Venus in Pearls(4)

"Very. My girls and I weren't able to lift it onto her shoulders and had to ask some men to help."

"What men?"

"Some of the soldiers on guard outside."

"You allowed soldiers to handle this treasure?"

Already I saw trouble. Soldiers are acquisitive people.

"They were Caesar's men," she said, shrugging. Like my wife and the other women of his family, Chloe seemed to share the common misconception that Caesar's men worshipped him and would never steal from him. I knew better.

"Besides," she added, "there is treasure everywhere here. They would scarcely need the feel of pearls to excite their greed." That, at least, made sense.

"Were these the girls who were with you then?" I asked.

"Girls, attend," she said with quiet authority. The girls lined up, hands clasped before them, eyes downcast. Chloe gestured to each in turn. "Harmonia, Euterpe, Gaia, Leto, and Chrysis. Do you wish to question them?"

"What I would really like to know," I said, watching them closely, "is whether any of these girls has been on familiar terms with any of those soldiers." No one frowned, no one blushed.

"Of course not!" Chloe said heatedly. "I guard the chastity of my girls personally. They were raised in the house of the Pontifex Maximus."

"Quite so." Chloe had little grasp of the relevancies, but none of the girls showed the slightest sign of guilt. "When was the statue delivered?"

She thought a moment. "Two days before the breastplate arrived."

"And who delivered it?"

"Thyrsites the Alexandrian. He is a dealer in statuary. I believe he handled all the work on this one: commissioning the sculptor, the shipping and delivery. His men are amazingly skilled at the work. They arrived at first light and had it set up by midmorning, heavy though it is."

"And how did the pearls arrive?"

She crossed the tent and stooped over a long wooden box. This she opened, and it exuded a fragrance of fresh cedar. "It was in this box." She drew from it a long, tubular case of what appeared to be silk, a fabulous item by itself. "It was rolled up and covered with this case."

"And who handled this work?"

"The firm of Considius. He does all the finest pearl work in Rome. The women of my family deal exclusively with Considius."

"Did he perform the goldwork as well?"

"That I could not tell you. Is it important?'

"You never can tell what may prove to be important." I took one last look at the goddess as the girls readied to recover her. She truly was glorious.

The workers and dealers in precious substances were concentrated near the Forum, the pearl market being located at the northern end. The establishment of Considius seemed surprisingly modest for so great a merchant; little more than a booth crowded with beautifully crafted wooden cases. The whole place smelled sweetly of cedar. The cases were made of the same wood as the big delivery box in the goddess's tent.

"Welcome, Senator!" The man who came from the back of the tent wore citizen's clothes and the ring of an equites, but his features were subtly foreign, that Greek-Syrian mixture one encounters so often in the East. This made good sense considering the nature of his business. He was a balding, portly man perhaps forty-five years of age. "I am Considius. How may I help my distinguished guest?"

"I find that I must learn something about pearls."

His eyebrows went up. "I do hope the Senate is not considering new sumptuary laws."

"With Julius Caesar in charge? Not likely."

"Ah, excellent. How, then, may I enlighten you?"

"I know very little about pearls, and I've avoided learning lest my wife acquire too great a taste for them. How do they come to Rome?'

"Pearls come from the seas of the world, Senator, most of them from far, far to the east. Observe." He went to a long, narrow case, a miniature of the one I had seen in the tent, opening it to reveal a stunning series of pearls graded by color, from the common white on one end to silvery black on the other. They lay in a single row, nestled in silk and none of them was smaller than the tip of my smallest finger.

"Here," Considius explained, "we have black pearls from the Euxine Sea, rose-tinted ones from the Red Sea, yellow pearls from Arabian waters. The greatest number come from India and its numerous islands."

"I never knew there could be so many shades of white alone," I admitted. "Yours is a great and far-flung business."

"The trade is very ancient and very extensive," he said. 'Perhaps the only trade to compare is that in frankincense."

"Even among the white pearls," I commented, "I see here great differences not only in color but in— in brightness."