Furies Read online

  “Hardly,” Aculeo said.

  Bitucus sighed. “I feel like I’m going mad these days, living here like this. After my family left, Gellius and Trogus kindly took me in. We hoped to climb out of this mess together.”

  “More like drowning men clutching onto one another in a storm,” Gellius said. “We’ll likely all drag one another down in the end.”

  “An unfortunate analogy under the circumstances,” Bitucus mused.

  “Tell us what you know,” Gellius said, putting a hand on Aculeo’s arm. “Please.”

  And so he did.

  Aculeo had joined up with Corvinus over a decade ago after his father’s death. A former associate of his father, some had intimated that the man had only wanted to use Aculeo’s family name and status to further himself, for Corvinus was only of the equestrian class after all, but it had mattered little at the time. Aculeo’s father may have been of more noble blood but the inheritance he’d left behind was barely enough to cover his funeral. So Corvinus had stepped in and extended a hand, lifting Aculeo from that mess, teaching him the grain business, encouraging him, helping him invest in his own small fleet.

  Corvinus, a rotund little man with a sparkle in his eyes, a rapid patter, ready laugh and a thousand filthy jokes to tell, always made anything seem possible. And so it had been for well over a decade. Over the years they’d financed many of the great ships that transported grain shipments to Rome to fill the permanently gawping mouths of the always growing empire. The tremendous returns on their investments had swelled everyone’s purses.

  They’d started with half a dozen two-sailed vessels and done quite well even before they were awarded a prized annona contract to Rome. That had led to rapid expansion, building a fleet that included a pair of massive freighters, each over 100 cubits in length and capable of carrying over 120,000 modii of grain in their vast holds. In just eight years, Aculeo had managed to turn father’s inheritance of a handful of tarnished brass into something truly phenomenal, spinning grain into a mountain of gold.

  Not that they weren’t always looking for private investors to fund the expansion of the fleet, anything to keep it growing and out of the hands of the bankers and grasping moneylenders like Gurculio. What did we have to lose? Nothing. Nothing at all. It was easy money … or so it always seemed. You could trust Vibius Herrenius Corvinus after all.

  And so, of course, when Corvinus came asking that last, fateful time, Aculeo could hardly have said no. He’d borrowed the necessary cash as had many of the other investors. Iovinus, their negotiatore, had arranged everything, borrowing from various moneylenders, Gurculio foremost among them. And while Aculeo had to mortgage virtually everything to cover the loan, he’d done so with only minor hesitation, even at the Roman’s exorbitant rate of interest – twelve percent per week.

  Still, the interest rate had seemed of little consequence in the greater scheme of things as the loan was only for a short term, a few weeks at most. Besides, hadn’t the opportunity been even grander than ever before? After the first storm at Portus, the subsequent demand for grain had soared, prices could be doubled, trebled, the difference pure profit ...

  Until the gods had sunk the second fleet as well, taking Iovinus and the ships’ crews down with it. Everything had been lost, Iovinus had drowned, Corvinus was dead – a loss Aculeo still couldn’t fully fathom. All gone, their lives and fortunes with it ...

  “Or so I thought,” Aculeo said.

  “What do you mean?” Bitucus asked.

  “I saw Iovinus at the Hippodrome this morning.”

  “What?” Gellius asked, almost choking on a mouthful of the wretched wine.

  “I saw him with my own eyes.”

  “Iovinus is still alive?” asked Bitucus.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “What do you think happened?” Gellius asked.

  “A good question. Steered the ships to another port, sold the grain there most likely.”

  “I never liked that little shit,” Bitucus said.

  “We have to find him then,” Gellius pronounced.

  “A brilliant revelation, how did you possibly think of it?” Bitucus said acidly.

  “I would have had him this morning if you hadn’t stabbed me,” Aculeo said, wincing as he touched his wounded shoulder.

  “You stabbed Aculeo?” Bitucus asked.

  “Never mind that,” Gellius said. “Don’t you get what this means? There’s still hope!”

  “What are you talking about?” Aculeo asked.

  “Think about it! Sunken ships are one thing, but stolen ships are something else entirely.”

  Damn. He’s right, Aculeo realized. He felt a thin, warm wedge of hope invade his heart for the first time in months. “Perhaps. But it will only help us if we can find him. Who else knows Iovinus? Does he have any family or friends?”

  They thought in silence for a moment. Iovinus was a different sort of fellow, brilliant at numbers and the like but not the sort of person who gathered friends easily.

  “There’s Pesach,” Bitucus suggested.

  “Yes,” Gellius said. “If Pesach was friends with anyone it was Iovinus.”

  Aculeo recalled Pesach dimly, a small-time investor that he’d met at a dinner once. An annoying little fellow, boorish, constantly pestering himself and Corvinus about details of the business instead of socializing like a civilized person. “Where might we find him?”

  “I heard he was sold into slavery when he couldn’t pay his debts,” said Bitucus. “Someone mentioned they’d spotted him fetching pisspots from a public latrine.”

  “A fuller’s slave?” Gellius asked in horror. Bitucus shrugged.

  Aculeo shuddered at the thought, While he barely knew Pesach and disliked what little he knew, the very idea of a Roman citizen being sold into slavery was atrocious. And to a fuller? The poor wretch would be lucky to survive the year.

  “I’d have killed myself before letting that happen,” Gellius said with a shudder.

  “Do you know where he is?” Aculeo asked.

  “Near the fabric makers’ macellum in Gamma is all I know,” Bitucus said.

  “It’s a start,” Aculeo said. He dropped a few coins on the table and stood to leave.

  “Wait, where are you going?” Gellius asked.

  “To find Pesach,” Aculeo said. “Then I’ll find Iovinus and get my money back.”

  “Our money you mean,” Bitucus said sharply.

  “Yes, Aculeo, our money,” Gellius said, almost desperately. Aculeo looked at the other men with their haunted eyes, gaunt, unshaven cheeks, so utterly broken from the fellows he’d known. And so like himself.

  “Of course,” Aculeo agreed. “Our money.”

  Aculeo threaded his way through the market stalls in the Agora, mingling with the crowds. A wooden marionette jerked about in a funny dance near one of the stalls as the merchant pulled its cords. A little monkey leaped up onto the merchant’s arm, clambering up to sit on his shoulder. A pretty little girl, perhaps seven years old, stood nearby watching the monkey in fascination.

  The merchant’s cart was stacked with marionettes, painted balls, hoops, tops and carved wooden soldiers. Aculeo watched as the girl slipped one of the colourful tops from the tray and tucked it under her belt when the merchant’s back was turned – clever little thief, he thought with a smile. She noticed Aculeo watching her and darted back to a nearby stall where two women, one with dark hair, the other fair, stood like exotic, beautiful birds as they examined bolts of gleaming Cosian silk. The women laughed and chatted with one another, pretending not to notice the countless men who watched them, captivated. Hetairai, Aculeo thought. The little girl attended to the dark-haired woman, holding a cloth parasol over her veiled head.

  Aculeo picked up one of the soldiers from the cart. The horse was painted bright yellow and had thick brown horse hair for its mane. The soldier’s arm moved easily, lifting his little sword up and down, and a silver shield fixed across his chest.
“Wonderful craftsmanship,” said the vendor. “Only three asses.” Aculeo felt a pang of loneliness well deep inside like a hollow drumbeat as he thought of Atellus.

  He bought the toy. I’ll give it to you soon enough, he thought. I just need to find that cursed Iovinus and my troubles will be done with. He watched as the hetairai and the girl walked towards a litter and stepped within. The dark-haired one, gazing through the litter’s window, caught Aculeo’s eye for a moment, smiled, then the curtains closed and the enormous Nubian slaves lifted the litter and carried them away.

  The attendant at the public latrine near the fabric makers macellum readily told Aculeo the name of the fullery that had contracted to buy their waste. There was stiff competition for the golden liquid, as fullers, dye-makers, fruit-growers, even gold and silversmiths all found good use for it in their busy little shops.

  The fullery in question was only a few blocks away, tucked in the rear of a narrow alley off the main street. A painted owl stared down at him from the wooden plaque hanging over the doorway. The symbol of Minerva, Aculeo recalled, the fuller guild’s protective goddess. The fullery’s taberna was unattended so he walked down the short corridor into a bustling atrium. The fetid pong of ammonia mixed with rotting eggs was enough to make him cover his nose. Cone-shaped wooden drying frames wrapped with freshly laundered tunics and togas were set in rows about the fullery’s atrium, suspended over pits of smouldering sulphur fires to bleach the cloth. Clusters of slaves were hard at work in the nearby laundering pits.

  A toothless crone with a sweat-stained cloth knotted about her head spotted him and approached, offering a subservient, gap-toothed smile. “Help you, sir?” she asked in broken Greek.

  “I’m looking for a man named Pesach,” Aculeo said, gazing about the atrium, his eyes burning from the pungent air.

  “A man?” the crone asked in puzzlement.

  “A slave,” he said, the words curdling in his mouth even as he spoke them.

  The woman nodded towards a slave walking carefully through the yard, barely balancing a broad wooden yoke with bulging skins of stale urine slung from either end across his bony shoulders. Aculeo would normally have ignored such a wretched creature, but he recognized Pesach’s familiar features beneath the scruff of whiskers and greasy, greying hair. He was decidedly small and weak for such an onerous task, staggering under the weight of the yoke, trying not to spill the skins as he shuffled barefoot towards a pair of slaves working the treading vat in the corner. The slaves unhitched the skins from the yoke and poured their contents into a nearby pot to boil. Pesach climbed wearily into the treading vat.

  Aculeo threaded his way carefully around the drying hoops towards the slaves. “Pesach?” he called tentatively.

  The slave looked up. His bushy grey eyebrows lifted in recognition, then his expression darkened into a scowl. “Aculeo. What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Well I’m clearly occupied here, aren’t I? It’s very exacting work you know – one wrong step and they make you start all over again.” Aculeo felt his skin crawl when he noticed the man’s red, scabrous hands and dead, yellowed eyes, his ribs in stark relief amidst the shadows of his cheap, soiled tunic.

  “A minute alone. Please.”

  Pesach considered him for a long moment, then glanced at his co-workers. “Is it alright with you gentlemen? I hate to leave our conversation just as things are getting interesting.”

  “What’d he say?” the old slave asked. The other slave shrugged.

  Pesach climbed out of the treading vat, feet dripping with urine, and walked barefoot across the atrium to a stuffy little storage area where a number of gleaming white tunics and togas had been hung, awaiting pickup. Aculeo took a closer look at the man, who scratched every few seconds at the raw pink patches of skin on his arms, bare shoulders and shins.

  A fat, bearded man lay snoring on floor. “The master fuller,” Pesach explained. “He shouldn’t wake for another hour or two. Good man, keen eye for talent. He made me assistant velicus, you know. See, only eight weeks in and I’m already making my way back. You can’t keep a good Roman down for long.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “What do you think happened? I lost everything because of you and that asshole you called a partner. Well, that and a few unfortunate gambling debts, I suppose. I got in too deep to that moneylender Marcellus Cocksucking Gurculio and so here I am.”

  “I’m sorry, Pesach …”

  “You’re sorry?” Pesach sneered. “Well then, as long as you’re sorry! Did you know they sold me to this drunken boob for eight hundred sesterces? I’m a Roman fucking citizen! At least I was. I ran my own business, and a highly successful one I might add! At the very least he could have sold me to a decent place for ten thousand at the snap of a finger and covered my debt. But no, they went out of their way to sell me here at a loss. Just to fuck me over!”

  The fuller gave a rumbling snore. Pesach placed his filthy, urine-stained toes on the man’s whiskered cheek and pushed, turning his face the other way. The man smacked his lips and belched but remained fast asleep.

  “I’ll find a way to help you, Pesach, I give you my oath,” Aculeo said.

  “Stick your oath up your festering hole and leave me be,” Pesach said, turning to leave.

  “Wait, that’s not the only reason I came.”

  “You didn’t come to borrow money I hope. I’m a little short right now.”

  “You were friends with Iovinus,” Aculeo said.

  “There’s another one. It’s a bit late for him though, isn’t it? He was lost at sea.”

  “I thought so too, until I saw him at the Hippodrome this morning.”

  “What?” Pesach said, looking at him in surprise. “Good swimmer is he? Survived the shipwreck and swam all the way back to Alexandria?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What was he doing alive and at the Hippodrome?”

  “Good question,” said Aculeo.

  Pesach’s face darkened, he shook his head in dismay. “Fuck. Fuck!”

  “Any idea where I might find him?”

  “Hm? Oh, how should I know? I was friendly enough with the man once upon a time but I’ve no idea where he lived.”

  “He lived with Corvinus’ family,” Aculeo said. “They treated him like a son.”

  “So much for filial loyalty,” Pesach said, scratching at his red, scaly legs and arms again, which began to bleed. Aculeo tried not to shudder. “He got himself involved with a porne a while back, I recall.”

  “How involved?”

  “He talked of buying her freedom outright, even marrying her. Fool that he was.”

  “Do you remember her name?” Aculeo asked.

  Pesach thought for a moment, itching his arms and shoulders. “Neaera, I think. She worked in a brothel in the Venus District. The Blue Bird I think it was called. Pricey little place but quite pleasant. Pretty young girls.”

  The fuller started to stir. Pesach considered him for a moment, then horked loudly and spat a wad of phlegm on the man’s head. The fuller absently ran his fingers back through his hair, blinked up at the two men in vacant surprise, then closed his eyes and started snoring again.

  “Ah well,” Pesach sighed, “enough fun for now. I’d better get back to work. I’ve many important responsibilities to take care of, you know.”

  The Venus District lay in the western edge of the city tucked in behind the Gates of Selene near the Harbour of Kibotos. It was already late in the day by the time Aculeo finally stepped onto its narrow streets. A rank stench rose from the yellow-brown sludge that spilled into the Eunostos Canal from the nearby tanneries, swirling at the water’s edge. Ornate marble tombs and funerary monuments lined the main road that led out through the gates. The covered benches of the tombs, which by day provided shade and respite to mourning family members, served by night as relatively private meeting places for those in search of more carnal comforts. As long as the porne
s and pimps continued paying the city their fees for use of the area however, no one troubled them much.

  It was a dangerous time of day as the narrow laneways filled in with shadows, the day’s crowds had thinned, new groups emerged. What had been quaint, quiet corners by day had turned into sullen meeting places filled with grunts of passion from the couplings in the shadows. The she-wolves slinked along the city’s outer walls, their faces painted, pale breasts barely covered, calling to the men, chanting in singsong voices about the services they’d provide, no matter what the danger, he supposed, for who knew what their lovers had in mind for them? And the rent boys, scared, scruffy little fellows, their eyes devoid of any joy in life.

  “Hey lover, where you headed?” a veiled porne called out. Aculeo looked up and saw her smile at him. Her dark brown eyes had a flinty prettiness to them.

  “I’m looking for a brothel,” he said.

  “Why pay extra to a harbour master when you can bring your great ship to port right here?” the porne said with a laugh.

  Aculeo held out a brass coin. “It’s called the Blue Bird. Do you know of it?”

  “I know a place we could go,” she said, appraising the coin with a scowl. “You’ll need more than that, though.”

  “And worth every as, I’m sure, but I’m looking for the Blue Bird.”

  “There’s a thousand birds in the sky, should I know each one by name?” she asked, pressing her body against him, her slender hand stroking his thigh, caressing him, smelling cloyingly of amber mixed with sweat and body odour. “You should see the things I’ll do to you for a single sesterce. Come on, let’s see your silver, lover.” Aculeo felt her fingers grasping for the purse tied about his neck and pushed her hand away. The porne thrust her knee up hard into his groin. Aculeo dropped to the pavement, writhing in agony.

  “Why don’t you go fuck yourself then,” she said sourly, plucking the coin from his outstretched hand, then moved on to find her next mark.

  Aculeo made his way to his feet after the aching waves of nausea passed. He watched as drunken clots of men and their rented lovers staggered together through the streets that stank of countless years of piss, spilled beer and sour sweat, wandering from tavern to tavern, the loud revelry, flute and lyre and roaring laughter from behind the mud-brick walls. The porne was right, he thought, there’s hundreds of brothels about the city. How am I to find this one, running about the Tannery like a fool? Pornes of all ages, sizes, shapes, sexes, colours … One’s choice is practically without limit in this city.