The new incumbent 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 spacing beads. Apparently he did all the work himself.
'Hello!' 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 crass 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 passed 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 passageway.
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 unobtrusive. 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 nobody 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 shells 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 repetitive 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.