House Of The Vestals Read Online Free PDF Page B

unknown might have killed poor Panurgus. I didn't witness the event."
    "But you guessed the truth, all the same. That's why you wanted me backstage, wasn't it? You were afraid the assassin would come back for you. What was I, your bodyguard?"
    "Perhaps. After all, he didn't come back, did he?"
    "Statilius, you're a worm."
    "You said that already." The smile dropped from his face like a discarded mask. He jerked his collar from my grasp.
    "You hid the truth from me," I said, "but why from Roscius?"
    "What, tell him I had run up an obscene gambling debt and had a notorious moneylender threatening to kill me?"
    "Perhaps he'd have loaned you the money to pay off the debt." '
    "Never! You don't know Roscius. He thinks I'm lucky just to be in his troupe; believe me, he's not the type to hand out loans to an underling in the amount of a hundred thousand sesterces.
    And if he knew Panurgus had mistakenly been murdered instead of me-oh, Roscius would have been furious! One Panurgus is worth ten Statilii, that's his view. I would have been a dead man then, with Flavius on one side of me and Roscius on the other. The two of them would have torn me apart like a chicken bone!" He stepped back and straightened his tunic. The smile flickered and returned to his lips. "You're not going to tell anyone, are you?"
    "Statilius, do you ever stop acting?" I averted my eyes to avoid his charm.
    "Well?"
    "Roscius is my client, not you."
    "But I'm your friend, Gordianus."
    "I made a promise to Panurgus."
    "Panurgus didn't hear you."
    "The gods did."
     
    Finding the moneylender Flavius was a simpler matter-a few questions in the right ear, a few coins in the right hands. I learned that he ran his business from a wine shop in a portico near the Circus Flaminius, where he sold inferior vintages imported from his native Tarquinu. But on a festival day, my informants told me, I would be more likely to find him at the house of questionable repute across the street.
    The place had a low ceiling and the musty smell of spilled wine and crowded humanity. Across the room I saw Flavius, holding court with a group of his peers-businessmen of middle age with crude country manners, dressed in expensive tunics and cloaks of a quality that contrasted sharply with their wearers' crudeness.
    Closer at hand, leaning against a wall (and looking strong enough to hold it up), was the moneylender's bully. The blond giant was looking rather drunk, or else exceptionally stupid. He slowly blinked when I approached. A glimmer of recognition lit his bleary eyes and then faded.
    "Festival days are good drinking days," I said, raising my cup of wine. He looked at me without expression for a moment, then shrugged and nodded.
    "Tell me," I said, "do you know any of those spectacular beauties.?" I gestured to a group of four women who loitered at the far corner of the room, near the foot of the stairs.
    The giant shook his head glumly.
    "Then you are a lucky man this day." I leaned close enough to smell the wine on his breath. "I was just talking to one of them. She tells me that she longs to meet you. It seems she has an appetite for men with sunny hair and big shoulders. She tells me that for a man such as you…" I whispered in his ear.
    The veil of lust across his face made him look even stupider. He squinted drunkenly. "Which one?" he asked in a husky whisper.
    "The one in the blue gown," I said.
    "Ah…" He nodded and burped, then pushed past me and stumbled toward the stairs. As I had expected, he ignored the woman in green, as well as the woman in coral and the one in brown. Instead he placed his hand squarely upon the hip of the woman in yellow, who turned and looked up at him with a surprised but not unfriendly gaze.
     
    "Quintus Roscius and his partner Chaerea were both duly impressed by my cleverness," I explained later that night to Bethesda. I was unable to resist the theatrical gesture of swinging the little bag of silver up in the air and onto the table, where it