"Mad bugger!" That sounded like Larius.
"Has he got a head for heights?" One of the Camilli.
"He gets squeamish standing on a chair to swat a fly." I would deal with that rascal later.
There was a working platform at first-storey height, and another up at roof level. I felt perfectly safe climbing aloft to the first one then deeply insecure. "He's gone all the way up, Falco!" Aelianus was sensibly resting his leg standing back at a distance so he could monitor events and shout advice. I hated being supervised, but if I fell off, I would like to think someone could make out a lucid fatality report. Better anyway than Valla's: What happened to him? He was a roofer. What do you think happened? He fell off a roof!
Grit rattled through the boarding overhead, showering me in the eye. I came to the second ladder. Mandumerus knew I was after him. I heard him growl under his breath. I had my sword. Faced with light fencing practice, twenty feet above the ground, I shoved the weapon into its scabbard. I wanted both hands free for clinging on.
I saw him now. He laughed at me, then ran lightly ahead, vanishing around the building. Beneath my feet the boards seemed far too flimsy. Gaps in the loose, elderly planks gaped. There was a guard rail of sorts, just a few roughly tied cross-pieces that would snap under the slightest pressure. The whole scaffold had been braced with mere scantling. As I walked, I could feel it bowing gently. My footsteps echoed. Bits of old mortar left un swept on the platform made the going treacherous. Obstructions jutted at intervals, forcing me out from the apparent safety of the house wall. Keeping my eyes fixed ahead, I knocked into an old cement-encrusted bucket; it went bowling off the edge and crashed below. Someone cried out in annoyance. Aelianus, probably. He must be tracking me at ground level.
I turned the corner; sudden sea views distracted me. A gust of wind slammed into me frighteningly. I grabbed the guard rail. Mandumerus crouched, waiting. In one hand he wielded a pick handle. He had hammered a nail into the end of it. Not any old nail, but a huge thing like the nine-inch wonders they use for constructing fortress gatehouses. It would go right through my skull and leave a point the other side long enough to hang a cloak on. And a hat.
He made a feint. I had my knife. Small comfort. He lunged. I swung, but was out of reach. I stabbed the air. He laughed again. He was a big, pale, swollen-bellied brute who suffered from pink-eye and eczema-cracked skin. Scars told me not to mess with him.
I He was coming at me. He filled the width of the platform. With the pick handle flailing from side to side in front of him, I had no clear approach, even if I had dared close with him. He flailed at me; the nail point hit the house and screamed down the stonework, leaving a deep white scratch as it gouged the limestone blocks. I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off and viciously jabbed at me again. I turned to flee, my foot slipped on the boards, my hand grabbed for the rail again and it gave way.
Someone had come up behind me. I was barged to safety against the wall. It knocked the breath out of me. As I scrabbled to regain my footing, someone stepped past, featherlight as a trapeze artiste. Larius. He had a shovel and an expression that said he would use it.
Justinus must have run along at ground level and climbed up by another ladder. I glimpsed him too at our height now, crashing towards us on the scaffold from the far side. He only had bare hands, but his arrival was at high speed. He grasped Mandumerus from behind in a bearhug. Using the surprise, Larius then smashed his
shovel on the brute's shoulder, forcing him to drop the wood and nail. I fell on top of him and laid my knife on his windpipe.
He threw us all off. Dear gods.
He was back on his feet and now chose to run up the pan tiles He scaled the palace roof at a slant. The tiles began to suffer. Marcellinus must have provided inferior roof battens. (No surprise; the best probably went to his own villa.) Even climbing at an angle away from us, the steep roof pitch told against Mandumerus. He got halfway up, then lost momentum. With nothing to grab, he began to slow down. Then his feet skidded.
"Not a roofer- wrong boots!" chortled Larius. He was setting off to intercept Mandumerus.
"Watch yourself!" I cried. His mother would kill me if he killed himself up here.
Justinus and I inched warily past the section where the guardrail had gone, then followed Larius. The Briton slid slowly down the roof slope, in a vertical line towards the three of us. We captured him neatly. He seemed to give up. We were taking him back to the ladder when he broke free again. This time he managed to get his great hands on the giant hook on the pulley rope.
"Not that old trick!" scoffed Larius. 'Duck!"
The evil claw, made of heavy metal, came hurtling round in a circle at face height. Justinus leapt back. I crouched. Larius simply gripped the rope, just above the hook, as it reached him. Four years playing about on Neapolis villas had left him fearless. He took off and swung. Feet out, he kicked Mandumerus in the throat.
"Larius! You are not nice."
While I contributed the refined commentary, Justinus rushed past me. He helped my nephew batten onto the man again. Clutching his neck, Mandumerus gave in a second time.
Now we had a problem. Persuading a reluctant captive to descend a ladder is no joke. "You can go down nicely or we'll throw you off."
That was a start. We acted as if we meant it while Mandumerus looked as if he didn't care a damn. I dropped my sword to Aelianus so he could stand guard at the bottom. Larius did gymnastics down the scaffold, then jumped the last six feet. The Briton reached ground level. The ladder must have been merely lent against the scaffold (or else he slipped its ties as he went down). Now he grasped the heavy thing and hauled it away from its position. I had been about to follow him down, so I had to make a jump for safety. He swiped Aelianus and Larius with the ladder and left me dangling from a scaffold pole. Then he threw down the ladder and was gone.
I had no alternative: I sized up the distance to the ground, then as my wrists began to go, I dropped. Luckily, I broke no bones. Larius and I replaced the ladder for Justinus to descend.
The fugitive made it to the end of the garden colonnade. Then two figures appeared unexpectedly, discussing some abstruse design point in the fading light of dusk. I recognised the parties and feared the worst. Yet they turned out to be quite handy. One threw himself headlong in a tackle and brought Mandumerus down: Plancus. Maybe a low lunge to the knees was how he acquired new boyfriends. The other grappled with a garden statue (faun with pan pipes rather hairy, anatomically suspect; dubious musical fingering). He wrested it from off its plinth then dumped the armful on the prone escapee: Strephon.
We cheered enthusiastically.
Being captured by a pair of effete architects hurt Mandumerus' pride. He subsided, grizzling tears of shame. As he pleaded in crude Latin that he had meant no harm, Strephon and Plancus assumed the high-handed manners of their fine profession. They summoned staff, loudly complained about rowdiness on site, denounced the clerk of works for permitting horseplay on a scaffold and generally enjoyed themselves. We left them to supervise the miscreant's removal to the lock-up. Thanking them quietly, we continued to our suite.
LIV
maia was alone with my children. She was furious. I could handle that. She was anxious too.
"Where's everyone?" I meant, where was Helena.
The Camilli and Larius, sensing domestic danger, shuffled off to another room where I could soon hear them trying to repair the damage to their outfits. At least their bruises made them look like men to reckon with.
My sister's mouth was tight with distaste for yet another stupid situation. She told me Hyspale had gone off with her 'friend'; he had turned out to be Blandus, the chief painter. Hyspale must have met him when she was hanging around the artists' habitat, hoping to encounter Larius.