David Wishart - Parthian Shot

At least there were no hit-men with him. And Twin Gods’ Alley was a major thoroughfare.

‘Yeah. That’s me,’ I said, carefully taking his hand off my shoulder. He had more rings than fingers.

‘You have time for a cup of wine?’ he said. ‘My treat. Just to show there’s no hard feelings.’

Nice as pie. You’d never think that the bugger had stood by and watched me being beaten up, would you? I wondered for a moment if Phraates had already had his little talk with the guy, but that was unlikely.

‘You know,’ I said slowly, ‘I don’t think I do. Besides, I’m careful who I drink with.’

If I’d expected him to flush or get angry I was disappointed. The smile didn’t waver. ‘Pity. Oh, by the way: did you and your wife — Perilla, isn’t it, or am I wrong? — enjoy your meal last night with Phraates?’

The ice in my gut sent another shaft of cold up my spine. ‘Yeah,’ I said. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking how he knew; the fact that he did was worrying enough. I didn’t like the mention of Perilla, either; that hadn’t been accidental. ‘Yeah, it was okay.’

‘And your talk? Interesting, was it?’ This time I didn’t answer. Carefully, deliberately, he put his hand back on my shoulder and pulled me closer. He wasn’t smiling now, and his breath smelled of some sort of expensive spice; cinnamon, maybe. ‘Listen, Corvinus, because I’m not messing around here with silly warnings. You back off, boy. You back right off, before you get in too deep to haul yourself out, or I’ll see you broken. Not just kicked around a little, but broken. That’s a promise. You understand? And if you’re really persistent I might just extend the same courtesy to that wife of yours, if — ’

He hadn’t been expecting it. Nor had I, for that matter, nor the three or four respectable punters who were passing at the time and kept on passing at about twice their original speed. My hands moved of themselves, grabbing the bugger’s fancy tunic, ramming him backwards so hard against the alley wall that he almost made a dent and holding him there.

‘Now you just listen to me, pal,’ I said softly. ‘You so much as think in that direction and tame gorillas or not, Gaius or not, I swear I’ll cut out your fucking liver and feed it to you in slices. Now do you understand that, or shall I draw you a fucking picture in crayon?’

Our eyes locked. He smiled, and the shoulder above where my right fist gripped the material lifted.

‘Oh, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. You really should not have done it.’

I let him drop. He winced as his back scraped against the wall, a stretch of rough brickwork that Augustus must’ve missed when he was swapping the stuff for marble. ‘That’s my look-out,’ I said. ‘Just don’t forget, right?’

‘I won’t forget. You can be very sure of that.’

I stepped aside. He flicked a smear of brick dust from the front of the tunic then reached up and — carefully — gave my bruised cheek a friendly pat. Then he smiled again, turned away without another word and walked off back towards Market Square, leaving me staring after him.

Fuck.

Well, there wasn’t much I could do about that little problem for the moment; what had happened had happened, and I didn’t regret it because I’d meant every word. Still, I wasn’t going to tell Perilla; no way was I going to tell Perilla, ever.

I carried on down the alley between the Julian Hall and the temple, pushed through the jostling crowds onto Tuscan Street and made my way to Cattlemarket Square.

Cattlemarket Square was heaving, too: everywhere was, this second day of the festival. Still, it was a more cheerful kind of bustle. The hucksters were out with their trays, and the whole place smelled of grilling meat, hot poppy-seed bread rings and roasted nuts. At the vegetable market side of the square a troupe of actors had set up a makeshift stage and were putting on one of the old Atellan farces. I hung around watching for ten minutes or so — long enough for the guy with the bag to get a handful of coppers out of me — but I’ve never found Atellan humour particularly funny. Unlike, strangely enough, Perilla: culture-vulture the lady may be, but I’ve seen her double up at jokes that had beards when Romulus had his first shave.

I finally managed to push my way through the mob and into the comparative quiet of the alleyway that led past the side of Hercules’s temple and down to the river. Okay; so where was this Mano’s, then?

If it hadn’t been for my friendly Syrian barber I’d’ve missed it altogether. ‘Alley’ was pushing things: all there was to see was a gap barely more than a body’s-width between two huge warehouses. I made my way down it.

The gap only went in for a few yards before it ended up in a wooden staircase so steep it was practically a ladder. Yeah, right, that explained things: the place must be part of one of the warehouses, probably a floored-off section up among the roof-beams. Interesting. And not your typical wineshop, by any means.

I climbed to the top of the stair. Sure enough, there was a door leading into the right-hand warehouse just below the tiled roof, and I could hear a murmur of voices.

I pushed the door open. The first thing I noticed was the smell that wafted out, a sort of sweet, herby smell like someone was burning leaves from an aromatic plant. I half-expected to be stopped, but I wasn’t. In fact, most of the punters paid me no attention.

I’d been right about the setup. Whether or not it accounted for the whole top of the warehouse, the room was pretty big, with a ceiling so low I had to duck under some of the beams. It was packed, too, even at this time of the day; not that that would’ve mattered, because although there were shuttered windows opening out on the city side half of them were closed and the darker areas were lit with tapers. They weren’t what was causing the smell, though: I noticed that although there were jugs and winecups on some tables most of the punters had tiny metal dishes in front of them hardly bigger than walnut-shell halves, that were smoking gently. Every so often a guy would pick up his dish, hold it to his nose and inhale.

Uh-huh. I knew where I was now, although I’d never been in one of these places before; not that there could be many around, in Rome at least. Try not to breathe too much , Aegle had said. Oh, ha ha. I wasn’t surprised that my Syrian barber had said I wouldn’t find any Romans here, either. We’ve got a lot of vices, sure, but qef isn’t one of them. We leave it to the degenerate easterners, along with depilatories and male cosmetics.

A man was coming towards me carrying a tray of the little bowls and a censer of glowing charcoal.

‘Excuse me, pal,’ I said.

He stopped. ‘Yeah?’

‘You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s anyone here by the name of Jarhades, would you?’

‘The juggler?’ He nodded with his chin towards one of the tables at the back. ‘That’s him over there, the man in the dark green tunic.’ Hey! Right! ‘What can I get you, sir?’

‘You have any wine?’

His mouth split in a gap-toothed grin. ‘Sure. I wouldn’t recommend it myself, mind.’

It’s always good to find someone who’s honest about his wine, especially when it’s rotgut. ‘It’ll do,’ I said. ‘Oh, and if I’m going to barge in on the guy you’d better bring another of what he’s having as well.’

‘ Qef . You’ve got it.’

I paid upfront — the qef was a lot cheaper than the wine, although that wasn’t much — and made my way over.

‘Excuse me, friend,’ I said. ‘You’re Jarhades?’