Render Unto Caesar (31 page)

“No!” exclaimed Gellia, with delight. “And when you confronted him, he turned you out of the house in the middle of the night?”

“I walked out after a loud quarrel,” Hermogenes informed her ruefully. “Ai, Zeus, we both lost our tempers. But it occurs to me now that perhaps you could help me.”

“Me?” asked the landlady in surprise.

He nodded. “You see, my Roman partner says he gave the money to a friend of the emperor, but I do not know the name of that friend, except that my partner referred to him as Titus—to impress me, I suppose, that he was on such good terms with a great man. Now that I have quarreled with my partner, I want to see if this Titus knows anything about our petition or the money he is supposed to have received. I am not a Roman, though, and I don't know who among the emperor's friends might bear that name. You seem to be a knowledgeable woman of the city, and I am sure that if you do not know yourself, you know someone who would. I would give a denarius for a list of names.”

Gellia smiled widely, showing a blackened tooth. “And what then? You'll go around them all asking whether they've received any money from you?”

“No, no, no!” he told her, smiling. “Probably there are not too many of them, and I will be able to rule most of them out at once. Fortunately Titus is not so common a name as, say, Gaius. When I have narrowed it down to two or three, I can make very careful inquiries among their associates or their slaves before I contact them. Then, if my partner
has
cheated us, I can report it to Myrtilos and Firmus.”

“You're right about the name not being too common,” the woman said thoughtfully. “The only important Titus I can think of at the moment is General Statilius Taurus. Could it be him?”

“It might be,” Hermogenes replied without blinking. “He is prefect of the city, so he would have an interest in the grain supply. But I would like to be certain that there are no other possibilities before I start asking questions. I would not want to do anything that might offend such an important man.”

“I see your point. Well. Well, you want to give me that denarius? I know one or two old men who know the names of everybody who's been anybody since Julius Caesar became a god, but they'll only talk if I give them wine.” Her eyes sparkled eagerly, and he was sure that she wanted the wine for herself.

Cantabra silently picked up one of the coins she'd been stitching into her belt and handed it to the landlady. Gellia took it with pleasure and slid it swiftly into her purse.

“If you could ask them
quietly
…” Hermogenes said apologetically. “I don't want my partner to find out what I'm doing.”

“Oh, he won't!” Gellia told him happily. “Leave it with me.” She bustled out eagerly.

Hermogenes watched her go, then sighed. “I do not think my room will be cleaned this afternoon.”

“No,” agreed Cantabra. She was grinning. “She will take that money, buy a large amphora of cheap wine, and invite her friends round. By this evening she will be very drunk. But that was clever. She and her friends will know about every Titus who holds office. I knew you would think of something.”

He stretched. “I owe you seven denarii.”

“Thirteen,” she corrected him. “The seven I have given Gellia, plus three days' wages.”

“Lend me some change to pay for a bath and a barber, and I will call it twenty.”

She frowned at him. “You should not go to a barber. You've said they will be asking about you in such places. Probably you should not go out at all.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I want a bath and a shave. I didn't have a shave yesterday, and I am covered in fleabites. Even if they do ask in barbershops, and even if they ask at the
right
barbershop within the next day or so, they still will learn nothing more than that I was there. Please. Lend me the money, or I'll have to pawn the pin off my tunic.”

She scowled ferociously, but went off, fetched her pen case, and tipped out some coppers. “I have never understood it,” she muttered, handing them to him. “All this washing! Every day, baths, baths, baths! And what is
wrong
with a beard?”

She made him wait while she finished sewing her belt, then accompanied him on the expedition, carrying his letters of credit and her pen case full of the rest of her coin rolled up in his good cloak, so as not to leave them unattended in the lodging house. The nearest bathhouse was only a couple of blocks away in the Campus Martius, new and very grand. It did not admit women in the afternoons—they were supposed to come in the mornings—so Cantabra sat down in the portico outside it, the rolled-up cloak on her lap. He worried that the men coming out would think her a prostitute waiting for custom, but when he suggested that she wait at the nearest public fountain instead, she simply scowled at him. The thought of her waiting made him take his bath in a hurry—that thought, and the fact that he had to leave his clothes unguarded in the changing room. He tried to remember when he had last gone to a bathhouse without at least one slave in attendance, and decided that it might have happened a few times when he was at school, but certainly hadn't happened since. It felt very odd. It felt, in fact, like being a truant schoolboy again.

He used the latrines at the bathhouse, had a shave at one of the barbershops in the portico, and they set out back to the lodging house. Cantabra still had an air of disapproval. Highly improper in a hired attendant, he thought irritably, and wondered about the offer he had made her earlier. Would he have made it if she'd been a man?

Yes, he decided. If a male ex-gladiator had come to his rescue in the Subura, asked for a job afterward, then proven his loyalty and ability in the escape from Pollio's house, he would have offered him a permanent job and taken him back to Alexandria if he were willing to come. The fact remained, however, that Cantabra was
not
a male, and that his feelings toward her were increasingly different to what they would have been if she were. He found himself watching her out of the corner of his eye, liking the way her hips moved with each long step, liking the proud way she held her head, and the bright color of her hair. He wondered if mere proximity really was enough to make a man begin to want a woman.

He remembered the attacker curled up on the cobbles in the Subura, and remembered what she'd revealed the previous night—that men had had to tie her up or beat her senseless before they raped her; that she had been willing to starve rather than prostitute herself. He remembered the way she'd wiped off her hand after he pressed it, as though he'd dirtied it. It did not seem likely, he admitted to himself, that he would get what he was beginning to want. This being the case, was it wise or kind to invite her to Alexandria, a strange city where she knew no one and could not speak the language, and where she would inevitably discover that her employer wanted to take her to bed? She would probably see it as both a betrayal and a threat.

He would worry about her, though, if she stayed in Rome. What sort of job could she get, even with the help of Titus Crispus? If she found a place bodyguarding another rich man, she was likely to run into lust in authority sooner or later, if not from the man himself then from a subordinate of his or fellow guard. Bodyguard to a rich society lady might be a better possibility, but how would Cantabra, with her fierce, forthright manner, fit into the household of a noble Roman matron? There would probably be some disaster. He sighed.

Cantabra scowled at him. “What?”

“I am trying to think what sort of job I could get you if you decide not to come to Alexandria,” he replied honestly.

“You should think about your own future,” she advised him severely. They were almost at the lodging house, and she paused to scan the street. The sound of loud voices could be heard from nearby—from Gellia's insula, he realized. The landlady had, indeed, invited all her friends round to share his bounty.

“I know my own future,” he objected. “Either I lose, and die within the next few days—or I win, and go home, where I have a house and a daughter and a business to look after. It's your future that worries me.”

“Why should you worry about me?” she demanded, glaring at him. “I am as good as most men, better than many. I survived two years in the arena. You are not my master or my keeper: it is my job to protect
you
!” She stalked on to the alley and beat on Gellia's door.

He limped after her, feeling, once again, slighted and indignant. He glared at the barbarian, who ignored him and beat on the door again, then again. At last it opened.

“Oh, there you are!” Gellia exclaimed happily, giving them a glazed smile. “Do you want to come have some wine? I told my friends what you wanted, and we've come up with a list of names. Not very long at all, you were right!” She punched Hermogenes on the arm.

He was not ready for this news. He realized that he did not want to know the name, not yet. Once he knew the name, he would have to act, and if he'd got it wrong there would be no more hope. He did not believe that if he went to Taurus with an accusation against a friend the prefect would simply allow him to walk free again. Far more likely that the man would hand him over to Rufus. Then there would be nothing left but death in one shape or another.

He smiled insincerely. “If it truly is not a long list, perhaps you could just tell it to me now.” He was shaken, and still angry at the woman beside him: the last thing he wanted was to join the drunken gathering he could hear talking loudly at the back of the house;

“Well,” said Gellia, pulling herself up, “the only friend of the emperor anybody knows of with the first name Titus is Statilius Taurus, like I thought. There's an ex-consul called Titus Peducaeus, though, and a Titus Cornelius Messala who's a senator and a member of the Arval Brethren, and a couple of rich businessmen called Titus-something-Balbus and Titus Salvidienus—”

“The man I want is not a businessman,” Hermogenes interrupted. “Do you know anything about the second two you named—the ex-consul Peducaeus or the senator?”

“Oh, you'll have to ask the others!” Gellia exclaimed genially. “Come on, come have some wine with us.” She cackled. “You paid for it, after all!”

He glanced uneasily at Cantabra, then forced a smile and followed Gellia into the ground-floor apartment.

It was immediately apparent that this was where Gellia herself lived. It was a comfortable, well-furnished apartment, though not much cleaner than the rest of the building. He was ushered into a central dining room with a floor paved in plain tiles; there was a curtain to the right that probably concealed a sleeping cubicle, and a kitchen just visible through an open door. Gellia's friends consisted of three women and a pair of old men. One woman and one old man reclined side by side on the couch, and the others perched on stools or cushions around the room. There was a mixing bowl half full of wine in the center of the floor, and everyone had a cup.

“This is the Greek I was telling you about!” Gellia told her drinking companions cheerfully. “The one who thinks his partner cheated him, Herapilus son of somebody I can't pronounce. He's a real gentleman, and he's only here because he hired my friend Cantabra after she helped him when he was being robbed.”

The drinking party obligingly cheered for him, and the couple on the couch made space for him to lie down. Cantabra, her face expressionless, sat down on the floor by the door, the rolled-up cloak still in her lap.

It took a little while to get the drinking party to talk about Romans called Titus: they were far more interested to hear about the robbery, and eager to recount their own stories on the same subject. Eventually, however, he managed to turn the conversation and learn that Titus Peducaeus had been consul many years before (“oh, it was before the war of Actium!”) and had not been active in public affairs since. The senator Titus Cornelius Messalla, in contrast, was young, not yet thirty and still ineligible for the consulship. Nervous and unhappy, he chased up further Tituses—the two businessmen, a couple of praetors, a minor military figure, and even, in desperation, a Marcus Titius—but there was no real competition to the dark and bloodily reputed prefect of the city.

“Well, it sounds like you want General Statilius Taurus, then!” exclaimed Gellia triumphantly.

He forced a smile. “So it does. I shall begin my inquiries in the morning. Thank you.”

“Let's have another drink to celebrate!” cried Gellia.

The wine, however, was all gone. Gellia asked Cantabra to fetch more, and gave her a couple of sestertii to pay for it. One of the old men suggested that she buy some food as well. There was a collection among the guests to pay the cookshop and the wineshop, and the old man whose suggestion it had been went along to help carry things.

“A dinner party!” cried the other old man enthusiastically. “Now all we need is some music!” He gazed at Hermogenes with an expression of slightly nervous hope. “I heard once that Greeks all learn to play music when they're in school.”

Hermogenes shrugged. “I can play a little on the kithara.”

“My Sentia has a kithara,” the old man said at once, nodding at the middle-aged woman at his side. “Maybe she could fetch it.”

Sentia, a plump shapeless woman in a shapeless brown tunic, giggled, said she wasn't sure it still had all its strings, and went off to fetch it.

She arrived back at about the same time Cantabra returned with the other old man, the wine, and food consisting of a pot of lamb and bean ragout and a basket of bread. The food was dished out, the cups were filled and the party got under way.

The kithara had two broken strings, but Sentia had found spares. Hermogenes restrung the instrument and tuned it between bites of bread and ragout. When he played a scale, the Romans all fell silent, their drink-flushed faces suddenly quiet and eager. He felt his mild contempt for them dissolve: they were not the drunkards he'd been considering them, but working people, middle-aged and older, struggling to make a living in a harsh and dangerous city. They had been enjoying a rare and unexpected party, and the chance to hear some music made it a real occasion. They did not hear much music in their lives.