The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (59 page)

John kicked the door inwards. It resisted briefly, impeded by a rolled up robe placed along its lower edge. Coughing, covering his mouth and nose with his tunic sleeve, John made his way to the pallet where Cupitas sprawled.

The man was as lifeless as the marble goddess he had so desired.

John turned the marble finger of Aphrodite over in his hand. It had been sitting on the sill of the window beside Cupitas’ bed.

Unfortunately, it had not been pointing at a culprit. In war-ravaged Italy scores died every day from disease, deprivation and armed skirmishes. Why then should this particular death be investigated simply because it was unexplained?

But the choice was not John’s to make. Procopios had suggested he do so and such a suggestion was tantamount to an order from Belisarius.

“Since the day we entered Rome, there are some who’ve been quick to blame Belisarius for every woe that has befallen the city,” Procopios had said. “If we are to
withstand the siege, we need the population on our side. The trader was found dead during my visit to a rather obscure inn. Everyone in the city will have heard the story before nightfall, and too many will draw the wrong conclusions. We must have a satisfactory explanation of this death.”

John had reluctantly agreed to look into the matter. In Constantinople, the Lord Chamberlain held a higher position at court than the general’s aide but unfortunately this was not Constantinople.

Now John sat in the kitchen of the inn, talking to Titus.

Titus wiped watery eyes as he spoke. “What’s the mystery? The man obviously suffocated.” A tear plopped into the wine cup clutched in the innkeeper’s hand. Even though it had been some time since Procopios had departed and the body had been moved to a small back room. the effects of the harsh smoke lingered.

“Emperor Jovian died in the same manner, suffocated by fumes from a charcoal brazier in his bedchamber,” Titus went on. “And Cupitas was fat. He probably suffered from some weakness of the lungs as well, as such men often do.”

“Unfortunately, Procopios was adamant that I prepare a report for Belisarius,” John observed. “I agree with you, Titus. It was obviously an accident. After all, a brazier isn’t a very reliable weapon. As I pointed out to Procopios, if Cupitas hadn’t stuffed a robe under the door to keep draughts out once he retired for the night, the smoke wouldn’t have been trapped in the room.”

“He was always complaining about the cold. I trust the eternal flames of Hell are warm enough for him!”

The innkeeper’s vehement tone reminded John he had heard the man arguing with Cupitas the night before. “You disliked Cupitas?”

Titus ran a hand nervously over his sparse hair. “No, of course not. I was just thinking how quickly he made enemies
here. The pilgrim’s always muttering about his blasphemy, and even Fronto complained about the wretched man.”

“What was Fronto’s grievance?” John asked.

“I had another servant here, Damian. He had an argument with Cupitas not long before you arrived. I understand the boy thought the trader was ordering him around too much. Young men have hot tempers, as we all know. Anyhow, Damian stormed off and without him to help, Fronto has had a lot more work to do. At least he imagines he has. Every time I ask him to cook a meal or fetch kindling or clean a room, he starts to grumble about Cupitas.”

“You have no reason to suspect anyone here of killing Cupitas?”

Titus shook his head. “Although I’d be surprised if there weren’t a few he’d robbed who’d be glad to hear he’s dead,” he added, getting to his feet. “You must excuse me, sir. Even with as few guests as we have, there’s much to be done. I have to keep up the inn’s reputation, in case – when – Tullia returns.”

The innkeeper trudged from the room. He might have been carrying the entire inn on his back.

There seemed nothing suspicious to John about the trader’s death. It appeared simple enough. Cupitas had gone to bed at his usual hour, pushed a robe in the gap under the door to keep out draughts, and gone to sleep for eternity.

Even so, John decided it would be wise to look into the man’s business affairs if only to be able to include a summary of them in his report. Cupitas had stored his wares in a small outbuilding behind the inn. The crumbling masonry structure had evidently once been used as an annex and the key was easily obtained from Titus, who had immediately taken possession of it upon discovery of the departed Cupitas.

John stepped into the small structure’s musty interior.
Enough light came through its cobwebbed windows and arched doorway to reveal a few precariously piled crates lining its walls, along with a heap of sacks amidst what remained of the bales of straw that had apparently been stored there. Any animals that had grazed in the forum in the shadow of Mount Olympus had long been consumed, or perhaps vanished with the retreating Goths.

A quick glance at the crates showed they were secured, but exuded the unmistakable odour of overripe cheese. John pulled a lumpy sack open. It contained a shrivelled human foot, a hand and numerous bones, some with bits of withered flesh still clinging to them. These were doubtless the supposed relics Cupitas had bragged about so often. John, who had seen enough of such scraps of flesh newly scattered on the battlefield, closed the sack quickly. Another held a few copper goblets of poor workmanship and a third a set of codices which proved to be mostly small volumes of Ovid’s love poems. They were however even less valuable than the goblets, since most of their innards had been torn out.

John heard footsteps and turned as a strangled gasp of terror announced Fronto’s arrival. The old man stood in the doorway but John wasn’t certain if Fronto was clutching his chest or had clasped his hands together in prayer.

“Thank the Lord it’s only you, Lord Chamberlain.” Fronto wheezed in an alarming fashion.

John asked if he had mistaken him for someone else.

“No, sir, not really.” Fronto sagged against the door frame. “This is what the master calls the emperor’s private apartments, sir. Once it served as the grandest part of the inn. Hard to believe that looking at it now, isn’t it? This is where visiting dignitaries stayed. The master often boasts that Romulus Augustulus slept here but what few know is that his shade still frequents the place, for this is the very inn where the emperor was brutally murdered.”

“It’s generally said that after he was deposed he was given a pension and lived out his days in Campania,” John observed mildly.

“Doubtless the Goths would like us all to think so too, sir. But if you had observed the inexplicable things that I have . . .”

“What would those be, Fronto?” John asked patiently.

“Strange happenings, sir, flickering lights, shadows with nothing to cast them. Just last night the shade walked. It must have sensed death nearby.”

“You saw this shade?”

“Heard it, sir. A hideous, inhuman whimpering. And scrabbling. Just the noise a clawed demon might make.”

Or, John thought, the noise Cupitas might make clawing through his wares, for some unknown reason, in the middle of the night, when everyone had assumed he was in his bed. Normally the inn would have been too crowded for anyone to creep about it unobserved. Now, with so few guests and most of the servants gone, there would have been no one to see the trader. Unless the pilgrim Makarios was as permanently attached to his stool in the corner as he seemed.

“The innkeeper would not think it strange that I choose to sleep on a stool if he had lived on a pillar for fifteen years as I have. When you are accustomed to sleep standing up, it is hard enough to sleep sitting down, let alone in a bed.” Makarios spoke too loudly, perhaps because he was accustomed to having to shout down from a high perch.

John decided the pilgrim probably had lived atop a column in Antioch, as he claimed. Makarios had the emaciated appearance of those holy stylites beneath whose wild gaze he often passed in Constantinople, and his skin was weathered, as from endless exposure to the elements.

“So you didn’t see Cupitas again after he went up to his room?”

Makarios shook his head stiffly. “No, that was the last time I glimpsed the foul heretic alive. But as I was saying, fifteen years I dwelt on that pillar, mortifying the flesh, glorifying the Lord. Until a dove alighted on the icy railing and spoke to me. ‘Throw off your chains,’ it said. In perfect Latin, mind you, not Greek. ‘Journey to Rome and carry my message to Pope Silverius.’ So I did.”

With some interest, John asked what message the bird wished conveyed.

“It told me as soon as I obtained an audience with the pope it would return and tell me,” Makarios replied. “Yes, it was a miracle. After all those years standing in such a cramped space, my legs still worked. Once I’d pulled my feet free of the platform, that is. My soles remain there although the rest of me is here, as you see. However, I have yet to gain an audience with Silverius and now I begin to wonder if the bird was a demon in disguise.”

John asked why the former stylite considered Cupitas a heretic.

“What else would you call a man who seeks to turn faith into coins? And by fraud at that! He came to Rome in hopes of selling holy relics to the pope. He told me he tried to gain an audience with him through various officials in Belisarius’ entourage. When that failed, he got the notion that I could arrange a meeting and pestered me endlessly about it. He showed me his prize relic. It’s a shrivelled piece of meat he claimed was the hand of Joseph, our Saviour’s father. ‘Look, you can see the calluses where he held his hammer,’ he told me. ‘Imagine, these fingers touched the holy child.’ More likely the villain chopped the hand off a corpse in a ditch. There’s plenty of them around. He’d preserved it in salt, you know.”

Unlikely as it seemed, John thought he detected the flicker of a smile cross Makarios’ leathery visage. “You find that humorous?”

“Certainly not! Blasphemous, more likely. I was thinking about Achilles, that savage black dog that accompanied the Moor on his patrols. It had a much keener interest in those relics than the pope did. In fact, it got hold of a shinbone one afternoon. Cupitas was furious. Up until then he and Constantine seemed friendly enough.”

“Constantine mentioned patrolling alone,” John said thoughtfully. “What became of his dog?”

“It disappeared, and the Moor is convinced that the mongrel was boiled in a delicate wine sauce and ended up on someone’s plate. Meat of any sort is hard to find these days. Given his nature, I agree it’s more than likely Cupitas stole the beast and sold it to a hungry family. The trader had a habit of taking whatever he pleased. A dog, a bit of cutlery, the innkeeper’s wife.”

John said he found the latter hard to believe.

“That he stole a mongrel and a knife, or that he dallied with the innkeeper’s wife? How can that surprise you? Flesh is weak. Cupitas had travelled the world. While righteous men recognize a corpulent fraud, poor Tullia, confined to this pile of bricks, saw him as an exotic figure, a modern day Herodotus. Cupitas read to her. Salacious poetry, that’s what it was. To whet their vile appetites. I pray I will soon receive the dove’s message and then I can climb up out of this stinking morass of sin and return home to breathe again the sweet air atop my column. I just hope it is as yet unoccupied,” he concluded gloomily.

John realized there was no point in questioning Makarios further, since scurrilous rumours were unlikely to advance his investigations. He thanked the pilgrim and prepared to leave.

“I see you doubt me, sir. Well, before you go, why don’t you see what Titus has been burning in his braziers?” Makarios suggested.

John took his advice. The brazier on the other side of the room smouldered feebly. Taking a stick from a pile of kindling beside it, he prodded the ashes beneath its embers. A partially blackened scrap surfaced.

It was a page of love poetry.

Constantine laughed. “If Tullia craved excitement there’s plenty willing to offer it to her. She didn’t need to turn to someone like Cupitas.”

John had caught up to the Moor during his solitary patrol. Now the two stood on a parapet overlooking the noisome Tiber, observing the tents of the besieging Goths on the opposite bank.

John asked Constantine what he meant by his remark.

“Belisarius didn’t order the women and children out until after you had arrived, so you must have met Tullia. Didn’t you notice she is a very attractive woman? And a lot younger than her husband. I’m not surprised Titus has been half-crazed with grief since she departed. Naturally he calls down curses on the heads of those who forced her to leave him. Before that, she was just another set of hands to help around the inn. Strange how one fails to appreciate the value of a thing until he no longer possesses it, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t have much opportunity to speak with her, although I do have the impression Titus appreciated his wife while she was here. He mentioned having planted a rosebay for her when they married.”

“So he says,” his companion replied.

“Do you think Makarios was lying about Cupitas reading Ovid to Tullia?”

“She was probably bored. He’d got a good bargain on
those books, he told me. Some fleeing aristocrat had space in his wagon for furniture, clothes, silver, everything but poetry. But it seems no one in this city is in the mood for poetry right now. At least not at the price Cupitas wanted. He said he was so bored he’d actually been reduced to reading the miserable drivel, just to make himself sleepy.”

“Do you think he stole Achilles?”

“You have been talking to that fool Makarios!” Constantine’s voice had hardened. “The dirty zealot squats there watching everything, and then spouts gossip disguised as helpful remarks. Of course Cupitas stole poor Achilles! He did it as much to aggravate me as to turn a profit. Well, the bastard’s cooking now and will be for a lot longer than Achilles did. That’s some consolation, I admit, but I sincerely hope someone in this city has a huge bellyache too!”

Across the river a few grey threads of smoke rose into the cool air. John recalled the stringy meat Titus had served in a stew that had not really tasted like goat. His stomach churned. He had felt vaguely unwell all day. It was nothing more than lack of sleep and poor food. Dog meat, he reminded himself, was not poisonous.