One woman passed between me and the girl who was counting my change (not much of that). Her companion called her Balbina Milvia. That name sounded vaguely familiar. She wasn’t a customer. What really caught my attention was that as they kissed goodbye with gooey compliments, she called the other one Pandora.
I waited while the friend settled into a carrying chair and left. Pandora was checking up on Meröe and Kalmis.
I put on my best confident smile. ‘Excuse me, did I overhear that you are Pandora? That’s lucky. I am hoping you can assist me with a professional matter.’
Of course it would be stupid to come right out and say my question was: did you sell the Volumnius women a love-potion that killed their Clodia?
‘See my girls.’ A practised brush-off.
‘They are lovely – but this may be too technical.’ I was desperate not to lose her. Since something strong was called for, I made the claim I had always sworn never to use: ‘I am from Britannia. I need very special supplies for my work.’ Then I looked Pandora straight in the eye and said it: ‘I am a Druid.’
20
No gods struck me down for infamy. Not even the hooded-poncho-wearing woodland and water spirits of my home province.
The Emperors of Rome had outlawed Druidic practices, having a specific antipathy to human sacrifice. During airy-fairy phases of my teenage years, it had been pointed out to me by anxious relatives that by decree you could not be both a Druid and a Roman citizen. If I wanted a soft bed in a frescoed room rather than a fern mattress in a round smoky hut, I had better not dream that I was lost British royalty with the gift of prophecy.
There was little risk. When I was growing up a beggar on the streets of Londinium, I never had the luxury of dreams.
It was a bit rich for our present Emperor to ban human sacrifice, given his frequent bloodletting as he disposed of his enemies. But there you are. Tyrants lack consistency. Druidry now only existed in Celtic areas that lay outside the Roman Empire – which meant that everyone inside the Empire’s boundaries was absolutely fascinated by the idea of it.
In my professional life, I played on that. I had no interest in magic of any kind, but at my old office on the Aventine, I put up a sign by the door that included an enticing crescent moon. Don’t scoff. You have to advertise. Look at Min the Mountain Man (no, don’t look!). Use any lure you can; you must get the punters through the door. Once on my consultation couch, clients soon learned they would be treated with pure practicality, not mystic lore. I told them my terms of reference and scale of charges, then if they wanted a good job done, it was up to them. But while they were first havering, an exotic reputation served me better than any reference. Sad, but true.
Pandora might think herself a top businesswoman, but she fell for the con. In fraud, this is so often the case. The higher they have risen, the more secure they feel, so the easier they plummet. Now that’s magic.
Pandora failed to gulp with surprise; she was a hard nut. Nevertheless, she said I should come upstairs with her. This was what I wanted. As I went, I saw Meröe and Kalmis raise their finely designed eyebrows. They had not seen me as a prophetess, but just a normal housewife with a normal lousy husband; nor were they used to Pandora letting new customers, strangers until this evening, ascend to her lair.
I admit, I hammed it up. ‘Thank you for this, Pandora. Some people back off from the Celtic connection. But I do find there is nothing like a sniff of human sacrifice to open doors for me.’
Going upstairs ahead of me, the woman just grunted.
I was not going to see a bubbling-over pot of newts’ eyes and puppies’ legs. If Pandora was a fetid witch, she lived in an extremely smart cave. Someone, and I guessed it was not her, kept it immaculately clean. The apartment was not to my taste, being overstuffed with gilt. Designer pieces. Her colour was Tyrian purple, that went without saying.
You would not immediately guess this was put together out of the profits from pedicures. It was more like the retirement bower of a fabulously rich freedwoman who had never absorbed culture but knew how to spend. A fortune had definitely been spent here. Every denarius of it was on display.
‘Now then, ducky!’ Pandora presented herself in the same way. This overdressed crone must be sixty, maybe more. Maybe a lot more. Under her flash she was dumpy and plain, with small eyes and a large mouth, but a thick layer of her own products, combined with a huge gold and amethyst pendant, passed her off as a queen of style. If you had poor sight, you would believe it.
That tall coronet of curls from ear to ear was the worst component. I hate that style. Fashion is for freaks, though. Everybody else dresses like their mothers, not least because the poor are in their mothers’ cast-offs.
‘You are lucky you caught me,’ she rasped. ‘I spend a lot of time at my Neapolis villa. My brother’s not well, so I am about to take him to our place in the hills …’ These details carefully established that she was too rich to need my custom, not unless she chose. ‘So, what’s your quest?’
Her voice sounded gravelly, as if she had spent many nights in smoky rooms. She did not bother to make it menacing. She had a high sense of her own power. Nobody crossed this woman. So she spoke as if she was simply talking to a neighbour who wanted to borrow a jar of fish pickle. I bet she would give you the one that had been open too long.
I wondered what she would do if someone tried to be difficult with her. There was no suggestion of violence – yet I felt a strong need to be very careful here.
That did not stop me being daft: ‘Mistletoe. Out of season now, but I want to line up a supplier for when the time comes. Ideally it must be cut in a sacred grove by moonlight, using a golden sickle.’
Pandora barked with mirth. Her necklace heaved on her scrawny breast. She was missing many teeth. ‘I can’t say I get a lot of call for that!’
‘I like your irony.’ We sized one another up, thoughtfully. I was still in the plain white dress I had worn to the feast, though when I came out this evening I had added a gold chain, and I was dangling a delicate sandal off one foot as I sat with a knee casually crossed. My hair had been simply tied on my neck, though Meröe and Kalmis had since then of course suggested that I should buy a nourishing oil, after which Kalmis had wound and pinned it more fancily. I watched Pandora price up my rosette earrings. Something about her stare made my bare neck prickle.
‘A Druid, you say, ducky?’
I smiled. Professional to professional, I supplied a background. I used some truth, though when I ran out of that, I invented madly.
‘As I say, I came from Britannia. I was snatched from my homeland by Romans who wanted an unpaid nurse for their children.’ Helena and Falco had vaguely thought a young person might stay at home with Julia and Favonia, while they went out doing more interesting things. They soon saw I would not accept being treated like a slave. No one had bought me. No one could impose on me. Minding babies was no thrill. All I did was walk the dog. That surprised the dog. Fair people at heart, Helena and Falco caved in and adopted me. ‘My working name is Elan.’
‘Where do you operate?’ Pandora demanded, full of suspicion.
‘Upon the Aventine. The Hill of Outsiders. I am no rival to your own craft here.’
She did not bother to acknowledge my reassurance. ‘I thought Druids were men.’
‘All wiped out by the Roman aggressors, set on conquest. The last great practitioners took their noble stand on the island of Mona during the Boudiccan Rebellion; they were all slaughtered in the holy groves. I am a Druid’s daughter. A woman-Druid. There are a few of us who survived the bloodletting. Holders of the sacred knowledge. Some choose a life of religious virginity, though others marry. Some live in remote forests where they plot endless war on Rome’s Imperialist power, others choose islands where they raise the sea and winds with incantations. We all act as counsellors to the great, practitioners of healing, prophets, intercessionaries’ – Was that a word? – ‘guardians of the law. The stars, the cosmos, nature and th
e divine acts of deities are ours to know.’
‘You have the sight?’ demanded Pandora.
‘I may have. I will not say so to anyone. Do you?’
She sniffed.
I kept talking. From the little I did know of mystic types in Britain, they dished out a verbal cascade. Everyone said, never get stuck in a tavern with a bard. So I maintained the pompous outflow, wishing I knew a little Celtic patois to throw in. ‘I am sorry. It was presumptuous to ask a question that I myself may not answer. But our holy lore is secret. It is never written down. The Druids of old were chosen as young men who learned their art through verses told by their elders, taking twenty years of study before they knew what they should know.’
‘Convince me. I’d like to see your work,’ said Pandora, like a nasty manageress interviewing a would-be employee.
Seeing she was sceptical, I still showed no fear. We Druids are not deterred by doubt. Since she thought me unreliable, I upped my game: without a second thought, I asked, ‘Can you lend me a skull?’
Well, that would stop her in her tracks.
21
Pandora matched me in bluff; she began looking around for the requested item. I managed not to panic – well, not openly.
Now I was stuck. This kind of situation was well known in my family. There was no need of a blood relationship to inherit crazy behaviour. Falco was always coming up with mad schemes that led to near-disaster; now so was I.
It seemed unlikely Pandora would keep skeletons here in her expensive bower, though there were several painted cupboards with pedestal tops, little tombs that would normally be used for vases people had never liked.
‘I don’t have a skull about me at present.’ Relief! Perhaps Pandora feared that to harbour human bones was unwise in a city where soldiers could bang on your door at any moment, bent on a search after a poisonous tip-off. ‘What do you want it for, ducky?’
‘Oh, classic necromancy,’ I breezed, recovering my composure. ‘I thought I might impress you by conducting a spirit into it. My skills are not perfect, but I can conjure a soul from the Underworld to answer questions. Be warned, though. Because I was torn from my forebears too young, I never learned the right incantation to dismiss the spirit. It’s awful if the wrong one swans into your vessel, and you are stuck with a ghastly hanger-on who won’t go home to Hades.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Pandora pretended she herself never partook in witchcraft, though she clearly recognised the occult practices I was talking about. ‘I’ll have to pick up an old head for you, won’t I, next time I’m in a graveyard.’ She passed this off as a joke, yet I did feel that graveyards were where she was at home. Gathering rare herbs, she would say. Many rank weeds put down their white roots beside tombs, sucking goodness from human decay.
I joined in, smiling. ‘Well, next time, I’ll be sure to bring my own skull. He’s a sweetie. I call him Pretty Boy.’
Pandora gave me a look that implied there would never be a next time.
Though tempted to dwell on Pretty Boy, this cute ghost I had invented, I pretended to turn more serious. ‘Enough jesting. I am a counsellor and healer. I cannot claim to match the knowledge that people say you have, Pandora. The closest I ever come to magic is divination with the spoons.’
‘What’s that?’ she growled, sounding jealous of my insight.
‘You don’t know it? The rite is very ancient, carried out with two special spoons. One has a hole through which the practitioner must dribble sacred oil onto the other that she holds beneath. Or some say to use blood. You read the future from the patterns formed. I don’t carry the spoons around with me. They are kept safe, locked in a casket.’
Don’t laugh. As a matter of fact, I did possess a set of divination spoons.
Now I bet you are sitting up. So I am British. I’m full of surprises.
In fact my spoons had turned up in an auction a few years before; nobody would buy them because, although they were elegant leaf-shaped copper utensils, they appeared to have maggots engraved on them. That’s Nature. To every leaf its caterpillar. Unfortunately, on the spoons the bugs crawled just where they would be horribly squashed by your thumb. That meant no bidders.
Once these utensils had been deemed useless for sale (or even for serving soup if pinched by a porter), they were passed on to me, like all dud goods with a hint of the north. At our auction house, everyone thinks sending me such items is funny. I tossed the weird cutlery into a box where I keep bits of torque, an old jet bangle and various coins with horses on them.
I made no offer to have the divination spoons fetched to Pandora’s. Undoubtedly she knew weird tools are only deployed to make fakery convincing. I didn’t need help here. Hades, I could see what Pandora was without a reading.
Since fortune-telling nevertheless seemed appropriate, I suddenly sat upright, with a straight spine and both feet neat on the floor. I placed my hands palm down on my thighs. I breathed gently. Glaucus, who tried to help me overcome the physical results of childhood deprivation, would have praised my deportment and my relaxed muscles. (Then he would have said: eat less meat, drink only water, come to the gym for weights more often, walk, sleep, stop worrying, do those stretches …)
I did not act as if I was calling down the moon, I talked matter-of-factly. ‘I feel the need for prophecy. I must speak. You are threatened by danger.’ Though I heightened the last part with urgency, Pandora did not react. She herself must be a past mistress of supernatural posturing, so she was immune. ‘You are Rubria Theodosia. You are accused of having misused the black arts. Is it scandal or have you truly done harm?’
She gave me back the I know your game look, the one with which I was familiar from so many other cases. ‘It is false!’ she hissed.
I kept going. Sometimes it works. ‘But you, like all of us with the knowledge, must have people begging for more help than you are allowed to give?’
‘They ask. I tell them no. Don’t you?’ demanded Pandora aggressively.
‘Oh yes. But sometimes …’ I was thinking of Laia Gratiana ‘… Sometimes, to be honest, I curse their persistence yet end up doing what they ask.’
Before she could quibble, we were interrupted. The room door opened. A woman came in. It took me a moment to accept she was female. She was nearly six foot tall and uncomfortably ugly.
‘Your boy’s here. He’s in the other room.’ Not much deference in the staff here, even though I guessed their mistress ruled through fear.
‘Right.’
‘He is still upset,’ the servant insisted accusingly.
‘I am coming. I’ve made a nice broth to console him. Put a bowl of that in front of him while I finish up here.’
While I wondered what went into broth made here (bunches of screech-owl feathers? Sliced vole?), with a humph the other woman departed.
‘My maid,’ Pandora informed me. I wouldn’t want that one cutting my bunions. ‘Polemaena. She is very good with hot hair-curling rods.’ That was clearly a threat. ‘She loves her work.’
I treat heated rods with caution. You can be badly burned through inattention. Never have your hair ringleted by a woman with her period.
It was left to my imagination where Polemaena might shove her instruments if she was given orders to torture someone. But I took the hint. ‘I can see you are busy …’
‘I have to see to my grandson. He’s a good boy, he never forgets his gran. You can leave now, Elan, or whatever you are called.’ Pandora had seen through my alias. I hoped she had not deduced my real interest in her or how, if I connected her to Clodia’s death, it could end with her being put out of action.
This was not a house where I wanted to linger. I was starting to feel anxious, and I don’t mean in case I was offered a ladleful from the tureen with a vole looking out of it. Hospitality broth was my least worry. Nobody knew that I had come here, a situation an informer should avoid. If I had been training an apprentice, I would have said never to go into a potentially dangerous home withou
t telling someone.
‘Well, I am sorry our exchange could not have been longer, Pandora, but thank you for talking to me.’
Unlike the goodbyes with that previous visitor, Balbina Milvia, whoever she was, Pandora and I did not kiss cheeks.
22
Just when you think you have wriggled out of a pickle, Fate says it won’t be so easy.
Pandora left me, in order to attend to her grandson. I thought he was probably hoping to persuade her to make a will in his favour. He might be still an infant, but he was more likely fully grown and of an age to run up hefty lifestyle bills. His grandmama’s purple apartment and her fashionable get-up would show him how to spend. He was bound to have absorbed her liking for luxury, even if he had better taste – though I didn’t bank on that.
I was not allowed to see myself out. It would have given me too many chances to look round. Instead Polemaena, the frightful maid, was waiting. I could not tell whether she had been specifically instructed to watch me; she seemed the type to take that upon herself. Aggression covered her like honey garnishing a gammon, but less tasty. She ushered me onto the landing outside the front door, then stood with her brawny arms folded, daring me to give her trouble. Close to, she loomed at least a foot taller than I was. She would have curled her lip, but it was permanently rolled up anyway, over protruding teeth of hideous colour.
A silent message propelled me out. Go straight to the stairs. Descend at a run. Do not linger with the girls below. Never come back.
To emphasise this, she growled, ‘Listen! I see your cheeky little game. If you want to look after yourself, don’t come here. Madam can be too indulgent, but she has me and I never let people take advantage of her kind nature.’
Most people must nervously avert their eyes in Polemaena’s presence, but I gave the massive one an evaluating stare. ‘You have such lovely hair,’ I cooed sweetly. Always be kind to the disadvantaged. ‘Do you use Pandora’s rosemary balsam or some other product from the pharmacopeia?’
Pandora's Boy: Flavia Albia 6 (Falco: The New Generation) Page 12