Maxian squinted at him. “You are Mordius? A Briton?”
The man smiled. “Aye, my lord, the very same. Petronus sent a message that I should meet a young, tired-looking
Roman with long dark hair here. Are you he?“
Maxian smiled back. “I am. Let us go someplace dark and cool, with wine…”
An hour later, in the recesses of a tavern in a narrow street just north of the Coliseum, Maxian thought he had a good mark on this barbarian. As Mordius had explained over an amphora and a half of middling Tibertinan wine, he was a man sent to Rome to make money for his investors in distant Londoinium. He had been in the city for six years, first to handle shipments of ceramics and glass back north to Britain, then handling a growing traffic of wool, lumber, amber, iron, coal, and tin from the icy northern islands to the ever-hungry markets of Italia. He was married to a Roman woman now and had a young son. Two of his cousins had come to join him; they handled the warehousing and traffic of goods. Mordius had a new objective-to make more money with the money that he controlled in Rome itself.
None of this surprised Maxian. Foreigners had been coming to the Eternal City for centuries, looking for work, looking for riches. Some few found it; many more failed and went home or became refuse in the streets of the Subura. Others passed onward, always looking for a new Elysium. This one, however, had stuck and from the restrained richness of his clothes, from his accent and his bearing, the Prince thought that had become successful.
“It is impossible to be successful in Rome if one does not follow proper custom,” Mordius was saying. “One requires a patron, both to represent your interests in the courts and to help you navigate the intricacies of the State and the will of the people. I account myself lucky to have made the acquaintance, even the friendship, of Gregorius Auri-cus.”
Maxian looked up in surprise. “The one they call Gregorius Magnus? He is a powerful man in the Senate and the city.”
Mordius bowed his head in assent. “Just so. Without his friendship, all of my efforts here would be dust. I would doubtless be back in Britain, digging stumps out of fields.” He paused and raised the earthenware cup he was drinking from. “Even this poor vintage would be acclaimed throughout Londonium as an exemplar of the vintners’ art. I drink to Rome, the Roman sun, and fine wine.” He drained the cup. Maxian joined him, then put the cup down on the table between them. “Petronus, at the baths, said that you had encountered a difficulty with a business deal. He told me this after I had related to him a problem that I had with a business arrangement of my own. It seems, and I say seems, that the two troubles might be related.”
Mordius refilled his cup, then offered the amphora to Maxian, who declined, turning his cup over. It joined a confusion of old wine stains on the tabletop.
“A difficulty, yes,” the Briton said, his face growing still and grim. “Almost seventy thousand sesterces in investment, gone. A man who had become a good friend, gone. Nothing to indicate an enemy, a business rival. All ashes within a day.”
“A fire?” Maxian asked, disappointed. Petronus had hinted at more than that.
“The fire came after,” Mordius replied. “Joseph and his family were dead before then. I will tell you what I know, what I heard, what I saw.” The Briton sat up a little straighter in on the bench and the cadence of his voice changed. Maxian wondered if the man had trained as an orator in his youth.
“Two of the businesses that I represent are the importation of lumber, which is cut into planks for building in the city, and wool, particularly to be made into heavy cloaks. As such I see the foremen of both the lumber mills and the weavers on a daily basis. Five months ago each man told me an odd story about a silversmith, a Jew, who had come to them to ask them for their refuse. To the mill he had come and asked for the dust that comes from the saws when they are cutting the logs. To the weaver he had asked for their old scraps of linen. This intrigued me, for I can smell business, particularly new business, from miles away. I asked around, spent a few coppers, and found the silversmith. His name was Joseph and his shop was down in the Alsienita, across the Tiber. A poor neighborhood, but cheap enough for him to afford a workshop without too many bribes.
“The day that I went in to talk to Joseph about his sawdust and linen rags he was despondent. He had been spending all of his time on his new project, and his wife was beside herself at the state of their jewelry business. His sons and daughters were spending all of their time making a terrible mess in the back of the shop with his oddments, while customers went waiting at the door, and then did not come at all.
“Needless to say, it seemed a reasonable business opportunity-not as if I were setting his house afire and then buying it from him in the street… I had some silver in my bag and I gladly pressed it into his hand in exchange for his story. He looked hopeful, and I know that he was more open with me, a fellow foreigner, than with some-pardon me, my lord-snobbish Roman. So he told me the tale and it pricked my ears right up.
“Joseph had a brother, Menacius, who was a scribe and made a good living in the shops down behind the Portica Aemilla copying scrolls and letters and what-not. I know the kind of living a good scribe makes, I’ve paid my share of gold to them. Still, this Menacius was very successful, for he was blessed with three sons, all with good eyes and steady hands. The three of them were like peas in a pod and this suited Menacius very well, for their letters were all but indistinguishable from one another. He could set all three of them to one book and each would take a section. Three working instead of one makes quick work. The sesterces were wheeling themselves up to the door-that’s how good it was. Now, like most good things, this came to an end.
“One of the sons fell sick, and then another ran off with a snake-dancer from Liburnium. To make things worse for Menacius, he had just caught a deal with the Office of the Mint for no less than seventy copies of the Regulation of the Coinage. A very good sum he stood to make from that too, no doubt, but to win the deal he had to agree to a tight delivery schedule. Now, with only one scribe, he was in a terrible state. Being a man of family, he had gone to see Joseph and poured out his tale of woe. Joseph, who was a fellow good with his hands and clever to boot, thought about it for a time and then struck upon a solution.
“If there were not three sons, then make one son do the work of three. Their strength came from their handwriting being steady, firm, and clear. So he struck, so to say, upon this.” Mordius opened a small leather bag and removed a tiny object, pressing into the Prince’s hand.
Maxian turned over the little piece of lead in his hand. A square bolt, no more than a little finger’s bone in length. Flat at one end with two notches, one on each side, bumpy on the other. He looked tip in puzzlement at the Briton, who was grinning broadly.
“A bit of lead?” Maxian asked. The Briton nodded, taking it back. With one scarred hand, he cleared a space on. the tabletop. Then he carefully took the bit of lead and dipped it in his wine cup. Even more carefully, he then pressed the bumpy end into the tabletop.
“Look,” Mordius said, moving his hand away. Maxian leaned over and squinted down at the table in the poor light. “An alpha,” he said. A tiny, almost perfect, letter was scribed on the tabletop in dark wine. The Briton nodded.
“Joseph and his sons made hundreds of them from lead scrap, all of the letters of the alphabet, even all the numbers. Each little peg was scored at the flat base, so that they could slide into a copper slat to hold them straight. Seventy slats per frame, each frame made of wood with a backing. Each frame a whole page of printing.” The Briton paused a moment, watching Maxian’s face closely.