Not wearing much of it!" Pa smacked his lips. When I produced my list of the kidnap victims, the first result was depressing. Pa knew for sure that one man called Isidorus, an olive oil merchant, had left Rome about a month ago. The other names were strangers to him, apart from a certain Posidonius, whom Pa said he could probably find for me. He already knew Posidonius had been a victim; the man had been moaning all around the Emporium about having to ransom his daughter, and my father added the detail that Posidonius believed one of her captors had interfered with the girl. Forewarned about this, Helena Justina came with me next day, after Pa did provide contact details and I went to interview the victims. Posidonius was a timber merchant who specialised in exotic woods from the eastern end of the Mediterranean. He shipped in the baulks for manufacture in Rome, where they were used to make enormous tables for millionaire show-offs with palatial homes. There was a high returns rate, owing to the fact that eager purchasers forgot that the heavyweight tables had to be delivered and installed. Fine art mosaic floors had crumbled under the massive display pieces, and slaves in two different households had suffered heart attacks while trying to lift table tops through doorways. One had died. Posidonius was now trapped in Rome, awaiting the outcome of a compensation claim against him. But it had done him good. The publicity had brought in new business. His daughter, called Rhodope, was about seventeen. She travelled around with her father, who was a widower. He had brought up Rhodope single-handed since her birth. He seemed intelligent and cosmopolitan, much annoyed with himself for being caught out by an old routine. She looked quiet; not that that meant much. Helena took the girl aside while I discussed the abduction with her father. Pa had described him talking freely to Emporium colleagues, but with us he clammed up. Perhaps he had now realised the risks. He would only confirm to me that what had happened fitted the case notes Brunnus had drawn up. Mention of the Illyrian, the sinister go between, made Posidonius shudder. He was reluctant to discuss his fears for Rhodope, perhaps because if she had been seduced it might affect her marriageability. Besides, he complained that she refused to talk to him. Helena had more luck. She told me afterwards that in her view, the girl had definitely lost her heart and all that traditionally goes with it. Helena had found her extremely naive. My glimpse of Rhodope had been of a wide-eyed teenager with that guileless look that usually means a young girl is hiding dangerous secrets from her worried parents. I should know; I had been the secret sometimes, in my younger days. While Rhodope pretended to be preoccupied with eye paint, she was probably hoarding her dress allowance for a flight from home. Helena had discovered that the girl, completely infatuated, believed that the captor who had paid her attention was coming back' to find her, so they could elope.
His name is Theopompus. Apparently he is virile, dashing, and very exciting to know." I said, I bet his breath stinks and he already has three wives."
If you point that out," replied Helena sadly, Rhodope won't hear you."
So how did you persuade the loopy lummock to talk?"
Oh…" An uncharacteristic vagueness afflicted my beloved. She's sweet, and perhaps rather lonely." It could have been Helena herself when I met her, though in her case I would add. furious with men, ferocious with me, and extremely bright. Among the girls I knew at the time, she shone. If I had had any wives, I would have socked them all with divorce notes. That was what made her vulnerable, I suppose, Marcus. She may have opened up to me because I confessed I had once fallen in love with a handsome brigand myself I gazed at her benignly. Helena Justina, what brigand would that be?" Helena smiled. Retailers of fashionable household goods are not my favourite citizens, but as a father of girls, a deep chasm of sympathy for Posidonius opened in my heart. I left him a note of how he could contact Camillus Justinus in Rome if he needed professional help; I did not say, if Rhodope ran away. With luck she would just mope, and by the time she realised Theopompus was never coming, some other appalling fellow might be hanging around to take her mind off it. Rhodope had been ransomed some weeks before, during the period when Diocles was still staying at his lodgings in Ostia. I checked and no approach for information had been made by the scribe to this family, either at the time or since. Diocles could have been in Ostia for some completely different purpose, or else he knew about the kidnaps but had been prevented from following up the story. The way the mysterious Illyrian" always stressed that the kidnappers were violent worried me. If Diocles had dabbled in this, I started to feel anxious about the missing scribe's fate.
