When Ostorius congratulated me on my thoughtful husband, I explained he was still very new.
Tiberius enjoyed his coup. “Can you find someone to sew you a gown, Albia? Or are you intent on making our clothes yourself at home, like a good Roman matron?”
We exchanged banter about the traditional wifely role of working a loom in the atrium; I wormed my way smartly out of that suggestion.
Finally, I took advantage of the good mood in our gathering and tackled what we had come for. “Ostorius, we have loved hearing about what happens here and I shall wear my new gown with much pleasure.” Well, I would do—once I had hung it out of doors to air … “We won’t keep you much longer. But I must admit we had a purpose in coming to meet you.”
Almost as if they had been expecting trouble, a group of workers, including Cincia, clustered around us. There were a couple of girls I would categorise as children; none were as stunning as the description of Lemni’s find that night in Rome.
The mood was quiet enough, though I felt wary. Tiberius stood with his thumbs in his belt, a relaxed posture. He had dressed to look unofficial; indeed, he had wasted much anxiety on choosing his outfit for leisure at the coast. No toga, of course. Instead of a crisp white tunic, some shapeless garment Dromo had produced from the bottom of a chest, in a shade even Tiberius described as camel-piss. He had a multi-purpose tool hung on his belt. There had been a hat of unutterable ghastliness, but it was in Barley’s pannier, making a bed for her.
Tiberius and I looked unthreatening. After our tour of the works, we were all smiles. When I began asking questions, I kept it light. But my easy-going enquiries were less fruitful than I wanted.
I owned up that I was being employed to investigate two deaths on the Capitol, one of them that of Gabinus. I said I knew Gabinus had had visitors who worked in their industry; I was certain it was them.
Ostorius reluctantly agreed. He and his family had gone to Rome in the hope of obtaining a contract to supply imperial purple. The suggestion had come originally from a chance meeting with Gabinus at Ostia; Gabinus made out that he had influence at court. He claimed he knew someone who controlled the orders for purple cloth and might be looking to take on a new supplier. But Gabinus was shamming. Any contact he did have must have told him to get lost. Once the dyers showed up in Rome, expecting much from Gabinus, of course he could not deliver; they realised it was a swindle.
That was the end of their visit, declared Ostorius. He agreed they had found themselves stuck on the Hill for a time, until the gatekeeper released them. Despondent, they had returned to their lodgings overnight, after which they came home.
“You must have been very angry with Gabinus,” Tiberius suggested.
“We felt like fools.”
“Did you quarrel?” I kept my tone neutral.
“Not much point.” Ostorius was honest about being duped, yet played it down phlegmatically. “We could see we had been stupid ever to believe him.”
“He told Gabinus what we thought of him, all right!” chipped in his wife, who was more outspoken. Cincia was a short, wide-faced, assertive countrywoman with the stained arms they all had. She had been paying a lot of attention to how Ostorius handled my questioning. “It cost us, going all that way—and for nothing.”
“Did Gabinus apologise?”
“No way!”
“Did he explain why he had led you astray?”
“He pretended that since we first met at the port, he had found out the purple supply was in the hands of powerful agents. He claimed he had tried to break into their cartel but couldn’t budge them. The material for the Triumph was already ordered and the cloth being embroidered, in any case. So we were too late for that and there seemed to be no opening for us. We should have known!” complained Ostorius, bitterly.
“The contract is with Tarentum?” I sympathised, letting him know I already possessed information. He nodded, not bothering to curse their rivals.
“Are they good?”
“Pretty fair.”
“So are we! We’ll get that contract one day,” Cincia announced firmly. There was a strong sense of her stiffening Ostorius when his hopes flagged. She gave the impression she regularly yearned for a take-over from Tarentum. Perhaps visiting Gabinus had been her idea.
Cincia must be nearing the menopause, I reckoned. She might be seeking more to show for her life than a line of pug-nosed offspring—even wanting more for them than extracting glands from murex shells just as she and her forebears had always done. She believed these dye-producers deserved better, and she was right. They led a disgusting life; from the state of their hutments, rewards were few. Yet they must be well aware how much profit their dyes earned for somebody else, further down the line.
Tiberius looked around the group. “Did you take the whole family to Rome?” he asked, sounding as if it was an innocent question.
“None of us had ever been there,” Cincia told him. “We decided we would like to see the place.”
He smiled. “A good experience. Especially for your children. Widen their horizons. Are these all yours?” On a quick count there were nine.
It was Cincia’s turn to nod, though first she flashed a look at Ostorius. Cincia had seen our point. Ostorius then added almost sheepishly, “Couple of cousins came as well. So as not to feel left out.”
“Are they here today?”
“No.” Ostorius left it at that.
With no alternative, I declared our interest: “I assume one of those cousins was the lovely young girl who has been mentioned by my witnesses?”
Silence.
“Come on. I know she exists. I know she had some kind of adventure, and that it was very upsetting for her. Somebody rescued her. Someone saw them. Who is she, please?”
Ostorius accepted that the game was up. “Oh, you must mean Susuza,” he answered casually. “Silly thing got herself lost, that’s all it was. She wandered off, couldn’t find the rest of us, had a bit of a panic. Someone did give her directions to where we were staying, so she found her way back. Nothing to get excited about. Nothing at all.”
Now it was the turn of Tiberius and me to exchange a glance. Neither of us believed this story. And neither of us cared if the murex family saw that we were sceptical.
XXXVII
We could no longer stay. The dye-producers were intransigent: Susuza was not theirs. The girl led her own life. They claimed they had no idea where she might be that evening. Anyway, she had nothing to say about anything, they assured us. It only heightened my interest.
The mood had changed. Ostorius brought our cloth; he threw the package, harder than necessary, into a donkey pannier—a good-riddance gesture. He wanted us to leave.
With nothing to lose, I tackled him: “When you were telling Gabinus what you thought of him, exactly how far did it go?” As I let him hear my implication, he assumed his cautious look. “Was there a fight? You must have been furious he had lured you to Rome for nothing—rightly so. Did you have proper fisticuffs?”
Ostorius shrugged. I could see Cincia preparing to back him up, but he replied strongly enough of his own accord: “I don’t like violence. Things never came to that.”
“We had the little ones with us,” Cincia reinforced him, almost as if without the children she would have weighed in herself to assault Gabinus. “What does it matter, anyway?”
“If there was pushing and shoving, I want to know.”
“Who cares?”
“I do. The city of Rome does. If his Triumph has been polluted, the Emperor has a deep interest.”
Cincia looked startled. “What’s so important?” She was bright. She had guessed.
“Because Gabinus hasn’t simply died. Somebody pushed him off the Tarpeian Rock.”
Cincia clapped her Tyrian purple hands. “Oh, well done, whoever that was! But it was not us.”
“I may believe you,” I said quietly. “So tell me this: how will Susuza, your cousin or niece or whatever she is, react when
you tell her Gabinus is dead?”
“She won’t say anything,” Ostorius declared. “Why should she? He was a stranger—she only met him once.”
“Anyone says otherwise,” his wife added, “I’ll push them off a rock too. That will be after I dunk them head down in a dye vat and leave them stewing for a week.”
It was too big a threat. She must be protecting the girl. They were lying about whatever had happened.
Tiberius and I took leave of them, remaining as polite as we could. There was nothing else we could do. We had been taken on a full tour of the works, so we had seen everybody present, yet never encountered anyone who could have been Susuza. We rode off slowly. Once out of sight, we stopped to confer.
While the donkeys munched grass where they could find it, Barley sniffed maritime plants, making feints as she tried to find one that was acceptable for a city dog to pee on. The gross smell of dead murex had accompanied us, suffusing our clothes, our hair, our skin. We felt we would never be rid of it. How much worse it must be for those who worked with it—the children whose little fingers prised out the glands from hundred after hundred of seashells, the women we had seen on their knees, hand-wringing newly dyed wool.
We stared back at the outlawed huddle of buildings, so isolated from the world where their produce was so valued. There, in the airless dark, the luxury fabrics stewed to their deep, sought-after sheen. From this stinking environment came the fabulous hues that would mark out great men and the women associated with them. In Rome, our self-regarding Emperor stalked marble corridors in a haze of marine odour. The vestments of priests or tributes paid to world leaders began life amid thousands of dying molluscs and the horrendous stench of dye baths, worked by exiled souls who were universally shunned.
“Their trade stinks, but why should that prevent ambition?” Tiberius reflected. “They went to Rome in a gang, dreaming they might pull a flanker on Tarentum. Of course, if they really know their market, any hope of that must have been slim. Why did they fall for it? Surely they understood there are ways things are done? Palace freedmen control purchasing as a fine art. Imperial patronage would never be handed out by a transport manager, even one who had snaffled a prime location for his site hut.”
“Perhaps they felt desperate,” I mused. “Tarentum has an entrenched hold on their trade. Gabinus offered them a way in, through a magical back door. They wanted to believe it. They wanted to trust him, even if that meant behaving like idiots. Did they think they could bribe him, or somehow pay off his supposed contact?”
“He may have let them think so. But would they have that kind of cash?”
“Probably not,” I said. To myself, I was wondering what else they might have had to offer him. I supposed I knew: the lovely young Susuza. The thought was extremely unpleasant.
Arms folded, Tiberius turned his face to the ocean. Bathed in twilight sun, the Tyrrhenian Sea lapped imperceptibly on its sandy shore in the long, straight stretch that runs south towards Antium. Low dunes carried patches of scrub between the sea and the line of the often wave-battered coastal highway. Behind us the heights of Latium were visible as long purple shadows, with their ancient hilltop towns and Alba Longa, where the Emperor infamously had his citadel. We were at the northern end of this stretch of coast; sluggish rivers drained old salt lakes but brought sand to pleasant enough beaches, which supported a fringe of substantial villas and imperial property. Much further on, the Pontine Marshes lay behind this shore, full of flies and fatal disease.
“This is a pleasant spot,” said Tiberius. “You and I could take advantage, darling. Better than fighting bedbugs at the Cow with No Tail…” He held out his hand and I came to nestle against him, though I merely pecked his cheek, too dispirited for love. He seemed keener. A man with an only recently married wife has preoccupations. So does she, of course.
He would settle down. Maybe even I would stop wanting him so badly …
For practical reasons, I was gently resisting. “We need to get back before dark, love.”
“Have to make it quick, then!”
A bloodsucking insect landed on my arm. I slapped it away. “Ugh! Call me a spoilsport, but my family’s villa has gorgeous antique beds with soft, wool-stuffed mattresses. By now the domestic manager will have been rousted out of the bar he favours. He will have brought in fish to grill on the beach, aired musty rooms, fired up hot water and found us a palatable flagon from my grandfather’s investment cellar.”
Tiberius capitulated. “What are we waiting for? Get a move on, girl. Let’s go!”
* * *
However, it was end-of-the-day for everyone. Before we persuaded Castor and Pollux to stop grazing, four or five boys with shrimping equipment came swinging along on their way home. With wet hair and damp tunics, amid much happy joshing, they had clearly been out enjoying themselves rather than seriously collecting dinner. As they passed us, we saw that their bucket of seawater contained such a small catch it would serve only a hundred-year-old granny with a pitiful appetite.
A short distance behind them trailed a girl they were ignoring. Tiberius and I might have ignored her too. She was not what we thought we were looking for. The ungainly teenager stomped along and had pudding features. But as she drew level, we both caught our breath. In the words of the tenement porter, she smelt like a basket of whelks.
XXXVIII
“You must be Susuza!” I held out my hand to stop her. “Stay for a word, will you?”
She was theoretically a child. She had yet to grow to her full height; she was all puppy fat and perturbation, but she had the fully developed bust of a twenty-five-year-old grown woman. It happens.
I groaned. She was no beauty. It was the big bust that attracted male interest.
She wore a rumpled, purple-streaked tunic, too short and much too low on top. Her hands and arms were stained with dye. Her dark hair had been crudely speared up with pins in a fanciful topknot that she had spent hours creating; odd pieces of plait trailed. I might have expected eruptions of spots, though her skin looked surprisingly clear, as if a diet of seafood and local greens protected her from hormonal rampages.
She wanted to be with those boys but they did not want her. They knew her; she had grown up in their circle. But with that weighty bosom she could never again be one of the lads. Those mature breasts scared them; still pre-pubertal, they were not ready to venture. Besides, they must sense that in subtle ways she was miles ahead of them.
Even so, the five boys now lingered, watching what happened.
Susuza broke my heart. She was heading to a life of loss before she understood how much she wanted the alternative. The first man who showed an interest would seduce her. Her first time would make her pregnant; her first child spelled her doom.
“What do you want?” Curiosity, so dangerous in other situations, had made her agree to stop.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Oh, that’s a shock. Who bothers with me?” She spoke up, not so nervous as she had looked when she first came sauntering along, dragging her heels so as not to catch up on the boys too closely, in case they shouted at her.
“We have been to the murex works to see Ostorius and Cincia. They showed us around. But, really, I wanted to meet you.”
Tiberius moved away from us, pretending to walk the dog. Barley looked up at him with refined surprise.
“What for?” Susuza had no balance between self-confidence and aggression. As she stood her ground with me, she verged on too much truculence, given that she didn’t yet know what I wanted.
I made her sit down on a sand dune with me. “The people we met at the dye vats seemed unsure where you were today. What are you doing out here?”
“I hate the work I have to do.” Susuza waved her dye-stained arms. “I bunk off when I can. Still, you have to eat.” She had an odd manner, as if she made a habit of listening in on adults.
I made no comment, then told her: “I want to hear what happened when you went to Rome.”
“I shall tell you in a moment.” I decided to hold off saying that she had met two men who had now died. “First, explain that trip to me, please.” “Please” might have been a new word to Susuza. Still, she took my good manners as her right. She was an oddly composed creature. “You went to the city with your relatives, who had hoped to secure a contract from a man who let them down.”
“He was no use. He was horrid.”
“Yes,” I said pleasantly. “I have met quite a few people who thought that. The more I find out about him, the more I sympathise.” She was eyeing me up, making a judgement. My rusty brown travel outfit failed to impress. This trapped girl dreamed of city life. In a woman from Rome, she yearned for glamour: stunning colour, wide embroidered hems, rich draping stoles, masses of jewellery—big jewellery, huge gems chained to crushing metalwork … When she looked over to Tiberius, he made the same poor impression: too old, too casual, too unexciting. I hid a smile.
“So,” I broached, more sombrely, “you met Gabinus.”
Now Susuza had the intelligence to wait, finding out how much I knew before she gave up her story. I gazed at her, as if considering how much to reveal. “Did he make an unwelcome move on you?”
Susuza nodded cautiously.
“Surely that was all right,” I suggested. “You had people with you.”
“Oh, they were no help!” she scoffed.
“No good?”
“They pretended they hadn’t seen anything. He was all charm and they went along with it.”
I tutted gently, letting her know I understood. I was on her side. Still, I decided against the full sisterly heads-together routine. We had only just met; for that, you need much more in common than we shared. “I am thinking about Cincia, how she was when I saw her this afternoon, Susuza. She seemed like a broody hen with her children. Naturally protective. But you are not hers. Does that make a difference?” Susuza had enough loyalty not to answer. “Are your parents alive, Susuza?”
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