Galeo placed another drachma on the table.
“Ah. Well it might be they hired a boat, take ’em to sea, in spite of it bein’ filthy weather. You’d best talk to ’er captain.”
“Send someone to fetch him. I’m not going out in this again.”
“Happens that’s ’im over there.” He glanced at one of the men at the bar. “Cleitus!”
Cleitus eyed Galeo warily. “’Aven’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“No one says you have.” Galeo placed another drachma on the table. Cleitus’ eye-he had only one-narrowed. “Tell me about the woman and boy.”
“They paid me ’andsomely to sail across Propontis to the Thracian side. Me and the lads agreed though we didn’t like the weather. Well, we wasn’t far out when the wind picks up and the boy comes all over queer, like maybe he has a demon in him. That’s what we thought anyway. I was for pitching ’im over the side but the woman begs me to leave ’em on an island that’s out there-just a little speck of rock really, nothin’ on it but a few goats. Well, we went in as close as we dared on the leeward side and made ’em jump.”
“And?”
“And that’s all I know. We sailed back with the big fella, Lurco. He didn’t want to jump and we couldn’t make ’im.” Cleitus’ hand shot out and plucked one of the coins off the table. He touched two fingers to his forehead and moved off.
At first light, Galeo was on his horse galloping back to Nicomedia.
Chapter Thirty-five
The 9th day before the Kalends of December
To Aulus the passage of time was formless and endless. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Sometimes spasms shook him, and afterwards he would sleep for hours: sleep filled with dreams of thrashing in icy sea water, of struggling for breath, of his mother’s powerful arms around him. And even in sleep the ache of hunger and the ache of cold never abated. In his lucid moments he knew that they drank rain water from a hollowed rock, ate berries that gave him a stomach ache, tried to catch and kill a goat until they sank down exhausted. How long had they been here? How much longer could they survive? Mother! She lay beside him on the stony ground, her hair a wet tangle spread out around her, her dress sodden and filthy. Her eyes shut. Was she breathing? Mother, don’t die, don’t leave me! He crawled to her and laid his head on her breast. It’s all right, she’s breathing. He sank again into oblivion.
And then, in his dream, he was being shaken. Hands gripped his shoulders. His eyelids fluttered open and gradually a face came into focus. Not mother’s but a man’s face. The governor’s face! “It’s all right, boy, it’s all right.” Pliny and another man helped to sit up. He knew that face too-the physician. They put a woolen robe around his shoulders, held a cup of water to his lips. He swung his eyes around. A ring of Roman marines stared back. His mother sat on the ground nearby, a rope around her wrists. At the edge of the islet a navy cutter rocked at anchor.
***
Silvanus was sunk in a pleasantly drunken doze when the soldiers burst through his door and laid hands on him. The next hours were very unpleasant. They bound him with chains and dragged him to the palace dungeon, where the governor stalked up and down the cell, firing questions at him, while a brute of a jailer heated pincers over a flame.
“The procurator caught you stealing, didn’t he? What did he do to you?”
“Beat me up. Not for the first time, he loved to hit. Threatened to sack me.”
“So you killed him.”
“I didn’t!”
“But you hated him.”
“Everyone hated him.”
“Then who killed him?”
“Fabia killed him.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Was Balbus stealing from the treasury?”
“I’m sure he was.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how. He never included me in that.”
“You do know that I can put you to death for what you’ve done.”
“You can’t. I’m a Roman citizen. I’ll appeal to the emperor.”
“All right. I’ll send you to Rome for trial, but I promise you you’ll find a nastier death at the end of it than the one I’ll give you. Now again, how was the procurator stealing?”
“I told you I don’t know!”
And so it went until they finally left him alone.
***
Aulus lay on a soft bed, propped up on cushions as a servant fed him spoonfuls of hot broth. Pliny sat in a chair beside him and spoke in a low voice.
“I honestly don’t know what to think about your mother. If nothing else, she had guilty knowledge of Silvanus’ whereabouts. I hope it’s nothing worse than that.”
“But she wouldn’t have sent assassins to kill my father when I was with him.”
“That is an excellent point, which I take note of. Aulus, I don’t want it to be your mother, but she did run away.”
“She made me tell her everything I told you-about that Greek who came to see her. And then she began to scream and strike her breast. I didn’t know what to do…”
“Hush, be calm now. I understand. I’m sending her home under guard until I know more. But what shall I do with you? Do you want to go back with her or would you rather stay here in the palace for a time? I’ve spoken to Marinus, you know, about you assisting him. He’s willing to take you on.”
“I–I’ve never been away from her. What will happen when I…”
“Have a seizure? We’ll know what to do. I remember you told me you’re the man of the family now. In law, yes. But in fact you never will be as long as you live with her. I’ll tell you something. I lost my father early and grew up in the house of my uncle. He was a good man, a tireless civil servant, a prodigious scholar, but a man whose personality absolutely dominated the household. Nothing mattered except his needs. We all tiptoed so as not to disturb him while he was being read to by his slaves and making notes for his Natural History, which was literally all the time. Until the day he died, we were almost like prisoners there. It’s taken me longer than I like to admit to get over it. Think about it, son.”
Mi fili-my son. He had said it without thinking. He felt a sudden pang of longing for the son that he and Calpurnia would never have. Suddenly he wanted very much to be a father to this tortured boy, bring him into his household, give him a better life than he had ever known. He would speak to Calpurnia about it. But what if it caused her pain? They never spoke about their childlessness. And lately, it seemed, they never spoke at all. They had grown so far apart he felt he hardly knew her anymore.
“Sir?” Aulus was staring at him. “Is something the matter?”
“What? No, no, of course not. You rest up, we’ll talk again later.”
***
Pliny summoned his staff. He toyed with the objects on his desk while he marshaled his thoughts. “We have, at the moment, four suspects. Silvanus hated and feared Balbus after he caught him stealing, although frankly I don’t think the man is capable of murder. Fabia and Argyrus, either together or singly, both stood to lose if Balbus divorced his wife and married Sophronia. In that case I suppose that Fabia’s muscular slave, Lurco, was the actual killer. Unfortunately, he gave my lictor the slip and we have yet to find him. Finally there is the banker, Didymus.”
“That little one-armed runt,” Nymphidius snorted. “He couldn’t kill my old mother.”
“I’m assuming Glaucon did the actual killing. Didymus must have had some influence over him. They knew each other, that much is certain. He wouldn’t even have to be there in person.”
“And the motive?” Marinus asked.
“A dispute over money. If, that is, Didymus is the Persian that Balbus complained of to this Sun-Runner, whoever he is. The same Persian who later poisoned Glaucon to silence him, and burned up Barzanes in his house too, I imagine.”
Zosimus spoke up, diffident as always. “Money? Is that reason enough to make a provincial risk murdering a high Roman official? Surely Didymus could have found the money somewhere to pay Balbus back. He is a banker with banker friends.”