Pandora's Boy Page 17

  The barman seemed glad of a customer who—he assumed—was not simply using his counter as a meeting venue. Little did he know. While I discreetly observed his other customers he brought me the house wine, with a jug of water, then gave me double snacks though I was still not hungry.

  Clearly the young men were regulars who spent a lot of money there. From the evidence of empties, it looked as if the others in their group had been drinking with them before I came. Since these two had ordered nothing for a while, the barman wanted their counter space so he was frothing with annoyance, yet because they were regulars he could not complain.

  “I felt I had to say something because I am your best friend. If you feel upset, or that I went behind your back, that was the last thing I intended. I was speaking to Granius on your behalf. To be honest, I felt annoyed with him. I thought he was overstepping the mark, since he knows how much you like Ummidia.”

  “I believe she’s keen on me. Of course I want to trust him. He tells me it didn’t mean anything,” returned the one who was a stranger to me. He was short and chunky with an unhappy air. But if this was Numerius, had the slippery lad now passed on from Anicia to Ummidia?

  “Exactly,” Cluvius agreed earnestly. “Granius assumed they were just flirting. If she took it too seriously, I could go and tell her it was a mistake.”

  “I met her this morning. We had a long talk. I think it’s all good again between us.”

  Cluvius slapped the other on the back, rubbing his shoulder in further encouragement. “I am delighted to hear that. Really I am. The big man will be pleased for you too.” So this definitely wasn’t Numerius Cestinus, my quarry. Who was he then? Could it be “Trebo,” whom I had assumed was an invention?

  Whatever his name was, he remained slumped, so after a moment Cluvius began a new subject, this time concerning his own love life, which soon started to sound seedy. “I think I’ll have a pop at Sabinilla.”

  “You will quarrel with Popilius then.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “He and Sabinilla are together, Cluvius.”

  “Well, I do see that, but I am so sure she likes me. I’m sure she only hangs around with Popilius because her parents seem so set against them and won’t say why.”

  “Why do you want to break them up?” asked the unknown one, who seemed to have a better moral compass.

  “I don’t want to do that, I just want to see what can be done with Sabinilla. It’s up to her, isn’t it?”

  I drained my cup. The barman caught my eye; he knew what I was thinking.

  I left.

  *

  Sour-faced, I strode back to Apricot Street. There, Dorotheus was again about to bob up with “innocent” demands about where I had been so he could report to his master. Volumnius Firmus must be on tenterhooks about progress; I did not want to see him while I had nothing definite to say. However, a new character was waiting for me. I recognized him as belonging to Iucundus, so I jumped into conversation with him, blocking Dorotheus out.

  “Hello! You’re the runabout for my good friend Iucundus, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

  “Paris.”

  “Oh! Are you waiting for three beautiful goddesses to offer you your heart’s desire?”

  “No, I’m waiting for my uncle to die and leave me his whelk stall.”

  “Is he close to departing?”

  “No, the bastard just married a twenty-year-old and he’s thriving on it.”

  Paris spoke bitterly, though at the same time showed acceptance of his fate. Iucundus must have infected him with easy good humor; it’s a tenacious disease if you have daily exposure.

  I asked what he wanted. As I hoped, he said if I was up for it, Iucundus and I could venture tonight to Fabulo’s.

  “Has he secured a table?”

  “No, he’s going on spec. It’s what he always does. Don’t worry, he’ll get in.”

  I sent back an acceptance message, adding that if possible could we take my husband? I knew it would thrill Iucundus to meet the man who had been struck by lightning. I explained about Tiberius temporarily working at the lettuce booth in a horrid disguise, another story Iucundus would love. Paris obligingly said he would pop to the booth in order to take the necessary details for fetching proper attire from Dromo. I asked him to collect a few things for me too. As obliging as his master, he didn’t seem to mind.

  I dodged Dorotheus and went up to my room. I had hardly been there long enough to throw off my sandals when the runabout returned. He banged on my door urgently.

  “Come quick! Your husband says he and the Egyptian have captured the lad you are looking for.”

  “Captured?”

  Paris grinned. “Something has been damaged. I won’t spoil the surprise, Flavia Albia. Come and see for yourself.”

  I put on different shoes to ease my feet, then I ran downstairs and along to the booth.

  Horrors! Desperate injury had been wreaked upon the Mountain Man. A group of social misfits had spent too long making merry at lunch. It sounded like the ones who had been with Cluvius and his companion, so presumably Numerius, Popilius and Granius, maybe even Vincentius. These feckless lads had gone roaming, intent on trouble. The resulting prank could have been any idea that struck them as they wove unsteadily along the fruit-named streets, but the target that caught their bleary eyes was Min.

  The result was inevitable. His huge appendage cried out for an outrage. They dared one another from a distance, then they mobbed him. The stone god’s manhood had been broken off.

  Alas, poor Min! He was no longer a symbol of virility.

  XXX

  Dedu was sitting on Numerius. Dedu might eat a lot of salad leaves, but he added substantial amounts of meat and eggs. Though squashed, Numerius Cestinus was still complaining—though not volubly; he had no breath.

  Furious, Tiberius Manlius jabbed a forefinger at his visible limbs. “You stay there! You will be kept in custody until your scummy friends bring back the bollocks.” He turned to me. “I mean that literally. The other little shits in their mindless pack ran off with Min’s salami.”

  These were strong words from him. I saw Tiberius had a black eye. A new rent had appeared in the ghastly brown tunic, so the mindless ones had not escaped without a fight. I wished I had witnessed this new side of him.

  Dedu was in tears. “They ruined him! They have destroyed Min!”

  I placated him gently. “Tiberius is right. Just get the piece back. Then, trust me, Dedu, if you see my father at the Saepta Julia, Falco will tell you a man who can fix it back so nobody will know. It won’t be the first time his statue repairer has reaffixed a plonker. He says it’s not so easy as noses, but doable for a specialist.”

  Dedu calmed down. So did Tiberius. From his expression, he was wondering how I came to be discussing male bits with Pa’s dodgy stone-restorer. To a new husband, this might be worrying.

  I crouched so I could speak to Numerius, or what I could see of him under Dedu. “Listen! Your father, with or without the fathers of your friends, will have to pay for the repair. It won’t come cheap. The lettuce man will be compensated in full too. His battered assistant will receive a new tunic, that goes without saying, but his black eye is more serious.”

  “He shouldn’t have tackled us! He threw more punches than we did!” That certainly was a new aspect of Tiberius. Had I married a bruiser? “Oh, we’ll pay for him being hit,” scoffed the prisoner. “But you’d better let me up and let me go right now.”

  “Yes, let him up,” said Tiberius, fully the magistrate, though the young man had not yet noticed. “Don’t let go, though.” Dedu jumped off. Given his size, he was surprisingly sprightly. Greens must give you go. His method of letting Numerius rise was to grab him by the tunic neck and backside, swinging him upright roughly like a sack of onions.

  “You will regret this!” Numerius blustered, trying to break free. He had damage to both tunic and dignity. “It was just a harmless bit of fun.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t think so!” growled Tiberius, rubbing his sore eye.

  “He is right,” I told the youth in a pleasant tone. “You can pay, you will pay for the damage to Min the Mountain Man, but attacking Manlius Faustus is different. No weary parent wielding moneybags for the umpteenth time can rescue you from this, my lad. Faustus is an aedile. His person is sacrosanct. You and your frivolous, fun-loving friends have defiled the inviolable.”

  Too many polysyllables were troubling to the tipsy. Still drunk, yet not too drunk to absorb my words, Numerius Cestinus let out a groan. “What’s the fine?”

  “There is no fine,” declaimed Tiberius. “Whoever hit me dishonored the goddess Ceres. The penalty for that is death.”

  “It was Granius,” admitted Numerius immediately.

  *

  I guessed Granius would blame Numerius or Popilius, while Popilius might finger Vincentius, or even their mythical pal, “Trebo,” whose name I thought the girls had made up. “Trebo” could be the young man I had seen today; oddly unhappy and decent, he might easily end up copping the blame.

  Normally, Tiberius made nothing of the fact that during his twelve months in office his person was so sacred he was not even given a bodyguard. But once he decided to play on it, he let rip. We held a passionate discussion about whether to call in the vigiles, the Urban Cohorts or even the Praetorians. For all his bombast, Numerius started to look yellow.

  The upshot was that I obtained my interview. We said Numerius had to remain our prisoner while the parents of all the boys who took part in the stupid escapade were informed. Once financial reparations had been made, and the missing part of Min returned, a decision on the sacrilege would be taken at the appropriate level.

  The booth was closed. Dedu said, without Min, he could not bear to operate. Min without Min’s manhood to masturbate had no powers as an advertisement. Who would buy aphrodisiac lettuce from a neutralized god?

  Tiberius sat down to help Dedu work out the maximum claim for loss of earnings. Numerius had a bucket of water thrown over him to sober him up. While he remained a hostage, I would interrogate him.

  “Albia will question you, then we shall lock you in the lettuce booth. One thing before you start!” commanded my husband. He had a lovely sense of humor. “Numerius Cestinus, I want to hear you formally apologize to Min!”

  XXXI

  Well, that was fun.

  After his apology, I propped Numerius up against the shuttered booth. Though wobbly on his feet, he leaned there with the lordly attitude all his friends had. Close to, I saw no physical resemblance to his father, the Stoic historian, though there was some facial kinship with his mother. His attitude I recognized: the assured belief in himself and his rights, including the rights to be drunk in the afternoon, to destroy property, to have a lark regardless of others. He and his friends were Quirinal kings—according to them.

  Even making allowances for his drenched hair, this one was not handsome. He had a square face with a hanging jaw, indeterminate eyes, no laughter lines, hints of weak character. His eyes were pale and wet-looking. His physique was gymnasium-trained, though his feet turned in. At the moment he was balanced on one while trying to scratch his calf with the other—which no drunk should attempt.

  When he stopped doing that, he smoothed his wet hair with practiced fingers, anxious to restyle himself.

  “I was expecting a finer specimen!” I scoffed frankly. “Is this the hunk that young girls want to influence with love-potions? The hot stud who can lure a vision like Anicia away from Vincentius?” Like all those girls, Anicia ladled on beauty products until she passed for heart-stopping, though she might be a pug-nosed turnip underneath if you gave her a good wash. I sound like my grandmother. “Or thinks he can lure her,” I sneered, trying to rile him. “I’ve met Vincentius. He could model naked for a Greek sculptor.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  Why do so many suspects say that? And why wait until it became so obvious that he did have to talk?

  “Reconsider, Numerius! You have jumped in a deep, deep pile of donkey dung. Cooperation is your only hope to extricate your sorry self.”

  “You have no authority over me.”

  “We shall see.”

  “You say that bastard is an aedile. He doesn’t look like one.”

  “Not at the moment,” I agreed brightly. “But Manlius Faustus is arranging to have his robes brought so he can pronounce your sentence. Darling,” I called out, “I hope you have remembered you will need your curule stool!”

  “Never mind the bloody stool!” He hated that piece of furniture. Even without his uncomfortable accessory, he knew how to act the classic magistrate and he secretly enjoyed it: “I can sentence that stupid slob hanging upside down from a coat-peg if I have to.”

  Tiberius was rehearsing Paris, the runabout, in what items to fetch from our house. He could have written a list, but Dromo would have had to have it read out to him and Paris could not read either. There was no need to tell Numerius that the aedile only wanted his smart duds for going out to dinner.

  “Numerius Cestinus,” I began sternly, “I suggest you talk nicely to me before the full-dress turnout is brought. Once formal penalties are issued, you’re finished. Let’s start. Tell me the story of your relationship with Clodia Volumnia.”

  “There was no relationship.”

  “Wrong answer.”

  “Anyway, it had ended.”

  “That’s a touching love story! How did it begin, then? I want you to tell me about her. Talk about yourself too, if you must.”

  Talking about himself appealed. “Her brother was my best friend. He and I were close for years. We had no secrets. We always did everything together.”

  “Until he went to the army? When was that?”

  “I suppose about a year ago.”

  “Did he want to go?”

  Numerius shrugged. “If that is arranged for you, it’s not the sort of thing you have any choice in.”

  “If you are so close, why didn’t you go with him?”

  “My parents do not believe in war.” Surprise!

  “So, what is in store for you?”

  “My uncle collects taxes in one of the provinces. I was intended to go to him, but I don’t fancy that so I shall just live off our estates, I suppose.”

  “Always good to have a plan! Right. Publius Volumnius went away solo to impose himself on North Africa. Is he doing well? Does he write to you?”

  “Not really.”

  “I thought you were best friends.”

  “Writing letters is not exactly a pressing occupation. None of us do that.”

  “Surely you all have slaves who can spell the hard words!” I commented sarcastically. He was so dumb he did not even understand my jibe.

  I steered the questions back to Clodia. What was she like? Answering easily enough, Numerius gave a portrait of a girl in her teens who was beginning to grow up. Only beginning, though he did not stress that. As she developed, she wanted to join in with her brother. According to my witness, she was entranced by the older group of friends. She clamored to know their doings. She listened round-eyed to everything her brother told her. Eventually she persuaded Publius to start taking her along.

  “No doubt you all found it agreeable to have an acolyte admiring your moves! But I have been told Clodia and Publius tended to scrap.”

  “Everyone quarrels,” Numerius said. In his clique this was true even if, to me, the ructions sounded manufactured: pointless shifts in relationships that simply gave the inane ones something to chew over. Empty spats in their mindless script.

  He tried again, apparently keen to appease me. “I expect Auctus did feel irritated sometimes. She was quite a bit younger. What we talked about or did was not always suitable. Anyway, we had a long chat and Publius told me he fretted to be independent sometimes.”

  “Little sister was too clingy?”

  Numerius missed the point, merely telling me she was lively and
sweet.

  “Adorable?” I asked.

  He paused. At last he had caught up.

  “She fell for you.” I made it a statement, not a question. “So what were you doing about it, Numerius? Did you lead her on?”

  For once he was almost serious. “That would have been unkind.”

  “Indeed. So, faced with a love-struck innocent, what was your compassion level?”

  “I don’t know … I hope I had some.” His Stoical parents would be glad to hear that.

  “Yet you did a flit, even after marriage had been under discussion—while people tell me Clodia desperately desired you.”

  “People did not really know what happened.” Numerius looked trapped, though I was unclear why. “It wasn’t unsuitable,” he grumbled. “I was her brother’s best friend.”

  “Some friend, if you broke his sister’s heart.”

  “I never did that.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure,” Numerius declared. It sounded good. He might have meant it. “Look, the whole thing with me and Clodia was a passing idea but it had absolutely finished. Her brother had been away for a year and her father was dead set against me for some reason.”

  “I can think of several reasons. His daughter wasn’t ready, your own father is a political liability, and as for you—maybe Firmus could see you have the staying power of a swatted gnat. You had your beady eyes on Anicia; don’t deny it, your mother told me. Well, then, what was Clodia’s reaction to that?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I tutted at him, so he tried again. “She dug her heels in—but that was only because digging in her heels was what little Clodia did best. She liked a tantrum. She would carry on long after something had happened.”