I cleared my throat. ‘Today you’ll see The Pot of Gold,’ I said pleasantly, leaning past Eco towards the newcomers. Flavius gave a start and wrinkled his bushy brows. ‘One of Plautus’ very best plays, don’t you think?’
Flavius parted his lips and peered at me suspiciously. The blond bodyguard looked at me with an expression of supreme stupidity.
I shrugged and turned my attention elsewhere.
From the open square behind us, the crier made his last announcement. The benches filled rapidly. Latecomers and slaves stood wherever they could, crowding together on tiptoe. Two musicians stepped onto the stage and descended to the orchestra, where they began to blow upon their long pipes.
A murmur of recognition passed through the crowd at the familiar strains of the miser Euclio’s theme, the first indication of the play we were about to see. Meanwhile the usher and the crier moved up and down the aisles, playfully hushing the noisier members of the audience.
At length the overture was finished. The central door on the stage rattled open. Out stepped Roscius, wearing his sumptuous white cloak, his head obscured by a mask of grotesque, happy countenance. Through the holes I glimpsed his squinting eyes; his mellow voice resonated throughout the theatre.
‘In case you don’t know who I am, let me briefly introduce myself,’ he said. ‘I am the Guardian Spirit of this house – Euclio’s house. I have been in charge of this place now for a great many years …’ He proceeded to deliver the prologue, giving the audience a starting point for the familiar story – how the grandfather of Euclio had hidden a pot of gold beneath the floorboards of the house, how Euclio had a daughter who was in love with the next-door neighbour’s nephew and needed only a dowry to be happily married, and how he, the Guardian Spirit, intended to guide the greedy Euclio to the pot of gold and so set events in motion.
I glanced at Eco, who stared up at the masked figure enraptured, hanging on every word. Beside him, the moneylender Flavius wore the same unhappy scowl as before. The blond bodyguard sat with his mouth open, and occasionally reached up to pick at the scar across his nose.
A muffled commotion was heard from backstage. ‘Ah,’ said Roscius in a theatrical whisper, ‘there’s old Euclio now, pitching a fit as usual. The greedy miser must have located the pot of gold by now, and he wants to count his fortune in secret, so he’s turning the old housekeeper out of the house.’ He quietly withdrew through the door in the right wing.
Through the central door emerged a figure wearing an old man’s mask and dressed in bright yellow, the traditional colour for greed. This was Panurgus, the slave-actor, taking the plum leading role of the miser Euclio. Behind him he dragged another actor, dressed as a lowly female slave, and flung him to the middle of the stage. ‘Get out!’ he shouted. ‘Out! By Hades, out with you, you old snooping bag of bones!’
Statilius had been wrong to disparage Panurgus’ comic gifts; already I heard guffaws and laughter around me.
‘What have I done? What? What?’ cried the other actor. His grimacing feminine mask was surmounted by a hideous tangled wig. His gown was in tatters about his knobby knees. ‘Why are you beating a long-suffering old hag?’
‘To give you something to be long-suffering about, that’s why! And to make you suffer as much as I do, just looking at you!’ Panurgus and his fellow actor scurried about the stage, to the uproarious amusement of the audience. Eco bounced up and down on the bench and clapped his hands. The moneylender and his bodyguard sat with their arms crossed, unimpressed.
HOUSEKEEPER: But why must you drive me out of the house?
EUCLIO: Why? Since when do I have to give you a reason? You’re asking for a fresh crop of bruises!
HOUSEKEEPER: Let the gods send me jumping off a cliff if I’ll put up with this sort of slavery any longer!
EUCLIO: What’s she muttering to herself? I’ve a good mind to poke your eyes out, you damned witch!
At length the slave woman disappeared and the miser went back into his house to count his money; the neighbour Megadorus and his sister Eunomia occupied the stage. From the voice, it seemed to me that the sister was played by the same actor who had performed the cringing slave woman; no doubt he specialized in female characters. My friend Statilius, as Megadorus, performed adequately, I thought, but he was not in the same class with Roscius, or even with his rival Panurgus. His comic turns inspired polite guffaws, not raucous laughter.
EUNOMIA: Dear brother, I’ve asked you out of the house to have a little talk about your private affairs.
MEGADORUS: How sweet! You are as thoughtful as you are beautiful. I kiss your hand.
EUNOMIA: What? Are you talking to someone behind me?
MEGADORUS: Of course not. You’re the prettiest woman I know!
EUNOMIA: Don’t be absurd. Every woman is uglier than every other, in one way or another.
MEGADORUS: Mmm, but of course; whatever you say …
EUNOMIA: Now give me your attention. Brother dear, I should like to see you married –
MEGADORUS: Help! Murder! Ruin!
EUNOMIA: Oh, quiet down!
Even this exchange, usually so pleasing to the crowd, evoked only lukewarm titters. My attention strayed to Statilius’ costume, made of sumptuous blue wool embroidered with yellow, and to his mask, with its absurdly quizzical eyebrows. Alas, I thought, it is a bad sign when a comedian’s costume is of greater interest than his delivery. Poor Statilius had found a place with the most respected acting troupe in Rome, but he did not shine there. No wonder the demanding Roscius was so intolerant of him!
Even Eco grew restless. Next to him, the moneylender Flavius leaned over to whisper something in the ear of his blond bodyguard – disparaging the talents of the actor who owed him money, I thought.
At length the sister exited; the miser returned to converse with his neighbour. Seeing the two of them together on the stage – Statilius and his rival, Panurgus – the gulf between their talents was painfully clear. Panurgus as Euclio stole the scene completely, and not just because his lines were better.
EUCLIO: So you wish to marry my daughter. Good enough – but you must know I haven’t so much as a copper to donate to her dowry.
MEGADORUS: I don’t expect even half a copper. Her virtue and good name are quite enough.
EUCLIO: I mean to say, it’s not as if I’d just happened to have found some, oh, buried treasure in my house … say, a pot of gold buried by my grandfather, or –
MEGADORUS: Of course not – how ridiculous! Say no more. You’ll give your daughter to me, then?
EUCLIO: Agreed. But what’s that? Oh no, I’m ruined!
MEGADORUS: Jupiter Almighty, what’s wrong?
EUCLIO: I thought I heard a spade … someone digging …
MEGADORUS: Why, it’s only a slave I’ve got digging up some roots in my garden. Calm down, good neighbour …
I inwardly groaned for my friend Statilius; but if his delivery was flat, he had learned to follow the master’s stage directions without a misstep. Roscius was famous not only for embellishing the old comedies with colourful costumes and masks to delight the eyes, but for choreographing the movements of his actors.
Statilius and Panurgus were never static on the stage, like the actors in inferior companies. They circled one another in a constant comic dance, a swirl of blue and yellow.
Eco tugged at my sleeve. With a shrug of his Shoulder he gestured to the men beside him. Flavius was again whispering in the bodyguard’s ear; the big blond was wrinkling his eyebrows, perplexed. Then he rose and lumbered towards the aisle. Eco drew up his feet, but I was too slow. The monster stepped on my foot. I let out a howl. Others around me started doing the same, thinking I was badgering the actors. The blond giant made no apology at all.
Eco tugged at my sleeve. ‘Let it go, Eco,’ I said. ‘One must learn to live with rudeness in the theatre.’
He only rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in exasperation. I knew that gesture: if only he could speak!
On t
he stage, the two neighbours concluded their plans for Megadorus to wed the daughter of Euclio; with a shrilling of pipes and the tinkling of cymbals, they left the stage and the first act was done.
The pipe players introduced a new theme. After a moment, two new characters appeared on stage. These were the quarrelling cooks, summoned to prepare the wedding feast. A Roman audience delights in jokes about food and gluttony, the cruder the better. While I groaned at the awful puns, Eco laughed aloud, making a hoarse, barking sound.
In the midst of the gaiety, my blood turned cold. Above the laughter, I heard a scream.
It was not a woman’s scream, but a man’s. Not a scream of fear, but of pain.
I looked at Eco, who looked back at me. He had heard it, too. No one else in the audience seemed to have noticed, but the actors on stage must have heard something. They bungled their lines and turned uncertainly towards the door, stepping on one another’s feet. The audience only laughed harder at their clumsiness.
The quarrelling cooks came to the end of their scene and disappeared backstage.
The stage was empty. There was a pause that grew longer and longer. Strange, unaccountable noises came from backstage – muffled gasps, confused shuffling, a loud shout. The audience began to murmur and shift restlessly on the benches.
At last the door from the left wing opened. Onto the stage stepped a figure wearing the mask of the miser Euclio. He was dressed in bright yellow as before, but it was a different cloak. He threw his hands in the air. ‘Disaster!’ he cried. I felt a cold shiver down my spine.
‘Disaster!’ he said again. ‘A daughter’s marriage is a disaster! How can any man afford it? I’ve just come back from the market, and you wouldn’t believe what they’re charging for lamb – an arm and a leg for an arm and a leg, that’s what they want …’
The character was miserly Euclio, but the actor was no longer Panurgus; it was Roscius behind the mask. The audience seemed not to notice the substitution, or at least not to mind it; they started laughing almost immediately at the spectacle of poor Euclio befuddled by his own stinginess.
Roscius delivered the lines flawlessly, with the practised comic timing that comes from having played a role many times, but I thought I heard a strange quavering in his voice. When he turned so that I could glimpse his eyes within the mask, I saw no sign of his famous squint. His eyes were wide with alarm. Was this Roscius the actor, frightened of something very real – or Euclio, afraid that the squabbling cooks would find his treasure?
‘What’s that shouting from the kitchen?’ he cried. ‘Oh no, they’re calling for a bigger pot to put the chicken in! Oh, my pot of gold!’ He ran through the door backstage, almost tripping over his yellow cloak. There followed a cacophony of crashing pots.
The central door was thrown open. One of the cooks emerged onstage, crying out in a panic: ‘Help, help, help!’
It was the voice of Statilius! I stiffened and started to stand, but the words were only part of the play. ‘It’s a madhouse in there,’ he cried, straightening his mask. He jumped from the stage and ran into the audience. ‘The miser Euclio’s gone mad! He’s beating us over the head with pots and pans! Citizens, come to our rescue!’ He whirled about the central aisle until he came to a halt beside me. He bent low and spoke through his teeth so that only I could hear.
‘Gordianus! Come backstage, now!’
I gave a start. Through the mask I looked into Statilius’ anxious eyes.
‘Backstage!’ he hissed. ‘Come quick! A dagger – blood – Panurgus – murder!’
From beyond the maze of screens and awnings and platforms I occasionally heard the playing of the pipes and actors’ voices raised in argument, followed by the muffled roar of the audience laughing. Backstage, the company of Quintus Roscius ran about in a panic, changing costumes, fitting masks onto one another’s heads, mumbling lines beneath their breath, sniping at each other or exchanging words of encouragement, and in every other way trying to act as if this were simply another hectic performance and a corpse was not lying in their midst.
The body was that of the slave Panurgus. He lay on his back in a secluded little alcove in the alley that ran behind the Temple of Jupiter. The place was a public privy, one of many built in out-of-the-way nooks on the perimeter of the Forum. Screened by two walls, a sloping floor tilted to a hole that emptied into the Cloaca Maxima. Panurgus had apparently come here to relieve himself between scenes. Now he lay dead with a knife plunged squarely into his chest. Above his heart a large red circle stained his bright yellow costume. A sluggish stream of blood trickled across the tiles and ran down the drain.
He was older than I had thought, almost as old as his master, with grey in his hair and a wrinkled forehead. His mouth and eyes were open wide in shock; his eyes were green, and in death they glittered dully like uncut emeralds.
Eco gazed down at the body and reached up to grasp my hand. Statilius ran up beside us. He was dressed again in blue and held the mask of Megadorus in his hands. His face was ashen. ‘Madness,’ he whispered. ‘Bloody madness.’
‘Shouldn’t the play be stopped?’
‘Roscius refuses. Not for a slave, he says. And he doesn’t dare tell the crowd. Imagine: a murder, backstage, in the middle of our performance, on a holiday consecrated to Jupiter himself, in the very shadow of the god’s temple – what an omen! What magistrate would ever hire Roscius and the company again? No, the show goes on – even though we must somehow figure out how to fill nine roles with five actors instead of six. Oh dear, and I’ve never learned the nephew’s lines …’
‘Statilius!’ It was Roscius, returning from the stage. He threw off the mask of Euclio. His own face was almost as grotesque, contorted with fury. ‘What do you think you’re doing, standing there mumbling? If I’m playing Euclio, you have to play the nephew!’ He rubbed his squinting eyes, then slapped his forehead. ‘But no, that’s impossible – Megadorus and the nephew must be onstage at the same time. What a disaster! Jupiter, why me?’
The actors circled one another like frenzied bees. The dressers hovered about them uncertainly, as useless as drones. All was chaos in the company of Quintus Roscius.
I looked down at the bloodless face of Panurgus, who was beyond caring. All men become the same in death, whether slave or citizen, Roman or Greek, genius or pretender.
At last the play was over. The old bachelor Megadorus had escaped the clutches of marriage; miserly Euclio had lost and then recovered his pot of gold; the honest slave who restored it to him had been set free; the quarrelling cooks had been paid by Megadorus and sent on their way; and the young lovers had been joyously betrothed. How this was accomplished under the circumstances, I do not know. By some miracle of the theatre, everything came off without a hitch. The cast assembled together on the stage to roaring applause, and then returned backstage, their exhilaration at once replaced by the grim reality of the death among them.
‘Madness,’ Statilius said again, hovering over the corpse. Knowing how he felt about his rival, I had to wonder if he was not secretly gloating. He seemed genuinely shocked, but that, after all, could have been acting.
‘And who is this?’ barked Roscius, tearing off the yellow cloak he had assumed to play the miser.
‘My name is Gordianus. Men call me the Finder.’
Roscius raised an eyebrow and nodded. ‘Ah, yes, I’ve heard of you. Last spring – the case of Sextus Roscius; no relation to myself, I’m glad to say, or very distant, anyway. You earned yourself a name with parties on both sides of that affair.’
Knowing the actor was an intimate of the dictator Sulla, whom I had grossly offended, I only nodded.
‘So what are you doing here?’ Roscius demanded.
‘It was I who told him,’ said Statilius helplessly. ‘I asked him to come backstage. It was the first thing I thought of.’
‘You invited an outsider to intrude on this tragedy, Statilius? Fool! What’s to keep him from standing in the Forum and announcing the news to
everyone who passes? The scandal will be disastrous.’
‘I assure you, I can be quite discreet – for a client,’ I said.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Roscius, squinting at me shrewdly. ‘But perhaps that’s not a bad idea, provided you could actually be of some help.’
‘I think I might,’ I said modestly, already calculating a fee. Roscius was, after all, the most highly paid actor in the world. Rumour claimed he made as much as half a million sesterces in a single year. He could afford to be generous.
He looked down at the corpse and shook his head bitterly. ‘One of my most promising pupils. Not just a gifted artist, but a valuable piece of property. But why should anyone murder the slave? Panurgus had no vices, no politics, no enemies.’
‘It’s a rare man who has no enemies,’ I said. I could not help but glance at Statilius, who hurriedly looked away.
There was a commotion among the gathered actors and stagehands. The crowd parted to admit a tall, cadaverous figure with a shock of red hair.
‘Chaerea! Where have you been?’ growled Roscius.
The newcomer looked down his long nose, first at the corpse, then at Roscius. ‘Drove down from my villa at Fidenae,’ he snapped tersely. ‘Axle on the chariot broke. Missed more than the play, it appears.’
‘Gaius Fannius Chaerea,’ whispered Statilius in my ear. ‘He was Panurgus’ original owner. When he saw the slave had comic gifts he handed him over to Roscius to train him, as part-owner.’
‘They don’t seem friendly,’ I whispered back.
‘They’ve been feuding over how to calculate the profits from Panurgus’s performances …’
‘So, Quintus Roscius,’ sniffed Chaerea, tilting his nose even higher, ‘this is how you take care of our common property. Bad management, I say. Slave’s worthless, now. I’ll send you a bill for my share.’
Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Page 52