Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth (22 page)

“Are the documents still here, mistress?” Pandareus asked. “Or have they…?”

“Oh, Venus, yes,” Collina said. “They’re mine, you see—my family. And if I’m going to live here, they move with me.”

She clapped her hands in surprise. “Oh, but why are we standing out here?” she said. “Do come in. I’d love to offer you refreshment, but if you just want to read the letters, I understand. Whatever Your Ladyship wants to do, we’ll help you, Ceutus and I, however we can!”

Collina turned. One of the maids still had a few flower petals left; she turned her basket over and shook it out on the front step, then hopped away. She couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

“They’re in the office,” Collina said as she led the way through the entrance hall. The stewards—Balbinus had come himself to lead the contingent of Saxa’s household; Collina’s steward was already talking with him—would sort out what the escort was to do while Alphena was inside. “Ceutus had a new case made for them after you read the letters last year, Master Pandareus.”

The walls of the reception room were frescoed with theatrical backdrops. On one side, porticos mounted over porticos until the one on top stretched off into the distance; on the other, painted Doric columns framed a plaza and a small, round temple—or possibly a well house—in the center of it. The work was bright and new enough that Alphena could smell fresh plaster.

“Here you are,” Collina said, pushing aside the curtains in front of the office. “These are the letters, right here. Ceutus is talking about buying a librarian, but, well…”

“Do you have any books, mistress?” Pandareus said, kneeling in front of a cedarwood chest. A servant offered him a pillow; he nodded gratefully and slid it between his knees and the terrazzo of randomly mixed black and white stones.

“Well, no,” Collina admitted. “Neither of us reads very well, to tell the truth. But Ceutus says we ought to have a librarian since we have valuable letters here.”

She paused and added, “
I
have letters, I remind him. He has the money, and he took my family name when he married me, but the man who wrote the letters was my four-times-great-grandfather, not his. I’m just saying.”

“Your husband is Illyrian, I believe?” Pandareus said, keeping his eyes on his work. He was removing small scrolls from the chest, reading enough of each one to determine the contents and then setting it on the floor as he took out the next.

“Yes, he is,” Collina said. “He’s really excited by being in an old family, though. Well, marrying into one. And he’s a good husband.”

Having watched the woman carefully, Alphena judged that she had wavered between a defensive response—“What of it? You’re a Greek yourself, aren’t you?”—and the neutral one she had chosen. With Pandareus, that was always the correct response: he was a scholar who gathered knowledge for the sake of knowledge, not to insult chance-met acquaintances.

Alphena wondered if neutrality wasn’t always the correct response. Even if the question was meant as an attack, wasn’t a calm smile better than showing the attacker that he’d gotten home? She would discuss it with Hedia.…

“I wonder…,” said Pandareus, gesturing with a letter he held partly unrolled in both hands. “It says here, ‘I’m thinking of creating a water feature beside the Shrine to Inuus, but I will examine the hillside behind it first as there appears to have been a construction there in the past.’ Would you would be able to identify that place? Identify the Shrine to Inuus, at least?”

“There’s the shrine to the household gods on the wall of the reception room,” Collina said. “We weren’t very religious, I’m afraid. I don’t know any Inuus. Who was Inuus?”

“Inuus is a very old—,” Pandareus said. He caught himself before he had fully launched into his lecture and grinned broadly.

“Inuus is a herdsman’s god,” he resumed. “His shrine might have been close to the sheepfold?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Collina said dismissively. “We didn’t keep sheep when I was growing up, though Ceutus talks about starting a flock again.”

She suddenly brightened. “I’m sure Ceutus’d be able to help you, though,” she said. “What he hasn’t learned about the estate I don’t think there’s to know. He’s told me things my grandfather didn’t know, all by talking to old servants and even the neighbors.”

“That’s very interesting,” Pandareus said mildly. “I wonder how he checks the accuracy of what he’s being told?”

“Oh!” said Collina. “Well, I don’t know about that. He’s a hard man to fool, though. He’s been in the shipping business thirty years, and he knows about folks trying to lie to him.”

“You know…,” said Pandareus. He set the letter back in the chest; the dozen or so others he’d looked at remained on the floor, but the servants could replace them easily. “That’s very possibly true.”

It didn’t seem to strike him that Collina might take that as an insult. Nor, in fact, did she. Beaming at Pandareus, she said, “He’ll be ever so proud to help you. A senator’s daughter and a famous magician—why, it’ll be the happiest day of his life!”

“I’m afraid I’m a scholar, not a magician, mistress,” Pandareus said. He put a hand on the floor to help himself rise; Alphena bent down to offer her crooked arm, which he took. “Which may be a pity in this case, because it appears that magic may be involved in the matter.”

“Are you really looking for a magician?” Collina said, frowning slightly. “Because there’s one that my husband’s been talking to. A priest, he calls himself, but he’s really a magician. He does purification ceremonies and the like. His name’s Paris.”

“Does he know Quintus Macsturnas, who was just elected aedile?” Alphena said. “Because if he does, I met him the other day.”

“Macsturnas?” Collina said. “I don’t know him, but that’s an Etruscan name, so I suppose he does. Paris is Etruscan himself. He’s crazy—I call it—about anything Etruscan.”

She grimaced. “I can’t bear him,” she said. “I don’t like the way he looks at my husband. But Ceutus doesn’t see anything wrong, so he’s visited here a few times. Maybe at the estate too.”

Pandareus looked thoughtful. “I wonder…?” he said without finishing the question.

“Mistress?” said Alphena. “Would Paris accompany us to your estate if you asked him to?”

“Why, I’m sure he would,” Collina said. “Why, I’ll send messengers to him and Ceutus both, to say you’re coming. Oh, my husband will be so pleased!”

Pandareus was looking at her without expression. Alphena nodded, then said to both her companions, “I didn’t like Paris, either. But he knows something or he wouldn’t have come along with Macsturnas. He may tell us more than the—”

How much did Collina know?

“—shrine or anything at the estate does.”

“Yes,” said Pandareus, smiling in acceptance. “Thank you, Mistress Collina; and again, Your Ladyship, I have reason to appreciate your wisdom.”

*   *   *

“
I
’M HERE TO SEE
M
ISTRESS
B
AUCIS,”
Corylus said to the man at the gate of the landscaper’s yard. “I think she’s expecting me.”

His tunic was plain instead of sporting the two thin stripes of a Knight of Carce. He still felt out of place because his garments were new and clean. He was too young to be a landscaper or an architect but too well dressed to be a laborer. Those were the only classes of people who were likely to be calling on an establishment like this.

“Wait a minute,” the gateman said, his eyes narrowing. “You’re Cispius’ boy, aren’t you?”

Without bothering to wait for an answer, he turned and bawled, “Hey, boss! Young Cispius is here. You want me to bring him to the office?”

“I’m here, Blennius,” said the blocky woman who came out from behind a row of three-year-old cypress trees in pots, ready to be transported to an estate that needed a windbreak. “Come on back to the office.”

She looked Pulto up and down. “There’s not a lot of room,” she said, “but if you think the boy needs to be protected, you come right along too.”

“That’s Vibius over with the gang tending the roses, right?” Pulto said. “I knew him when he worked for the Old Man. Guess I’ll go chew the fat with him until somebody tells me I’m needed.”

He walked away. Looking after him, Baucis said, “I needed a supervisor, somebody to send out on big jobs or to watch the yard here while I was out. Your father let me have Vibius. It’s one—”

She switched her attention suddenly to Corylus.

“—of the things I owe your father for. Come on back to the office, boy. What do I call you?”

“Corylus,” Corylus said, falling into step with her. “Or ‘boy.’ Or pretty much anything else you want to call me. So long as I’m sure you don’t mean some other dickhead.”

Baucis burped a hoarse laugh.

A workman with a short-bladed knife turned from a row of fruit trees. “Hey, boss?” he called. “Want to take a look at these grafts?”

“Not unless you think I need to, Grammon,” Baucis said. “And not now anyway. I’m busy.”

Corylus didn’t comment, but he viewed the yard with lively interest as they walked through. The laborers seemed cheerful, and the plants were well cared for. He even glimpsed a pair of olive sprites, hand-in-hand as they peeped out from trees in adjacent pots.

Baucis looked at him sharply. “Say, how do you like roses?” she said unexpectedly.

“Ma’am?” Corylus said. “I like them fine. Do you want a rose moved or something?”

She smiled. Her name meant “Very Modest.” “Very plain” would have accurately described her. Baucis was now about fifty. She never could have been a beauty, and her right arm, right cheek, and the right side of her forehead were covered with a net of thin white scars. Perhaps she had fallen—or been thrown—into briars.

“We’ll sit in the arbor,” she said, “instead of the office. I don’t mind work, but the work I have to do in the office is about my least favorite.”

She gestured to the left; together they walked down an alley of fruit trees on one side, wisteria on the other. Corylus heard whispering, but no sprites showed themselves.

The semicircular arbor against the fence at the edge of the property was covered with pink roses. It wasn’t part of the commercial layout. The flowers were individually small, but they bloomed in homey profusion.

Baucis sat down and pointed to the seat facing her. “Now,” she said. “Tell me what you want?”

“Well,” Corylus said. This woman put him off-balance. He was tempted to treat her as he would a man, but he was pretty sure that would be as bad a mistake as patronizing her as a woman. Almost as bad a mistake. “You read my note?”

“I recognized Cispius’ seal,” Baucis said, flicking her left hand dismissively. “My secretary read the note to me. Your dad is as much of a scholar as you’re going to find in this business, and
that’s
because he needed to read to put together guard rosters. But I said, what do you
want
?”

“You provide the crews that take care of a fellow named Melino’s gardens,” Corylus said. If he had been standing, he’d have braced to attention. “I want to be on the next crew you send over. I can do any kind of gardening labor, certainly well enough to pass, and probably better than the man I replace.”

“Let’s see your hands,” Baucis said. She leaned forward.

Corylus stretched out his arms and turned his palms upward. She took his wrists and peered closely at his hands before she released him.

“Your calluses aren’t in the right places for gardening,” she said. “But all right, you’ll do.”

“Nobody sleeps on Melino’s property and leaves it,” Corylus explained. “The guards are billeted in an apartment block a quarter mile down the road, and your people tend the garden on contract.”

He coughed before proceeding to the awkward part. “I’ll do my best not to involve you in any way,” he said. “But of course there’s a risk—”

Baucis laughed. She leaned forward, this time to pat Corylus’ knee.

“You’re Cispius’ son,” she said. “Of
course
you’ll do your best to cover a friend. But to tell the truth, I don’t much care.”

“Ma’am?” Corylus said.

“I don’t like Melino,” Baucis said, turning her palms upward. “I couldn’t tell you why—he pays on the dot
and
I’m socking him double the rate I’d charge most folks. But I don’t like him, and if I lose his business—”

She gestured to the bustling yard without taking her eyes off Corylus.

“—I won’t be begging in the street. That’s the one side.”

Corylus nodded to show that he was listening. He didn’t speak.

“The other side is this,” Baucis said. “My husband Gallus and I started this business. He was the business end and I was the plants, but we both picked up the other one’s part pretty quick. But then Gallus died.”

Corylus nodded again. He wasn’t sure what he was about to be told, but he knew better than to interrupt.

“The rest of the nurserymen here in Puteoli decided it’d be a good idea to put the widow out of business,” she continued harshly. “All but Cispius; he didn’t think that was right. He helped me some with money, but mostly it was just him standing by me when I needed it.”

She gave Corylus a lopsided smile. “Folks don’t like to go up against your old man, Corylus,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” Corylus said, his voice suddenly husky. “Smart folks don’t.”

“So you tell me what you want,” Baucis said, “and I’ll see that you get it. I’ve got a crew going out this afternoon, and you’re on it if you want to be. And don’t worry about what it might cost, because that’s been paid long since.”

She stood up; Corylus rose also. He restrained his impulse to salute her.

“Have you maybe heard about the fancy woman Melino keeps upstairs?” she asked. “I can get you into the grounds, but for the house you’re on your own.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Corylus said. “In truth, I don’t know anything about Melino. That’s why I’d like to get closer to him.”

“Well, it’s none of my business,” Baucis said indulgently. “Show up here at the seventh hour, dressed for work. It’s cultivation and watering today, nothing fancy.”

She looked at him, again appraisingly but in a different fashion. “You’re a handsome one, as I’m sure you been told. Handsomer than your father, that’s for sure. But Cispius is a man.”