Venus In Copper Part 6

Chapter XIII.

I spent the rest of that evening turning my betting tags into cash. I found Cossus, clinched the deal, and received my key. I had a few drinks with the agent--business courtesy--then a few more later with my best friend Petronius Longus (in fact a few more than we meant to have, but we revelled in having something proper to celebrate). I ended up feeling far too happy to dupe the spies at Fountain Court so I stumbled to the new apartment, crashed inside, stretched out on the floor and sang myself to sleep.

Someone banged on the door and I heard a voice demanding whether everything was all right. Nice to know my new neighbours were such concerned types.I woke early. The best-laid floorboards tend to have that effect.

Feeling pleased with life despite my headache, I went out to hunt for a snack. All-night cookshops in the Piscina Publica seemed a rarity, which could prove an inconvenience for my erratic way of life. But eventually I found a bar full of bad-tempered flies where a bleary-eyed waiter served me a slab of ancient bread with a pickled cuc.u.mber in it and told me I had to take it off the premises to eat.

It was too early for watching Severina's house. Even so, that rapacious little lady was firmly in mind. Clients have the unreasonable habit of expecting rapid progress, so I would soon need to report.

My feet took me east. They brought me up below the Esquiline, in the old part of town which people still call the Subura, though it had been variously ret.i.tled after Augustus enlarged the city and redrew the administrative sectors. Some folks grumble that was when Rome lost all its character; still, I dare say while Romulus was ploughing up the first boundary furrow there were hidebound old peasants standing about the Seven Hills and muttering into their frowsty beards that life would never be worth living in this wolf-man's newfangled settlement...

The Subura still kept its republican character. Much of it had been wiped out under Nero in the Great Fire. He had grabbed a large swathe of the blackened ground for his Golden House and its enormous parks and pleasure grounds. He then ordered Rome to be rebuilt on a cla.s.sic grid pattern, with really strict fire regulations. (Even Nero had recognised that the Golden House was big enough for a petty prince, so there was no need to plan on any more Imperial land clearance.) In fact many streets had been rebuilt ignoring his proclamations, higgledy-piggledy on top of the old ones. I liked it. The Empire has far too many pious four-square towns all looking exactly the same.

This area had once been the most sordid in the city. There were plenty of rivals for that honour now. The Subura seemed like an elderly wh.o.r.e; it still had a tawdry reputation, though it was past living up to it. Yet you could still be robbed. Like everywhere else, the footpads in these tense one-man lanes were far from slack. They were set in their ways: an arm round the throat, a dagger in the ribs, lifting your purse and finger-rings, then kneeing you facedown in the mud while they hopped it.

I kept my wits about me. I knew the Subura, but not well enough to recognise the faces and not well enough for its villains to steer clear of me.

Coming this way was deliberate: to dig deeper into Severina's past. The Praetor's clerk Lusius had mentioned that her first husband, the bead-threader Moscus, used to own a shop which still existed somewhere here. I started looking for jewellers. They usually know where their rivals hang out. Sure enough, on the third try I was given directions and reached the right booth just as it was opening.

The new inc.u.mbent was probably another ex-slave from the Severus Moscus household, now free and self-employed. He sold every kind of gemstone work, from intaglios, where he cut into the jewel's surface, to cameos, where the design stood proud. He used all the semi-precious stones, but agates in particular--pale blues laced with milky striations; stone whites which blossomed with green or red ochre threads like lichen; translucent-streaked charcoals; handsome mixtures of matt buff and bronze. He was already at his bench, sorting tiny gold s.p.a.cing beads. Apparently he did all the work himself.

'h.e.l.lo!' I cried. 'Is this where Severus Moscus lives? I've been told to look him up; my mother knew his mother -'

He gave me a thoughtful glance. 'Would that have been in Tusculum?' He had a curiously high-pitched voice for one whose manner was so completely confident.

Thinking it might be a trap I shrugged offhandedly. 'Could be. My ma has lived all over the place. She did tell me; I didn't bother to listen, I confess -'

'Moscus is dead.'

'No!' I whistled. 'I've had a wasted journey then. Look--my old biddy's bound to ask; can you tell me how it happened?' He leaned on the counter and told me the tale about the heart attack in the hot amphitheatre. 'That's bad luck. Was he very old?'

'Sixties.'

'No age!' No response. 'Did he have any family? Ma would want me to pay her condolences -'

I thought the man's face closed. 'No,' he said. That was odd; also inaccurate.

'What about you?' I pressed him cheerfully, like a cra.s.s stranger. 'You've got his business--were you involved with him?'

'I worked with him. He gave me a good apprenticeship; I ran the business when he started feeling his years, then I took over after he pa.s.sed away.'

I admired his stuff. There was everything from strings of cheap coral to fabulous sardonyx pendants half the size of my fist. 'Beautiful! I know a lady who would happily accept anything I took her from your stock...' Not that I intended to, with a houseful of furniture to buy. Helena possessed enough jewellery. Most of it was better than I could afford; no point trying to compete. 'Look, don't get me wrong, but I'm sure my mother told me Moscus had a wife.'

'She remarried.' He sounded brief, although not particularly grim. 'I rent the shop from her. Anything else you want to know about Moscus, sonny? The position of his birthmarks, or the size of his feet?'

At his increasingly aggressive tone I backed off with a look of shamefaced innocence. 'Jupiter; I didn't mean to pry--my ma never has enough to do; she'll expect to hear a proper tale.'

'That's it. You've heard it,' stated the cameo-cutter tersely.

'Right! Thanks!' I risked a final impertinence: 'Don't you find it a bit galling to have kept the business afloat for old Moscus yet end up still a tenant, while his widow gaily flits off with somebody new?'

'No.' The lapidary gave me a level stare. He was daring me to put it even more plainly--though giving notice that he would cut up rough if I did. 'Why should I?' he continued in his squeaky voice, apparently unperturbed by my badgering. 'She charges a fair rent; she has a decent business sense. Moscus is dead. It's up to the girl what she does with her life.'

If I wanted scandal, I stood no chance here. I grinned foolishly, and ambled off.

Back to watching the gold-digger's house in Abacus Street. The diary took its usual course. Breakfast. Hot weather. Wine delivery. Dog chasing a cat. Gold-digger to bathhouse...

This was reaching the point where I could describe Severina's day before she yawned and decided her plans. It was easy work, though so unproductive it made me depressed. Then, just when I was wondering how to initiate some action I acquired several new pieces of information in rapid succession.

The chair emerged just after lunch. I followed for five streets and watched it carried down an entry through a pottery shop. I stayed in the outer street. After over an hour, doubt set in. I walked through the shop, expecting to see Severina's chair waiting at the far end of the dark pa.s.sageway.

The chair had vanished. While I was outside like a fool, being buffeted by piemen's trays and having mules stamp on my feet, the gold-digger had been carried indoors--then probably out afterwards through the garden gate. Clever work, Falco!

I walked up to the house. The ground-floor apartment was pretty un.o.btrusive. No windows; no potted creepers; no kittens on the step; just a dark painted door with a secretive grille. Beside it a small ceramic tile had been fixed to the wall. The plaque was midnight blue, with black lettering and a decorative border of tiny gold stars. It bore a single name in Greek script: ************

* TUXH *

I knew what sort of place this was. I knew just what sort of mad, withered hag this Tyche must be. I braced myself. Then I raised my fist, and banged firmly on the door.

'Any chance of an appointment?'

'Do you want to see her now?'

'If there's n.o.body else with her -'

'It should be all right. Her last visitor left some time ago...'

I swallowed. Then in I went, for an immediate appointment with a female astrologer.

Chapter XIV.

I dread these places.

I prepared myself for a filthy Babylonian, muttering gibberish. To my relief, the smoky caboose for predictions must be elsewhere in the house; the neat slaveboy led me instead to a disturbingly handsome reception room. It had a gleaming black and white mosaic floor. The walls were painted black above a simply patterned dado; their panels were divided by stylised candelabra and featured tiny gold medallions--scallop sh.e.l.ls and flower sprays. There were two long-backed chairs such as women use, either side of a low white marble table that must have weighed half a ton. Positioned on the table (rather obviously, I thought) were an astrolabe at one end and at the other an open scroll of planetary records. Opposite the door stood a set of shelves holding a score of very old Greek vases which an auctioneer I knew would have drooled over--all perfect, all a substantial size, all in the ancient geometric style whose repet.i.tive rows of whorls, circles and stylised antelopes must be the specialised choice of a collector with cool taste.

The antiques impressed me more than the atmosphere. Apart from a lingering scent of women's perfume, as though the room had been recently vacated, there were no wafts of incense or drugs to lull the unwary visitor. No tinkling bells. No subtle intoxicating music. No deformed dwarves leaping out of hidden cabinets...

'Welcome. How can I help you?' The woman who had slipped in through the door curtain was perfectly clean, calm, and possessed a pleasant, cultured voice. She spoke her Latin with a better accent than me.

She looked about sixty. Her straight dark gown hung from two small silver niello shoulder-brooches, so her arms were bare, though hidden in spare folds of the material. Her hair was rather thin, mostly black yet with broad silver streaks. Her face lacked professional mystique, except for severely hooded eyes. The eyes were no special colour. It was the face of any businesswoman in the male world of Rome: accommodating, yet with an underlying stubborn strength and a trace, faint as snail tracks, of personal bitterness.

'You the astrologer?'

Her mouth was tight, as if she disapproved of me. 'I am Tyche.'

'Greek for Fortune--very nice!'

'That sounds insulting.'

'I have several less nice names for people who pointlessly raise the hopes of those in despair.'

'Then I must remember,' Tyche commented, 'not to raise yours!'

I was expecting to find myself the subject of some shrewd scrutiny. So I stared back openly. 'I can see you are not a customer,' she commented, though I had said nothing. Of course pretending to read minds would be part of her trade apparatus.

'The name's Falco -'

'I have no need to know your name.'

'Spare me the patter. Enigmatic piffle makes me grind my teeth.'

'Oh I see!' Her face relaxed into ruefulness. 'The regime here disappoints you. You wanted to be frightened to death. You expected a cackling harridan casting dried entrails backwards into a bright green fire?--I stopped doing spells. The smoke ruins the decor... You had better tell me when you were born.'

'Why?'

'Everyone who comes on other business expects a free prophecy.'

'I don't! March, if you must know.'

'Pisces or Aries?'

'Never quite sure. "On the cusp".'

'You would be!'

'I was right; you do disapprove of me,' I growled.

'Don't most people? Your eyes have witnessed too much you may not speak of among friends.'

'My feet have tramped too many uneven pavements on the trail of too many grasping girls who are conniving at death! Her name is Severina, by the way.'

'I know that,' said Tyche quietly.

'Oh?'

'Severina was a customer,' the astrologer explained, with mild reproof. 'I needed her name and address to send my bill.'

That did surprise me. 'What happened to crossing the palm with a silver denarius? I thought you people only did business on a strict cash basis?'

'Certainly not! I never handle money. I have three perfectly adequate accountants who look after my financial affairs.' This must be one fortune-teller who had moved up a long way from telling half-truths to shepherds' girlfriends in hot little canvas booths. Tyche serviced the gilded-litter trade; I bet she charged for it too. 'What do you want, Falco?'

'A seer ought to know! What did Severina Zotica want?' The woman gave me a long stare that was meant to start a shiver between my shoulder blades. It did. But my work was as much based on bluff as her own. 'Was she buying horoscopes?' She a.s.sented in silence. 'I need to know what you told her?'

'Professional secret!'

'Naturally I'll pay the going rate for it--'

'The information is not for sale.'

'Everything is for sale! Tell me whose future she was putting a marker on.'

'I can't possibly do that.'

'All right; let me tell you! Her story goes, she is about to be married and wants to rea.s.sure herself about her prospects afterwards. One horoscope was her own; that was to make it look good. And the other subject was -'

'Her future husband.'

Tyche smiled wryly, as if she realised the news was bound to be misinterpreted: some people believe that to possess another person's horoscope gives you power over their soul.

Chapter XV.

The first positive signal about Severina's motives: I felt my toes curling inside my boots, while my heels tried to press themselves through the unyielding tessellations of the mosaic floor. The coa.r.s.e fibres of my worn woollen tunic p.r.i.c.kled against my collarbones. Into this oddly civilised room with its austere occupant, horror had stalked.

Before I could comment, the astrologer took the initiative. 'I presume you are not a superst.i.tious man?'

'The point,' I exclaimed, 'is whether Severina believes this gives her a hold over her fiance!' Rome accepts anyone who takes a keen interest in their own destiny--but to peek at someone else's must be a sign of bad intentions. Indeed, in political life, to acquire an opponent's horoscope is a deeply hostile act. 'Future husband or not, Severina has broken a serious taboo of privacy. Tyche, you could be heading for indictment as an accessory to an unnatural death: if the freedman dies I'd be prepared to cite you for encouraging his murderer--unless you co-operate. What did you tell her?'

'I told her the truth, Falco.'

'Stop fencing! If Novus is supposed to die in the next few weeks, better warn me now -'

'If the man is supposed to die, then he will!'