anxiously from among her lugged fur. She had seen whoever killed Cleonymus. That took us nowhere: one of the disappointments that had awaited my return was hearing that when Young Glaucus and Albia took her on a lead past members of the group, Nux had wagged her tail happily at all of them.
Bitterly, I put the dog on the floor. Even she was useless.
Helena set aside the scroll she had been reading and lay down to sleep. She held herself a little apart from me. I knew why that was. My own brow was furrowed. Coming back to Corinth and meeting up with my nephews, Albia, and Glaucus, had reminded us of home.
Helena and I lay in darkness, each keeping our thoughts private. We were both badly wanting to see our daughters. Finding Aulus in Athens would be no substitute. Winter was approaching; the seas would soon be too dangerous to sail. We had come to Greece to solve a puzzle that now seemed impossible, and we would very soon be trapped here.
Suddenly the personal cost of this mission seemed too high. We would have quarrelled if we had discussed it, so we both lay in silence, grieving privately.
Next day the Seven Sights group left. We went along to see them off from the Helios, where they had been staying. Its landlord came out and stood around conveniently; despite their previous wrath at his low standards and brothel-keeping, several gave in and slipped him money. He thanked them with slimy ingratitude. He probably got much bigger tips from the working girls who used his rooms.
The group were taking a ship direct from the eastern port at Kenchreai. You could walk to the jetty from here. Even for that short trip the Sertorius family rode in a covered wagon. That enabled them to pretend nobody could hear the squeals of their two squabbling teenagers pinching and punching each other, and the continual row between the idiot husband and his former slave wife; she seemed at last to be standing up to his obnoxiousness, but it had created a verbal battlefield. Tall Marinus had dreamed of quails last night, which apparently was an omen that he would be tricked by someone he met en route; Helvia heard this with a round-mouthed 'Ooh, Marinus!' while Cleonyma winked at me.
I was amazed to see they were being organised quite openly by Phineus. Clearly he had no fear of re-arrest. Had he bribed Aquillius, or was he just brazen?
He and Polystratus were busy counting and loading up the group's paraphernalia. It was the first time we had seen them in full procession for a journey. Their luggage included far more than just clothing for all weathers, though there seemed plenty of that. They carried with them blankets, pillows, and mattress overlays to improve on the poor bedding that inns provided; they had chamberpots; they had medicine chests, no doubt including flea powders and insect-bite ointments as well as bandages, stomach and eye remedies, foot creams, suppositories, and metallic wax treatments for sexual disease; they had cooking equipment – pots, dishes, goblets, griddles, sawn logs and charcoal, wine, oil, water, spices, salt, vinegar, cabbages, loaves, olives, cheeses, cold meats, and Polystratus' amphorae of salted fish; they had their own lamps, lamp oil and tinderboxes; they had ropes and a stretcher-board in case of accidents; they had bath oils, wooden-soled slippers, strigils, towels, bathrobes, and tooth powders; they had animal fodder and money chests.
It seemed cruel to interrupt when Phineus was loading up this mass of stuff, but I accosted him. 'Couldn't hold me. Nothing on me,' he asserted with a bold gap-toothed grin.
'So where have you been since you escaped – or should I say, you were 'let out'?'
'Looking for my partner. We found each other – isn't that nice?'
'Did you go across to Delphi?'
'Now why would I do that?' asked Phineus.
Polystratus gave me a matching grin. 'Give up, Falco!'
'I never gave up on a case yet.' No case before this one had ever gone so cold on me.
It was a bright, sunny day, but the travellers had assembled like a cohort of soldiers setting off for an endurance camp in the far snows of Pannonia.
Apart from the Sertorii behind their sealed leather curtains, some were on donkeys and some on foot. They all wrapped themselves in heavy woollen cloaks and several women had added rugs around their shoulders too. Amaranthus wore knee-length riding trousers – although he was walking. At the signal to go, the women shrieked excitedly and everyone donned flat-brimmed Hermes hats.
Under their cloaks, they checked the money-bags they were carrying on strings around their necks. There was a last-minute delay while Sertorius Niger scrambled out of his coach to search through bags for his travelling backgammon board. Putting, Indus looked up the time pointedly on a portable sundial. Volcasius was already making detailed notes on his waxed tablet.
We waved them off. Nobody had asked us about Statianus. They did not yet know we would eventually see them all again in Athens, though perhaps the wiser ones assumed it. They just wanted to leave at last. R
elief at being allowed to continue their journey had made all of them light-headed. Maybe someone was even happier, thinking he had escaped detection for the murders.
Helena and I watched them go with a mixture of frustration and melancholy.
The quaestor had also come to see them off. I announced that we too were leaving.
'I'm going to keep Lampon here, this witness you found,' insisted Aquillius. Maybe he thought we wanted a household poet. He was wrong.
'You're welcome to him. Let him give recitals, though. He needs the money.'
'You're all heart, Falco.'
'I believe in looking after witnesses. In my job, I find so few of them!'
'Give me anything connected with Statianus.' The quaestor wanted to help. He was pleading with me. 'Any part of him. Anything we can say is directly associated with the man – I'll make arrests immediately, I promise you.'
I knew he meant it. He was no worse, and in some ways much better, than most young men in official posts. He had an amiable personality and had resisted corruption. I never saw him again after we left Corinth. They had a devastating earthquake there the following year; Aquillius was a casualty.
As for us, without his financial backing, we took far too long to reach Athens. We started out by road, not knowing that the overland route from the Isthmus was one of the worst tracks in the Empire. It wound in and out, high up among precipitous mountain tops, above the Megaronic Gulf. The track was often so narrow and corroded that only sure-footed donkeys in single file could manage to edge along it. Sometimes pack animals failed to keep their footing, and fell over the sheer drop into the sea. This road had been notorious for centuries. Helena said it was where heartless robbers used to lurk, including legendary Sciron, who made travellers wash his feet, then gave them a great kick right off the crag.
I groaned and said I always liked a good legend. Then I led us down a path to water level at Megara. Helena sold some jewellery, and we took a ship the rest of the way into Piraeus.
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