'Oh really! You always have to dramatise!' Helena Justina was a sensible young woman. Every informer should have one as his associate. 'Why should there be a body?'
Trying to withdraw from the ridicule, I defended myself. 'Epimandos used to be terrified of people asking questions about these rooms.' I heard my voice drop, as if I were afraid of being overheard. There was nobody here-or if there was, they had been sealed up for years. I was remembering a conversation I must have misconstrued at the time. 'There is something here, Helena. I once joked about hidden secrets and Epimandos nearly had a fit.'
'Something hidden by him?'
'No.' I was drowning in a familiar sense of the inevitable. 'Someone else. But someone Epimandos respected enough to keep the secret-'
'Festus!' she exclaimed quietly. 'Festus hid something here that he did not tell even you about-'
'Ah well. Not trusted, apparently.'
Not for the first time I fought off a wild pang of jealousy as I faced the fact that Festus and I had never been as close as I had convinced myself. Maybe nobody had known him properly. Maybe even our father only touched him in passing. Not even Pa knew about this hiding-place, I was sure of that.
But now I knew. And I was going to find whatever my brother had left in it.
LXII
I ran downstairs, looking for tools. As I went, I checked again the layout of the small landing. If there was indeed another room, it had never been accessible from the corridor; the stairs were in the way where its door ought to be.
Bringing a cleaver and a meat-hammer from the kitchen, I ran back. I felt mad-eyed, like a butcher who had run amok in the August heat. 'People must have entered through this room here:' In Rome, that was common. Thousands of folk reached their bedrooms through at least one other living area, sometimes a whole string of them. Ours was not a culture that valued domestic privacy.
Feeling the wall with my open hand, I tried to forget how it had been splashed with the soldier's blood. The construction was rough lath and plaster, so rough it could have been my brother-in-law Mico's work. Maybe it was. Now I remember Mico telling me that Festus had arranged work for him: But I doubted whether Mico had ever seen what was bricked up in the missing room. Somebody else must have filled in the doorway secretly-almost certainly someone I knew.
'Festus!' I muttered. Festus, on his last night in Rome: Festus, rolling away from Lenia's laundry in the dead of night, saying he had a job to do.
That must have been why he wanted me; he needed my help with the heavy work. Now I was here without him, and about to undo his labours. It gave me an odd feeling, which was not entirely affectionate.
A few inches from the cloak hook I found a change in the surface. I walked the width of the wall, tapping it with a knuckle. Sure enough, the sound altered, as if I was passing a hollow area, slightly more than two feet wide. It could have been a doorway once.
'Marcus, what are you going to do?'
'Take a risk.' Demolition always worries me. The caupona was so badly built, one wrong move could bring the whole place crashing down. Doorways are strong, I told myself. I bounced on my heels, testing the floor, but it felt safe enough. I just hoped the roof stayed up.
I felt for a crack, applied the cleaver like a chisel, and tapped it gently with the meat-hammer. Plaster shattered and dropped to the floor, but I had not been fierce enough. I had to use more force, though I was trying to be neat. I did not want to crash into the hidden room in a great shower of rubble. What was there might be delicate.
By pulling off the upper skim of plaster, I managed to trace the edge of the lintel and frame. The doorway had been blocked with fireclay bricks. The infill had been poorly done, hurriedly no doubt. The mortar was a weak mix, most of which crumbled easily. Starting from near the top, I tried to remove the bricks. It was dusty work. After much effort I freed one, then lifted out more, bringing them towards me, one at a time. Helena helped pile them to the side.
There certainly was another room. It had a window, matching the one where we were, but was pitch-black, unlit and filling with dust. Peering through the hole, I could make out nothing. Patiently I cleared a space in the old doorway that would be wide enough and tall enough to step through.
I stood back, recovering, while the dust settled a little. Helena hugged my damp shoulders, waiting quietly for me to act. Covered with dirt, I grinned at her excitedly.
I took the pottery lamp. Holding it ahead of me, I squeezed an arm through the narrow gap and stepped sideways into the tomblike stillness of the next room.
I had half hoped to find it full of treasure. It was empty, apart from its single occupant. As I pulled my shoulders through the gap and straightened up, I met the man's eyes. He was standing by the wall exactly opposite, and staring straight at me.
LXIII
'Oh Jupiter!'
He was not a man. He was a god. The lord of all the other gods, unmistakably.
Five hundred years ago a sculptor with divine talent had breathed life into a massive marble block, creating this. The sculptor who was later to ornament the Parthenon had, in the days before his greatest fame, made for some small anonymous island temple a Zeus that must have excelled all expectations. Five hundred years later, a gang of cheap priests had sold it off to my brother. Now it stood here.
It must have been an awesome task hauling this upstairs. Some of the tackle my brother had used lay abandoned in a corner. I wondered if Epimandos had helped him. Probably.
Helena had ventured into the room after me. Clutching my arm, she gasped, then stood with me staring in rapture.
'Nice piece!' I whispered, aping Geminus.
Helena had learned the patter: 'Hmm! Rather large for domestic consumption, but it does have possibilities:'
Zeus, naked and heavily bearded, surveyed us with nobility and calm. His right arm was raised in the act of hurling a thunderbolt. Set on a pedestal in the darkened inner sanctum of some high Ionic temple, he would have been astonishing. Here, in the silent gloom of my brother's abandoned glory hole, he quelled even me.
We were still standing there, lost in admiration, when I heard noises.
Guilt and panic struck us both. Somebody had come into the caupona below us. We became aware of furtive movements in the kitchen area, then feet approaching up the stairs. Someone looked into the soldier's room, saw the mess and exclaimed. I dragged my attention from the statue. We were trapped. I was trying to decide whether there was more to be gained by extinguishing the lamp or keeping it, when another light was thrust through the gap in the brickwork, with an arm already following.
The arm wriggled frantically, as a broad shoulder jammed in the narrow space. Someone cursed, in a voice I recognised. The next minute loose bricks tumbled inward as a sturdy figure forced its passage, and my father burst through into the hiding-place.
He looked at us. He looked at the Zeus.
He said, as if I had just produced a bag of apples, 'I see you've found it then!'
LXIV
