Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4)

by Steven Saylor

  ‘Eco!’ I called softly. ‘We’ve no right to be snooping here. Eco, where are you?’ I wandered up and down the aisles, until I discovered another door at the far corner of the room. It opened into yet another office. From small windows set high in the wall came the sounds of ships knocking together in the harbour and the cry of seagulls. There was no sign of Eco inside. I backed out of the room and closed the door behind me. I took several steps before I suddenly realized what I had seen and hurried back.

  On a table against one wall I saw a simple scale. Neatly stacked beside it were some sample weights of silver and gold. There was also a small wooden tub on the table. I stepped closer. Sure enough, the tub was half filled with water, and there were several waterline markings made with a piece of chalk along the inner surface.

  Behind me, I heard the door close.

  ‘I thought I bade you farewell, Gordianus.’ There was not the slightest hint of good humour in Dorotheus’ voice. Without the beaming smile, his round, bearded face had a stern, almost menacing look; the constant smile had kept me from seeing the cold, predatory gleam in his eyes, so common in successful traders and merchants. I also realized what a large man he was. Fat, yes, but the fellow had arms like a blacksmith’s – strong enough, I had no doubt, to drag the smaller, weaker Agathinus on to the stone cube, and then to push him backwards on to the cruel spike.

  ‘I’m looking for my son,’ I said, as innocently as I could. ‘Eco has a terrible habit of wandering off on his own. I really should be less indulgent …’

  But Dorotheus wasn’t listening. ‘How much, Finder?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘How much to shut you up and send you on your way back to Rome?’ He might be a murderer, but he was a businessman first.

  If accepting his bribe meant getting safely through the door behind him, why not? But I thought of Agathinus on the night before – the final night of his life – saying, I like you, Gordianus … and I like your son … the way he laughed at Dorotheus’ awful jokes … and offering to do me the favour of showing me Archimedes’ tomb. I remembered the gaping grimace of horror on his face when we found him, and I shuddered, thinking of the appalling agony he must have suffered at the end, transfixed like an insect on a pin.

  ‘Agathinus did tell you last night about meeting me outside the Achradina Gate?’ I said.

  Dorotheus, deciding to submit to a bit of conversation, let his face relax. The hint of a smile returned to his lips. ‘Yes. He was quite looking forward to tramping through the thicket with you. I insisted on coming along for the fun.’

  ‘And Margero?’

  ‘I’m afraid I lied to you about that, Finder. Margero excused himself as soon as Agathinus caught up with us last night. He could hardly stand dining in the same room with him, in case you didn’t notice, and he was in no mood to stroll along beside him afterwards. Probably Margero was in a great hurry to get home so he could get drunk in solitude and make up new poems for that silly boy at the gymnasium.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I saw Agathinus home. Then I came here.’

  ‘To your offices? In the middle of the night?’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Finder. You saw the scale and the tub of water.’

  ‘A demonstration of Archimedes’ principle?’

  ‘Would you believe, ‘I never quite grasped it, until Cicero explained it last night.’

  ‘What could be so important that you had to rush here at once to try it out?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve suspected for years that Agathinus must be cheating me. Why not? He was always smarter than me, ever since we were boys. And the smarter partner always cheats the stupider one – that’s the law of business. So I always watched every transaction, always counted every piece of silver and gold we divided between us. Still, I could never catch him cheating me.

  ‘For the last shipment of goods, he talked me into taking my payment in gold vessels – pitchers and bowls and such – while he took his in coin. He needed the ready money to spend on certain investments of his own, he said, and what did it matter anyway, so long as we both received the same weight? Secretly, I thought I must be getting the better deal, because worked gold is more valuable than its weight in coinage. Agathinus was counting on my own greed, you see, and he used it against me. He cheated me. The devious bastard cheated me! Last night, with Archimedes’ help, I proved it.’

  ‘Proved that your gold vessels weren’t made of solid gold?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Perhaps Agathinus didn’t know.’

  ‘Oh, no, he knew. After we went into the thicket and found the tomb this morning, I confronted him. He denied the deception at first – until I dragged him on to the cube and threatened to throw him on the cone. Then he confessed, and kept on confessing, with the sight of that spike to goad him. It didn’t begin with this transaction! He’d been pilfering and corrupting my shares of gold for years, in all sorts of devious ways. I always knew that Agathinus was too clever to be honest!’

  ‘And after he confessed—’ I shuddered, picturing it.

  Dorotheus swallowed hard. ‘I could say that it was an accident, that he slipped, but why? I’m not proud of it. I was angry – furious! Anger like that comes from the gods, doesn’t it? So the gods will understand. And they’ll understand why I had to get rid of you, as well.’ He reached into the folds of his tunic and pulled out a long dagger.

  I coughed. My throat was bone-dry. ‘I thought you intended to buy my silence.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘You never agreed, so there was never a bargain. And now I withdraw that offer.’

  I looked around the room for something that might equalize the situation, but saw nothing remotely resembling a weapon. The best I could do was to pick up the tub. I threw the water on him, then threw the tub, which he knocked aside. All I managed was to make him furious and dripping wet. All trace of the laughing, genial dinner companion of the previous night had vanished. Seeing his face now, I would not have known him.

  It was at that moment that the door behind him gave a rattle and burst open.

  Cicero entered first, followed by a troop of well-armed Roman peacekeepers who surrounded Dorotheus at once and took his dagger. Eco trailed behind, leaping in the air in great excitement, the anxious look on his face turning to jubilation when he saw that I was unharmed.

  ‘Eco fetched you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cicero.

  ‘You heard Dorotheus confess?’

  ‘I heard enough.’

  Eco opened his mouth wide and moved his lips, but managed only to produce a stifled grunt.

  ‘What’s the boy trying to say?’ asked Cicero.

  ‘I think it must be “Eureka! Eureka!” ’

  ‘Greed!’ I said to Eco the next morning, as we made ready to vacate our room at Cicero’s house. ‘Last night I read that idyll of Theocritus, the poem that Cicero quoted from at dinner the other night. The poet certainly got it right:

  Men no longer aspire to win praise for noble deeds,

  but think only of profit, profit, profit.

  Clutching their coinbags, always looking for more,

  too stingy to give away the tarnish that comes off their coins!

  ‘Thanks to greed, Agathinus is dead, Dorotheus awaits trial for his murder, and Margero the poet has lost both of his patrons in one stroke, which means he’ll probably have to leave Syracuse. A disaster for them all. It’s very sad; enough to make a man want to leave behind the grubby human cares of this world and lose himself in pure geometry, like Archimedes.’

  We gathered up our few belongings and went to take our leave of Cicero. There was also the matter of collecting my fees, not only for finding Archimedes’ tomb, but for exposing Agathinus’ killer.

  From the atrium, I could hear Cicero in his office. He was dictating a letter to Tiro, no doubt intending for me to deliver it when I got back to Rome. Eco and I waited outside
the door. It was impossible not to overhear.

  ‘Dear brother Quintus,’ Cicero began, ‘the fellows I was so strongly advised to cultivate here in Syracuse turned out to be of no account – the unsavoury details can wait until we meet again. Nonetheless, my holiday here has not been entirely unproductive. You will be interested to learn that I have rediscovered the lost tomb of one of our boyhood heroes, Archimedes. The locals were entirely ignorant of its location; indeed, denied its very existence. Yesterday afternoon, however, I set out with Tiro for the old necropolis outside the Achradina Gate, and there, sure enough, peeking out above a tangle of brambles and vines, I spied the telltale ornaments of a sphere and cylinder atop a column. You must recall that bit of doggerel we learned from our old math tutor:

  A cylinder and ball

  atop a column tall

  mark the final stage

  of the Syracusan sage.

  ‘Having spotted the tomb, I gave a cry of “Eureka!” and ordered a group of workers with scythes to clear the thicket all around. Now the tomb of Archimedes can be seen and approached freely, and has been restored to its rightful status as a shrine to all educated men.’

  Cicero did not mention the cube and cone, I noticed. They had been removed along with the thicket, lest someone else meet Agathinus’ fate.

  Cicero cleared his throat and resumed dictating. ‘Ironic, brother Quintus, is it not, and sadly indicative of the degraded cultural standards of these modern Syracusans, that it took a Roman from Arpinum to rediscover for them the tomb of the keenest intellect who ever lived among them?’

  Ironic indeed, I thought.

  DEATH BY EROS

  ‘The Neapolitans are different from us Romans,’ I remarked to Eco as we strolled across the central forum of Neapolis. ‘A man can almost feel that he’s left Italy altogether and been magically transported to a seaport in Greece. Greek colonists founded the city hundreds of years ago, taking advantage of the extraordinary bay, which they called the Krater, or Cup. The locals still have Greek names, eat Greek food, follow Greek customs. Many of them don’t even speak Latin.’

  Eco pointed to his lips and made a self-deprecating gesture to say, Neither do I! At fifteen, he tended to make a joke of everything, including his muteness.

  ‘Ah, but you can hear Latin,’ I said, flicking a finger against one of his ears just hard enough to sting, ‘and sometimes even understand it.’

  We had arrived in Neapolis on our way back to Rome, after doing a bit of business for Cicero down in Sicily. Rather than stay at an inn, I was hoping to find accommodations with a wealthy Greek trader named Sosistrides. ‘The fellow owes me a favour,’ Cicero had told me. ‘Look him up and mention my name, and I’m sure he’ll put you up for the night.’

  With a few directions from the locals (who were polite enough not to laugh at my Greek) we found the trader’s house. The columns and lintels and decorative details of the facade were stained in various shades of pale red, blue and yellow that seemed to glow under the warm sunlight. Incongruous amid the play of colours was a black wreath on the door.

  ‘What do you think, Eco? Can we ask a friend of a friend, a total stranger really, to put us up when the household is in mourning? It seems presumptuous.’

  Eco nodded thoughtfully, then gestured to the wreath and expressed curiosity with a flourish of his wrist. I nodded. ‘I see your point. If it’s Sosistrides who’s died, or a member of the family, Cicero would want us to deliver his condolences, wouldn’t he? And we must learn the details, so that we can inform him in a letter. I think we must at least rouse the doorkeeper, to see what’s happened.’

  I walked to the door and politely knocked with the side of my foot. There was no answer. I knocked again and waited. I was about to rap on the door with my knuckles, rudely or not, when it swung open.

  The man who stared back at us was dressed in mourning black. He was not a slave; I glanced at his hand and saw a citizen’s iron ring. His greying hair was dishevelled and his face distressed. His eyes were red from weeping.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, in a voice more wary than unkind.

  ‘Forgive me, citizen. My name is Gordianus. This is my son, Eco. Eco hears but is mute, so I shall speak for him. We’re travellers, on our way home to Rome. I’m a friend of Marcus Tullius Cicero. It was he who—’

  ‘Cicero? Ah, yes, the Roman administrator down in Sicily, the one who can actually read and write, for a change.’ The man wrinkled his brow. ‘Has he sent a message, or … ?’

  ‘Nothing urgent; Cicero asked me only to remind you of his friendship. You are, I take it, the master of the house, Sosistrides?’

  ‘Yes. And you? I’m sorry, did you already introduce yourself? My mind wanders …’ He looked over his shoulder. Beyond him, in the vestibule, I glimpsed a funeral bier strewn with freshly cut flowers and laurel leaves.

  ‘My name is Gordianus. And this is my son —’

  ‘Gordianus, did you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cicero mentioned you once. Something about a murder trial up in Rome. You helped him. They call you the Finder.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me intently for a long moment. ‘Come in, Finder. I want you to see him.’

  The bier in the vestibule was propped up and tilted at an angle so that its occupant could be clearly seen. The corpse was that of a youth probably not much older than Eco. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was clothed in a long white gown, so that only his face and hands were exposed. His hair was boyishly long and as yellow as a field of millet in summer, crowned with a laurel wreath of the sort awarded to athletic champions. The flesh of his delicately moulded features was waxy and pale, but even in death his beauty was remarkable.

  ‘His eyes were blue,’ said Sosistrides in a low voice. ‘They’re closed now, you can’t see them, but they were blue, like his dear, dead mother’s; he got his looks from her. The purest blue you ever saw, like the colour of the Cup on a clear day. When we pulled him from the pool, they were all bloodshot …’

  ‘This is your son, Sosistrides?’

  He stifled a sob. ‘My only son, Cleon.’

  ‘A terrible loss.’

  He nodded, unable to speak. Eco shifted nervously from foot to foot, studying the dead boy with furtive glances, almost shyly.

  ‘They call you Finder,’ Sosistrides finally said, in a hoarse voice. ‘Help me find the monster who killed my son.’

  I looked at the dead youth and felt a deep empathy for Sosistrides’ suffering, and not merely because I myself had a son of similar age. (Eco may be adopted, but I love him as my own flesh.) I was stirred also by the loss of such beauty. Why does the death of a beautiful stranger affect us more deeply than the loss of someone plain? Why should it be so, that if a vase of exquisite workmanship but little practical value should break, we feel the loss more sharply than if we break an ugly vessel we use every day? The gods made men to love beauty above all else, perhaps because they themselves are beautiful, and wish for us to love them, even when they do us harm.

  ‘How did he die, Sosistrides?’

  ‘It was at the gymnasium, yesterday. There was a citywide contest among the boys – discus-throwing, wrestling, racing. I couldn’t attend. I was away in Pompeii on business all day …’ Sosistrides again fought back tears. He reached out and touched the wreath on his son’s brow. ‘Cleon took the laurel crown. He was a splendid athlete. He always won at everything, but they say he outdid himself yesterday. If only I had been there to see it! Afterwards, while the other boys retired to the baths inside, Cleon took a swim in the long pool, alone. There was no one else in the courtyard. No one saw it happen …’

  ‘The boy drowned, Sosistrides?’ It seemed unlikely, if the boy had been as good at swimming as he was at everything else.

  Sosistrides shook his head and shut his eyes tight, squeezing tears from them. ‘The gymnasiarchus is an old wrestler named Caputorus. It was he who found Cleon. He heard a splash, he said, but t
hought nothing of it. Later he went into the courtyard and discovered Cleon. The water was red with blood. Cleon was at the bottom of the pool. Beside him was a broken statue. It must have struck the back of his head; it left a terrible gash.’

  ‘A statue?’

  ‘Of Eros – the god you Romans call Cupid. A cherub with bow and arrows, a decoration at the edge of the pool. Not a large statue, but heavy, made of solid marble. It somehow fell from its pedestal as Cleon was passing below …’ He gazed at the boy’s bloodless face, lost in misery.

  I sensed the presence of another in the room, and turned to see a young woman in a black gown with a black mantle over her head. She walked to Sosistrides’ side. ‘Who are these visitors, father?’

  ‘Friends of the provincial administrator down in Sicily – Gordianus of Rome, and his son, Eco. This is my daughter, Cleio. Daughter! Cover yourself!’ Sosistrides’ sudden embarrassment was caused by the fact that Cleio had pushed the mantle from her head, revealing that her dark hair was crudely shorn, cut so short that it didn’t reach her shoulders. No longer shadowed by the mantle, her face, too, showed signs of unbridled mourning. Long scratches ran down her cheeks, and there were bruises where she appeared to have struck herself, marring a beauty that rivalled her brother’s.

  ‘I mourn for the loss of the one I loved best in all the world,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘I feel no shame in showing it.’ She cast an icy stare at me and at Eco, then swept from the room.

  Extreme displays of grief are disdained in Rome, where excessive public mourning is banned by law, but we were in Neapolis. Sosistrides seemed to read my thoughts. ‘Cleio has always been more Greek than Roman. She lets her emotions run wild. Just the opposite of her brother. Cleon was always so cool, so detached.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s taken her brother’s death very hard. When I came home from Pompeii yesterday I found his body here in the vestibule; his slaves had carried him home from the gymnasium. Cleio was in her room, crying uncontrollably. She’d already cut her hair. She wept and wailed all night long.’