“My little Venus . . .”
“It seems we have a problem.”
A man’s voice—harsh, not one she recognized—replied, “Yes, we have a problem right enough.”
To which Ampliatus responded: “And his name is Marcus Attilius.”
She leaned forward again so as not to miss a word.
Africanus wanted no trouble. Africanus was an honest man. Attilius marched him down the staircase, only half listening to his jabbering protests, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to make sure they were not being followed. “I am an official here on the emperor’s business. I need to see where Exomnius lived. Quickly.” At the mention of the emperor, Africanus launched into a fresh round of assurances of his good name. Attilius shook him. “I haven’t the time to listen to this. Take me to his room.”
“It’s locked.”
“Where’s the key?”
“Downstairs.”
“Get it.”
When they reached the street he pushed the brothel-keeper back into the gloomy hallway and stood guard as he fetched his cashbox from its hiding place. The meretrix in the short green dress had returned to her stooclass="underline" Zmyrina, Africanus called her—“Zmyrina, which is the key to Exomnius’s room?” His hands were shaking so much that when finally he managed to open the cashbox and take out the keys he dropped them and she had to stoop and retrieve them for him. She picked out a key from the bunch and held it up.
“What are you so scared of?” asked Attilius. “Why try to run away at the mention of a name?”
“I don’t want any trouble,” repeated Africanus. He took the key and led the way to the bar next door. It was a cheap place, little more than a rough stone counter with holes cut into it for the jars of wine. There was no room to sit. Most of the drinkers were outside on the pavement, propped against the wall. Attilius supposed this was where the lupanar’s customers waited their turn for a girl and then came afterward to refresh themselves and boast about their prowess. It had the same fetid smell as the brothel and he thought that Exomnius must have fallen a long way—the corruption must have really entered his soul—for him to have ended up down here.
Africanus was small and nimble, his arms and legs hairy, like a monkey’s. Perhaps that was where he had got his name—from the African monkeys in the forum, performing tricks at the ends of their chains to earn a few coins for their owners. He scuttled through the bar and up the rickety wooden staircase to the landing. He paused with the key in his hand and cocked his head to one side, looking at Attilius. “Who are you?” he said.
“Open it.”
“Nothing’s been touched. I give you my word.”
“Which is valuable, I’m sure. Now open it.”
The whoremonger turned toward the door with the key outstretched and then gave a little cry of surprise. He gestured to the lock and when Attilius stepped up next to him he saw that it was broken. The interior of the room was dark, the air stuffy with trapped smells—bedding, leather, stale food. A thin grid of brilliant light on the opposite wall showed where the shutters were closed. Africanus went in first, stumbling against something in the blackness, and unfastened the window. The afternoon light flooded a shambles of strewn clothes and upended furniture. Africanus gazed around him in dismay. “This was nothing to do with me—I swear it.”
Attilius took it all in at a glance. There had not been much in the room to start with—a bed and thin mattress with a pillow and a coarse brown blanket, a washing jug, a pisspot, a chest, a stool—but nothing had been left untouched. Even the mattress had been slashed; its stuffing of horsehair bulged out in tufts.
“I swear,” repeated Africanus.
“All right,” said Attilius. “I believe you.” He did. Africanus would hardly have broken his own lock when he had a key, or left the room in such disorder. On a little three-legged table was a lump of white-green marble that turned out, on closer inspection, to be a half-eaten loaf of bread. A knife and a rotten apple lay beside it. There was a fresh smear of fingerprints in the dust. Attilius touched the surface of the table and inspected the blackened tip of his finger. This had been done recently, he thought. The dust had not had time to resettle. Perhaps it explained why Ampliatus had been so keen to show him every last detail of the new baths—to keep him occupied while the room was searched? What a fool he had been, holding forth about lowland pine and scorched olive wood! He said, “How long had Exomnius rented this place?”
“Three years. Maybe four.”
“But he was not here all the time?”
“He came and went.”
Attilius realized he did not even know what Exomnius looked like. He was pursuing a phantom. “He had no slave?”
“No.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Exomnius?” Africanus spread his hands. How was he supposed to remember? So many customers. So many faces.
“When did he pay his rent?”
“In advance. On the calends of every month.”
“So he paid you at the beginning of August?” Africanus nodded. Then one thing was settled. Whatever else had happened to him, Exomnius had not planned to disappear. The man was obviously a miser. He would never have paid for a room he had no intention of using. “Leave me,” he said. “I’ll straighten it up.”
Africanus seemed about to argue, but when Attilius took a step toward him he held up his hands in surrender and retreated to the landing. The engineer closed the broken door on him and listened to his footsteps descending to the bar.
He went around the room, reassembling it so that he could get an impression of how it had looked, as if by doing so he might conjure some clue as to what else it had held. He laid the eviscerated mattress back on the bed and placed the pillow—also slashed—at the head. He folded the thin blanket. He lay down. When he turned his head he noticed a pattern of small black marks on the wall and he saw that they were made by squashed insects. He imagined Exomnius lying here in the heat, killing bedbugs, and wondered why, if he was taking bribes from Ampliatus, he had chosen to live like a pauper. Perhaps he had spent all his money on whores? But that did not seem possible. A tumble with one of Africanus’s girls could not have cost more than a couple of copper coins.
A floorboard creaked.
He sat up very slowly and turned to look at the door. The moving shadows of a pair of feet showed clearly beneath the cheap wood and for a moment he was sure it must be Exomnius, come to demand an explanation from this stranger who had taken his job and invaded his property and was now lying on his bed in his ransacked room. “Who’s there?” he called, and when the door opened slowly and he saw it was only Zmyrina, he felt oddly disappointed. “Yes?” he said. “What do you want? I told your master to leave me alone.”
She stood on the threshold. Her dress was split, to show her long legs. She had a fading purple bruise the size of a fist on her thigh. She gazed around the room and put her hands to her mouth in horror. “Who done this?”
“You tell me.”
“He said he take care for me.”
“What?”
She came farther into the room. “He said when come back he take care for me.”
“Who?”
“Aelianus. He said.”
It took him a beat to work out who she meant—Exomnius. Exomnius Aelianus. She was the first person he had met who had used the aquarius’s given, rather than his family, name. That just about summed him up. His only intimate—a whore. “Well, he isn’t coming back,” he said roughly, “to take care for you. Or for anyone else.”
She passed the back of her hand under her nose a couple of times and he realized that she was crying. “He dead?”
“You tell me.” Attilius softened his tone. “The truth is, no one knows.”