'And among the slaves themselves, there are no rumours, no whispers?'
'Nothing. And if anyone had said anything at all, even in secret, I'm the one who's most likely to have overheard. Not that I eavesdrop-'
'I understand. Your duties take you all over the house, from room to room, dawn to dusk, while the cooks and stablemen and cleaners stay in one place all day and gossip to each other. Hearing things and seeing things is nothing to be ashamed of, Meto. I do it for a living. When I first saw you, I could tell right away that you are the very eyes and ears of this house.'
He looked at me in wonderment, and then cautiously smiled, as if no one had ever perceived his true worth before.
'Tell me, Meto, on that night, might Zeno have been in this room with your master?'
'It's possible. They often came here and worked together after dark, sometimes very late, especially if a ship had just arrived or was about to leave from Puteoli, or if Master Crassus was on his way.'
'And might Alexandros have been here as well?' 'Possibly.'
'But on that night you saw no one going in or out of this room? Heard nothing from the stables or the atrium?'
'I sleep in a little room with some of the others,' he said slowly, 'over in the east wing of the house, behind the stables. Usually I'm the last one in bed. Alex laughs and says he's never seen a boy who needed less sleep. On any other night I might have been up and about. I might have seen whatever it is you want to know. But that night I was so tired from running so many errands and carrying so many messages all day…' His voice began to quaver. 'I'm sorry.'
I put my hands on his thin shoulders. 'You have nothing to be sorry for, Meto. But answer one more question. Last night, were you up late wandering about the house?'
He looked thoughtful. 'Yesterday was so busy, with you and Mummius arriving on the Fury, and the extra work for the dinner last night…'
'So you went to sleep early?'
'Yes.'
'Then you saw nothing unusual, heard no one wandering in the hallways or going down the hillside to the boathouse?'
He shrugged helplessly and bit his Hp, sad to disappoint me. I looked at him gravely and nodded. 'It's all right, I only thought you might know something I don't. But here, before you go, I want you to see something.'
I guided him with a hand on his shoulder until we stood beside the centaur statue. 'Look at it all you want. Touch it, if you'd like.' He looked at me for reassurance, then reached out with trembling fingers and a glow in his eyes, then abruptly pulled back and bit his Hp.
'No, no, it's all right,' I said. 'I won't let anyone punish you.'
And I will not let Marcus Crassus destroy you, I thought, though I dared not speak aloud so rash a pledge. Fortune herself might hear, and smite me for making promises even a god could not be sure of keeping.
X
'When I was a girl, I would never have stooped to painting a fresco. One painted in encaustic on panels of canvas or wood, using an easel, and never, never in fresco on a wall; so my mentor taught me. 'Wall painters are mere workmen,' he would say, 'while an easel painter, ah, an easel painter is treated like the very hand of Apollo! Easel painters receive all the glory, and the gold. Make your reputation on the easel and they will flock to you like pigeons to the Forum.' My, that's a nasty bump on your forehead.'
Iaia's appearance was very different from that of the night before at dinner. Gone were the jewellery and the elegant gown; instead she was dressed in a shapeless long-sleeved garment that reached to the floor. It was made of coarse linen and spattered all over with dabs of colour. Her young assistant was similarly dressed, and even more remarkably beautiful by the light of day. Together they looked like priestesses of some strange cult of women who wore their paints upon their clothing rather than their faces.
The skylight above filled the little circular anteroom with a cone of yellow light, around which swirled a vortex of underwater blues and greens populated by silvery wisps of fish and weird monsters of the deep. The figures were remarkably fluid and superbly shaded, and the rendering of the water itself produced illusions of impossible depth; Eco and I together with arms outstretched could have reached from wall to wall, but in
places the murky depths appeared to recede forever. Had it not been for the jumble of scaffolding and drop cloths, the scene might have been almost frighteningly real, like a dream of death by drowning.
'Of course, these days, I'm long past scrambling for commissions,' Iaia continued. 'I made my fortune back in the good old days. Did you know that in my prime I was better paid than even Sopolis? It's true. Every rich matron in Rome wanted her portrait painted by the strange young lady from Cyzicus. Now I paint what I want and when I want. This project is just a favour for Gelina. One day we were leaving the baths, feeling all fresh and relaxed, and she complained about how plain this room was. Suddenly I had a vision offish, fish, fish everywhere! Fish flying above our heads and octopi coiling at our feet. And dolphins, darting through the seaweed. What do you think?'
'Astounding,' I said. Eco gazed about the room and shook out his hands as if he were sopping wet.
Iaia laughed. 'It's almost finished now. There's no real painting left to be done. We're at the stage of sealing the watercolours with an encaustic varnish, which is why these slaves are helping. There's no real skill to the job, just smoothing on the varnish with a brush, but I have to watch them to be sure nothing's damaged. Olympias, nudge that one over there, on the top scaffold. He's putting it on too thick — the colours will never show through.'
Olympias looked down from above our heads and smiled. I secretly pinched Eco, whose slack-jawed stare was not in response to the artwork around us.
'Ah, yes, in the good old days I could never have taken on a project like this one,' Iaia went on. 'My mentor wouldn't have allowed it. I can just imagine his reaction. 'Too vulgar,' he'd have said, 'too merely decorative. Painting histories or fables with a moral point is one thing, but painting fish? Portraits are your strong point, Iaia, and portraits of women, at that; no man can paint a woman half so well as you can. But one look at these staring fish heads and no Roman matron will ever allow you to paint her! She'd be looking for traces of satire in every brush-stroke!' Well, that's what my old mentor would have said. But now, if I wish to paint fish, by Neptune, I'll paint fish. I think they're lovely.'
She seemed quite enraptured by her own skill, an immodesty perhaps forgivable in an artist in the final stages of an almost-done creation. 'I can see why you became renowned for your portraits,' I said. 'I saw your picture of Gelina in the library.'
Her smile wavered. 'Yes, I did that only a year ago. Gelina wanted it for a birthday present, for Lucius. We spent weeks working on it, out on her private terrace at the north end of the house, in her room where Lucius never went, so it would be a surprise.'
'Didn't he like it?'
'Frankly, no. It was done especially to fit the wall above his table in the library. Well, he made it quite plain that he didn't want it there. If you've seen the room, you've seen his taste — those awful statues of Hercules and Chiron. The painting above his table was even worse, a horrible thing that purported to show the Argonauts attacked by harpies, such a hideous embarrassment I can't imagine how he dared to allow visitors in the room. A really terrible painting done by some unknown hack in Neapolis, a mishmash of naked breasts and nailing claws and stiffly painted warriors brandishing swords. Words cannot exaggerate how awful it was. Am I not right, Olympias?'
The girl looked down from her work and laughed. 'It was a very bad painting, Iaia.'
'In the end Lucius acquiesced and had the thing removed so that we could mount Gelina's portrait into the wall, but he was most ungracious. Gelina had ordered a rug to match, and he complained endlessly about the expense. She was in tears more than once, thanks to that episode. Of course, misery about money was an old story in this house. What a failure Lucius was! What an impostor! What's the point of living in a villa like this if you have to count every sesterce before you spend it?'
