Lucius cupped his hands around a pile of coins, as if they emitted a warming glow. He smiled ruefully. 'I tell you what, Gordianus-as commission for recouping my gambling losses, what if I give you… five percent of the total?'
I sucked in a breath and eyed the coins on the table. Bethesda would be greatly pleased to see the household coffer filled to overflowing. I smiled at Lucius and raised an eyebrow.
'Gordianus, don't give me that look!'
'What look?'
'Oh, very well! I shall give you ten percent. But not a sesterce more.
IF A CYCLOPS COULD VANISH IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
Eco was incensed. That was all I could tell at first-that he was angry and frustrated almost to the point of tears. At such a time, I felt acutely aware of his muteness. He was usually quite skilled at expressing himself with gestures and signals, but not when he was flustered.
'Calm down,' I said quietly, placing my hands on his shoulders. He was at that age when boys shoot up like beanstalks. It seemed to me that not long ago, placing my hands at the same height, I would have been patting his head. 'Now,' I said, 'what is the problem?'
My adopted son took a deep breath and composed himself, then seized my hand and led me across the overgrown garden at the center of the house, under the portico, through a curtained doorway and into his room. By the bright morning light from the small window I surveyed the few furnishings-a narrow sleeping cot, a wooden folding chair, and a small trunk.
It was not to these that Eco directed my attention, but to a long niche about knee-high in the plastered wall across from his bed. The last time I had ventured into the room, a hodgepodge of toys had been shoved into the niche-little boats made of wood, a leather ball for playing trigon, pebbles of colored glass for Egyptian board games. Now the space had been neatly cleared-the cast-off toys put away in the trunk along with his spare tunic, I presumed-and occupying the shelf were a number of tiny figurines made of fired clay, each representing some monster of legend with a horrible visage. There was a Medusa with snakes for hair, a Cyclops with one eye, a Nemean lion, and numerous others.
They were crudely made but tinted with bright colors, and I knew that Eco treasured them. A potter with a shop down by the Tiber made them in his spare time out of bits of leftover clay; Eco had been doing occasional odd jobs for the man and accepting the figurines as payment. He insisted on showing them off to me and to Bethesda whenever he brought a new one home. I always made a point of admiring them, but my beloved concubine made no secret of her disdain for them. Her upbringing in Egypt had given her attitudes different-dare I say more superstitious? — than those of a Roman, and where I found the figurines to be harmless and charming, she saw in them something distasteful, even sinister.
I had not realized how large Eco's collection had grown. I counted fifteen figurines, all lined up in a row.
'Why do you show me these?' I asked.
He pointed to three gaps in the evenly spaced row.
'Are you telling me that three of your monsters are missing?'
Eco nodded vigorously.
'But where have they gone?'
He shrugged and his lower lip began to tremble. He looked so desolate.
'Which ones are missing? When were they taken?'
Eco pointed to the first gap, then performed a very complicated mime, snarling and gnashing his teeth, until I grasped that the missing figurine was of three-headed Cerberus, the watchdog of Pluto. He passed an open palm behind a horizontal forearm-his gesture for sundown-and held up two fingers.
'The day before yesterday your Cerberus went missing?'
He nodded.
'But why didn't you tell me then?'
Eco shrugged and made a long face. I gathered that he presumed he might have mislaid the figurine himself.
Our exchange continued-me, asking questions; Eco, answering with gestures-until I learned that yesterday his Minotaur had disappeared, and that very morning his many-headed Hydra had vanished. The first disappearance had merely puzzled him; the second had alarmed him; the third had thrown him into utter confusion.
I gazed at the gaps in the row of monsters and stroked my chin. 'Well, well, this is serious. Tell me, has anything else gone missing?'
Eco shook his head.
'Are you sure?'
He rolled his eyes at me and gestured to his cot, his chair, and his trunk, as if to say, With so little to call my own, don't you think I'd notice if anything else was gone?
Eco's figurines were of little intrinsic value; any serious burglar would surely have been more likely to snatch one of Bethesda's bracelets or a scroll from my bookcase. But as far as I knew, nothing else in the house had gone missing in the last few days.
At that time, I was without a slave-other than Bethesda, whom I could hardly justify calling my slave anymore, considering that she tended to prevail in any contest of wills between us-so the only occupants of the house were Bethesda, Eco, and myself. In the last three days, no tradesmen had come calling; nor, sadly for my purse, had any client come to seek the services of Gordianus the Finder.
I raised an eyebrow. 'Fortunately for you, Eco, I happen to be between cases at the moment, so I can bend all my efforts toward solving this mystery. But the truth can never be hurried. Let me ponder this for a while-sleep on it, perhaps-and I'll see if I can come up with a solution.'
Bethesda was out most of the day, shopping at the food markets and taking a pair of my shoes to be resoled by a cobbler. I had business to attend to in the Forum, as well as a special errand to take care of on the Street of the Plastermakers. Not until that night, after Eco had retired to his room and the two of us reclined on our dining couches after the evening meal-a simple repast of lentil soup and stuffed dates-did I find time to have a quiet word with Bethesda about Eco's problem.
'Disappearing? One at a time?' she said. By the warm glow of the nearby brazier, I thought I saw a subtle smile on her lips. The same light captured wine-colored highlights in her dark, henna-treated hair. Bethesda was beautiful at all hours of the day, but perhaps most beautiful by firelight. The black female cat she called Bast lay beside her, submitting to her gentle stroking. Watching Bethesda caress the beast, I felt a stab of envy. Cats were still a novelty in Rome at that time, and keeping one as a house pet, as others might keep a dog, was one of the peculiar habits Bethesda had imported with her from Egypt. Her last cat, also called Bast, had expired some time ago; this one she had recently acquired from a sailing merchant in Ostia. The beast and I got along passably well, as long as I didn't attempt to interpose myself between Bast and her mistress when it was the cat's turn to receive Bethesda's caresses.
'Yes, the little monsters seem to be vanishing, one by one,' I said, clearing my throat. 'I don't suppose you know anything about it?'
'I? What makes you think I might have anything to do with it?' Bethesda raised an eyebrow. For an uncanny moment, her expression and the cat's expression were identical-mysterious, aloof, utterly self-contained. I shifted uneasily on my couch.
'Perhaps…' I shrugged. 'Perhaps you were cleaning his room. Perhaps one of the figurines fell and broke-'
'Do you think I'm blind as well as clumsy? I think I should know if I had broken one of Eco's figurines,' she said coolly, 'especially if I did such a thing three days in a row.'
'Of course. Still, considering the way you feel about those figurines-'
'And do you know how I feel about them, Master?' Bethesda fixed me with her catlike stare.
I cleared my throat. 'Well, I know you don't like them-'
'I respect them for what they are. You think they're just lumps of lifeless clay, a child's toys made by a
