A Body in the Bathhouse (16 page)

“North wing,” said the chief mosaicist. Bleating so expressively almost finished him. He did not explain the marine life. I was left to theorize that it was to decorate a room for fish suppers.

The other grand design was fully worked out. This was black and white, a stunning carpet of dramatic squares and crosses, some of its patterns devised from arrowheads, compass rosettes, and fleurs-de-lis. The images had been put together so the effect was three-dimensional, but I realized that irregularities made the patterns seem to shift. As I moved position, the perspective changed elusively.

“His ‘flickering floor,’ “ said the assistant proudly.

“North wing,” grunted the chief mosaicist again. Well, skilled repetition was his art.

“People will love it.” I flattered them. “If you run out of work here, you can come to my house!” Being slow men, whose lives ran at the restrained pace of their work, they did not quip back the obvious retort. I said it for them: “I don’t suppose I can afford you.”

Nothing gave.

I tried again: “Not a lot for you to do around here at present.”

“We’ll be ready when they are.” The chief spoke dourly.

“I can see you’re a cut above the average. This client won’t be fobbed off with apprentice work and a few preformed panels, cut in at the last moment.” Again, he did not deign to comment.

“Your most important activity takes place before you’re even on-site,” I mused. “Creating the design. Choosing the stones—I assume it’s to be mostly stone here, none of those glass fragments or sparkly gold and silver particles?”

He shook his head. “I like stone.”

“Me too. Solid. Cut well, there will be plenty of light reflected back. You can achieve a gleam without gaudiness. Do you make the tesserae yourself?”

“When I have to.”

“Done it in your time?”

“I use a team now.”

“Your own? You trained them?”

“Only way to get good color matches and consistent sizing.”

“Do you lay your own screeds?”

He scoffed. “Not anymore! Those days are behind us.”

He had put down his beaker. His hands dipped automatically into the baskets of tesserae that littered his table, running the matte miniature tiles through his fingers like embroidery beads. He didn’t know he was doing it. Some of these samples were minute, at least ten to the inch. Setting them would take forever. He had a trial block in front of him, with a band of tight interwoven borders in four colors—white, black, red, and yellow—executed exquisitely.

“Audience chamber.”

This was a fellow who saved himself. He let time pass by calmly; he would live long—yet his joints would go, despite the use of padded kneelers, and his eyes must be doomed.

The younger man must be his son. He had the same body weight, face shape, and manner. These were archetypal craftsmen. They passed their skills from generation to generation, developing their art to suit the times. Their world had a tight circle. Theirs was solitary work. Limited by a man’s private concentration, constrained by the reach of his arm.

These were workers who, in the course of their daily life, rarely looked up at what was going on nearby. Apparently they lacked curiosity. They had an air of ancient, honest simplicity. But I already knew from my study of this oversized building scheme, the mosaic workers were a bugbear. They wasted time, kept no proper records of supplies, and overcharged the Treasury more relentlessly than any other trade. The chief knew I was on to it. He defied me silently.

I, too, examined a bunch of black stones. I let them clatter slowly back into their basket. “Everyone else I have interviewed so far told me who they hate. So who annoys you?”

“We keep to ourselves.”

“You come along at the end of the job, the last finishing trade—and you know nobody?”

“Nor want to,” he said complacently.

Loud guffaws sounded through the thin walls from the volatile fresco painters. I was starting to think they would be more fun. “How do you get on with them next door?”

“We work it out.”

“Tell me—when a room has an elaborate floor, something like your ‘flicker’ design, then it needs quiet walls. You want people to admire it without distraction. And vice versa: when there is a flamboyant painting—or the occupants plan on using a lot of furniture—the floor needs to be restrained, in the background. So who chooses the primary design concept each time?”

“The architect. And the client, I suppose.”

“You get on with Pomponius?”

“Well enough.” If Pomponius had kicked him in the privates and stolen his lunch basket, this buttonmouth would never get excited about it to me.

“When they pick a style, do you have any input?”

“I show them layouts. They choose one, or a general idea.”

“And is there conflict?”

“No,” he lied.

If he completed his floors to the fine standard in his artwork, he was a high achiever. That did not alter the fact, this man was as surly as they come.

“Have you come across anyone called Gloccus or Cotta?”

He thought about it, taking his time. “Sounds familiar …” He shook his head, however. “No.”

“What line are they in?” enquired the son. The father glared, as if it were a rash question.

“Bathhouse construction.” Pa’s wonkily tiled Neptune had nothing in common with the cool sophistication that had been ordered up for the palace. “They do lay floors—subcontracted—but nothing of your quality.”

Reluctant to say that the last time I stood on a new floor mosaic, I had put a pick through it and then my father squelched his tool into a corpse, I ended the interview. It had hardly advanced my knowledge. Still, I had formed some thoughts about how I would like my dining room at home relaid.

One day. One day when I was really rich.

XIX

W
HEN I CAME
out from seeing the floorers, the fresco painters’ hut next door now lay silent. I looked in.

It was the same kind of chaos, though more crowded since their best friend was a trestle. It had been given a home where the table would have been if these lads had been proud housekeepers. Instead, they ate squatting on the floor (I could tell from the mess) and had upended the table against a window, to give them more access to wall space. They wanted lots and lots of free area to cover with their sheer brilliant brushwork.

The last painters I had dealings with were a mad crowd of crooked, aimless semicriminals from a wine bar called the Virgin; they wanted to bring down the government, but had no money for bribes and no charismatic charm to fool the plebs. Most of the time they could hardly remember their own way home. They were connected with my father. Enough said.

These loud characters here were probably layabouts too. All gambling, drink, and high ideals about betting systems. What they possessed in abundance was talent. All over their hut were fantastic examples of mock-marble stumbling. Dainty purple flecks on red, with trickles of white. Wandering orange streaks. Two shades of gray, sponged in layers. A blank square patch of wall was satirically labeled
LAPIS BLUE HERE
, presumably because the jeweled paint was too expensive to waste in experiments. All other surfaces were daubed. Every time they came in for a break and a barney and a bit to eat, they must flick new paint around just for the joy of seeing different colors and effects. When they were feeling even more obsessive, they produced elaborate bands of wood-graining so perfect it seemed a tragedy that this crude hut with their experiments would one day be pulled down and burned.

There were paint pots everywhere, mostly with great wet glops sliding down them. Paint rings stained the floor. I kept well outside.

“Anyone home?”

No reply. I did feel saddened.

XX

A
S I LEFT
the site huts, my heel slipped in a barrow rut. I landed flat out. Wet mud attached itself down the full length of my tunic. I had badly jarred my spine. When I stood up again, cursing, pain shot all up my back and into my head, to score a direct hit on a grumbling tooth that I was trying to ignore. I would be walking stiffly for days.

I planted my feet apart, getting my breath back. This part of the palace grounds was in general use at present. The official hutments were fairly smart and arranged in a regular pattern. Scattered tents belonging to hangers-on and hobos had been pitched in an untidier camp. Smoke wreathed from untended cooking fires. The smell of dank leaves harbored duskier odors that I chose not to identify.

Pyramids of enormous sawed logs, mighty oak trunks from some nearby forest, had been piled at the track side. In other rows, square stacks of bricks and roof tiles waited, layered with protective straw. Somewhere not far off, I could smell caustic smoke, probably lime being burned off for mortar. Here, heavy delivery carts, many still with their contents, were parked in a rough line, their oxen and mules unhitched and hobbled. If there was supposed to be a watchman, he had gone off for a pee in the woods.

One of the carts belonged to Sextius. I limped over to it. I found Aelianus, looking heavily unshaven and distinctly gray. He was curled up awkwardly, in a cramped space in the back of the cart, fast asleep. The senator would approve of his son’s endurance—though Julia Justa, who favored her truculent middle child, would produce a more tart response.

Seeing a rough hide cover, I manhandled it free and gently laid it over him. I was careful. Aulus did not wake.

I leaned for a moment on the cart wheel, rubbing my sore back. Then I heard noises. Instinctively I felt guilty lurking there alone. It made me cautious how I emerged into public view.

I must have crept like a mouse sneaking out from a skirting. A man who was atop a nearby wagon failed to see me at first. A flash of his extremely white tunic caught my eye. I had a good view of him. He was dragging up old sacks that covered the cart contents and peering underneath. He could have been the owner searching for something—or a thief. He looked furtive, not legitimate.

In fact, I knew him. It was Magnus, the surveyor. I was so surprised to find him leaping about these transports on his own, I must have moved abruptly. He glimpsed me and tried to change position. Then he fell off.

Wincing myself, I hopped over there as fast as possible. He lay on the ground, but making enough noise to prove that parts of him were undamaged. Obscenities came thick and vivid.

“Stuff you, Falco! What a start you gave me—” I helped drag him to his feet. He roared and shifted to and fro, pretending he had to rejig his limbs in their joint sockets. His fall must have been so unexpected he had stayed limp and that saved him. Basically, he was unhurt.

He had noticed my own filthy tunic, so I said, “Now there’s two of us stiffening up like planks—I took a tumble myself a minute ago. What were you up to, Magnus?”

“Checking a marble consignment,” he breezed offhandedly. “And you?” Considering
he
had been behaving oddly, he was looking at me hard.

“I’ve been trying to squeeze more than two words at a time out of the mosaicist.”

“Philocles? Oh, he’s all gab!” Magnus laughed.

“Right.
He
didn’t even tell me he was called Philocles. What about the other—his son, is it?”

“Philocles Junior.”

“Surprise!” Why waste imagination thinking up a different name?

We had started to walk slowly towards the main site. Magnus had been battered by a far worse shock than me, but he was recovering. He must be in general good shape. Refusing to be put off, he insisted, “Going back to your office by the scenic route?”

I reflected wryly that he sounded like me, harassing some suspect.

There was no need to connect myself to Aelianus, so I told Magnus how the previous day I had met the man with moving statues to sell; I played up Great-Uncle Scaro’s interest in automata and just said I was curious. “The fellow isn’t there. Must be making his pitch to Plancus and Strephon.”

“Good luck to him.” Magnus grinned. “Yes, I found his cart myself.”

Now I did have to check. “And the snoring assistant?” I felt unease at someone else inspecting Aelianus without his knowledge. “Looks a rough character!”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Falco,” replied Magnus demurely. “Rather odd, I thought—did you not notice? He was wearing a very good quality tunic and has manicured hands.”

“Oh dear!” I had been right to worry. I tried to pass it off. “One of the playthings they hawk about, is he? Maybe Sextius uses him to model moving parts.”

Somehow I managed to maneuver the conversation onto delusional statuary. We ended up discussing Homer. That was another shock. According to Magnus, there was a scene in the
Iliad
where the underworld god, Hephaistos, appeared, complete with a set of three-legged bronze tables that moved around on wheels. “They follow him like dogs, dogs who will even turn round and go home by themselves at his command.”

“Sounds like a good set of nesting tables for drinking parties.”

“When your guests have had enough, you can whistle and the tables remove themselves.”

I liked Magnus. He had a sense of humor. But I was surprised to find that he read Homer, and I told him so.

“Surveyors take an interest in the world. Most of us are well read,” he bragged. “Anyway, we spend time alone. Other people think we’re tricky sods.”

I made no comment. I had moved Magnus onto my list of men to watch. For one thing, checking important deliveries ought to be done by Cyprianus, the clerk of works. And I would expect marble to be kept not in some unsupervised encampment full of oddball hawkers and interlopers, but safe in the well-fenced site depot.

Covered with mud, I was hardly impressive. I went back to the old house and stripped off. Helena discovered me rooting through a chest of clothes. “Oh, Marcus, what happened?”

“Fell down.” I sounded like a sad little boy.

“Did somebody push you?” Helena was not being maternal; she worried about me getting into serious fights.

“What, some big rough bully? No, I fell down all on my own. I was dreaming and not looking where I put my feet. I’d been looking at work by some fresco artists: I must have been thinking about Larius.”