‘I brought you flowers for your desk. Marigolds.’ Arbil looked up. Apart from a mist around the margin of his vision, he could see her doe-like eyes, her blue-black hair swishing when she walked. How old was she now? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? After twelve years in the marriage bed, no blemish had yet marred her olive skin, no wrinkle, not so much as a droop to those delicious breasts. Yet today wasn’t the first time he’d not been able to get it up… Shit.
‘Yes, Angel, very nice,’ he said, shooing her out of the room with the back of his hand then tipping the pathetic little bunch in the bin when she’d gone. He mightn’t remember coming into this office, but by Marduk, he didn’t intend to start work without his hair being crimped. ‘Fuck me!’ His hair was crimped! Arbil peered into the mirror. And his beard? Curled in at the tip. He sniffed his forearm. It glistened with oil and smelled of pine and spice. His favourite unguent. What the fuck happened this time? Dazed and trembling, surrounded by the bulls of Adad, artefacts of gold, horses of stone, Arbil realized that the time he had lost must have been close to an hour. Sargon would be waiting… Hell, he’d have to wait a moment longer. He daren’t let his son see him like this.
His antiques orientated his befuddled mind, especially the free-standing zodiac tiled in lilypad green, which was his favourite. Money box excepted, of course! Above the locked chest and nailed to the dark blue plaster hung the calendar which, being Roman, told him that today was the Festival of Luna. Despite his aversion to the people who had, like the Assyrians and the Macedonians before them, defiled his native city, it was in his interests to understand their hollow cults. Arbil knew about Luna. Crescent moons framed Luna’s face like horns, but Arbil would have no knee bent here to poor imitations. For his army of child slaves, it was Zin who governed their moons. Adad sent their thunderbolts. Ishtar was the true goddess of love. He sighed. Maybe it was not she who’d let him down this morning, maybe it was something he ate? He’d have to check his diet, call his physician. Normally he went like a stallion…
Fuck these lapses.
‘Come in, boys, come in,’ he called.
They made a good team, did Sargon and Dino. Both had shown an aptitude for business, Arbil trusted them implicitly. Sargon was his son, his firstborn, but not always do sons turn out as you’d hope (by Marduk, they do not!) and Dinocrates, the orphan he’d picked up on Chios and whose potential he had spotted, was-well, if not a son, damn close.
‘Shut the door, there’s a terrible damp in the air.’ He indicated chairs. ‘Now sit down, take the weight off.’
The two young men exchanged glances of amusement.
Every morning between November and May they lingered in the doorway as a means of admitting fresh air into a room which boasted many heavy unguents but not a single open window.
His vision might have cleared, his mouth no longer felt dry, but until the shock of losing that hour had passed, Arbil was content to shuffle through his table deep in scrolls and tablets pretending to search for something.
Sargon waited patiently. Unlike his father, worship played no part in his life, neither the old gods of home nor the newer gods of Rome. His devotions were of a more personal nature, and any spiritual fulfilment he might require he sought at the tailor’s, the dice table, the drinking den among men of his own ilk. To his father’s dismay, he also embraced modern art and Roman ways, wearing the toga and attending whichever ceremonies amused him-and, radically for a Babylonian, he shaved his face. It was vanity, as opposed to ancestry though, which kept his hair halfway down his back, because the combination of mane, wolf and wealth made him a magnet to ladies in every stratum of society. If he hadn’t made a living out of slavery, Sargon could have made a fortune as a gigolo.
Arbil finally tapped the scroll he’d pretended to look for. ‘I have an approach here for thirty unskilled workers for a brickworks on the Via Tiburtina.’
Dino’s breath came out in a whistle. ‘That’s over 10 per cent of our annual output,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a new money box for that lot, Arbil.’
His employer nodded slowly several times, but his eyes remained fixed on his son.
Sargon folded his arms and pulled at his lower lip. ‘I’d offer him ten at 2,000 sesterces,’ he said at length. ‘Then tell him that if he wants the other twenty, he’ll have to pay skilled rate.’
Arbil’s eyes glittered.
‘But, Sargon,’ Dino protested. ‘We’ve got sixty unskilled boys for sale.’
Sargon smiled knowingly. ‘If this brickmaker has approached us, not the other way round, you can bet your fancy fringed boots he knows about our training policy.’
‘But-’ A flick of Arbil’s wrist cut the Chian short. ‘My guess,’ Sargon continued thoughtfully, ‘is that once he’s handed over his silver, he plans to sell them on himself as trade apprentices, pick up his brickmakers at public auction and then, when he tallies up his accounts, he’ll expect to see a healthy profit.’
Dino’s face creased into a slow smile. ‘You sly bastard! You’re planning to screw that old brickmaker?’
‘A matter of justice,’ put in Arbil. ‘Teach him not to go into business on his own.’ It was impossible to keep the smugness out of his voice. This was the first real test he’d been able to give Sargon, the boy came out with colours flying. Proof, if it was needed, that the business was in safe hands should anything happen to him.
‘Word will spread,’ added Sargon, ‘that you don’t mess with the Babylonians.’
No, thought Arbil, you do not. He thought back to the merchant from Pisae who’d refused to pay for his order, saying they were females, for gods’ sake, he wanted proper workers. For a while Arbil had been reasonable. The merchant wanted slaves to weave his linen, he gave him slaves to weave his linen. Cheerful, nimble-fingered girls who’d be quick to learn. Give them a chance, he had said. Then other customers started complaining, hoping to lower the price, squeeze a refund. So Arbil taught the linen merchant a lesson, and once people saw his ears pinned to the wall, they’d stopped quibbling.
Arbil leaned back in his chair, the signal that the meeting was over. Sargon and Dino stood up.
‘I received a report from Rome,’ the slave master said casually, ‘saying another girl was killed last night.’
Two Adam’s apples tensed. ‘Rough districts, some of them,’ said Sargon.
‘Real no-go areas,’ added Dino.
‘Mmmm.’ Arbil’s eyes fixed themselves on the green-tiled zodiac scorpion. ‘I’m told this girl died of twenty-seven cuts with a knife.’
Dino glanced up sharply. ‘Twenty-seven?’
Arbil’s eyes moved to the lion, symbol of courage. ‘That makes three girls who have been killed from exactly twenty-seven wounds. Odd, don’t you think?’
No one answered. Drips from the eaves splashed into puddles of mud beneath the window. Arbil’s spicy unguents seemed to cloy, especially the cade which clashed with the cedarwood scent from his hair oil.
‘The authorities are too busy wetting their pants over his Imperial Majesty’s health,’ he said, pulling his long woollen mantle more snugly over his ankles, ‘to be concerned about slaves.’
Sargon and Dino stared straight ahead, and pretended they didn’t notice the heat in this dark blue room of antiquities.
‘But I am,’ the slave master said quietly. ‘Especially when they could be traced here. Do either of you have information on these killings?’
The word ‘No’ came in unison.
‘Then that’ll be all for this morning.’ Arbil’s hirsute cheeks bunched into a smile as he chafed his hands together. ‘The shipment that’s due out-those three boys for the bakery-I’d like to check it over personally, could you see it’s brought to the house, Dino?’
Two jaws relaxed visibly.
Arbil waited until the two men had reached the door. ‘Oh, and boys.’