This was evidently done as ordered, for when Gracchus came into the dining room, the fat man who had sat under the awning at the first crucifix, was reclining on a couch, quite clean and respectable except that he needed a shave. As Gracchus entered, he rubbed his beard self-consciously. “If you could add a shave to all this—?”
“I’m hungry and I think we ought to eat, Flavius. You can spend the night here, and I’ll have my barber shave you in the morning. It will go better after a good night’s rest and a bath. I’ll throw in a clean tunic and some decent shoes. We’re just about of a size, so my clothes will fit you well enough.”
They were of a size, a good deal alike; they might have been mistaken for brothers.
“That is—if you’re not afraid Sextus will scold you for giving up his cheap sinecure and accepting a crumb from me.”
“Yes, it’s all very well for you to talk,” Flavius said, a whining note in his voice. “Things have been good with you, Gracchus. Wealth, comfort, respect, honor, power. Life is like a bowl of cream for you, but it’s been something else for me, I assure you. I assure you a man doesn’t feel good or proud, sitting under a rotten corpse and making up lies so that travellers will grease his palm with a little something. It’s a bitter, nasty thing to be a beggar. But at least, when I was at the end of my rope, I got a little something from Sextus. Now, when I go to him again, he’ll say—Ah, you don’t need me. Go to your great protector and friend, Gracchus. That’s what he’ll say. He hates you. He’ll hate me.”
“Let him hate you,” Gracchus said. “Sextus is a frog, a cockroach, a cheap little ward boss! Let him hate you. Do what I ask you to, and I’ll get you something here in the city, a clerkship, a wardenship, something where you can put aside a little money and live a decent life. You won’t have to go crawling to Sextus again.”
“I had a lot of friends at one time, when I was useful to them. Now I could die in the gutter—”
“You’re useful to me,” Gracchus interrupted. “Let’s put it just on that basis. Now eat your dinner and stop whining. My God, good fortune is all over you. But you’re afraid to say, how do you do, to it. I don’t know what you’re afraid of.”
Food and wine mellowed Flavius. Gracchus had an Egyptian woman in his kitchen. Her specialty was to bone squab, and then to stuff the bird with pine nuts and fine barley. This was baked slowly and basted with brandy and fig syrup. It was served with tiny sausages which were made of chopped smoked lamb’s tongue and citron peel, called
pholo,
and justly famous throughout the city. The meal began with melon, which was followed by these two dishes. Then a cream soup of minced lobster, flavored delicately with garlic. Then a sweet pudding of grapes and dates, with paper-thin slices of smoked ham on the side. Then broiled mushrooms on a base of glazed whitefish, and finally a tray of almond paste and sesame pastry for dessert. Hot white bread and good red wine kept pace with this, and when they had finished, Flavius lay back, smiling and comfortable, his big paunch heaving gently, and said,
“Gracchus, I have not eaten a meal like this in five years. Good food is the best balm in the world. My God, such food! And you eat this way every night! Well, you’re a smart man, Gracchus, and I’m just an old fool. I suppose you deserve it, and I’ve got no right to be resentful. Now I’m ready to hear what you want me to do for you. I still know a few people, a few gangsters, a few cut-throats, a few pimps and a few madams. I don’t know what I can do that you can’t do yourself or find someone else who can do it better, but I’m willing.”
“Well talk over the brandy,” said Gracchus. He poured a glass for each of them. “I think you have virtues, Flavius. I could have found someone else who knows everyone in Rome who deals in bodies and souls and suffering, but I don’t want to bring into this anyone who has any call on me. I want something done quietly and well.”
“I can keep my mouth shut,” said Flavius.
“I know you can. That’s why I’m asking you to take this on. I want you to find a woman for me. A slave. I want you to find her and purchase her, regardless of what the price is. And you have unlimited expenses to draw on in finding her.
“What kind of a woman? God knows, there are enough slave women on the market. With the end of the Servile War, there’s a glut of them, and it’s the exception which fetches any kind of a price. I suppose I could find you any kind of a woman you want, black, white, yellow or brown, virgin or slut, old or young, fair or ugly, blond, brunette, red-head—anything at all. What kind do you want?”
“No kind,” said Gracchus slowly. “I want a certain woman.”
“A slave woman?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Varinia, and she was the wife of Spartacus.”
“Ah—” Flavius looked searchingly at Gracchus. Then he took a sip of his brandy. Then he looked at Gracchus again. “Where is she?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
“But you know her?”
“I do and I don’t. I’ve never seen her.”
“Ah—”
“Stop saying
ah
like a damned oracle!”
“I’m trying to think of something intelligent to say.”
“I hire you as an agent, not as an entertainer,” Gracchus growled. “You know what I want you to do.”
“You want me to find a woman, but you don’t know where she is and you’ve never seen her. Do you know what she looks like?”
“Yes. She’s quite tall, well-built but slim. High-bosomed with full breasts. She is a German. She has that straw-colored German hair and blue eyes. Small ears, a high brow, a straight nose but not small, deep-set eyes and a full mouth with an underlip which is perhaps a trifle heavy. She would speak poor Latin and possibly pretend to no Latin at all. She speaks better Greek in the Thracian style. She has given birth to a child within the past two months, but the child may be dead. Even if the child were dead, she’d still have milk in her breasts, wouldn’t she?”
“Not necessarily. How old is she?”
“I’m not sure of that. At least twenty-three and possibly as much as twenty-seven. I’m not sure.”
“Maybe she’s dead.”
“That’s a possibility. If so, I want you to find out. I want you to bring proof to me that she died. But I don’t think she’s dead. She is not someone who would ever take her own life, and a woman like that is not put to death quickly.”
“How do you know she wouldn’t commit suicide?”
“I know. I can’t explain it, but I know.”
“After Spartacus was defeated,” Flavius said, “didn’t they take his camp with some ten thousand women and children?”
“There were twenty-two thousand women and children. Twelve thousand went as spoils to the troops. That’s the rottenest scandal of the kind I ever heard of, but Crassus stood behind it, and he gave his own share of spoils to the public treasury to hush it up. That was no great gesture on his part, since his share was worth very little. He made a great gesture of taking no slaves himself. He knew what the market would be.”
“And was Varinia among these women?”
“Possibly. Possibly not. She was the wife of their chief. They might have taken some special means for her protection.”
“I don’t know. The slaves made a fetish of equality.”
Gracchus drained down his brandy and directed a stubby finger at the other. “Do you want to do it or don’t you? You can’t talk your way into any solution of this, Flavius. It means hard work.”
“I know it does. And how much time will you give me?”
“Three weeks.”
“Ah, now—ah—” Flavius threw his hands wide. “That’s no time at all. She may not be in Rome. I’ll have to send people to Capua, to Syracuse, to Sicily. Perhaps to Spain and Africa. Be reasonable.”
“I’m being as reasonable as I intend to be. Damn it all, go to Sextus and take his charity.”
“All right, Gracchus. There’s no need to be so angry. But suppose I have to purchase a number of women? Do you know how many German women fit that particular description?”
“A great many, I’m sure. I don’t want someone who fits that description. I want Varinia.”
“And what shall I pay for her if I find her?”
“Whatever price is asked. I’ll honor it.”
“All right. I agree, Gracchus. Pour me another glass of that excellent brandy, will you, please.” The brandy was poured. Flavius stretched on his couch, sipping it, and regarding the man who had employed him. “I have certain talents, don’t I, Gracchus?”
“You do indeed.”
“But I remain poor. I remain a failure. Gracchus, may I ask you one question before we leave this. Don’t answer if you don’t want to. But don’t be angry.”
“Ask it.”
“Why do you want this woman, Gracchus?”
“I’m not angry. But I think it’s time we both went to bed. We’re neither as young as we used to be.”
III
But in those times, the world was neither as large nor as complicated as it is today, and in less than the allotted three weeks, Flavius appeared at the home of Gracchus and announced the successful conclusion of his task. Money, as they say, has a soft surface and it rubs off on those who handle it. Flavius was different, well-dressed, clean-shaven, and self-assured since he had carried a difficult task through to the end. He sat with Gracchus over a glass of wine and toyed with his knowledge, and Gracchus himself restrained his impatience.
“I began,” Flavius explained, “with the very puzzling job of reaching the officers who participated in the spoils. If Varinia was handsome and well built, I realized, she would be selected in that first group. But when you realize that the whole question of appropriating the slaves was illegal and that five or six hundred officers were concerned and that very few of them had any desire to talk, you can see that it was not easy. Well, luck was with us. People remembered. Varinia went into labor when news reached them that the slaves were defeated, and people remembered this woman who would not be parted from a new-born child. They didn’t know it was the wife of Spartacus or that her name was Varinia. You must understand that Crassus sent a detachment of cavalry against the slave city, or camp or village or whatever you call it, immediately after the battle. Then the infantry followed. The slave women and the children there—there were some boys of thirteen and fourteen—did not put up much of a fight. They were dazed. They had just heard that the slave army was destroyed. But you know how soldiers are after a battle, and I suppose it’s no picnic to fight with slaves. They—”
“I don’t need a recapitulation of the mood of legionaries,” Gracchus said. “Suppose you give me the facts.”
“I’m only trying to describe the situation. I mean that there was a lot of senseless killing at first because our soldiers were angry and hot. Varinia had just given birth. Well, a slave child is hardly worth its weight in gold these days, and what gave me the clue to her was a story of a soldier who picked up this child by its leg and began the motion which would have dashed out its brains against a tent-post. Crassus himself stopped it. Crassus saved the child and beat the soldier half to death with his own hands. One would never suspect that of Crassus, would one?”
“I’m not interested in what one would or would not expect from Crassus. What sort of an old windbag are you, Flavius? Did you find Varinia? Do I own her? Did you buy her?”
“I couldn’t buy her.”
“Why?” Gracchus roared suddenly, rising to his feet in a burst of anger as frightening as it was unexpected. As he advanced toward Flavius, the other shrank back into his chair, and Gracchus hooked a hand in the neck of his tunic, twisted, and shouted, “Why? Why, you fat, useless tramp? Is she dead? If you bungled this, I swear I’ll see you back in the gutter for good! For good!”
“She’s not dead—”
“Oh, but you’re so full of wind! Like a bag of wind that farts instead of talking! Why didn’t you buy her?” He let go of Flavius, but continued to stand over him.
“Just calm down!” Flavius said suddenly and loudly. “You gave me something to do and I did it. Maybe I’m not as rich as you, Gracchus. Maybe I belong back in the gutter. But that doesn’t give you any right to talk to me that way. I’m not your slave. It’s bad enough when a man gets the way I do. You don’t have to make it worse.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t buy her because she’s not for sale. That’s all.”
“Price?”
“Not price. There’s no price at all. She belongs to Crassus. She lives in his house. And she’s not for sale. Don’t you think I tried? Crassus was at Capua, and while he was there, I took the matter up with his agents. Oh, no—nothing doing there. They wouldn’t even discuss it. As soon as the conversation got to that particular slave, they closed up like clams. They knew nothing about such a slave. They wouldn’t talk price. They wouldn’t speculate. I let money trickle into their palms, but it didn’t change things one bit. If I wanted the barber or the cook or the housekeeper, that might be arranged. Why they were even willing to make a deal for a beautiful Syrian woman Crassus bought last year, and manage to turn her over to me. They were willing enough to do that for me, but not Varinia.”
“Then how do you know it’s Varinia, and how do you know she’s there?”
“I bought that information from a wardrobe slave. Oh, don’t think that Crassus’s household is one happy little family. He has a son who hates his guts, and a wife—she lives apart from him—who would cut his throat, and the intrigue in that place is like something out of Damascus. Just fine. I could buy information, but I couldn’t buy Varinia.”
“Did you find out why he bought her? Why he keeps her?”
Flavius chuckled. “Indeed I did. Crassus is in love with her.”
“What!”
“Yes. The great Crassus has found love.”
Then Gracchus said, deliberately and slowly, “God damn you, Flavius, if you talk about this business, if it ever gets around, if I ever hear any of it repeated anywhere, so help me, I will see that you are crucified.”