Furies (32 page)

The strings of blue glass beads that hung in the bedroom window caught the first light of the day, casting a dazzling violet design that danced like flames on the red terracotta tiles as the beads clacked and twisted in the morning breeze.

Idaia stretched and yawned, then she threw off her blankets and climbed from the bed, enjoying the feeling of her bare feet against the cold tile. She stepped into her pretty sandals, the ones with all the colourful beads, and slipped out of the bedroom. She could hear a pleasant chatter from the kitchen as the cooks prepared breakfast, the wonderful smell of fresh bread with cinnamon and honey baking in the oven. A handful of slaves were whispering to one another in the courtyard as they swept and worked in the garden. A pair of white geese waddled down the pathway, flapping their wings and running awkwardly away when she chased them. The rooster crowed, trying to wake the household. A good idea, Idaia thought wistfully, wake them all!

She spotted the little slave, Scato, holding a reed basket filled with grain, feeding the birds as they gathered around him, flapping their wings, making a fuss. She drew closer to him. He glanced up at her, smiling. “Yes, Mistress?” he asked.

“Come play with me,” Idaia said.

“But cook said I’m to feed the geese and peacocks and gather their eggs, Mistress.”

“Put the basket down and play with me,” she commanded.

“Yes, Mistress,” the slave said, and placed the basket at his feet. The birds all rushed forward and attacked the grain, spilling it onto the tiles, pecking savagely at one another to get at it. The boy gave a worried look at the chaos.

Idaia laughed, grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the gate. There was a space on the side just wide enough for them to slip through, and soon they were out into the street without anyone noticing they were gone. She beamed at him triumphantly. Even Scato permitted himself a small smile.

The sun was lovely and warm, the air filled with the extravagant perfume of all the spring flowers coming into bloom. Slaves walked about the outer grounds of the neighbouring villas doing their chores. Idaia smiled and waved at them. The slaves waved back, smiling wearily at the two children as they walked down the street.

“Where are we going, Mistress?” Scato asked.

“Stop calling me that, it’s bothersome,” she said.

“Should I call you by your name then?”

“No, that wouldn’t be proper. Don’t call me anything. We’ll go to the Agora, I think. I want to get some candied dates.”

“We’ve pears in the kitchen, I saw them,” he said.. Perhaps cook would let us …”

Idaia gave an impatient flip of her head. “Don’t talk so much. How fast can you run?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She looked down at Scato’s skinny legs, his bony knees and his mop of intensely curly brown hair. He didn’t look all that fast. She slipped off her sandals and held them in her hands. “We’ll race and then we’ll see.”

“Alright.”

“But if my legs get tired, you’ll have to carry me the rest of the way.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Idaia made a face. “Go!” she cried, and then she ran, her bare feet pounding along the paving stones, her hair flying out behind her, the sun warming her cheeks. She could see the whole city laid out like a precious mosaic below her, thousands of gleaming white houses and buildings with their pretty red rooftops, elegant, even streets with horses and wagons all heading to market, the Pharos Lighthouse standing tall in the harbour above all the little ships, all of it wrapped in a crescent around the brilliant blue jewel of the Egyptian Sea. She felt like she was flying over it all.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Scato had almost caught up – he was faster than he looked! She squawked in surprise and picked up her pace, flying down the hill now, past the gates of the villas, the groves of towering palm trees, past the fountains and gardens.

Her toe struck something sharp and she tumbled to the ground.

Scato caught up to her then, trying to catch his breath. “Are you alright, Mistress?”

“I’m fine.” The boy looked like he might burst into tears at any moment. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Cook will beat me if she finds out you got hurt playing with me.”

“Well stop it, I won’t let anyone beat you. Come,” Idaia said, then she put her hand out and let Scato help her up. “Ah, it hurts!”

“Let me see.” She held up her foot. The big toe was bleeding, her knees were skinned, her tunic torn and soiled. “Shall I carry you now?”

“Not yet.” Idaia paused a moment, sniffing the air. “Do you smell something?”

Scato lifted his nose and closed his eyes. “Something’s burning.”

“Look,” she said, pointing to a black cloud of smoke that had spilled into the sky like a cloud of ink. They followed the winding streets of Olympia until they came to the source of the smoke, a villa that had burned down in the night. The fire seemed to have gone out, though citizens and slaves alike were still running back and forth along the path between the street and the house, bringing buckets of water from the fountains and wells. She could hear something yelping from somewhere within.

“Whose house is it?” Scato asked.

“Gurculio’s,” Idaia said, in awe of the smoke that seemed to fill the pale blue sky.

The air still hung with smoke and the stench of wet ashes as Aculeo and Calisto approached the burned out shell of Gurculio’s villa. The roof was gone and shards of broken clay tiles were scattered on the ground. The scorched walls of the house lilted like frail black bones trying to stand upright. Aculeo thought he heard a small child crying from within.

Calisto wore
a simple linen chiton, the makeup from last night’s symposium washed away, her glossy black hair lay unpinned across her shoulders, yet she looked all the more lovely for being so unadorned.
Aculeo held her hand, squeezing tight. He felt her tremble in return and smelled her hair, the perfume of her skin.

“
What happened here?” she asked, clinging to him.

“
I wish I knew.”

The front door hung awry on its warped brass hinges. Remains of tapestries, now little more than burnt tatters, hung on the wall of the main entrance hall. They walked along the passageway of the main floor to the garden beyond. The whimpering sound was louder there, a desperate, haunting lament. The pathway that wound through the garden was smeared and speckled with dried blood stains. And there, dangling from a pine tree in the corner of the courtyard, hung Gurculio, quite dead. Little Felix danced on his hindlegs beneath his master, whimpering and yelping himself into a frenzy. Gurculio’s hands were bound behind him, his head twisted to the side, facing them. Calisto let out a horrified sob.

Aculeo took her in his arms and held her tight as the dead moneylender’s bulging eyes stared down at them in wordless wonder.

After Aculeo sent Calisto back home – there was little she could do here, after all – he wandered about the moneylender’s ruined villa trying to gather his thoughts. The questions Gurculio’s murder raised left little time to rejoice in his death. He searched the storage rooms on the main floor – they were littered with fine ceramics, marble statues, expensive furniture and other treasures tossed aside in what must have been a frantic search by Gurculio’s murderers. He could find nothing that gave him any clue to what may have happened. Clearly this was no simple robbery. So what was the motive?

Aculeo returned to the main entrance hall and carefully climbed the burned-out stairs that led to the rooms on the second floor. Slaves’ sleeping quarters, most of them, little more than small, windowless closets with simple wooden pallets for beds. All of them empty. Where are all the slaves? Escaped from the fire?

The last door opened into an enormous bedroom. In the dim light he saw a vast, scorched mural covering one wall. Jupiter, Heracles, Apollo and Mercury, engaged in salacious encounters with one another, young boys, centaurs and satyrs. The images of the gods all bore more than passing resemblances to Gurculio. The mattress had been stripped from the bed and slit lengthwise, the straw bled onto the floor. A large obsidian mirror, cracked from the heat, hung on the wall in front of the bed. Something had dripped in hardened rivulets down the wall beneath it, pooling on the floor. Aculeo scratched at it with a fingernail. Wax.

He heard a sound downstairs and returned to the inner courtyard. The healer,  Sekhet, was already there in response to his summons and squatted next to Gurculio’s body. Her assistants had cut down the noose and laid the Roman’s body out on the ground. The healer’s dark eyes narrowed in concentration as she conducted her examination. Felix sat patiently at her side, watching her every move. He started to growl at Aculeo’s approach, but Sekhet cut him off with a sharp word.

She looked up at Aculeo and frowned. “Should I even ask what happened to you?”

“Not enough cucumber juice. What do you think happened here?”

“To start with, one of his ears and two of his fingers were removed,” Sekhet said, pointing to the charred stumps on his blistered hand. “They were cut off using a very sharp instrument.” Sekhet cut Gurculio’s blood-stained tunic from the neck down to the hem and raised an eyebrow. “He was castrated just before he died.”

“Like Iovinus. But why? Do you think he was tortured?” Aculeo asked, trying not to vomit at the sight of the moneylender’s wound.

“A reasonable guess,” she said.

What were they looking for? Aculeo mused. The doors of the store rooms were open. The bedroom had been looted as well, the bed slit open. Did they find anything?

“It wasn’t your madman from the Sarapeion that did this, we know that at least,” Sekhet said.

“Beyond that we know little else though,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands in exhaustion. He felt nothing in the way of sympathy for Gurculio – he’d been a ruthless, loathsome man who’d ruined so many lives – Corvinus, Iovinus, Trogus, Pesach, not to mention his own. Even so, there was something deeper going on here, and a chance to understand what it was had disappeared like smoke. He recalled the argument he’d heard at Ralla’s symposium the night before. Could the man have been Gurculio? What was it he cried out? Something about a dog-eyed porne?

Felix lay on the floor and put his head on his paws, looking completely miserable. “What shall we do with him?” Sekhet asked.

“Send him to the street,” Aculeo said.

“He’d be a jackal’s dinner by nightfall.” She scratched him behind the ears and sighed. “I suppose I could take him in for a short time. What of you, where are you going?”

“To a brothel.”

Sekhet snorted. “And you call the Egyptian death traditions odd.”