The Grove of the Caesars

by Lindsey Davis

  XLV

  Before he left, Ursus told me his plan. First, he would let out news in Caesar’s Gardens that I had recovered a runaway, who was talking. “If I tell the super ‘in confidence,’ then on past form that cracked old cove will tell all his staff. The Pest will know. I’m going to send you a man. He’ll stay here. Keep your doors and windows locked, then my man will jump on anyone who turns up looking for the squealer.” He supplied me with what passed for a grin. “I’ll see if I’ve got a man who can paint.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “This place needs some attention.” I so love visitors who criticise my home. “I hear you took on that Sosthenes, the waterworks designer.”

  “Who told you so?”

  “Station-house gossip. He supposedly maintains our supply lines and cleans our big fountain. We’d rather do it ourselves, but they make us use Public Works.”

  “Is he any good? Or is that just what he tells everyone?”

  “He can unblock a pipe. Well, he can hit it with a mallet and see what happens. If things are slack we watch him at work—it’s a good laugh. You’re having a tap on the Aqua Marcia.”

  “I am if I agree to it.”

  “Oh, I think Sosthenes has already had trenches dug. Lovely quality, the Marcia. Crystal. The Fourth up here are bloody lucky to be washing smuts off in that. And another thing,” he mentioned, as unperturbed as if he was inspecting my fire buckets and knew I had to endure his spiel, “if ever you want another of those big octopus pots, I know someone who can knock one up for you. No one will ever believe it only came from his workshop yesterday.”

  Our pithos, with its smiley, writhing sea creature, was a fifteen-thousand-year-old masterpiece from ancient Crete, made by a fun-loving civilisation that no longer existed. A dear friend gave us the present so we didn’t want to double up. Who needs to be obligated to the vigiles, anyway?

  “Some big city houses have his stuff, and I believe his prices are reasonable.” So, not only scrolls were being faked? Rome had craftsmen churning out “historic Greek artefacts’ on a daily basis? I was too cynical to feel surprise.

  “A pair would be more valuable, you know.”

  I was an auctioneer’s daughter: I knew. I was sick of Ursus. I stood up to show him out. The man was so helpful, on so many fronts, I thought he would never take the hint and leave.

  Despite my gritted teeth I thanked him, saying I would take his potter friend’s name because my father might use his expertise. An auction house can never have too many contacts who know how to invisibly mend a cracked vase of enormous antiquity. Pa likes experts who can stick handles back on. Or make fine replacements. Handles to go with pots, or pots for handles. The words “work has been done to it” are the most regularly used by auctioneers, especially when dodging queries.

  “I’ll keep in touch, Flavia.”

  “Call me Albia.” Call me by my proper name, you irritating deadbeat— or I’ll kick you into the street without opening the door first.

  “It has been very enjoyable talking to you.” Ursus must have had a mother who taught him manners. Maybe the Seventh Cohort had acquired polish since the days when my relations all loathed them.

  “I hope it’s been a relief for you to get away from Karus. Maybe,” I ventured, “if you do find a suspect, I could sit in on your interview?”

  “No chance!”

  Wrong, then. The Seventh had not changed. They were irretrievable, unhelpful donkey turds and always would be.

  I bet he would have stolen my octopus pot, if he had had a handcart with him.

  He winked. “Get those lead pipes ordered up so your hole in the road is backfilled before some citizen falls into it!”

  Yes, there it was outside: a really dangerous deep hole. Sosthenes had dug us a trench. Tiberius Manlius was having a water feature. Dear gods, I hoped his sister’s will had bequeathed us enough funds for it.

  Note to self: ask Larcius who Tiberius likes to use as a pipe-supplier.

  * * *

  My cousin had gone out. She had taken my maid. As a lodger, Marcia Didia was unspeakable. No wonder Corellius had dumped her. She had only been here a day but was driving me wild with her impertinence. A broken heart was no excuse.

  The girls came home to tell me they had been to the Temple of Minerva-on-the-Aventine, that holy dive where craft clubs congregate to pool funeral funds, hold rowdy banquets and get sick-in-the-street drunk. Most notorious was the Poets’ Guild, now the incorporated Failed Authors’ Conglomerate. No aristocratic authors who would become known to history were members. Rich patrons kept good authors in dinners and Sabine farms; decent writers didn’t need a club of obnoxious peers. The temple mob was as awful as you’d expect from men who consistently fail to get their work published. I knew that. It was why I had not bothered to go.

  Despite my warnings, Marcia had been surprised to find the scribblers she encountered all denied knowledge of forged scrolls, before offering wine to her and trying to look down her tunic. She would learn.

  “How many received your super-trained uppercut?”

  Marcia shuddered. “So-o ghastly! I couldn’t find the energy to thrash them. Suza stood on the foot of one.” Suza smiled sweetly, reminiscing. “He’ll have broken toes. We told him to see it as research. The pain should help him write laments. Where do you get your ideas from? Angry women.”

  So much for the scribblers. The would-bes had never heard of Epitynchanus or Philadespoticus. Only the poetess Thallusa had aroused any interest. This, we women at home agreed, was due to Sappho. She had ensured all female poets are seen as rampant lesbians, which the totally masculine Writers’ Guild found thrilling. But none of them had ghost-written her supposed work. The old boys went gooey at the suggestion.

  The Didymus Dodomos controversy was known to one of them, said Marcia. His doctor had forbidden him to drink wine, so he was half sober rather than three-quarters drunk like the rest. He knew Mysticus had been fooled by the fake scroll: he remembered that a man called Ovidius had almost bought it from him—and usefully, because the scribbler had tried to sell his own work to Ovidius, he knew where the litigious buyer lived.

  “Is he really litigious, Marcia, or was it a one-off?”

  “He tried to sue his barber once, for a bout of ringworm.”

  “Get anywhere?”

  “Free shaves for a month as compensation.”

  “Oh, he’s good!”

  “I decided to come home and tell you, Albia. I told Suza we’d better not go without you.”

  They were right. I wanted to investigate this man myself, although I could not manage it any time soon. I had to berate Sosthenes for pre-empting me on the fountain, tell Larcius to order lead pipes since we were having a water supply whatever I said, sort out the self-willed painters, instruct Gratus that we were about to have vigiles protection and he, too, must look out for a pervert who might break in, hunting for Galanthus. Then write a letter to Tiberius, describing my day. Make it funny enough to lighten his sad heart, while not too detailed so he acquired new worries.

  * * *

  When the vigilis Ursus sent us from the Seventh arrived, Suza had whacked him with a besom before he had been in the house half an hour, but he bore her no ill will for it. He was built like a pigpen and, by their standards, taciturn. “This is nice! My chief said I’d like guarding you folk. I see you’re having a wall fountain.”

  He reckoned his presence was now unnecessary. Julius Karus had arrested the Pest. “Sure it’s the right man?” I was sceptical.

  “Karus says so!” The vigilis spoke sourly. Then he winked. “Ursus thought you would be interested, Flavia. Knock three times and he’ll let you into the station-house.”

  “What an offer!”

  “If you’re going to be living in her house, I advise you to call her Albia,” commented Marcia. He looked surprised. Then he perked up as if he had just noticed my cousin was a beauty. I sighed.

  Karus had put his suspect in isolati
on for a few hours to make him sweat. That never works. Later that afternoon, he intended to make the killer confess. I could observe his interrogation technique for myself, if I could get over the river by the time he started.

  XLVI

  There was a buzz at the station-house. This is bound to happen when a culprit is finally arrested for a notorious, decades-long series of crimes. Vigiles who would normally have slept during daylight hours had decided it was vital to untangle ropes in the yard. A few did not bother pretending to be busy, but stood around with their arms folded, just watching.

  The suspect was called Quietus. This fact was not extracted by Karus, who had yet to appear. Having arrested his man and sent him in, he was still out looking for evidence—his idea of a good task sequence. The name had been asked by Ursus, so the clerk could complete today’s arrest list. Ursus liked neat records. He and I stood surveying the man from the doorway of a holding-cell, while we agreed that Quietus was a nice peaceful name for a gardener.

  I had met him before. It was no surprise.

  This man had been in the group who had found Satia’s body yesterday; he was the one who had boasted of spying on lovers when they were canoodling in arbours. That fitted. He certainly could be a killing pervert. But he would not be the only gardener who snooped on people in flagrante; I reckoned they all did it. His habit was indicative only. To me, not proof. But the special agent wanted easy answers.

  * * *

  Julius Karus arrived. He rattled the gates, then swept in with a small knot of his own men. He had about six today. The First Vardullorans, given the honorific title of Faithful Asturians, had been the governor’s bodyguard in Britain when he was killed, presumably by Karus, on the Emperor’s orders. These tough boys were then batch-granted citizenship, a rare treat. Any were free to follow Karus if the assignment as his hit-squad appealed.

  The Varduli were a tribe in an area near the Atlantic coast of Spain; my husband was a rarity who had diligently looked them up. They were short, thickset men, unsmiling, who spoke only to each other and only in their own language.

  As Karus approached the holding-cell, Quietus became anything but peaceful. He kicked off, causing uproar. Perhaps he had heard that when an officer goes into a cell with a suspect and closes the door, what happens will be uncivilised. He was expecting broken ribs.

  Oddly enough, Karus responded. He snarled that he would talk to the necrophiliac swine outside, then. Let the process be public. I thought he wanted to show off to the Seventh or even, if he had noticed my presence, to me. Karus would be brutal. I wasn’t expecting acumen and talent.

  An Asturian dragged Quietus out through the portico and threw him onto a tiny low stool. Karus had a chair, which he used as a prop more often than a seat. Normally in Rome, you stand, I sit; this is the sign of my breeding and authority, compared to which you are dirt. You are the captive, doomed; I am the general, glorious. However, Karus preferred to loom over his suspect to dominate him.

  In the one-sleeved brown tunic I had seen before, Quietus had rope-bound hands and was now barefoot. There were no signs that he had been knocked about already; he must know it could still happen. He had a long, narrow face, as if his antecedents had come from eastern Europe, but he spoke in the thick Rome dialect used by the lowest class. Leaving him to stew had not quelled him, and he failed to use the time to prepare a believable defence. But he wasn’t bright; all he had to say was that he hadn’t done it, which he kept doing even though no one had asked him yet. Even if true, that would never be enough.

  Karus snapped orders to clear the yard. The Seventh’s men sloped to their sleep cubicles, though left the doors wide open. Ursus and I went up the stone steps with them, remaining outside as observers on the second-floor walk-around. The Asturians stationed themselves in the exercise yard; they stayed very still, so all attention focused on their chief. Karus was protected, though everything about him said he could carry out his own thrashings.

  Tackling a violent criminal with threats of equal violence might make sense to Karus, but I thought if Quietus was the Pest, it would be too familiar. He would know all about fear being in the mind.

  “I am Julius Karus. I shall be asking you about the killing of women and boys in Caesar’s Gardens.” He hurled something onto the ground between them. “This is the billhook you were found mending today.”

  Leaning over the balcony rail, I could see it was a sharp blade, shorter and stouter than a sickle, with a vicious curved end. The garden variety was similar to many tools used in agriculture, or even the grappling hooks deployed in fires by the vigiles. This blade was still attached to its handle, where two metal flaps were folded to grip the wood, but the shaft itself was split, so badly it had snapped. Clean splinters indicated the break was recent.

  Karus leaned in close. “You were covering up what it had been used for. I know, and you know, how the tool was broken.” He ladled on more details: “You smashed it over the heads of the two dancing boys. There’s blood here. It’s their blood.”

  “It’s mine!” protested Quietus, managing to stay fairly calm. “I got cut when the billhook broke on me.”

  “Don’t talk!”

  My uncle, Lucius Petronius, had taught me a few things about interviews. Aggression worsens your odds. It is hard enough to tell whether the suspect—or innocent witness—is tense because they really are a villain who needs to out-step you, or whether they are clean, but terrified of your accusations. Petro liked to be firm, yet to seem understanding and patient; he aimed to make them settle down, so they were more likely to tell him the truth.

  Standards, as he loved to tell us bitterly, had slipped since Petro’s day. “I’ll tell you what happened,” Karus declared. He was certain. His straight aim was to make the suspect agree with him. “I know what you are like, Quietus. The superintendent has been telling me all about you.”

  “He’s an old idiot—”

  “Silence! Berytus says you have worked in the gardens and the Grove of the Caesars for as long as bodies have been found. There are records. And you’re filthy-minded, Quietus. What you enjoy isn’t weeding or planting, it’s sneaking up to watch couples engaged in copulation. When you get down on your knees, it’s to spy on them through knotholes. You go with the whores who come to the gardens, or when you are not fornicating yourself, you watch what they do with other men. This unhealthy interest in grubby acts makes you my prime suspect.”

  Quietus protested. “I could never do those things he does.”

  “Don’t deny the evidence.”

  I glanced at Ursus. As “evidence” the billhook proved nothing. In any case, Galanthus had said the boys were hit with something very heavy, which to me sounded different. Ursus kept his eye on the yard, but his face tightened as if he had bitten a gooseberry.

  “You helped find that woman’s body yesterday—I say, you knew she was there. You put her there.”

  “What? You’re lying.” Quietus echoed our thoughts. “You’ve got nothing on me! Go and stuff yourself up a centaur’s arse, Karus.”

  Colourful imagery had no effect on Karus. “Do you want to tell me why you do it?”

  “I never did anything!”

  “Who, then? Are you telling me somebody else does it?” Quietus opened his mouth but had no answer. Karus now spoke to him more conversationally. “No. You can’t suggest anyone else. It’s you. You snatch them, you knock them cold to control them, you rape them, then you strangle them. They die, at some point. You want to watch that. That arouses you, doesn’t it? Then you like to leave them dead in the open, so you come back to their cold bodies. Dead women can’t argue. That gets your juices going. Once they decay too much, even for you, you dig a hole and pop them in it. But when you think they might be found before that, you lay out their bodies in positions that will shock the finders. I find this disgusting, but I will listen if you want to explain why you do it.”

  Quietus said nothing. Even from upstairs we could see him licking his lips nervous
ly. He had a sheen of apprehension. Karus took the suspect’s anxiety for guilt.

  He was on the prowl as he started off again: “All right, I’ll suggest some reasons for you. Perhaps women have treated you so badly that you hate them. Or perhaps wise ones never want anything to do with you, so your only recourse is to grab one and force her. Which is it, Quietus? You’re damaged and punishing, or you’re naturally vile to those you hate? I think most likely it is not your fault. You were hurt by a woman, early on in your life—is that it? You never stood a chance of being normal? Which do you say, though? What makes a man like you commit such crimes?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me and I never did it.”

  “Now don’t just say that. Choose a reason!”

  Quietus was clever enough to see where this could lead. “Oh, I get it. You make me choose, so you can call that my admission?”

  “I don’t need your admission,” Karus replied confidently. “I have enough evidence. You’re damned.”

  At this point he picked up his chair, as if he was going to smash it down on the suspect. The back legs screeched on the roughly paved yard as it was lifted. Quietus flinched. Karus put down the chair again. Then he moved in much closer, increasing the prisoner’s agitation.

  “This has been happening for years and I’m looking for an explanation. One idea I have is that you blame the victims. What are these women, most of them?” Karus demanded. He moved about, walking to and fro in restless bursts, then leaned over the chair back. “Prostitutes. Bad creatures. You go with them, you spy on them with their customers, but to you they are vermin. They use men’s needs, they prey on men, they get money for doing it. You’ll say you want to clear them out of the gardens, especially the sacred Grove. That’s a special place. Honorific. It should never be invaded by these women—and the boys, of course. They were as bad. Filthy dancers. Insects like them should be stamped on—isn’t that what you think, Quietus?”