Petro glanced at me over Zeno’s head, then stopped asking. Questions would be better when we had seen whether the unresponsive mother had been battered by her husband or lover or whether (less likely) she had just faded away in her sleep from some natural illness.
We passed the Theater. Opposite that tight-arsed Augustan edifice were various old monuments and guild assembly rooms. Then came a podium holding a neat row of four little temples, all elderly in style, just before the approach road to the massive granary built by Claudius. We stayed on the Decumanus to the end of that block. Then the boy turned right, facing the river. He stopped in front of what had once been a fortified gatehouse, when Ostia was much smaller and much, much older. This would have been the boundary wall of the original settlement. It probably dated back to the supposed founding of the port by Ancus Martius, one of the traditional Kings of Rome. They built to last in those ancient times, using massive square blocks. The stolid gate, made redundant when the town expanded, had now been redeveloped into shops. Above them were a couple of rooms rented to visiting foreigners.
Petronius left Zeno with me; he made a brief inquiry at one of the shops, then went up alone by an outside stair. I sat on the curb alongside the child, who meekly squatted by me.
“Who told you to come to the vigiles for help, Zeno?” I asked nonchalantly, as we pulled in our feet in front of a heavy cart full of marble blocks.
“Lygon told me, If anyone ever doesn’t wake up, the vigiles will want to know.”
Lygon instantly became a key suspect. “Is he one of the family?”
“My uncle.” The child looked embarrassed. There are uncles and uncles. Some uncles are no relation, as children understand.
“Where is he at the moment?”
“Gone away on business.”
“When do you think he will come back?”
Zeno shrugged. No surprises there.
Petronius stuck his head out of a window on the top story.
“Come up here, Falco.” He sounded annoyed, not like a man who had just found a domestic tragedy. “You can bring the boy.”
“Sounds as if your mother is all right, Zeno.” We went up.
The gatehouse contained a warren of small rooms, all kept cool by its massive construction. Zeno lived in a cheap let, a single airless room with no amenities. The mother was unconscious on what passed for a bed. It was the only one; Zeno must either sleep with her or on the floor.
She was from the scrag end of womanhood; we had suspected that. She was dressed, in several layers—a traveler who wore all her wardrobe, as a deterrent to theft. The folds of cloth were richer than I expected, though when sleeping it off she wore them in bedraggled swathes. Sprawled face-up on the mattress, she looked sour and middle-aged, but I guessed she was much younger and had fallen pregnant with Zeno in her teens. That was the type of ménage it was. “Uncle” Lygon would be her latest lover; we could guess what he was like: some scrounging swine who was now playing the big fellow in a wine shop by the port. Presumably they both liked a tipple. Zeno’s mother had imbibed so much she had passed out cold. I guessed that was yesterday.
“Drunk as a dog.” Petronius (a cat man) closed her drooling mouth with his thumb. This was a gesture to spare her young son. He wiped his thumb on his tunic at thigh level, with an expression of weary distaste. Much of his working life had been spent among this sad level of society, and he despaired of it.
Had the child been any older, that would have ended our interest. Instead, since my sister was only around the corner in the loaned house, Petro made me stay at the gatehouse while he fetched Maia to sit with the mother until she came around. We would look after Zeno.
Maia was furious to be given this task—but she had children herself. We took Zeno to play with her brood; Petro and I claimed that both of us would need to supervise them. Cursing, Maia stayed behind. Two hours later the woman revived. Maia came home with a ripe black eye, cuffed Zeno around the ears, told him to go and keep his mama out of trouble, then made us feel guilty all that evening.
“Your lush is called Pullia. The family come from Soli, wherever that is. There’s a man no one ever sees much. Pullia is dumped on her own while he goes out and has his fun; she’s bored, but she never leaves the apartment. The child roams the streets. A neighbor in the cushion shop told me.”
“That’s more than I found out,” Petro soothed her admiringly. “I didn’t even notice that it was a cushion shop!”
“Eyesight qualifications don’t apply to the vigiles? Drop the flattery.” Maia and Petro were in love. Happiness had failed to soften the cut and thrust of their repartee. Maia distrusted men who tried to ingratiate themselves and Petro was finding out fast just what he had fallen for.
They were made for each other—though that did not mean this relationship would last. Petronius had always sought out fair-haired women previously—apart from his ex-wife. Arria Silvia looked a little like Maia, who was dark and smart, with a fiery temper and a brisk manner even when nothing had offended her. My Helena reckoned Petro had married Silvia because Maia was married herself at the time and refused to look at him. I knew Petro, and I could not believe it, but I saw the similarity.
“Do the tipsy family pay their rent?” he asked Maia, pretending he was only making conversation.
“Find out for yourself,” snarled Maia, as she prodded her battered cheekbone.
She was my favorite sister. I made sure Petronius applied soothing liniment to her eye as soon as Maia calmed down enough for him to get near her. I wouldn’t risk it myself.
The feckless folk from Soli were a typical splash of color in the hectic marine society of Ostia. The place was awash with temporary visitors from all ends of the Empire. Attached in some way to nautical trade, they stayed weeks or months, awaiting a cargo, awaiting a payment, awaiting a friend, awaiting a passage. Some found work, though mostly the locals had the jobs and clung on to them. Now that Pullia had had a meeting with officialdom, her little group would probably be up and off.
I was off myself, back to the patrol house. I could have stayed to dinner. The moneybags who had lent Petro the house had left his slaves behind, in accordance with the hospitality rules of the rich. They served up regular meals of excellent quality, for which Petronius was not billed. “The food is here—eat, don’t let it go to waste!” the steward urged. No one needed to be told twice.
It was not for me, however. I was hoping that Helena would arrive that evening. The patrol house was somewhere no well-brought-up young lady would want to find herself alone.
III
A donkey cart was standing outside the gate: Helena had already arrived.
She was just inside the entrance, keeping her cloak tightly around her. In late July it was far too hot for cloaks, but a respectable woman’s duty is to be uncomfortable in public. The Sixth Cohort duty boys would not have interfered with her, but nobody made her welcome either. The vigiles rankers are ex-slaves, doing a horrid job as the quick route to citizenship; their officers are citizens, normally ex-legionaries, but few and far between.
Helena glanced around the quadrangle, with its many shadowed doorways; they led to equipment stores, the bare cells where the men slept, and the offices where they skillfully brought pressure to bear on witnesses. Even the entrance to the shrine at the far end looked forbidding. As harsh voices sounded loudly from indoors, she flinched. Helena Justina was a tall, spirited girl, who could always fend off trouble by citing her position as a senator’s daughter—but she preferred to avoid the trouble in the first place. I had taught her some tactics. She disguised her nervousness, though she was glad to see me.
“Luckily no suspects are screaming in agony just at this moment,” I teased, acknowledging the atmosphere that hung over the yard, especially at dusk. We went to the room I had been using. The false excuse was to fetch my belongings; the true one was to greet my lady privately. I had not seen her for a week. Since everyone I knew swore that she was bound to leave me one d
ay, I had to reinforce my feelings. Besides, I liked getting excited when Helena showed her affection for me.
Even we felt too uneasy there to dally. I promised greater relaxation at an apartment I had found for us.
“Aren’t we staying with Lucius and Maia?” Helena was fond of them both.
“Not likely. Petro has been loaned a flash mansion by a damned construction magnate.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Helena was smiling. She knew me.
“I hate handouts.” She nodded; I knew she too preferred our family to live quietly, with no obligations to patrons. Most of Rome operates on favors; we two had always made our own way. “But we can go and have a free dinner!” There were limits to my high-mindedness.
Back at the town house, Petro and Maia were already eating in one of their host’s frescoed dining rooms. He had several. This was made airy by folding doors, currently flung open onto a small garden, where a tiled turquoise niche housed a sea god statue. A child’s hat was hanging on his conch shell. Small sandals, clay animals, and a homemade chariot littered the garden area.
Space was quickly made for us on the large, cushion-strewn couches. Maia gave us a calculating look, as she rearranged the children: Marius, Cloelia, Ancus, and little Rhea, who were aged between twelve and six, all four of them bright as new carpentry nails, together with Petro’s quiet daughter Petronilla, who must be about ten.
“Are you staying or what?” demanded my sister. She and I came from a large, loud, quarrelsome family whose members spent much effort avoiding one another.
“No, we’ve taken a holiday apartment, just the other side of the Decumanus,” I reassured her.
Maia did not want us cluttering up her already busy household, but she went into a huff. “Suit yourselves!”
Petronius came back from stabling Helena’s luggage cart. “It looks as if you’ve come for the rest of the season by the amount you have brought!” he said.
“Oh, it’s holiday reading.” Helena smiled calmly. “I was rather behind with the Daily Gazette, so my father has lent me his old copies.”
“Three sacks of scrolls?” Petro asked her, in disbelief. Clearly he had poked through Helena’s luggage without shame.
Everyone knew that the strange girl I had chosen would rather have her nose in literature than tend to her two little daughters or walk to the corner market for a mullet and some gossip like a normal Aventine wife. Helena Justina was more likely to neglect me because she was deep in a new Greek play than because she was having a fling with another man. She did tend our daughters in her own fashion; Julia, at three, was already being taught her alphabet. Fortunately I liked eccentric women and was not afraid of forward children. Or so I thought so far.
Helena fixed her gaze on me. “The news all looks rather dull at the moment. The imperial family are at their country estates for the summer—and even Infamia has taken a holiday.”
Infamia was the pseudonym of whoever compiled the salacious scandal about senators’ wives having affairs with jockeys. I happened to know that Infamia was shifty and unreliable—and if he really had taken a holiday, he had forgotten to clear the dates with his employers.
“If there’s no scandal,” Maia announced crisply, “then there’s absolutely no point in reading the Gazette.”
Helena smiled. She hated me being devious and was trying to force me to say what I knew. “Infamia must have a hotspot villa somewhere. Think of all his payoffs from people who don’t want their secrets told. What do you think, Marcus?”
“Are we missing something?” Maia hated to be left out. She sounded tetchy. Nothing new in that.
“Falco, you rat. Are you down here on one of your crackpot investigations?” demanded Petronius, also catching on.
“Lucius, my dearest and oldest friend, when I am commissioned for work, crazy or sane, I shall report it to you immediately—”
“You are on a job!”
“I just denied it, Petro.”
Petro turned to Maia. “Your tight-lipped bastard brother is hiding a commission in his hairy armpit.” He scowled at me, then gave his attention to capturing a tureen of gingered shellfish the children had been scooping up like ravenous gulls. He had to deal with the squeals as they watched him emptying all the good bits into his own food bowl.
“What job?” Maia quizzed me rudely.
“Secret. Clause in my contract says, ‘Don’t tell your nosy sister or that interfering boyfriend of hers.’” I relieved Petro of his trophy and served Helena and myself the last prawns.
Maia snatched one from my bowl. “Grow up, Marcus!”
Ah, family life. I wondered if the man I had come to look for had any close relations. When you are looking for motives, never neglect the simple one.
IV
Helena and I had one evening to ourselves. We made the most of it. Tomorrow we would be joined by Albia, a young girl from Britain who took care of our children while we tried to take care of her. Albia had had a poor start in life; running around after Julia and Favonia took her mind off it—in theory. She had experience of family travel from when we brought her to Italy from Londinium, but controlling a toddler and a growing infant on a two-hour jaunt in a cart would be a challenge.
“Are we sure Albia can find her way here all on her own?” I sounded wary, but not too critical.
“Settle down, Falco. My brother is bringing her.”
“Quintus?”
“No, Aulus. Quintus stays with Claudia and the baby.” Gaius Camillus Rufius Constantinus, our new nephew aged two months, was making his presence felt. The world and all the planets revolved around this baby. It could be why Helena’s other brother was very keen to leave the family home. “Aulus is coming on his way to university. He expressed an interest in law; Papa seized the moment and Aulus is being packed off to Athens.”
“Greece! And studying? We are talking about Aelianus?” Aulus Camillus Aelianus was the unmarried son of a senator, with money in his pocket and a carefree outlook; I could not see him gravely attending jurisprudence lectures under a fig tree at an antique university. His Greek was awful, for one thing. “Can’t he be a lawyer in Rome?” That would be more useful to me. Expert knowledge for which I did not have to pay was always welcome.
“Athens is the best place.” Well, it was traditionally the place to send awkward Romans who did not quite fit in.
I chuckled. “Are we certain he is going? Do you and I have to check that he goes on the boat?” At a little short of thirty, the favorite pursuits of the noble Aulus Camillus Aelianus were hunting, drinking, and gymnastics—all done to excess. There must be other, equally vigorous and disreputable habits, which I tried not to discover. That way, I could assure his parents I knew of no nasty secrets.
“This is a serious shock for my parents,” Helena rebuked me. “One of their children can at last be mentioned at respectable dinner parties.”
I held back the jokes. Their daughter had left home to live with a lowlife—me. Now that Helena and I had daughters of our own I understood just what that meant.
As parents we had better things to do than talk about Aulus. Freed for once from the threat of little visitors in the bedroom, we tested out our apartment with passion. I had hired one of the identical room-sets in a small block set around a courtyard with a well. There were balconies on the street side, for show; tenants could not access them. All around us were other visiting families; we could hear their voices and the knocking of furniture, but since we did not know them we did not have to care if they were listening in.
We managed not to break the bed. I hate being at a disadvantage when the landlord comes to check the fixtures and fittings schedule before he lets you leave.
After a short deep sleep, I awoke abruptly. Helena was facedown and dreaming beside me, pressed closely to my side. I lay with my right arm along her long bare back, my fingers lightly splayed. If there had been a pillow, it had gone missing. My head was back, my chin up. As always at the very start of a mi
ssion, my brain was full of busy thoughts.
I had been hired to find the absent Daily Gazette scribe. It was a mission I was foolish to take on, like most jobs I do. The only advantage to this one was that there were no dead bodies—or so I reassured myself.
As I lay quiet, I thought back to how it had started. Back in Rome, the request first came obliquely via the imperial secretariats. There was a top man there called Claudius Laeta, who sometimes gave me business; the business always turned sour, so I was glad that Laeta’s name was not attached to this. Well, not obviously. You could never be sure, with that smooth swine.
At home two weeks ago, someone on the Palatine had recommended my investigative skills to the scribblers at the Gazette. A scared little public slave was sent to sound me out; he wasn’t telling me much, because he knew nothing. I was intrigued. If this problem had any significance, then as Chief of Correspondence, Claudius Laeta should have been made aware of it: the Daily Gazette was the official mouthpiece of the government. In fact, when the slave appeared in my office being secretive, one attraction was the delicious idea that scribes at the Gazette might be trying to work a flanker on Laeta.
There was something that would make me even happier than going behind Laeta’s back: putting one over on Anacrites, the Chief Spy. That glorious hope seemed a possibility. If there was a hitch at the Daily Gazette, then, like Laeta, Anacrites ought to have been told about it. His role was protecting the Emperor, and the Gazette existed nowadays to burnish the Emperor’s name.
Anacrites was away at his villa on the Bay of Neapolis. He had told my mother, whose lodger he had been briefly, and she had passed it on to me so I would be jealous of his prosperity. Stuff his prosperity. Anacrites upset me just by talking to Ma, and he knew it. What he did not know, apparently, was that the scribes who produced the Gazette were asking for expert assistance. He was away, so they had come to me. I liked that.
Initially I was only told by the messenger that there was a problem with an employee. Even so, curiosity grabbed me; I told the little slave I would be happy to help, and would call at the Gazette offices that same afternoon.
Scandal Takes a Holiday Page 2