The Corpus Conundrum

by Albert A. Bell

  Scaevola apparently meant to do just that. He pushed some of his men toward the aqueduct. Tacitus led my servants as they gathered around the base of the arches to prevent anyone else from climbing them. The flickering, eerie light from the fire made the figures stand out against the dark. I heard shouts and groans as men came to blows.

  One more solid blow opened a gap large enough for water to start to trickle through. A final blow knocked out a section of the side of the channel. Scaevola’s men scattered as the stone crashed to the ground.

  “Fill the buckets,” Tacitus ordered.

  I could see there wasn’t enough water flowing out of the hole. I knocked loose another piece of stone and used it to block the stream of water and divert it out of the hole I had made. Now we had a small waterfall. A couple of my servants pushed Scaevola’s men out of the way while the others filled buckets. I was glad to see all the men below on their feet. This wasn’t worth killing anyone over.

  Tacitus opened the door to Myrrha’s quarters. The fire in that area had not gotten very large. Fire needs air, and the windowless rooms had quickly filled up with smoke. Oddly enough, the smoke produced by the fire helped smother the flames. A few buckets of water finished the job.

  I worked my way down off the aqueduct while my men were dousing the fire. “How do we get upstairs?” I said. “The fire’s got a good start there.”

  The man who had fetched the axe said, “I saw a ladder behind that shed, my lord.”

  The ladder proved to be about a cubit too short to get to the window. As soon as Naevius saw the problem he climbed the ladder, hooked his arms over the window sill and hoisted himself inside, ignoring the flames starting to show through the other window. “Get those buckets up here!” he called back down. “Be quick about it.”

  Forming a bucket brigade on a ladder was awkward, but we managed it. The gap from the top man on the ladder to Naevius reaching down from the window was the trickiest part. The Long of It lived up to his nickname, though. As fast as he threw the water on the fire, he tossed a bucket out the window to be refilled. One of my men caught it and held it under the stream of water I had diverted from the aqueduct, then passed it to the others on the ladder.

  With six buckets on the move, we kept an almost steady stream of water on the flames. I hoped the ladder, which looked as run-down as everything else in Laurentum, would bear the weight of three men long enough.

  Scaevola watched the whole process without lifting a finger to help but at least no longer trying to stop us. “If that dump collapses on you and your men,” he said, “you can dig your own way out. And who’s going to pay for repairing the aqueduct? I could bring charges against you, Gaius Pliny, for destroying public property.”

  “I’ll have a crew here in the morning to repair it. They’ll even fix some of the leaks back here—something the town’s magistrates should have taken care of long ago.”

  “Will you be running for duovir this year?” Scaevola sneered.

  “No, but I will pay much closer attention to the elections than I have in the past.”

  Naevius stuck his head out the window. “That’ll do it. Fire’s out.”

  Scaevola turned to leave. “You’d better have a crew here in the morning to repair that aqueduct, Gaius Pliny. By the second hour.”

  I ignored him and passed the axe up the ladder to Naevius. “Poke around a bit and make sure nothing’s smoldering. We don’t want the fire to break out again.”

  “Yes, sir. But I’m sure it’s all right. What was mainly burnin’ was some piles of clothes.”

  “We’ll be up in a moment.”

  I sent one of my men up to the top of the aqueduct to remove the piece of stone with which I had blocked the channel. When it was set in place of the chunk I had knocked out of the wall, the waterfall was reduced to a trickle.

  “Hardly any worse than any other leak back here,” Tacitus said. “Do you actually have someone who can plug this thing up?”

  “Yes. Several of the men on the estate worked on that addition I made a few years ago. They can handle this job and be home for lunch. Now let’s go see what started this fire.”

  We first looked over the rooms where Myrrha and Chloris lived. Furniture had been upended, clothes pulled out of chests. Oil from the lamps had been poured out and set on fire.

  “Somebody ransacked the place,” Myrrha said in dismay. “Why would they do that? We’ve got nothin’ worth stealin’.”

  “Somebody was looking for something,” I said.

  “But then why set a fire?” Tacitus asked.

  “If they couldn’t find what they were looking for, perhaps they didn’t want anyone else to find it either.”

  “Maybe somebody was looking for Saturninus’ will,” Tacitus said.

  I nodded. “That’s a strong possibility. Let’s go see what the upstairs looks like.”

  One of my men relieved Chloris from watching the horses and sent her to join us. When we got to the front of the building we saw that the door had been opened by cutting the leather hinges.

  “We’ll leave a couple of men here on guard tonight,” I said, “and my crew will put stronger hinges on this door tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Myrrha said, hugging Chloris and drawing her close. I wondered how Chloris felt, going into the shop for the first time since she had learned who her grandparents were.

  We lit a few lamps and surveyed the main floor of the building. It had escaped damage, except for the permeating smell of smoke.

  “It looks like you’ll still be able to do business,” I said, “once you air the place out.”

  “I hope the smoke don’t get into the cheese,” Myrrha said. She opened the back room of the shop, where the cheese was stored. When she turned back around she looked hopeful. “I think we’ll be all right, if we have our cheese-cutter back.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” I promised. “Let’s see what the upstairs looks like.”

  Chloris hesitated at the stairs. “I’ve never been up here. It seems so strange. All my life I’ve thought Saturninus hated me.”

  “It’s all right, dear,” Myrrha said. “Your grandparents loved you, even if they never could tell you so.” She took her daughter’s hand and they led us up the stairs.

  The damage was not all that severe. As I had seen from the aqueduct, someone had piled up clothes and bedding and set fire to it. Like the women’s rooms downstairs, this area had been ransacked before the fire was started.

  “I think these old floors saved the place,” Tacitus said. “They’re just too thick to burn easily.”

  “But what was somebody lookin’ for?” Myrrha asked.

  “It must have been someone who didn’t know that the strongbox had been removed,” Tacitus said. “They wanted to know what was in it.”

  “Or maybe it was somebody who knew that it had been removed and knew exactly what was in it.”

  “But that would be just the people who were at your house when it was opened.”

  I nodded. “And we know where all of them were tonight, except for Licinius Strabo.”

  By the second hour the next morning my crew was at work repairing the aqueduct. Myrrha, Chloris, Tacitus, and I went to take a better look at the cheese shop in the daylight. We met Licinius Scaevola coming out of the broken front door.

  “You have no right to be in there,” I said.

  “As a magistrate I was inspecting the damage from the fire last night.”

  “It was minimal. Myrrha and Chloris are going to clean up and will be open for business again in a day or two.”

  “What claim do they have on the place?”

  “Saturninus left it to them in his will. They are his daughter and granddaughter, as I believe you know.”

  Scaevola pursed his lips. “As many of us in Laurentum have always known.”

  “How did everyone keep that secret?” Chloris asked. “Was I truly the only one who didn’t know?”

  “Not the only one, my dear. B
ut those of us who wanted the secret kept did manage to keep it.”

  “They didn’t want to admit it,” Myrrha said bitterly, “so they could keep on whorin’ with her, like you and your son.”

  Scaevola closed his eyes and nodded. “But that’s all in the past, I gather. Have you seen this will, Gaius Pliny?”

  “I have. Tacitus and I will vouch for its authenticity.”

  Scaevola turned to Myrrha. “I’m prepared to buy the shop.” He named a price. Even given the poor condition of the building and the general decay of the town, it was still a very low offer.

  Myrrha turned to me. “Sir, what should we do?”

  “I don’t think you should sell,” I said. “This shop has an excellent reputation and a lot of loyal customers.”

  “And you ladies certainly have quite a reputation and a lot of loyal customers,” Scaevola sneered.

  “Including your son,” Chloris said. “But those days are over.”

  “Speaking of Strabo,” I said, “where is he?”

  Scaevola seemed genuinely surprised. “I thought he was being held hostage at your house, locked up in your darkest cellar, I hoped.”

  “I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. He asked my permission to go home and I gave it.” Apollodoros was also gone. I began to wonder if there was some connection.

  “He never got there,” Scaevola said. “I haven’t seen him since our ... encounter on the road. But my worthless son isn’t the issue here. I’ve made an offer for this shop. What do you say to it?”

  I took Myrrha aside and asked her if she wanted me to act as her agent in this matter. She quickly agreed.

  Coming back to Scaevola, I said, “We say that your offer is an insult. The shop is not for sale.” Beside me, Myrrha nodded vigorously.

  Scaevola threw his hands in the air. “If that’s your decision, so be it. Just remember, there are three taverns in this town. The two that I own will no longer be buying cheese from you. I don’t think my customers will care for that smoky flavor.”

  “Where will you get your cheese?” I asked.

  “I’ll start bringing it in from Ostia. It may be a bit more expensive, but there are some good shops there.”

  “Sir,” Myrrha whispered, “what’ll we do? If we can’t sell no cheese, we’ll have to go back to whorin’. It’s too late for me, but I want Chloris to have a chance to get away from that, to have a decent life.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “I assure you that we will buy cheese for the house here and for my house in Rome from you. And I will encourage my neighbors to do the same. As my friends, you will have my full support.” I turned to Scaevola. “We have nothing further to discuss.”

  “Just to give you fair warning,” Scaevola said, “when you go out of business, my offer will be much lower.”

  “Let me give you an equally fair warning,” I said. “These women are among my friends. They enjoy my protection. Anyone who tries to harm them or interfere with their business will find he’s not dealing with just two helpless women.”

  “Gaius Pliny, if you think these women are helpless, you don’t know your friends very well.”

  We went upstairs to the living quarters to see how bad the damage was and what could be salvaged. It appeared that some of the furniture would be usable. The arsonist had piled it up with the clothing and set fire to it, but the fire had not gotten hot enough to ignite much of the wood.

  Myrrha pulled her mother’s work table out of the charred heap. “I remember sittin’ over there with Mama when I was just a little girl, learnin’ how to make bowls.”

  “It’s just one of the legs that is burned,” I said. “I think it can be repaired.”

  “And the room itself wasn’t badly damaged,” Tacitus pointed out. “This spot in the floor looks like it needs to be repaired, but for the rest of it, it’s just a matter of some cleaning.”

  Myrrha stirred a pile of partly burned clothing with a broom handle. “Maybe we should just sell and move somewhere else and start over. These people aren’t never goin’ to think of us as anything but whores.”

  “And that’s how we’ll think of ourselves,” Chloris said, taking her mother by the shoulders and looking her in the face, “if we let Scaevola drive us out. It’ll take some work, but there’s nothing here that can’t be fixed or cleaned up. We’ve got to stand up for ourselves.”

  “I’ll have some of my women up here this afternoon,” I said. “And a few of the men will repair this floor and help you move your belongings from downstairs up here. By the time you go to bed tonight, the place should be as good as it ever was.”

  Myrrha brushed tears from her face. “Thank you, sir. I can’t believe you’re bein’ so kind to us, for whatever reason. Thank you.”

  “I would do the same for any of my friends.” I leaned out the window and gave instructions to one of the servants working on the leaks in the aqueduct to go back to the house and bring the people I needed to get the living quarters repaired and cleaned up.

  “Since we’re up here,” Tacitus said, “should we look for the clue to Macer’s killer that Livilla mentioned in her letter?”

  “Could that have been what someone was looking for when they did this?” Chloris asked.

  “But why would they set the fire?” Myrrha asked.

  “If they couldn’t find it,” I said, “they must have wanted to be certain no one else could. Or perhaps they did find it and it was something they couldn’t remove, so they wanted to destroy the whole place and the clue along with it.” I looked around as though the secret might be lying out in the open.

  “Where could she have left a clue?” Chloris asked. “There aren’t many hiding places up here.”

  “Saturninus made a good one under a floorboard for his strongbox. Let’s see if the place holds any other secrets.” I took Myrrha’s broom and began tapping on the floor. Tacitus found a piece of wood that Livilla must have intended to work with and began testing the walls. Myrrha and Chloris looked under and behind anything that hadn’t been ruined in the fire.

  “Nothing,” Tacitus finally said.

  “Not in the floor either,” I said, leaning the broom against the wall.

  “Then I guess he found it,” Chloris said, brushing her hair back and smearing soot on her forehead. Somehow she didn’t look any less beautiful.

  I looked over the room one more time. “I don’t see what he or she—we have to keep an open mind—would gain by starting a fire if they found what they were looking for. It would mean staying in here longer and calling attention to what they’d done that much sooner. If they found it, why not just quietly slip away?”

  “Then where is it?” Tacitus asked, sweeping his arm around the room.

  “Hidden in plain sight,” I said. “These people were good at keeping secrets, even when they were right in front of everybody.”

  Myrrha and Chloris exchanged a glance. “Are you meanin’ us, sir?” The older woman hugged her daughter.

  “Not in any derogatory sense,” Tacitus said.

  When her mother’s brow furrowed, Chloris leaned over and said, “He didn’t mean to insult us.”

  Since Livilla’s work table had only three usable legs, I turned it on its side and leaned it against the wall, under the window where Livilla had worked on it. Kneeling next to the table, Chloris began wiping the soot off it.

  “Mother, what was my grandmother like?” She spoke slowly, like someone using a language she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. “Whenever I saw her looking out this window, she always looked sad.”

  “She was a quiet woman,” Myrrha said. “I know she loved you and wanted to talk to you, but Papa was so angry at me, he wouldn’t let any of us know one another.”

  Chloris stopped cleaning and peered intently at the bottom of the table. “Is there something written under here?”

  I knelt beside her and looked where she was pointing.

  “It looks like that Jewish writing,” she said, “like t
he letters on the parchment in that little box of my grandfather’s.”

  “It’s probably some kind of magical incantation,” Tacitus said from behind us. “Jews are supposed to write those on their doorposts—to keep evil spirits away, I think.”

  “I’ll ask Naomi if she can read this script,” I said. “I know she can read Greek, and it looked like she could read what was in that box.”

  “She might just have known what it was supposed to say,” Tacitus said.

  “True, but if she can read it, I’ll send her up here. Maybe she can tell us what this means.”

  “She might not want to,” Tacitus said. “The Jews I’ve known have always been reluctant to tell any of us Gentiles what their magical words mean.”

  “But their sacred writings have been translated into Greek. Naomi has gotten copies of some of their books for my mother. And there are a lot of Gentiles who go to their worship places—including my mother. I don’t see why there should be anything so secret about this. It may be just some sort of blessing on the house or a prayer to their god.”

  “Or a curse on anyone who disturbs the place,” Tacitus said, causing Myrrha’s eyes to widen.

  “But, if my grandmother wrote it,” Chloris said, “doesn’t that mean she was a Jew?”

  By the time the sun was overhead my men had finished repairing the aqueduct. I also had them gather up enough pieces of stone to pave the alley leading from the street to the back of the building. The final step in refurbishing the place was to expunge the phallic symbol.

  “No more whorin’!” Myrrha said as she and Chloris chiseled the image out of the wall.

  We bought part of our lunch—some rather questionable fish—at the only tavern which Scaevola did not own and supplemented it with some of Saturninus’ cheese.

  “The smoke really didn’t damage it,” I said as I savored the first bite. “It looks like you’ll be back in business by tomorrow.”

  “It’s hard to believe, sir,” Myrrha said. “Thank you again.”

  We were eating on the patio where Tacitus and I had first seen Myrrha and Chloris. “The sun is certainly bright out here,” I said, holding up my hand to shield my eyes.