The Asturians had sailors to help them, but if the sailors warned Karus, he ignored it. Their oars were out, so the collision smashed them. With our vessel at rest temporarily, ours had been shipped. Fortunate. Damage was minimal.
Their ship had suffered. With their blades gone along one side, they had been taking in water. Either they were holed, or simply poorly caulked and leaky, but with sudden intensity, the lake came washing in. Our sailors started jeering, matched by derisive applause from the distant Naumachia audience. Ours took their stations. We moved away towards the landing stage, leaving the other ship squat in the water, its bronzed ram virtually nose-down in the lake. With the basin unused for shows, the water level was not high and hidden debris from long-ago fights must still have rested on the bottom. The Karus trireme settled. From the far banks of seats, we heard cheers and foot-drumming.
On board our ship there was a new crisis. The surprise of the crash tipped Blandus over the edge again. He leaped up, dragged his pruner hard across Alina’s neck, left her collapsing on the deck. He stabbed at himself, an inadequate gesture with a tool meant for sawing, then staggered to the side, climbed the rail, and threw himself into the lake, shouting that he had killed Alina and would drown himself.
I reached his wife but she expired at my feet. There was no struggle; I heard a small sigh of resignation. Alina, having lost both her lover and her husband, surrendered herself to Fate.
While other people rushed to her, I ran to the rail. Below in the silted water, I saw a new boat: a little skiff was tossing against the trireme. Standing up, a youngish boatman wielded a long oar. He must have known about Berytus and now Alina. Not offering rescue, he was pushing Blandus down again and again, every time he resurfaced. He finally forced Blandus under the water, using all his strength to make sure he could never come up. I guessed he had rowed out from the ship sheds. I guessed he was Alina’s brother.
Informers are free to choose how they pursue justice. As he looked up and saw me, I raised a palm briefly. Then I turned away.
LIII
Small boats aplenty had appeared. They could pick up survivors from the foundered ship. It was too much to hope they would abandon Karus. He and the Asturians ought to be safe: they should have learned to swim in the army.
Ursus, still green, had also looked over the rail. Hugging myself to control my shock, I suggested that was the brother. “Well, murder belongs in the family,” was his bleak comment. Without stopping to watch, he gave orders for our trireme to be rowed back to shore.
I am tough but I was trembling. Once we reached the wooden pier, I feared that my legs would give way and topple me into the water as we disembarked. My plight was noticed. A member of the vigiles walked backwards all the way down the gangplank, holding out his big hands for me to grasp so I could walk off safely. They do this in fires, of course. Leading scared women along wobbly planks is everyday work for them. If they take to you, they don’t even manhandle you.
I kissed his cheek for this. The Fourth Cohort would have been outraged by such a gesture to the bastard Seventh, but I make my own rules.
I have never seen a man blush so badly. He recovered when his grinning colleagues pointed out that their chief was still vomiting, even now he was back on land.
Ursus rallied. “Flavia Albia, I’d heard about you, but I didn’t believe the stories. It’s one big adventure after another when you are around!”
I smiled weakly.
I wanted to go home. No chance. Ursus was determined we should complete our interrupted mission to the grotto cave. We chose not to stay to see Karus netted and landed.
I did glance behind once. Where the clash of triremes had occurred, I saw a lone skiff still stationary on the lake, as if its now-seated rower was on watch to ensure Blandus never resurfaced. It would not happen. Unless his gases brought him up, he would stay down there, his body drifting along the sludgy bottom, among abandoned wreckage and the lost bones of drowned combatants from old maritime spectacles.
The Naumachia seats had emptied of spectators. The lake basin was placid. Its greyness mirrored the winter sky as it returned to supporting only coots and mallards.
* * *
Walking in silence, Ursus and I went over to the gardeners’ compound. He had to conduct a scene-of-crime visit after Berytus’s murder. The deceased was a public official. Bureaucracy has its regulations. The Treasury could not simply drop a supervisor-grade soul from the Leisure Amenities payroll; there must be a full manpower report before another time-server could be assigned as his replacement. Someone would be given temporary promotion to cover. Due to the sensational circumstances, there might need to be a public statement. An unlucky lackey would have to inform Domitian.
Meanwhile the corpse remained, lying on the ground, though with a covering groundsheet. Ursus bent to lift a corner. Still queasy, he signed that this was a bad idea. “Don’t look, Flavia! He’s nearly in two bits.” He had no need to warn me. I had seen the blood on Blandus. I averted my gaze even from the murder weapon, which was lying alongside. It was a long-handled foot spade, shod with a tapered iron piece. “We’ll take that. Nobody wants darling daffodils being planted with a shovel that has killed a man.”
Ursus wiped the blood off the blade on a topiary hedge. This was an elegant demi-lune of well-clipped low box, fringing oleanders. His men muttered jokes that rain would soon wash the twigs clean. In any case, blood was a good fertiliser …
Ursus made them gather up the note-tablets the Asturians had left scattered on those tables where the gardeners liked to sit. He said it would be indecent to have the dead lovers’ sweet talk passed around any more. I asked what he would do with the letters from Alina to Berytus. Ursus gave them to me, on the understanding that, even if I read them first, I would make sure they were destroyed.
I put them in my satchel for now, but I wanted to read them. As we walked over to the grotto, I told Ursus I had a professional interest. I was mildly intrigued. It struck me that even if a gardener’s wife was basically literate, her reading and writing skills would not normally extend to writing love poems, or even quoting them. Alina would have gone to a professional letter-writer. Plenty of those existed; in hard times, I had even done such work myself. Because of the fake philosophers, I had a current interest in commercial ghostwriting.
Ursus said he was glad someone cared. He would leave all that nonsense to me.
* * *
When we approached my husband’s building site, we could see it would not delay us long. Nothing was there. We had no cave to search. The old grotto had been reduced to a bare space among the forest trees. Ursus had brought a couple of vigiles, who walked around aimlessly, as if they thought slimy green rocks and puddles might suddenly pop up, like primeval dragon’s teeth.
Every stone had gone, leaving flat, tidy ground. Sparsus was giving it a final brush over with a besom while his elders ate their last picnic and watched him at work. Trypho, no longer spooked by creepy feelings, was looking cheerful.
“Flavia, you don’t hang around!” marvelled Ursus.
Even I was impressed. “It was payment by the job. The sooner we finish, the bigger the profit margin. When our team tackles a big pile of rocks, believe me, it vanishes.”
Larcius and the men had already packed up. All their tools, even their site barricades, were loaded onto barrows and the sack-trolley, ready to move out; had I not arrived, they would have been away.
If new trees were planted, nobody would ever know that the gloomy cave had ever existed. If Sosthenes ever got approval for a nymphaeum, he had a perfect virgin site.
Unfortunately, that meant no clues to our killer. Ursus cursed. He had lost any evidence that Rullius or anybody else had ever used the place, with anything a killer might have hidden in it. I knew he had been hoping to find the trophies taken from dead women.
I took my usual upturned bucket to sit on, then let him deal with this. After what we had just been through, or in deference to my heady masc
ot status, his grilling of my workforce was fairly polite. As always, I told Larcius to answer his questions fully. Behind the vigiles’ backs, Serenus was winking at me. I glowered, to show I meant it.
Larcius confirmed what he had once told me: on taking possession of the site, the workmen had found unpleasant relics of human occupation. At the time they had thought the leftover trash meant use by lovers or adventurous young people. The grotto was sited too far into the Grove for criminal activity. Larcius had not even gained the impression anyone homeless lived there.
“Did a gardener called Rullius ever come along to see what you were up to?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you know who I mean?”
“No. What does he look like?”
“Ordinary!”
“No one really bothered us once we started.”
“But somebody had definitely been here before?”
Larcius answered patiently, as if telling a member of the public that he did know how to dig a hole: “We found rubbish, food evidence, though not in great quantities, plus—if you will pardon the expression—human shit. Just enough for us to be careful where we put our feet until we had cleared up.”
“Find any bones?” asked Ursus. “I don’t mean from a rack of lamb. Skulls, pelvises or long shanks. Remains of female skeletons?”
“No, sir.”
Larcius glanced at me. The sharp-sighted Ursus jumped in to ask why he was looking at Flavia. I answered: “We found an odd bunch of buried scrolls. It is no secret. I mentioned it at your station-house. Your officer-of-the-day took a written report.”
“It’s official, then!” Ursus nodded, satisfied. I could not tell whether he had seen that report: knowing the Seventh, probably not. It would have ended up in a rubbish pail, or at least in their infamous case-notes cupboard.
“Yes, and it’s why I am interested in ghostwriters.”
He rolled his eyes. “Pegasus the flying pony! So, what’s happened about this little mystery, Flavia?”
“Nothing. No one ever came forward to claim the scrolls. We don’t know why they were buried. They were barely passable as reading matter. I read them myself, because I like a challenge, though I found them grim. I am having them sold at an auction.” Tomorrow, but Ursus had no need to know that. As forgeries, the scrolls had enough notoriety, without vigiles turning up at the sale so bidders nervously melted away. My father would tell me never to bring officials in. I was supposed to know auction etiquette.
“But nothing else ever got dug up?… The main excitement would be,” Ursus summed up to Larcius, “if you had found a box, a bag, or similar container, stuffed with odd bits of women’s jewellery. A lot of it would be cheap trash. Bangles. Chains. Earrings. Amulets … If you found anything like that, there’s no comeback, I just need to have it. It’s my one missing link to the pervert who takes all those floozies. Never mind if it’s sold, pawned, or donated to your cuties—”
“No,” broke in Larcius. He was a good clerk of works, which meant he knew his business and rejected nagging.
“Nothing at all?” For once Ursus sounded desperate.
“Nothing!” I broke in, before one of the men whacked him. Violence had been dealt out enough today. “They would have given it to me. Ursus, please stop messing about.”
I had had enough. This had been a tiring day, wearing and tragic. We had wasted effort on a minor suspect, a dire personality but he looked wrongly implicated, while the real person of interest must be laughing. My fear was that all the attention given to the tragic love triangle would make the killer jealous. He would feel driven to attack a new victim, to claw back his own celebrity. Thanks to Blandus, another woman would be raped and killed in the Grove, as a gesture.
Something in me snapped. “I cannot keep doing this. The vigiles have gone astray and I see no hope of anything changing.”
Ursus raised an eyebrow, giving me his “annoying woman” expression. “Astray?”
“For heaven’s sake! Why did you ever settle on the Blandus group as suspects? Because the superintendent fingered them. Why did Berytus do that? Now we know. It had nothing to do with the killings. He hoped you would arrest Blandus, leaving Berytus a clear way to Alina. Due to Karus, you took in Quietus instead, so now three people are dead, yet you have come nowhere near the killer.”
Ursus had the grace to show he took my point. Being from the vigiles, and the terrible Seventh, he would only say, “Settle down, Flavia! Anyone would think you were walking away from the job.”
“I am. This inquiry is all yours. I won’t be associated with the wreckage. Somewhere there must be evidence, clues you have repeatedly not found. Quietus is a dud. Berytus lied about Blandus. There is no convincing suspect, but you have the personnel list, you have the old case notes, you even have a special agent drafted in—for what that’s worth. Ursus, I’m going to inform my client his fears are correct. The vigiles cannot do the job.”
“Ah, be fair!”
“I have been fair long enough. You have the manpower and you claim to have the expertise—so you damn well get on and catch this man!”
Ursus muttered to Larcius, “Must be the wrong time of the month. Take her home, will you?”
Larcius knew better than to agree with that lousy time-of-the-month hypothesis, in case I really erupted. But he signalled in silence that he and the workmen were ready to escort me.
I was having none of it. “Keep away from me, all of you!”
I set off for home by myself. Being men, they all cringed and let me go.
* * *
Gardens are good places for solitude. The Grove of the Caesars, so dark and hemmed in, often seemed deserted and ominous, but the wide walks and tended beds beyond the old stand of forest trees offered peace and healing.
Healing and peace were not what I wanted, however.
LIV
Home. It felt as if I had been away for days.
When I came in, works I had never approved were waiting to jar me. A long uneven hump ran across the courtyard, improperly levelled after being backfilled; the fountain designer had brought in a water trench. It was not where I would have agreed to have it. Sosthenes had marked out his feature halfway along a wall, on a sight line through the atrium from the front doors: boringly conventional. In front of it, the two painters stood, while they discussed how they could paint a false garden either side. Very in vogue, they claimed. Very trite to me. Barley was sitting there with her back to me, inspecting the wall with the painters. Disloyal hound.
A bright new standpipe post attached to this wall must support water delivery; it could have been placed much closer to the kitchen. I watched Dromo turning on the metal tap. When no water came out, he turned it off, looking puzzled. He waited a moment, then turned it on again hopefully.
“Dromo! Give up. Sosthenes has not yet connected the supply.”
The slave abandoned the attempt, turning himself around to scowl. “About time!” he greeted me.
“I had to do my work. Was I needed?”
“I’ll say!”
“Have you had an adventure?” I could see he had. Dromo was full of pent-up excitement, with something to tell me. Knowing him, I would not want to hear it, but I had to.
“Guess what! A man walked in when you were out.”
Apprehension. “Not into our house?”
“Right in. Sosthenes had left the doors open because he came to do his trench. They’d all gone away to buy stuff, leaving the doors like that. Anyone could just come in. Gratus and Fornix were out shopping. Marcia and Suza went to see a man—I think it was the one you told them not to visit. I was all on my own,” Dromo complained.
“Where was the vigilis who was sent to look after us?”
“He went off with Marcia and Suza because they are so attractive they need an escort everywhere. In case.”
“In case of what? They’re tough enough.” He left the house he came to guard? That was the Seventh all over. “Well, I’m sure you coped.
What did you do, Dromo?”
“I was in charge of the whole place, so I jumped up and I called out, ‘Ho there! What are you doing in our house, stranger?’ He said he was looking for a boy. I said, ‘I am the only boy here. I am Dromo and if you don’t get out of here at once, I’ll give you a thrashing with my cudgel.’ He didn’t know I’ve lost it somewhere. This man looked at me, smiling horribly. He seemed to be thinking what he could do to me, but he turned around and walked out. When Sosthenes and his workmen came back, I gave them a good talking-to about leaving the doors open.”
My mouth fell open. I closed it.
Dromo lowered his voice, sounding nervous. “Was that man looking for the dancer?”
“Sounds so.”
“I was brave, then!”
“Yes, you were brave to stand up to him. You didn’t tell him about Galanthus?”
“I certainly did not.”
The thought of Dromo encountering the Pest, right in our house, made me go cold.
“Good boy. Dromo, your seeing this person in daylight could be important. Will you describe him for me?”
“Easy.” Dromo shrugged, convinced he was good at description. “He was nothing. Just ordinary.”
As I’d thought. I had always said he would be like that. It is always the trouble with serial killers. They look like everybody else.
LV
Having dropped my main inquiry, I was stuck with fake philosophy. After a fitful night’s sleep, I rose next morning, thinking I would ease my mind by losing myself in the scroll sale.
Marcia brought word up from my parents’ house that there had been “a lot of interest” in my scrolls. Mentioning pre-sale interest is an auctioneer’s way of prophesying gains. If they claim to have quiet confidence, that is shorthand for “Get the drinks in.”
The Grove of the Caesars Page 26