The King's Gambit(53)
We found seats at a small table jammed into a corner. By this time my eyes were accustomed to the limited interior light, and I could see that this place had been hewn from the solid rock below the temple. As the servers brought us a platter of steaming fish and sausages along with cheese, onions, bread, fruit and a pitcher of wine, I asked Milo about it.
“Been here since the founding of the city, they say. It was a natural cave beneath the temple, used for a storehouse. Then it was enlarged and the god up there”—he jerked a thumb upward, toward the temple—"Mercury, it was, came to a priest in a dream and told him to establish a great wineshop down here.”
“Mercury. That makes sense. The god of profit would be the one to tell his priest to establish a business beneath his temple. And do they rent rooms as well?”
“Behind the temple they have an inn. Decent lodgings, if you aren’t picky.”
“This is convenient,” I said. The wine was not bad, either, for a public house. The crowd was interesting and varied. The sailors and rivermen of Ostia were as hard-bitten a lot as I had ever encountered anywhere. They were loud and fairly boisterous, but I saw no fights breaking out. I asked Milo about this and he jerked his chin toward a huge, shaven-headed man who sat on a stool in a corner, an olive-wood club propped against the wall next to him.
“They keep experts here to maintain good order. I’ve worked here as chucker-out in the off season, when there was no rowing to be done.”
We concentrated on our dinner for a while. When we had wrought sufficient devastation, a server took the platter away and left a bowl of figs and nuts. While we munched on these, sipping our wine, Milo began sounding me out.
“Not meaning to pry, sir, but visiting a pirate’s agent doesn’t seem the sort of thing an official in your position ought to be doing.”
“It isn’t one of my regular duties,” I agreed.
“And that man Claudius,” he went on, “he was trying to force you to drop an investigation. What was that all about?”
“And what is your reason for asking?” I demanded.
His eyes went wide with injured innocence. “Why, I’m a concerned citizen, just like your friend Claudius.” He held his look of innocence just long enough, then he laughed his great laugh again, and this time I joined him. It was an impertinence, but Milo had such an easy and ingratiating manner that I found myself telling him the whole story. Well, not every little detail. I left out my tryst with Claudia and Chrysis, for instance. I saw no real need to reveal that incident, which was still somewhat mysterious even to me.
I actually felt a great sensation of relief in explaining these matters to Milo. Of my peers and colleagues, none seemed utterly trustworthy. Most of my superiors in office turned out to have some nefarious interest in the case, some secret guilt to hide. Telling Milo of my woes and my bewilderment seemed to clear the air of a maddening vapor. He listened quietly, with great attention. Only a few times did he interrupt with questions, usually to clarify some point about the political standing of some of the men I mentioned: Caesar, Claudius, Hortalus, even Cicero.
“So,” he said when I was finished. “It’s all about this stolen amulet?”
Once again, I was impressed by his quick intelligence. “It can’t be entirely about that. But the amulet is some sort of key that could unlock this whole chest of secrets.”
“You want to be careful of boxes like that. Remember Pandora, and Ulysses’s men and the bag of winds.”
“You don’t need to remind me. However, having pried it open a little, I don’t intend to stop until I’ve sifted through to its bottom.” Pleased at having extended the metaphor so far, I took another drink of Mercury’s excellent wine. A sudden thought struck me. “I wonder if Lucullus’s statue here was really struck by lightning a few days ago. Ask somebody.”
“How could it have been?” Milo asked. “It was never erected. A few years back the city proposed to honor Lucul-lus with a bronze statue, but they never got around to paying for it. They never got further than putting up the marble pedestal at the Juno dock.”
“I might have known. Now Claudius is making up his own omens.”
“That would be a handy political device,” Milo mused. “Just spread false stories of terrible omens about your opponents. Who ever looks into the truthfulness of those things?”
I shrugged. “It would only add another type of lying to an activity already heavily burdened with them.”
“Odd,” Milo said, “that even after the rebellion of Ser-torius, they want to maintain contact with the pirates. Those pirates love to slap the Roman face. Last year we could see their sails from the docks as they cruised past, unconcerned as you please, and our fleet laid up in the sheds, doing noth-ing.”