Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4)

by Steven Saylor

  Bethesda rather sullenly obeyed, taking her time to rise from where she had been sitting cross-legged beside a pillar. She disappeared into the house. Her movements were as graceful as the unfolding of a flower. Lucius watched her with a lump in his throat. He swallowed hard.

  ‘A very beautiful slave,’ he whispered.

  ‘Thank you, Lucius Claudius.’ I hoped he wouldn’t offer to buy her, as so many of my wealthier clients do. I hoped in vain.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider – ’ he began.

  ‘Alas, no, Lucius Claudius.’

  ‘But I was going to say – ’

  ‘I would sooner sell my extra rib.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded sagely, then wrinkled his fleshy brow. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Oh, a nonsense expression I picked up from Bethesda. According to her ancestors on her father’s side, the first woman was fashioned from a rib bone taken from the first man, by a god called Jehovah. That is why some men seem to have an extra rib, with no match on the other side.’

  ‘Do they?’ Lucius poked at his rib cage, but I think he was much too well padded to actually feel a rib.

  I took a sip of wine and smiled. Bethesda had told me the Hebrew tale of the first man and woman many times; each time she tells it I clutch my side and pretend to bleat from pain, until she starts to pout and we both end up laughing. It seems to me a most peculiar tale, but no stranger than the stories her Egyptian mother told her about jackal-headed gods and crocodiles who walk upright. If it is true, this Hebrew god is worthy of respect. Not even Jupiter could claim to have created anything half as exquisite as Bethesda.

  I had spent enough time putting my guest at ease. ‘Tell me, Lucius Claudius, what is it that troubles you?’

  ‘You will think me very foolish …’ he began.

  ‘No, I will not,’ I assured him, thinking I probably would.

  ‘Well, it was only the day before yesterday – or was it the day before that? It was the day after the Ides of Maius, of that I’m sure, whichever day that was – ’

  ‘I believe that was the day before yesterday,’ I said. Bethesda reappeared and stood in the shadows of the portico, awaiting a nod from me. I shook my head, telling her to wait. Another cup of wine might serve to loosen Lucius’ tongue, but he was befuddled enough already. ‘And what transpired on the day before yesterday?’

  ‘I happened to be in this very neighbourhood – well, not up here on the Esquiline Hill, but down in the valley, in the Subura – ’

  ‘The Subura is a fascinating neighbourhood,’ I said, trying to imagine what attraction its tawdry streets might hold for a man who probably lived in a mansion on the Palatine Hill. Gaming houses, brothels, taverns and criminals for hire – these came to mind.

  ‘You see,’ he sighed, ‘my days are very idle. I’ve never had a head for politics or finance, like others in my family; I feel useless in the Forum. I’ve tried living in the country, but I’m not much of a farmer; cows bore me. I don’t like entertaining, either – strangers coming to dinner, all of them twice as clever as I am, and me, obliged to think up some way to amuse them – such a bother. I get bored rather easily, you see. So very, very bored.’

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted, suppressing a yawn.

  ‘So I go wandering about the city. Over to Tarentum to see the old people easing their joints in the hot springs. Out to the Field of Mars to watch the chariot racers train their horses. All up and down the Tiber, to the fish markets and the cattle markets and the markets with foreign goods. I like seeing other people at work; I relish the way they go about their business with such determination. I like watching women haggle with vendors, or listening to a builder argue with his masons, or noticing how the women who hang from brothel windows slam their shutters when a troupe of rowdy gladiators come brawling down the street. All these people seem so alive, so full of purpose, so – so very opposite of bored. Do you understand, Gordianus?’

  ‘I think I do, Lucius Claudius.’

  ‘Then you’ll understand why I love the Subura. What a neighbourhood! One can almost smell the passion, the vice! The crowded tenements, the strange odours, the spectacle of humanity! The winding, narrow little streets, the dark, dank alleys, the sounds that drift down from the upper-storey windows of strangers arguing, laughing, making love – what a mysterious and vital place the Subura is!’

  ‘There’s nothing so very mysterious about squalor,’ I suggested.

  ‘Ah, but there is,’ insisted Lucius; and to him, I suppose, there was.

  ‘Tell me about your adventure two days ago, on the day after the Ides.’

  ‘Certainly. But I thought you sent the girl for more wine?’

  I clapped my hands. Bethesda stepped from the shadows. The sunlight glinted on her long, blue-black tresses. As she filled Lucius’ cup he seemed unable to look up at her. He swallowed, smiled shyly and nodded vigorously at the quality of my best wine, which was probably not good enough to give to his slaves.

  He continued.

  ‘That morning, quite early, I happened to be strolling down one of the side streets off the main Subura Way, whistling a tune, noticing how spring had brought out all sorts of tiny flowers and shoots between the paving stones. Beauty asserts itself even here amid such squalor, I thought to myself, and I considered composing a poem, except that I’m not very good at poems – ’

  ‘And then something happened?’ I prompted.

  ‘Oh, yes. A man shouted down to me from a second-storey window. He said, “Please, citizen, come quick! A man is dying!” I hesitated. After all, he might have been trying to lure me into the building to rob me, or worse, and I didn’t even have a slave with me for protection – I like going out alone, you see. Then another man appeared at the window beside the first, and said, “Please, citizen, we need your help. The young man is dying and he’s made out a will – he needs seven citizens to witness it and we already have six. Won’t you come up?”

  ‘Well, I did go up. It’s not very often that anybody needs me for anything. How could I refuse? The apartment turned out to be a rather nicely furnished set of rooms, not at all shabby and certainly not menacing. In one of the rooms a man lay wrapped in a blanket upon a couch, moaning and shivering. An older man was attending to him, daubing his brow with a damp cloth. There were six others crowded into the room. No one seemed to know anyone else – it seemed we had each been summoned off the street, one by one.’

  ‘To witness the will of the dying man?’

  ‘Yes. His name was Asuvius, from the town of Larinum. He was visiting the city when he was struck by a terrible malady. He lay on the bed, wet with sweat and trembling with fever. The illness had aged him terribly – according to his friend he wasn’t yet twenty, yet his face was haggard and lined. Doctors had been summoned but had been of no use. Young Asuvius feared that he would die at any moment. Never having made a will – such a young man, after all – he had sent his friend to procure a wax tablet and a stylus. I didn’t read the document as it was passed among us, of course, but I saw that it had been written by two different hands. He must have written the first few lines himself, in a faltering, unsteady hand; I suppose his friend finished the document for him. Seven witnesses were required, so to expedite matters the older man had simply called for citizens to come up from the street. While we watched, the poor lad scrawled his name with the stylus and pressed his seal ring into the wax.’

  ‘After which you signed and sealed it yourself?’

  ‘Yes, along with the others. Then the older man thanked us and urged us to leave the room, so that young Asuvius could rest quietly before the end came. I don’t mind telling you that I was weeping like a fountain as I stepped onto the street, and I wasn’t the only one. I strolled about the Subura in a melancholy mood, thinking about that young man’s fate, about his poor family back in Larinum and how they would take the news. I remember walking by a brothel situated at the end of the block, hardly a hundred paces from the dying man’s room, and being st
ruck by the contrast, the irony, that within those walls there lurked such pleasure and relief, while only a few doors down, the mouth of Pluto was opening to swallow a dying country lad. I remember thinking what a lovely poem such an irony might inspire – ’

  ‘No doubt it would, in the hands of a truly great poet,’ I acknowledged quickly. ‘So, did you ever learn what became of the youth?’

  ‘A few hours later, after strolling about the city in a haze, I found myself back on that very street, as if the invisible hand of a god had guided me there. It was shortly after noon. The landlord told me that young Asuvius had died not long after I left. The older man – Oppianicus his name was, also of Larinum – had summoned the landlord to the room, weeping and lamenting, and had shown the landlord the body all wrapped up in a sheet. Later the landlord saw Oppianicus and another man from Larinum carry the body down the stairs and load it into a cart to take it to the embalmers outside the Esquiline Gate.’ Lucius sighed. ‘I tossed and turned all night, thinking about the fickleness of the Fates and the way that Fortune can turn her back even on a young man starting out in life. It made me think of all the days I’ve wasted, all the hours of boredom – ’

  Before he could conceive of yet another stillborn poem, I nodded to Bethesda to refill his cup and my own. ‘A sad tale, Lucius Claudius, but not uncommon. Life in the city is full of tragedies. Strangers die around us every day. We persevere.’

  ‘But that’s just the point – young Asuvius isn’t dead! I saw him just this morning, strolling down the Subura Way, smiling and happy! Oh, he still appeared a bit haggard, but he was certainly up and walking.’

  ‘Perhaps you were mistaken.’

  ‘Impossible. He was with the older man, Oppianicus. I called to them across the street. Oppianicus saw me – or at least I thought he did – but he took the younger man’s arm and they disappeared into a shop on the corner. I followed after them, but a cart was passing in the street and the stupid driver almost ran me down. When I finally stepped into the shop they were gone. They must have passed through the shop into the cross street beyond and disappeared.’

  He sat back and sipped his wine. ‘I sat down in a shady spot by the public fountain and tried to think it through; then I remembered your name. I think it was Cicero who mentioned you to me, that young advocate who did a bit of legal work for me last year. I can’t imagine who else might help me. What do you say, Gordianus? Am I mad? Or is it true that the shades of the dead walk abroad in the noonday sun?’

  ‘The answer to both questions may be yes, Lucius Claudius, but that doesn’t explain what’s occurred. From what you’ve told me, I should think that something quite devious and all too human is afoot. But tell me, what is your concern? You don’t know either of these men. What is your interest in this mystery?’

  ‘Don’t you understand, Gordianus, after all I’ve told you? I spend my days in idle boredom, peering into the windows of other people’s lives. Now something has happened that actually titillates me. I would investigate the circumstances by myself, only’ – the great bulk of his body shrank a bit – ‘I’m not exactly brave …’

  I glanced at the glittering jewellery about his fingers and throat. ‘I should tell you, then, that I’m not exactly cheap.’

  ‘And I am not exactly poor.’

  Lucius insisted on accompanying me, though I warned him that if he feared boredom, my initial inquiries were likely to prove more excruciating than he could bear. Searching through the Subura for a pair of strangers from out of town was hardly my idea of excitement, but Lucius wanted to follow my every step. I could only shrug and allow it; if he wanted to trail after me like a dog, he was certainly paying well enough for the privilege.

  I began at the house where the young man had supposedly died and where Lucius had witnessed the signing of his will. The landlord had nothing more to say than what he had already said to Lucius – until I nudged my client and indicated that he should rattle his coin purse. The musical jingling induced the landlord to sing.

  The older man, Oppianicus, had been renting the room for more than a month. He and a circle of younger friends from Larinum were much given to debauchery – the landlord could deduce that much from the sour smell of spilled wine that wafted from their room, from the raucous gambling parties they held, and from the steady parade of prostitutes who visited them from the brothel down the street.

  ‘And the younger man, Asuvius, the one who died?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, what of him?’

  ‘He was equally debauched?’

  The landlord shrugged. ‘You know how it is – these young men from small towns, especially the lads who have a bit of money, they come to Rome and they want to live a little.’

  ‘Sad, that this one should die, instead.’

  ‘That has nothing to do with me,’ the landlord protested. ‘I keep a safe house. It wasn’t as if the boy was murdered in one of my rooms. He took sick and died.’

  ‘Did he look particularly frail?’

  ‘Not at all, but debauchery can ruin any man’s health.’

  ‘Not in a month’s time.’

  ‘When illness strikes, it strikes; neither man nor god can lengthen a man’s time once the Fates have measured out the thread of his life.’

  ‘Wise words,’ I agreed. I pulled a few coins from Lucius’ purse and slapped them into the man’s waiting palm.

  The brothel down the street was one of the Subura’s more respectable, which is to say more expensive, houses of entertainment. Several well-dressed slaves lingered outside the door, waiting for their masters to come out. Inside, the floor of the little foyer was decorated with a black and white mosaic of Priapus pursuing a wood nymph. Rich tapestries of red and green covered the walls.

  The clientele was not shoddy, either. While we waited for the master of the house, a customer passed us on his way to the door. He was at least a minor magistrate, to judge from his gold seal ring, and he seemed to know Lucius, at whom he cast a puzzled gaze.

  ‘You – Lucius Claudius – here in Priapus’ Palace?’

  ‘Yes, and what of it, Gaius Fabius?’

  ‘But I’d never have dreamed you had a lustful bone in your body!’

  Lucius sniffed at the ceiling. ‘I happen to be here on important business, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, I see. But of course. Don’t let me interrupt you!’ The man suppressed a laugh until he was out of the door. I heard him braying in the street.

  ‘Harrumph! Let him laugh and gossip about me behind my back,’ said Lucius. ‘I shall compose a satirical poem for my revenge, so witheringly spiteful that it shall render that buffoon too limp to visit this – what did he call this place?’

  ‘Priapus’ Palace,’ piped an unctuously friendly voice. The master of the house suddenly appeared between us and slid his arms around our shoulders. ‘And what pleasures may I offer to amuse two such fine specimens of Roman manhood?’ The man smiled blandly at me, then at Lucius, then at the baubles that decorated Lucius’ neck and fingers. He licked his lips and slithered to the centre of the room, turned and clapped his hands. A file of scantily clad women began to enter the room.

  ‘Actually,’ I said hurriedly, ‘we’ve come on behalf of a friend.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A regular client of your establishment in recent days, I believe. A young visitor to Rome, named Asuvius.’

  From the corner of my eye I saw a sudden movement among the girls. One of them, a honey blonde, tripped and thrust out her hands for balance. She turned a pair of startled blue eyes in my direction.

  ‘Oh yes, that handsome lad from Larinum,’ gushed our host. ‘We haven’t seen him for at least a day and a half – I was beginning to wonder what had become of him!’

  ‘We’re here on his behalf,’ I said, thinking it might not be a lie, when all was said and done. ‘He sent us to fetch his favourite girl – but I can’t seem to remember her name. Can you remember it, Lucius?’

  Lucius gave a start and bli
nked his eyes, which were trained on the girls and threatened to pop from their sockets. ‘Me? Oh no, I can’t remember a thing.’

  A look of pure avarice crossed our host’s face. ‘His favourite? Ah, let me think … yes, that would be Merula, most definitely Merula!’ Another clap of his hands fetched a slave who put an ear to his master’s whispering lips, then ran from the room. A moment later Merula appeared, a stunning Ethiopian so tall that she had to bow her head to pass through the doorway. Her skin was the colour of midnight and her eyes flashed like shooting stars.

  Lucius was visibly impressed and reached for his purse, but I stayed his hand. It occurred to me that our host was offering us his most expensive property, not the one which had necessarily been the favourite of young Asuvius.

  ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I’m sure I would have remembered a name like Merula.’

  ‘Ah, and she sings like a blackbird, as well,’ interjected our host.

  ‘Nevertheless, I think we were meant to fetch that one.’ I nodded at the honey blonde, who gazed back at me with apprehensive blue eyes.

  The tavern across the street was pleasantly cool and dark, and almost deserted. Columba sat within the cloak Lucius had thrown over her transparent gown, looking pensive.

  ‘The day before yesterday?’ she frowned.

  ‘Yes, the day after the Ides of Maius,’ offered Lucius, certain at last that he had his chronology straight, and eager to help.

  ‘And you say that you saw Asuvius in his room, deathly ill?’ She continued to frown.

  ‘So it appeared, when this man Oppianicus called me up to the room.’ Lucius leaned on one elbow, gazing at her raptly and ignoring his cup of wine. He was not used to being so near such a beautiful girl, I could tell.

  ‘And this was in the morning?’ Columba asked.

  ‘Yes, quite early in the morning.’

  ‘But Asuvius was with me!’

  ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘Certainly, because he had slept the whole night with me, at my room at the Palace, and we didn’t wake until quite late that morning. Even then, we didn’t leave the room …’