Part 18 (1/2)

'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 s.h.i.+p 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 h.o.a.rded 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 towardsthe 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 c.o.c.kerel 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.

x.x.xV

The dog let out quite a tentative yip when she first noticed the hen. For a single drumbeat, Nux pondered in an amiable fas.h.i.+on 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 b.u.mped 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 slos.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.sive 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce on the barge.