My friendly request was meeting resistance; I did feel a few doubts. I even wondered if this woman was herself the so-called old water-seller. She was minus a hat, and I could see no suitable equipment with her, though a little way off there was a mangy donkey, nibbling at the barren scree in search of sustenance. He looked up at me despondently.
‘If this was a myth,’ I suggested to the floozy, ‘you would be a sphinx who would issue tortuous riddles - and frankly, I’d be stuck. I rely on my wife to unravel codes…’ The charm was failing. ‘Look, all I want is this. do you know anything about an elderly lady who sometimes sells water to travellers on their way up the crag? I just need to find out is she is still in the vicinity?’
The loopy-looking dame turned her head and surveyed me as if she had never seen a man before. In view of her supposed profession, this could not be true. Surprisingly, she answered the question. Her voice had a remote quality, but she made sense. ‘Why do you want her?’
‘Need to ask her about something that happened at Olympia three years ago.’
She gave me a wilder stare than ever. ‘She has left here now.’
‘Thank you.’ I was tucking my flagon back into my belt, ready to descend the hill again.
‘I am Philomela,’ announced the woman suddenly.
‘Nightingale! Good pseudonym for a working girl.’ Must be a reference to her singing out convincingly as she faked orgasms.
She looked confused but made me the usual offer. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘No thanks. The act of love is difficult when travelling, but my wife and I made up our losses yesterday. Sorry.’
Once again I was subjected to the weird gaze. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said the so-called Philomela. Then she realised what I had meant - and I too saw my error. Oops! She was not a prostitute.
I saluted her smartly, and turned on my heel. Before either of us had time to be embarrassed, I made off hastily back down the road to Corinth.
XXXIV
Going down that towering crag was even harder than coming up. Different, more awkward leg muscles were stretched, and there was a constant need to avoid gaining too much momentum and tumbling. Leaning back against the gravitational force, I skipped and slithered. Pebbles slipped away beneath my feet. My flagon banged against my waist. I used my stave to steady myself; I had to dig in its point hard, for the most part fixing my eyes on the treacherous road surface. The stave was bending against my weight, so uncontrolled was my descent.
As I came in sight of the spot where I had left Cleonymus, I heard Nux. An ear-splitting edge to my dog’s barks alerted me. I could see a small crowd. Although it had seemed there was hardly anyone about on the acropolis road, people had emerged from nowhere. They had come to help in an emergency.
At first I could not tell what was going on. Nux spotted me; she ran up and danced around my feet, yelping in agitation. From time to time she put her muzzle to her side, giving a brave little whine, as if she had been hurt but would not make too much of it. I raced down the last stretch. With a grim feeling, I pushed through the small group of spectators to the road’s edge. Satisfied, Nux followed me; she lay with her nose on the very edge of the precipice, whining again piteously.
‘Good girl. Good girl…’ Talking to the dog was supposed to soothe me. Instead, as I craned over the drop, panic surged.
I was too late to join in and help. Too late altogether.
A man had gone over the edge. A chain of courageous locals were risking their lives as they struggled to reach over, using a short rope someone must have had with him. They had dropped the rope to the man below. He was clinging to a few dry bushes that had rooted in the sheer side of the hill. A line of broken foliage showed where he must have already slipped down, perhaps in stages.
Dear gods, it was Cleonymus. I recognised his rich blue tunic, then the top of his head as he pressed himself against the rockface. He was clinging on by his fingertips. One hand grasped a twiggy shrub above him, while the other reached out sideways, desperately clutching variations in the bare limestone. The rescuers had managed to lower the rope very close to him, but if he let go with either hand to grab it, he would fall.
I wanted to call out to him. That could be fatal. I grabbed the rescuers’ rope, adding my weight to the human ballast. Then someone shouted a warning. I let go, looked over the edge, and was just in time to see the shrub give way, its shallow roots wrenched from their tenuous hold. Cleonymus went crashing down the cliff. He travelled many feet. Once I thought I heard him yell. Then there was silence. Far below, his body lay still. We all started down the road as fast as possible, but we knew that by the time we reached him wherever he had come to rest, there would be no help we could give.
‘Did anyone see what happened?’ As we stumbled along, I tried to make sense of the accident.
A passer-by, himself in shock now, had heard the dog barking and a man calling for help. At first Cleonymus had come to rest almost within reach, clinging to the rockface close to the road. Minutes later, he panicked as he tried to climb to safety, lost his grip and fell further. A ragged group of helpers assembled. One brave soul ventured over the edge, but it was too dangerous; others pulled him back.
Everyone assumed Cleonymus had stood too close to the edge. He either lost his balance as he looked down over the perilous drop, or perhaps part of the road gave way under him.
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Apart from screaming ‘Help me!?’.
‘Sorry. Was anybody with him when he fell?’
One witness had seen Cleonymus talking to another fellow earlier. But the witness was elderly and vague; the other man could easily have been me when I was with Cleonymus. Then someone else claimed to have seen a man in expensive clothes walking briskly downhill just before the tragedy. Nobody like that had passed me on my way to the spring. If the sighting was true, this well-dressed man must have followed Cleonymus and me up, then turned back.
With great difficulty, we managed to retrieve the body. It took over an hour, and by the time we brought Cleonymus to a lower part of the road, he had been with his ancestors too long to be revived. For his sake, I hoped death had happened quickly. We laid him down with gentle hands. I removed his jewellery and purse for safe keeping, then covered him with my cloak. One of the helpers had transport; he promised to convey the body to the governor’s residence. Aquillius could take responsibility.
I called Nux. She came over slowly, still walking as if she had been kicked in the ribs. She yowked in pain when I picked her up. As I carried her back to Corinth, she lay subdued in my arms, tail down and trembling.
The freedman had told me a few new facts today. He had known more, I felt sure of it. Now I was left frustrated, wondering whether somebody had thought his knowledge so bad for them that they silenced him. Did Cleonymus share something Turcianus Opimus had known? Were the two travellers killed by the same person, for the same reason?
I remembered how I left Cleonymus, sitting in a perfectly safe position, with Nux lying contentedly at his feet. He had wanted simply to rest quietly for a while. In the short time I took to reach the upper Peirene spring, fill a flagon, and insult a woman, it was unlikely that Cleonymus would have moved from his recovery spot.
Something had made him fall. My dog had seen it. It sounded to me as if this ‘expensively dressed man’ had pushed Cleonymus and kicked Nux, maybe when she tried to defend the freedman. Nux was unable to explain to me, but I stroked her to bring us both comfort. Now it fell to me to break the news to Cleonyma. I always loathed that task. It was all the worse when the victim was someone whose generosity and intelligence I had come to like.
It was worst of all when I suspected the ‘accident’ that killed him had been no accident at all.
XXXV
The women were shrieking with laughter when Helena and I walked into the inn courtyard. Most of the group were there at the Helios. Everyone seemed tipsy. To me the day s
eemed to have been endless, yet it was just after lunch. Helena squeezed my hand in encouragement. Nux was now being cared for by Albia; the dog had not wanted us to leave her.
Within a few minutes my task was done and nobody was laughing.
The atmosphere changed to funereal. Cleonyma sat motionless, trying to take in what I had said. Helena and her friend Minucia waited to console her, but so far the new widow’s reaction was straight disbelief. There were questions that I needed to ask her urgently, but not now. She could not speak. After a while she tilted her head back slightly. A short rush of involuntary tears ran down her tinted cheeks, but she ignored them. Soon she recovered her composure.
‘We had a hard life, then a good one,’ she pronounced, to nobody in particular. ‘He and I were true friends and lovers. You cannot ask for more.’
She could have asked to enjoy it for longer.
She was flamboyant and loud yet, like her husband, underneath she had unusual modesty. The couple had been humane and decent. Helena and I respected them. We had decided that since there was so little evidence I would not mention my fears about what had happened - but to myself I made a vow that if those fears proved to be well founded, I would track down whoever had pushed Cleonymus down the crag.
Cleonyma had closed her eyes. Grief was starting to overcome her. Minucia moved closer and took her friend’s hand. As she did so, Minucia shot me one quick, hard look, as if challenging me about the freedman’s abrupt and unexpected extinction. I shook my head slightly, warning her off the subject. Then she devoted herself to Cleonyma, signalling for the rest of us to leave them alone in the courtyard while the long process of mourning began.
Most of us went out on the street side, emerging into bright sunlight like stunned sheep after a hillside scare with a wolf. Helena sat me on a sunny bench, one arm around my shoulders protectively.
‘You look as if you need a drink,’ Marinus offered, but I shook my head. He and Indus seemed to need to give someone hospitality to ameliorate their shock; they went off, leading Amaranthus instead. Helvia had been swallowed up by the Sertorius family. That left Volcasius. He came and plonked himself right in front of us.
‘This is a new twist, Falco!’ I just nodded. ‘So was it an accident?’
‘Apparently.’ I did not want him upsetting Cleonyma with some blunt revelation that could not be proved.
‘Doesn’t sound like it!’
I forced myself to answer. ‘Nobody saw anything, so we cannot be sure what happened.’ I glared at Volcasius as he stood there, shambly and lop-sided in his irritating sunhat. ‘Unless you have any particular reason to suppose someone was out to get the freedman?’
Volcasius made no reply, but continued to stand there. He was a man with fixations and seemed fascinated by disasters. He would hang around unwanted, where those of us who understood the etiquette of crisis would leave the bereaved alone.
Helena shared my thoughts. She too must be wondering if Volcasius had clung to the bridegroom in the aftermath of the earlier tragedy. ‘Cleonyma will have a lot to go through now. You saw all this with Statianus at Olympia, Volcasius?’
‘He was hysterical,’ Volcasius said. ‘Nobody he knew had ever died before. He had never seen a dead body, or had to arrange a funeral.’
‘You talked to him? Did anything come out of it?’ Helena spoke unexcitedly. She seemed to give her attention to me, stroking my hair. I let myself go limp, soothed by her long fingers.
‘Did I think he was the killer?’ Volcasius demanded. ‘No. He didn’t have the willpower, or the necessary strength.’ Volcasius had previously denied any opinion on this.
‘But he and Valeria argued all the time, didn’t they?’ Helena probed.
‘That was just their way. They would have gone on arguing, even if they stayed married for the next thirty years.’
‘Their domestic routine? - Yes, I have seen couples who are locked in endless disharmony,’ said Helena. ‘If one of them dies, the other is devastated. They miss the wrangling… Statianus has gone to consult the oracle at Delphi. My brother wrote and told me.’
‘Is Aelianus with him?’ Volcasius looked eager to be on that trip himself.
Helena avoided answering. ‘Statianus has now shouldered responsibility for finding out who slaughtered his wife.’
‘He should have stuck around here then!’ scoffed the loner.
‘Why - do you know something about it, Volcasius?’
‘I know he won’t find whoever did it from the Sibylline Leaves at Delphi.’
‘The Sibylline Leaves are in Rome now.’ Delighted to catch out the pedant in an error, I bestirred myself. ‘The prophetess at Delphi mutters and growls her riddles orally.’
As I expected, being put in the wrong made Volcasius vicious. ‘You think you’re very clever, Falco!’
‘No, I think I’m being treated like a fool,’ I snapped.
‘Not by me.’ He was so self-righteous I could have leaned forward and chopped him off at the knees.
‘By most of the people in your travel group. You are all accepting what happens far too casually. If you know something, do your duty and report it!’
‘Three of the tour group are dead. Valeria, Turcianus, Cleonymus…’ Volcasius counted them off. ‘Someone is picking us off like cornfield rats. Should the rest of us be scared, I wonder?’
‘You should all be very careful.’ It was Helena who growled that at him. Like me, she was churning with anger after the freedman’s death. Volcasius tossed his head and without any farewell or warning, suddenly stomped off.
Typically, he threw back a confusing remark over his shoulder. ‘Did you see our wonderful organiser, when you were with Cleonymus?’ He did not wait for me to answer - nor, of course, did he explain. But it sounded as though he was aiming accusations against Phineus.
I sat on the bench for a while longer, sharing my deep melancholy with my wife.
In the end, curiosity got the better of me. I hated to feel manipulated by Volcasius, but his fingering of the tour escort fitted my suspicions and action was my style. I kissed Helena, rose, and said I was going in search of Phineus. Helena was on her feet as well. She kissed me again, holding me for an extra moment.
‘You too be careful, Marcus.’
‘Trust me.’
I found Phineus in a bar, near the one where I first saw him yesterday. He was alone, though there were two empty winecups in front of him; one of his many cronies had recently left. For some reason, I remembered the man I had seen talking with Phineus that morning, just before I met Cleonymus. He had seemed vaguely familiar. Still, Phineus would seek out a certain type. The one I saw earlier had been similar in dress and manner to Phineus himself, lighter built but also bearded.
‘Have you heard the news?’
‘What’s up, Falco?’ He seemed sincere. He was standing at a counter, on the verge of paying his bill from a very fat purse. The size of the purse riled me.
A man in his position, always alert for some new problem with customers, habitually stays calm. He was already halfway to his ‘nothing to worry about; let me handle it’ expression and I had not told him anything. Being what he was, he was preparing to do nothing and hope the crisis would just go away.
‘You have lost another of your clients.’
‘What?’ He groaned. If he was faking, he must be a good actor. As an informer I had met plenty of them, mostly not on a stage. ‘What’s happened now? Which one is it?’
‘The freedman.’
‘Cleonymus? He’s a character!’
‘Not any more. He fell off the acropolis.’
Phineus steadied. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Unfortunately.’
Now Phineus sighed deeply, standing still to take it in. He signalled the waiter to refill his wine beaker. I had a good look at his tunic, the same he wore yesterday: full nap, dyed to a gemstone hue of gorgeous dark ruby. Heavy belt, sharp boots, bulging pouch, hardstone signet ring with a thick laced strapwork sett
ing; all his accessories were good. You could describe him as a well-dressed man. But was he the same well-dressed man who went up the acropolis? This prosperous city was crammed with businessmen who looked equally high-priced in style.
I put it to him straight out. ‘Someone thought they saw you going up to Acrocorinth today.’
Phineus hardly registered that this was a dangerous question. ‘Not me. I’ve been at the port all morning.’ He quaffed the whole new cupful in one go. Now he came out with whatever had preoccupied him. ‘Oh pig’s piss. This is a blow.’ He looked to me for consolation; I had none to give. ‘Travel is never safe. I’ve had a mule fall on someone and crush them, and a man struck on the head by a full amphora of Cretan red. We try to take precautions, but you cannot cover everything. Accidents will happen.’
I gave him a bleak stare. ‘That presupposes this was an accident.’ Without another word, I left him and went back to find Helena.
I had no evidence against Phineus. I was not yet ready to accuse him. I dared not even ask such pointed questions that he guessed what I was thinking. I could not risk frightening him off.
I would continue to watch the others. But he was in my sights now.
XXXVI
Back at the Elephant, I was relieved to find that the builders had taken an afternoon off. I could not have borne their dusty, noisy renovations. The landlord was hanging about. He had heard we had a connection with a fatal accident. This little excitement drew him to us, as if he thought a death gave us magical attributes. I asked what the public were saying; he said the rumour was that Cleonymus went over because he was drunk. I snarled that the public were idiots then, and sent the landlord packing.
In a clear space in the courtyard, Albia and my two nephews were crouching around Nux. She lay in a basket I had never seen before, putting on a brave little invalid act. When I appeared, she allowed the end third of her short tail to twitch; she lifted her nose to me. I knelt down and put my palm on her side; her eyes showed a look of panic through their matted fur fringe, though she managed not to yelp.
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