The Bull Slayer

CHAPTER Ten

The 13th day before the Kalends of November

The first hour of the day

The next morning Caelianus was ushered into the dining room just as Pliny was finishing his breakfast. The clerk looked worried.

“I’ve just been to the treasury, sir, to start the counting. Silvanus isn’t there. No one’s seem him since yesterday.”

Pliny was gripped by a sudden premonition. He threw down his napkin, called for his bearers, and the two men set off at once.

“Where are the chief clerk’s living quarters?” he demanded of the door slave who admitted them.

It was a bare, cold room—almost a cell—that Silvanus called home: the furnishings Spartan, the floor bare stone, the walls unadorned save for a threadbare tapestry that covered the wall behind his narrow cot.

“Look over here, sir,” said Caelianus. “Scuff marks on the floor, like something might have been dragged over it.”

“Leading to or from his bed, no, more likely from the wall behind it. Here, help me move the bed.”

Pliny tore aside the tapestry and ran his fingers over the plastered wall. “Look here, there’s a crack. He thumped the wall, producing a hollow sound. In an instant he and Caelianus, on hands and knees, had pulled away a low door cut into the false wall and exposed Silvanus’ secret. The compartment was just large enough to hold three or four of the regulation treasury chests. Only two were still there.

“He got away with as much as he could carry, Caelianus. It must have hurt to leave the rest. Damn the man! How did he get out of the building without being seen? How did he carry it at all? The strength of desperation, I suppose.”

Pliny confronted the clerks, the door slaves, the sentries, every last inhabitant of the building, all herded together in the big counting room.

“None of you saw anything, heard anything last night?”

They looked at one another and shook their heads.

“The chief accountant has been stealing, probably for a long time. Did any of you suspect? Speak up, I promise you won’t be punished.”

Now there were knowing looks on a few faces and muttered words quickly exchanged. Then one of the junior clerks, a fat-bellied youth, stepped forward. “We knew, your honor. He let us get away with a bit too.”

“Thank you,” said Pliny. “And now I will ask you a very important question and I want a careful answer. Did Vibius Balbus know that Silvanus was stealing?”

The fat young man looked around at his comrades; two or three of them nodded encouragement. “He asked some of us if we thought so. Not long ago. Said there was a new governor now, meaning yourself, sir. That you were going to poke your nose in where it didn’t belong and things had better smell like roses, or else. Well, I didn’t like to snitch on Silvanus but the procurator was that angry I was afraid not to tell the truth in case it came out some other way and I was caught lying. So I told him ‘yes.’ He turned so red in the face I feared he’d have an apoplexy then and there.”

“And what happened after that?”

“Don’t know, sir. If he had it out with Silvanus it wasn’t in our hearing. And that man always looks so sorrowful you don’t rightly know what he’s thinking.”

Within the hour, Pliny had men at the harbor and at every stable in the city that rented coaches. But no one answering Silvanus’ description had been seen. The man might be anywhere.

And so might Balbus—if he was still alive.

***

That night Pancrates, as always, toiled with his assistants over the day’s haul of queries.

“Have a look at this one, Master.”

He took the tablet from his oracle writer, held it near the lamp, and squinted at it: Will I be punished for slaying the lion? Glaucon, son of Phormio.

“A lion? Is the man a venator?”

“Hardly. We know who Glaucon is. Comes from a wealthy family, big local landowner. What do you think he means?”

Pancrates chewed on the end of his moustache. “Let’s put a scare into him and see what happens. Tell him he’s angered Hercules, who slew the Nemean lion and resents competition, something like that, you know what to say. We will keep an eye on this Glaucon.”