Furies (15 page)

“I’ve no idea. I thought she might have run away, but she left her jewellery, lyre and some clothing behind at her flat in Delta.” And an unkept promise of helping the little porne, Tyche, escape the Blue Bird, Aculeo thought.

“Did she ever say anything to you about wanting to leave Alexandria?”

“No, no nothing. She … she was …” Calisto’s voice trailed to a wisp and she began to cry. Aculeo waited until she finally managed to regain her composure. “It’s all so terrible.”

“I fear Iovinus’ murder and Neaera’s disappearance are linked somehow,” he said. “When did you see her last?”

“I don’t know. Five or six days ago perhaps, I can’t recall exactly. She came here for a visit. We had a … a lovely afternoon.” Calisto’s voice caught with emotion.

“Did she say anything to you? About any troubles she’d been having? Anything about Iovinus?”

“No, nothing. She was happy, happy and calm as I’d ever seen her.”

“Was there a mention of some tablets that Iovinus possessed?”

“Tablets?” Calisto asked, confused.

“Never mind.” Aculeo indicated the portrait once again. “What about the third woman? Who’s she?”

Calisto glanced down. “That’s Petras. Neaera’s cousin.”

“Is she a porne as well?”

“A hetaira,” Calisto corrected him.

“Of course. Where can I find her?”

“I haven’t seen Petras in some time. I never really knew her all that well.”

All these women running off, Aculeo thought irritably – are they running from or to something I wonder. “I’m sorry to have brought you such unwelcome news,” he said. He could hear the sound of a child playing and laughing in the garden, singing a song in a strange tongue.

“I … appreciate knowing at least,” Calisto said, then started to weep again. “I’m sorry, it’s just …”

“I understand.”

She took a deep, quavering breath, and dabbed at her eyes with a square of linen. “It’s late. I’m supposed to be getting ready. I’ve a symposium to attend this evening.”

“Of course,” Aculeo said, and stood to leave

“This is madness,” Calisto said. “The last thing I want to do is go out tonight and entertain while I’m worrying about Neaera. I doubt the host would understand if I didn’t come though.”

“We don’t always get to choose such things. May I ask who the host is?”

“Marcellus Gurculio,” she said. “Do you know him?”

“I do,” Aculeo said, forcing a smile. Is this what fate dictates for me now? he thought bitterly. Scraping about in the streets like a beggar selling my wife’s wedding jewels for food and rent while moneylenders host symposia with my stolen wealth? Fuck the gods!

“Are you not well?” she asked with sudden concern.

“I’m fine. Again, my condolences.”

Calisto stepped closer to him, touching his arm with her soft cool hand. Her touch, the closeness of her body, the scent of her, wild flowers mixed with sweet wine. “I’m indebted to you. Please, if you find out anything else, anything at all, you’ll let me know.”

“I will indeed.”

She stood back then, managing a small smile. “Fortune be with you, Aculeo.”

“And you, Calisto.”

“What do you think that man wanted?” little Idaia asked Myrrhine. They sat in a cloistered area at the bottom of the garden, watching Aculeo walk back up the path towards the outer gates.

“I don’t know, little bee,” the fair-haired hetaira replied, returning her attention to her small silver mirror as she applied dark grey galena to her upper eyelids with a flat stick of ivory.

“I like him, he has a nice smile.”

“That’s a silly reason to like someone.”

“Don’t you like him?” Idaia asked. Myrrhine shrugged. “Do you think Calisto likes him?”

“Idaia, please, enough with all your nonsense!” Myrrhine said, picking up a jar of green malachite which she began to apply to her lower eyelids, complementing her golden hair in such a fetching manner.

“Let me try it,” Idaia said, reaching for the jar.

Myrrhine held it out of her reach. “Not until you’re older.”

“I’m old enough now.”

“You’re still a child. You need to be thirteen at least. Old enough to marry.”

Idaia sighed and sat back down. “Will you marry someday?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I come live with you if you do?”

“I suppose, if my husband lets you.”

“You’ll have to make him,” Idaia said. “I should like to be a hetaira when I grow up.”

Myrrhine hesitated a moment, then continued applying her makeup. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes I do. You get to dress up pretty, you wear nice jewellery, you go to parties all the time, and men give you beautiful presents …”

“Men would want to do things to you too.”

“What kind of things?” Idaia asked.

Myrrhine sighed. “Never mind.”

Idaia watched a peacock bobbing its head along the garden path, pausing to preen its long tail feathers. “I remember home.”

“Really? You must have been a baby when you left.”

“I can still remember. I remember a tree outside the house where I played, I remember my mother who’d sing me songs.”

“You don’t remember your mother,” Myrrhine scoffed.

“I do too!” Idaia said, tears welling in her eyes.

“Oh stop crying!” Myrrhine said, then glanced at the child`s reflection in the mirror. “What’s that you’re playing with?”

Idaia hid her hands behind her back. “Nothing.”

Myrrhine held out a hand until Idaia finally surrendered the top. “You stole that.”

“I did not! One of the slaves made it for me!”

“Which slave?”

“I don’t remember.”

Myrrhine shook her head. “I told you not to steal things anymore, you’ll get into trouble. They’ll cut off your hands.”

Idaia burst into tears. “But I didn’t steal anything!”

“Stop crying.”

“I … I’m n-n-not crying,” she sniffed. After a while she said, “Tell me what you remember about your home.”

“I don’t want to. This is my home now. And yours as well.”

“I know.”

Myrrhine smiled at her, then pulled her into a hug, tickling her until she laughed, and kissed her cheek. “Don`t worry, little bee, we have one another now, right? Where we’ll both be safe and sound.”

It had grown dark as the hours stretched late into the evening. Aculeo was tired of waiting in the shadows of the street outside Gurculio’s villa. A villa that used to belong to dear old Nigellus before he too lost everything when the damned fleet sank, he thought miserably. If the damned fleet sank that is, he thought, correcting himself. More likely stolen by Iovinus and whoever he was working with.

So the moneylender lives here now, does he? Why not? A vast marble fountain stood outside the villa’s ornate iron gates, and the tops of its high garden walls were alight with coloured lanterns. He could hear music from behind the walls, the sound of flutes and lyres, laughter echoing into the evening airs. He watched as half a dozen slaves carried heavy amphorae in through the back entrance. Another slave stood at the front gates dressed as a satyr, complete with a long wooden phallus strapped to his waist and the ears and tail of a donkey, greeting guests as they arrived in their elegant litters, pretty young women accompanied by much older men.

Aculeo recalled all too well the endless evenings he himself had either hosted or attended in the old days, hours filled with music, rich food, fine wine, entertaining talk, lovely dancers – a feast for the mind and the senses. The days before everything had utterly fallen apart. It seemed a lifetime ago. Could it actually be measured in mere months?

Three young men arrived then, two slender and dark, one a fat, moon-faced boy who looked oddly familiar. Where have I seen him before? he wondered. A number of sophists from the Museion, among them a short, balding, barrel-chested man with a grey-streaked beard who stood back from the fray, smiling, taking everything and everyone in. How much actual philosophy will be talked tonight? And there, the host of the evening’s festivities, the moneylender, with his crudely cut features and chunky gold rings that flashed and sparkled on his thick fingers, displaying his ill-gotten wealth for the world to see. A tangle of purple veins branched across his nose and cheeks, the inspiration for his cognomen, Gurculio – Latin for mealworm. He appeared quite inebriated already, laughing uproariously as he bellowed greetings to the new arrivals. 

Aculeo watched another litter being carried down the street and pressed his back flat against the wall, deep in the shadows. The Nubian litter bearers arrived at the gates and eased the elegant structure to the ground. Calisto emerged, wearing a bright red peplos with a matching, diaphanous veil over her head. She looked quite lovely, far more entrancing than she had at the villa. She’s in her element here, he thought. Next to step from the litter was the fair-haired hetaira he’d seen with her in the Agora the day prior. She was dressed in a tight coral chiton, without a veil this time though, her hair the colour of wild honey, with a garland of tiny flowers woven through it. She had a pretty face, with a large birthmark that marked her upper lip.

Another figure emerged from a splendid looking litter – a balding, weak-jawed man in his forties, with a rounded belly and skinny limbs. Lucius Albius Ralla, Aculeo realized in surprise. Ralla was a very wealthy banker, not to mention confidante of the Roman Prefect Flaccus himself. What’s a man of his rank doing at a moneylender’s symposium? He was warmly greeted by Gurculio and the two of them fell to whispering with one another, laughing at some private joke. Aculeo felt his skin crawl. So the moneylender has enough money and influence to climb so high in society as this?

Ralla approached Calisto, took her hands in his, leaned in close and kissed her on the lips. She accepted it graciously enough, then politely disengaged. Ralla then grabbed the fair-haired hetaira by the wrist, pulling her tight against him, kissing her on the neck as he grabbed one of her breasts. Half a dozen pretty young flute girls dressed as Maenads with fawn skins and wreathed in ivy emerged giggling from behind the garden gates and moved in amongst the guests. Ralla, distracted, turned to them with a drunken grin and released the hetaira as the Maenads crowned the guests with garlands, anointed them with scented oils and led them inside. The gates closed behind them then. Aculeo decided there was little to do but leave.