Mary Reed - Four for a Boy

“His rumored financial circumstances suggest this would be an excellent time to make a reasonable offer.” John’s tone was dry.

“An even better one to make a modest bid. I cannot be the only one who intends to wait another season before declaring interest. By then his circumstances will make him happy to accept an even lower price than he would right now.”

“Your comments suggest you and Trenico are not on the best of terms.”

“I wouldn’t say that. We are men of business. You might say that we are like two friends who bet against each other at the races. However well I may best Trenico now and then, I still do not see him falling into destitution.”

“It’s also possible that his finances will have improved by next year. There are rumors of him making a good marriage.”

Tryphon laughed. “That’s the nature of the Great Palace! Full of whisperers in dark corners and plotting in the bushes. I’ve heard the same. I don’t believe a word of it! Mind you, there are apparently any number of courtiers betting against the success of his suit for the hand of a certain senator’s daughter.”

“May I ask about Hypatius?” John put in, struggling to keep his voice level. The very thought of Trenico attempting to solve his financial problems by a union with Lady Anna angered him. To a greater extent, he realized, than was reasonable. “Do you have any thoughts on who might have wished Hypatius dead? Someone with whom he had had business dealings, perhaps?”

Tryphon regarded him shrewdly. “Ah, now we come to the point of your visit. You think it is possible he may have been murdered over money matters? That’s the cause of many murders, I would imagine, but it’s less likely grounds among businessmen.”

The landowner gazed out over the restless water. Fixing his stare on a distant sail he went on, choosing his words with care. “Hypatius was known for his piety and charitable works. I can’t see that those who benefited from his generous purse would wish to see him dead. Occasionally one heard rumors of less than honorable business transactions. Lately there’s been some talk of his mistreatment of his servants. I think it’s safe to put all that down to disgruntled rivals and the usual whinings of lazy menials. After all, if you cannot attack a man for his success you can always drop a few poisonous words about his private life, even if you know nothing about it.”

“Especially if you know nothing about it,” Felix observed.

“Successful and wealthy men always attract envy. Envy breeds anger. Angry men speak without thought and usually, so I have noticed, live to regret it.”

“We understand that Hypatius was a close associate of Senator Opimius,” put in John.

“Opimius?” Tryphon pursed his lips in thought and looked away from the water. The squat shape of the merchant ship he had been watching could now barely be discerned. Doubtless the vessel was laden with marble slabs or amphorae of wine or oil, but from their vantage point it looked like a toy a child had dropped from the seawall, only to cry over its loss.

“I am not acquainted personally with the senator,” Tryphon said. “Only with his reputation. Nothing more than that.”

***

As John and Felix walked slowly down the cobbled street on which Tryphon’s villa perched, Felix looked thoughtful.

“I noticed that Tryphon might admire wine from Trenico’s vineyard, but he didn’t offer us anything from his own stock,” he grumbled. “We might have found inspiration in a cup of wine. What do you make of it all?”

John shrugged. “It appears that the civic-minded public benefactor Hypatius was not quite what he appeared to be. But we’d begun to suspect that, given the business with his will, for example.”

Before he could say more, a pair of splendidly dressed, long-haired young men emerged from an emporium at the foot of the street. There was nothing uncommon about that or even threatening under the circumstances. What caught John’s attention was the enormous size of one of them.

Then he noted the oddly crushed nose.

It could only be the man he had seen running from the Great Church after Hypatius’ murder.

John did not have the opportunity to discover whether the Blue would have been as quick to recognize him as being the man whom he had raced past a few days earlier because as soon as

Felix caught sight of them he bellowed, “Halt! By order of the Prefect!”

The two took to their heels. The smaller scuttled into the narrow passageway behind the establishment they had just left. The other, the big one, cut swiftly across the street and disappeared under an archway leading to a stairway down to the docks.

Felix and John raced downhill and plunged through the archway behind him.

The sound of their fleeing prey’s boots hitting worn stone steps echoed back, briefly mirrored by the sound of their own thudding feet. They burst from the stairway’s darkness into momentarily dazzling sunlight.

The Blue had vanished along with the sound of his boots, but only for an instant. John spotted his large frame, jutting above the crowd of milling laborers on the docks. He sprinted after him.

Those who saw the three running men stepped quickly back out of the way, leaving a clear path along the docks. John found himself in a footrace for the first time since he had been a callow youth attending Plato’s Academy.

His prey ran with enormous, loping strides, but was heavily built and obviously not a practiced runner. John fixed his gaze on his quarry’s long tail of flapping hair. He began to draw nearer to the broad back, close enough to make out the geometric pattern stitched on the cloak.

Now he could hear the man’s wheezing, labored breathing.

John gauged the distance and then lunged out.

And slammed into an unwary pedestrian. He caught a glimpse of a pudgy fellow whose hair resembled an untidy nest. Then he was looking at the sky before smashing down on one side and spinning, sliding across an icy puddle, to crash shoulder first into a brick wall.

In an instant Felix was looking down at him, gasping, his broad face blazing red. “If I owned you I’d have those wings on your heels clipped,” he blurted out.

John scrambled up. “Where did he go?”

Felix pointed to the brick building’s wide door, beside which was a chiseled inscription announcing it to be the warehouse of Viator, importer of fine marbles and stones.

A swift glance into the gloomy interior revealed the broad back of a large man who seemed intent on examining the contents of a crate. His cloak, however, was brown and undecorated.

“How could he have changed clothes so quickly?” Felix muttered.

The man turned at the sound. “You! Loiterers! I can hear you whispering! Do I have to summon the Prefect’s men and have you arrested or are you leaving now?”

He was not young but middle-aged. Clearly, he was not the man John and Felix had pursued.

***

“The notion that my son murdered Hypatius is so outlandish that were I not a law-abiding citizen I would knock you both immediately into the sea for even suggesting it!”

Viator looked perfectly capable of carrying out his threat. He was of such cyclopean size as to make apparent at a glance that he was the fleeing Blue’s father. In addition to his bulk, he shared with his offspring the same sort of crushed and crooked nose, evidently an accident of birth rather than the result of fighting.

The marble importer led John and Felix through his warehouse. There was no sign of his son, Victor by name. He could easily have been hiding among the wilderness of marble blocks and huge pieces of stone piled in orderly rows in the dimness. Or perhaps he had slipped out a side door to the docks, from there to disappear into the city.