A Dying Light in Corduba Page 21

  'I saw them in passing the other night. Nice lads!'

  Optatus grinned. 'I've also heard that the minute Maximus leaves for Gades, Spunky, Dotty and Ferret will be defying their parents and holding open house again!'

  Every parent's nightmare. Once I would have been delighted. Now I found myself wondering whether poor Annaeus Maximus could somehow be warned to take his cellar keys to Gades. I knew why I felt so dispirited: one day there would be out-of-control young persons throwing up in my own Attic vase collection. One day it would be my polished sandalwood table that some little drunken idiot decided to dance upon while wearing her sharpest-heeled shoes.

  Then as I glanced at Helena (who was regarding me rather quizzically) I felt able to view coming events at the Annaeus house with greater complacency: after all, my own children would be brought up well. With model parents, they would love us and be loyal. They would heed our prohibitions and follow our advice. My children would be different.

  XXXIV

  This job was taking longer than I wanted - like most of my work. At least it was civilised. I was more accustomed to being compelled to get drunk during long waits in seedy wine bars, and joining in the occasional fight with a bunch of roughs in the kind of location you don't let your mother know about.

  Next day it was back to Corduba, determined this time to force a meeting with Cyzacus, the bargee I had seen being dined out by Quinctius Attractus back in Rome. Helena Justina came with me. She pretended my constant trips had made her suspect I was keeping a light woman somewhere, but it turned out that when we had driven in together on the Parilia Helena had discovered a manufacturer of purple dye, the expensive juice extracted from murex shells that is used for top-rank uniforms. While I had been chatting to the proconsul she had ordered a quantity of cloth. Now she said she wanted my company - though it was also a chance to pick up her bargain.

  'Sweetheart, I hate to be pedantic but nobody in either of our families is an army commander, let alone a candidate for emperor!' I wondered if she was making wild plans for our baby. Political ambition in Helena was a terrifying prospect. Helena Justina was the kind of girl whose wild plans came into effect.

  'Bought here, the stuff is so reasonable, Marcus. And I know just who wants it!' I would never match her in deviousness: Helena intended to offer the purple material at cost to the Emperor's mistress when we went home. She reckoned that if all the stories of frugality (otherwise called meanness) in Vespasian's household were true, the lady Caenis would leap at this chance to kit out Vespasian, Titus Caesar, and the sprog Domitian in really cheap imperial uniforms. In return, there might be a chance that Vespasian's darling, strongly encouraged by my darling, would put in a good word for me to him. 'It's more likely to work than smarming around your friend Laeta,' Helena sneered.

  She was probably right. The wheels of empire turn on barter. After all, that was why I was spending the end of April flogging around Corduba.

  I had managed to persuade Helena to meet the midwife I had interviewed. She screwed out of me what had happened during my own introduction. 'So that's what upset you!' she muttered darkly, grabbing my hand in a rather fierce manner. She must have noticed I came back from town the day before yesterday in a bad mood. Her promise to have a look at the woman herself lacked conviction, I thought.

  I was now very familiar with the sluggish River Baetis, its sudden petering out at the sixteen-arch bridge, and the lazy wheeling of marsh birds above the wooden wharf with its collection of rough and ready sheds. At last there were signs of activity, though the riverside was not exactly heaving with life.

  Marmarides parked our carriage in a tree-shaded area where stakes had been set up for tethering wagons and mules. It was a beautiful morning. We all walked slowly to the water's edge. Nux trotted happily alongside, thinking she was in charge of the party. We passed a large character who was crouching down talking quietly to a clutch of choice African fowl as he put together a new hen-house. Far out, a man was crouched in a small raft with a fishing line, with the air of having found a good excuse to sleep in the sun.

  A barge which had been motionless at the wharf for three days to my knowledge now had its covers off; looking down into it we could see rows of the distinctive globular amphorae in which oil was transported long distances. They were packed several deep, each balanced between the necks of the previous layer, with reeds stuffed among them to prevent movement. The weight must have been enormous, and the sturdy barge had sagged low in the water.

  Cyzacus' office - a shed with a stool set outside it - was open today. Not much else had improved.

  Presumably once harvest time started in September the action here would be hectic. In spring, nothing much happened for days on end, unless a convoy of copper, gold or silver happened to come down from the mines in the Mariana mountains. Left in charge during this dead period was a run-down, rasping runt with one leg shorter than the other and a wine jug clamped under his arm. Nux barked at him once loudly, then when he turned and stared at her she lost interest and confined herself to blinking at clouds of midges.

  'Cyzacus here?'

  'No chance, legate!'

  'When's he due?'

  'You tell me.'

  'Does he ever show his face?'

  'Hardly ever.'

  'Who runs the business?'

  'I reckon it runs itself.'

  He was well trained. Most useless lags who pretend to be watchmen feel compelled to tell you at length how pitiful the management is and how draconian are their own employment terms. Life was one long holiday for this reprobate, and he didn't intend to complain.

  'When was the last time you saw Cyzacus down on the wharf?'

  'Couldn't tell you, legate.'

  'So if I wanted to ask someone to arrange to ship a large load down to Hispalis, say, I wouldn't ask for him?'

  'You could ask. It wouldn't do you any good.'

  I could tell Helena was losing her temper. Marmarides, who nursed the fond idea that what he called agenting was tough work with interesting highlights, was beginning to look openly bored. Being an informer is hard enough, without subordinates who expect thrills and quaking suspects.

  'Who runs the business?' I repeated.

  The lag sucked his teeth. 'Well, not Cyzacus. Cyzacus has pretty well retired nowadays. Cyzacus is more what you'd call a figurehead.'

  'Somebody must sign the invoices. Does Cyzacus have a son?' I demanded, thinking of all the other men involved in the conspiracy.

  The man with the wine jug burst out laughing, then felt the need to take a hefty swig. He was already obstinate and awkward. Soon he would be obstinate, awkward, and drunk.

  When he stopped chortling he told me the story: Cyzacus and his son had fallen out. I should have known, really. I fell out with my own father, after all. This son had run away from home - the only oddity was what he had run off to do: Spain produced the Empire's best gladiators. In most towns boys dream of upsetting their parents by fighting in the arena, but maybe in Spain that's the sensible career that they rebel against. At any rate, when Cyzacus junior had his blazing row with Papa aud left home for ever with just a clean tunic and his mother's hoarded housekeeping, he ran off to be a poet.

  'Well, Hispania has produced a lot of poets,' said Helena quietly.

  'It's just a different way of messing me about,' I snarled at the watchman. 'Now look here, you great poppy: I don't want a tragic ode, I want the man in charge.'

  He knew the game was up. 'Fair enough. No hard feelings -' My feelings should have been obvious. Then he told me that when Cyzacus senior was disappointed by his boy's flight to literature, he adopted someone more suitable: someone who had been a gladiator, so he had nothing to prove. 'Now he has Gorax.'

  'Then I'll speak to Gorax.'

  'Ooh, I don't advise it, legate!'

  I asked what the problem was and he pointed towards the large man we had seem earlier engaged in building a hen-house: Gorax had no time for visitors because of his chickens.


  Helena Justina gave up on my investigation and said she would go into town for her purple cloth. Marmarides escorted her back to the carriage, reluctantly because he knew the name Gorax: Gorax had once been famous even as far as Malaca, though now he was retired.

  Never one to shrink from challenges, I said chickens or no chickens, he would have to speak to me.

  I approached quietly, already having second thoughts. He was covered in scars. What he lacked in height he made up in width and bodyweight. His movements were gentle and he showed no wariness of strangers: if any stranger looked at him the wrong way Gorax could just wrap him around a tree. Gorax must have been a gladiator who had known what he was doing. That was why, after twenty bouts in the arena, he was still alive.

  I could see the big fellow was really enjoying himself, building his chickens a house. I had been told by the watchman that Gorax had a girlfriend who lived downstream near Hispalis; she had given him the poultry, to provide a safe hobby while he was away from her. It seemed to have worked; he was clearly entranced by the birds. The great soft-hearted lunk looked completely absorbed by his pretty cockerel and three hens as they pecked up maize.

  They were finer than common barnyard poultry, special guineafowl so delicate they begged to be fussily hand- reared. Neat, dark-feathered birds, with bare heads and bony helmet crests, all speckled like fritillaries.

  As I tentatively approached him, he stood up to stare at me. He might have been willing to allow a polite interruption, especially if I admired his pets. But that was before he glanced around his little flock and noticed that only two of the precious hens were here. The third had wandered off along the wharf towards the tethered barge - where she was about to be spotted by Nux.

  XXXV

  The dog let out quite a tentative yip when she first noticed the hen. For a single drumbeat, Nux pondered in an amiable fashion whether to make friends with the bird. Then the hen saw Nux and fluttered up on to a bollard with a frantic cluck. Delighted, Nux sprang into the chase.

  As the dog began to rush towards the little hen, the huge gladiator dropped the hammer with which he had been nailing up a perch. He pounded off to save his pet, holding another bird under his arm. I sprinted after him. He naturally had the turn of speed a fighter needs to surprise an unwary opponent with a death-thrust. Oblivious, Nux sat down on her tail and had a meditative scratch.

  Marmarides had been lurking by the carriage, unwilling to leave with Helena while I was talking to the famous Gorax. He saw the fun start. I glimpsed his slight figure running our way. Three of us were converging on the dog and the hen - though it was doubtful whether any of us would reach them in time.

  Then the stunted watchman, still clutching his wine, began dancing about on the wharf. Nux thought it was a game; she remembered the hen and decided to fetch it for him. Marmarides whooped. I gulped. Gorax shrieked. The hen squawked hysterically. So did the other one, squashed against the mighty chest of Gorax. Nux barked again ecstatically and jumped at the hen on the bollard.

  Flapping its wings (and losing feathers) the endangered fowl flew off the bollard, and scooted along the wharf just ahead of Nux's eager nose. Then the stupid thing took off and flapped down into the barge. Gorax rushed at Nux. She had been up on the edge of the planking having a bark at the hen but with a heavyweight bearing down on her, yelling obvious murder, the dog leapt straight after the hen.

  The hen tried to flutter up off the barge again but was terrified of the watchman peering down and calling obscene endearments. Nux floundered amongst the necks of the amphorae, paws flailing.

  I jumped off the quayside on to the barge. It was basic - no features to grab. I had no time to judge my footing, so one end of the boat swung out suddenly into the stream as I landed. Gorax, who had been about to step aboard himself, slipped on the thwart as the tethered end bumped the quay unexpectedly; he crashed to the deck with one leg overboard. Landing on his chest, he crushed the hen he had been carrying. From his expression, he knew he had killed it. I teetered wildly, trying hard to keep my balance since I could not swim.

  Marmarides skidded up the quay and chose a target. He gave the watchman a shove, so the befuddled fool tipped straight into the river. He started screaming, then gurgling. Marmarides had a change of heart and plunged in after him.

  Gorax had let out a whine as he cradled the dead bird, but he dropped it as Nux scrabbled closer to the one that was still flapping. Gorax went for the dog, so I aimed at the fowl. We collided, lost our footing on the amphorae, and caused a nasty crack of pottery underfoot. The ex-gladiator had gone through one and was ankle-deep in broken pot. As he struggled to extricate his leg the container broke again, so he was up to his knee, with oil sloshing everywhere. To regain his balance he grabbed at me.

  'Ooh, be gentle!'

  Unlikely! I had a swift glimpse of his gullet as he let out a wild cry. Even his tonsils were terrifying. I thought he was going to bite off my nose, but just then a refined voice cut through the racket saying, 'Leave it out, Gorax! You're frightening the fish away!'

  Gorax, all obedience, dragged his leg out of the smashed amphora, trailing blood and golden oil. Then he sat down on the edge of the barge and held the dead fowl on his massive knee, while tears streamed down his face.

  'Thanks!' I said quietly to the newcomer. I grabbed Nux with one hand, and made my way carefully to the river side of the barge, where a thin man who was propelling a raft with a pole had stuck his head above the deckline to see what was going on. I crouched and offered a handshake. 'The name's Falco.'

  'Cyzacus,' he said.

  I managed to keep my temper. 'You're not the man I was introduced to by that name in Rome!'

  'You must mean Father.'

  'Apollo! You're the poet?'

  'I am!' he responded, rather tetchily.

  'Sorry; I thought you had left home.'

  'I did,' said Cyzacus junior, punting his raft around to the wharfside with some competence.

  'You wield a mean oar, for a man of literature.' Clamping the dog under my arm, I had regained the wharf. After Cyzacus tied up his raft I reached down and helped him spring up on to the jetty.

  He had a slight body and a few whiffs of hair, amongst which was actually a stylus shoved behind his ear. Maybe the fishing was a cover for writing a ten-volume magisterial epic to glorify Rome. (Or maybe like my Uncle Fabius he was the crazy type who liked to note down descriptions of every fish he caught - date, weight, colouring, time of day, weather, and bait used on the hook ...) He did look like a poet, saturnine and vague, probably with no sense about money and hopeless with women. He was about forty - about the same as his adopted brother Gorax. There appeared to be no animosity between them, for Cyzacus went to console the big hulk, who eventually shrugged, tossed the dead hen into the river, and came back on to the wharf cooing over the live one fondly while it tried to fly away. He had simple emotions and a short attention span; perfect in the arena, and probably just as useful sorting out wholesalers who wanted to hire space on the barge.

  'He organises the loads,' Cyzacus told me. 'I keep the records.'

  'Of course, a poet can write!'

  'There's no need for cheek.'

  'I'm just fascinated. You went to Rome?'

  'And I came back,' he said shortly. 'I failed to find a patron. Nobody came to my public readings; my scrolls failed to sell.' He spoke with much bitterness. It had never entered his head that wanting to be famous for writing was not enough. Maybe he was a bad poet.

  I wasn't going to be the man who pointed this out, not with Gorax standing beside him looking immensely proud of his creative business partner. An ex-gladiator's brother is entitled to respect. The two were about the same height, though the big one filled about three times the space of the other. They looked totally different, but I already sensed there were closer bonds between them than between most real brothers who have grown up squabbling.

  'Never mind,' I said. 'The world has far too many tragedies and a
lmost enough satires. And at least while you're dreaming on a raft on the River Baetis you'll be spared too many crass interruptions to your thoughts.' The failed poet suspected I was ragging him, so I went on quickly, 'I was just explaining to Gorax when the fracas blew up, your father and I met at a very pleasant dinner in Rome.'

  'Father does the trips abroad,' Cyzacus junior confirmed. 'What was it? Making contacts?'

  Cyzacus and Gorax exchanged looks. One thought himself intellectual and one was a beaten-up punchbag - but neither was dumb.

  'You're the man from Rome!' Cyzacus told me in a sour voice.

  Gorax snarled. 'We were expecting you.'

  'I should hope you were. I've been here three times!' I bluffed it out. The office has been closed.'