His eyes devoured the Phidias.
I asked quietly, 'What are you doing here?' Pa let out a small groan of ecstasy, ignoring my question as he lost himself in admiration of the Zeus. 'Did you know this was here, Pa?'
For an instant Geminus blinked unreliably. But he cannot have known for much longer than I had, or the statue would not have been left here. He must have been starting to guess as he came up the stairs. I tried not to believe he had run into the caupona at top speed, intent on breaking down the wall himself.
He walked around the Zeus, admiring it from all sides. I amused myself wondering whether, if he had found the statue first, he would ever have told me.
My father's expression was inscrutable. I realised he looked just like Festus, and that meant I shouldn't trust him.
'We should have known, Marcus.'
'Yes. Festus was always hanging around this place.'
'Oh he treated it like home!' agreed Pa, in a dry tone. 'We should have guessed. And what's more,' he declared, 'this won't be the end of it. Your precious brother must have had hideaways packed with treasure everywhere he ever went. We can find them,' he added.
'Or we can tire ourselves out looking!' I commented. Euphoria dies very quickly. I felt tired already.
'He will have had a list,' said father, hanging his lamp on the statue's thunderbolt and coming back round to us.
I laughed. 'That would be madness! If it was me, the details would be locked only in my own head!'
'Oh me too!' agreed Pa. 'But Festus was not like us.'
I saw Helena smile, as if she enjoyed thinking that my father and I were alike. With half a million sesterces' worth of Phidias standing opposite, I allowed myself to smile back at her.
We all stood about for as long as possible, gazing at the Zeus. Then, when it became ridiculous to stay in that dark empty space any longer, we squeezed back to the comparative luxury of the furnished room beyond.
Pa surveyed the rubble from my demolition work. 'You made a right mess here, Marcus!'
'I was as tidy as I could be, in a hurry and without proper tools-' While the others gawped and marvelled, I had been planning. 'Look, we need to move fast. We'll have to cover up this rubble as best we can. It would be better to remove the statue before anybody sees it. Horrible-but we must shift it. We are sure it belonged to Festus, but explaining that to the owner of the building may not be so easy-'
'Relax,' interrupted my father graciously. 'Nobody's coming here tonight.'
'That's where you're wrong. Will you listen to me? I've been left here on guard while the owner is informed by Petronius that the waiter's dead. Any moment we're expecting to be joined by the mysterious Flora, and she won't be pleased to discover this great hole in her wall-'
Something made me stop. Nobody else was coming. Pa had said it in a flat voice. Even without a reason given, I understood.
'Thanks for looking after things,' my father chirruped wryly. I was still trying to ignore the implications, though already aghast. He reassumed his shifty look. 'Flora's not coming. Acting as watchman is man's work; I volunteered.'
Then I groaned as I realised what I should have worked out weeks before. I knew why my brother had always treated this place as if he owned it; why he had found jobs here for runaways; why he had made free with the rooms. It was all in the family.
Petronius was right. Flora existed. And right, too, that I would have preferred not to discover it. Flora's Caupona was the business my father had bought for the woman who now lived with him, to stop her interfering in his own. Flora was Pa's ladyfriend.
LXV
The first part of our plot against Carus and Servia was the most painful: my father raised half a million sesterces by auctioning his chattels. A friend of his called the bids on the day, with Gornia from the office supervising the rest of the sale. Father went to Tibur for a couple of days while it happened, presumably taking the redhead. I had gone to the Campagna, to fetch one of our blocks of Parian stone.
We closed the caupona, on the excuse of Epimandos's death. We made a space in the kitchen area, installed the marble block, brought Orontes over from his lodging with the painters on the Caelian, and set him to work.
'Can you do it?'
'If it will get you awkward beggars off my back: Oh I'll do it; just leave me in peace to get on with it!'
Using the Zeus as a copy, together with his memory of its brother the Poseidon, Orontes was to redeem his betrayal of Festus by making us a new Phidias.
While this was in hand, we lulled the collectors into a false sense of security by paying off our supposed debt.
It was just before dawn.
We drove up the Via Flaminia in an open cart, during the last hour that wheeled vehicles were allowed into Rome. Mist hung above the Campus Martius, clothing all the silent public buildings with a wintry chill. We passed the grey stone of the Pantheon and the Saepta, heading towards the elegant gardens and mansions up in the north of the city.
All the streets were still. The revellers had gone home; the robbers were busy hiding their swag under floorboards; the prostitutes were sleeping; the fire brigade were snoring. Door-porters were so deeply asleep visitors could have banged for half an hour and still been left out on the step.
We were ready for that.
When we reached the peaceful middle-class lane where Cassius Carus dwelt with his lady, we backed our cart up against their front portal. As if on cue, one of our oxen lowed. My father sat up on the cart, blurred in the light of smoking torches, and solemnly began to bang an enormous copper bell. A great cloud of starlings rose like a dark curtain from the pantiled roofs and circled anxiously. I and two helpers walked along the street pounding massive gongs.
It was a refined middle-class area where the inhabitants liked to keep their heads down on their pillows whatever excesses were going on outside, but we roused them. We kept up the noise until everyone took notice. Shutters flew open. Watchdogs were barking. Tousled heads appeared everywhere while we carried on banging in a slow, deliberate manner as if it were some dread religious rite.
Finally Carus and Servia burst from their front door.
'At last!' roared my father. The helpers and I gravely made our way back to him. 'The vultures appear for the reckoning!' Pa informed the audience. 'Now hear me: Aulus Cassius Carus and Ummidia Servia maintain that my son Didius Festus-who died a national hero, in possession of the Mural Crown-owed them half a million sesterces. Never let it be said that the Didius family reneged!' It was brilliant. After years of observing puzzled punters in the auction ring, he had the knack of sounding like a man who believed he had probably been cheated, though he could not quite see how. 'Here's the cash then! I call on all those present to be my witnesses.'
He walked to the edge of the cart. I joined him there.
'Here's your money, Carus! It's been counted!'
We raised the first lid together, up-ended the chest on the edge of the wagon, and let its contents spill out on to the roadway. The first consignment of our half-million tumbled at the collectors' feet. With an anguished cry they fell on it, vainly trying to catch up the cash as the coins bounced and spun over pavement and gutter. We shoved aside the empty chest and heaved forward another. Helped by our companions we continued this until a mound of twinkling coinage filled the entrance to the Carus home, chest-high, like a great pile of winter grit left beside a steep road.
It was all in small change. Box after box of mixed coppers, ancient bronze bits and silver fell like the mica chips that spangle the sand in the Circus Maximus. We emptied the entire amount into the road. We had no need
