That was it. He submitted quietly. In and out. No struggle, no riot.
There were bruises on him that might have been from bite marks, though probably too old now for a definite identification. I noticed Ursus looking at the size of his hands, though he did not bother to measure them.
Rullius never denied what he had done. He accepted that his time was up. He would never give any details; he would never show where more bodies were; he never named further victims he had killed. But he always agreed that he was the Pest.
I know Ursus believed Rullius felt relieved to be taken so he could finish killing. I never thought that. Had we not picked him up, he would have continued until he was prevented by age or his own death. What he did to women was so much his nature that there was no cure and no retirement. He saw nothing wrong in his actions. He felt no shame. He was proud to have done it so many times before anyone had stopped him.
Outside in the street, the Seventh’s tribune had arrived. A heavy ex-centurion, he stood opposite, observing but not participating—as they do. If anything went wrong, it would not be his fault. With him was a similar hard-bitten tribune, from the Sixth, so due liaison must have taken place. The two men talked quietly to one another, not speaking to anybody else. They looked to be discussing their children’s education or what they had done on holiday.
The tribune told Ursus he was claiming his mule back, so the inquiry chief would have to walk. That suited him. Ursus would march with the tight detachment that took their prisoner back across the Pons Sublicius. He would not be satisfied until that man was inside the Transtiberina station-house, safely chained in a cell. Action then would be routine. All the case notes would be bundled to send to the praetor, Rome’s senior law-giver; he would sign off with “guilty: no trial needed” and a free ticket to the amphitheatre. But Ursus muttered he was going to have a big hook screwed into the ceiling and leave a piece of rope with Rullius in the holding-cell.
“I’ll mention you in reports, Flavia.”
“Albia.”
“You’ll always be Flavia to us, girl! Our mascot, like a little winged Victory up on a plinth.”
By tomorrow they would have forgotten. They reckoned they had solved this case. I was an informer; I knew how procedure worked.
LX
It was really dark now, with a strong sense of winter gripping the city. No more rain had fallen. Dim lights appeared at food shops, looking muzzy in the damp atmosphere. The streets remained quiet, but with occasional revellers starting Saturnalia too early; they whooped loudly to annoy and frighten people. Treading quickly in the shadows, I managed to avoid having them run at me.
I went straight up the Aventine to Prisca’s bath-house. I spent a long time strigilling, as if I had to scrape away my investigation, like physical filth. Afterwards, with my washed hair soaking up scented oil in a hot towel, I lay on a slab in the massage room, merely resting.
Prisca came in. “Caught the Pest yet?” she carolled, expecting a negative.
“Yes. Arrested this evening.”
“Well done you, you marvel!” She paused, ever shrewd. “Never mind now. Come in tomorrow, my love, and tell me the delicious details then.” She patted me once and left. I liked Prisca. She could see when her customers were desperate for recovery time. She was my kind of businesswoman. She sent me a free pastry, plus a kind message that she had despatched a runner to tell my household I would be arriving home soon.
I did pop in at home, since I was passing. I told Gratus I had a vital client visit before dinner.
* * *
Paris was back. “Tiberius Manlius will be coming home tomorrow.”
“And?” I sensed more.
“And he can tell you himself.”
“Is there a letter?”
“No. He will speak to you when he comes.”
To tell me what? Nothing good, or he would have written it.
* * *
Sosthenes was fussing. He had built our fountain, though I could not inspect it because of the formwork; concrete needed to set. “A wonderful, waterproof material, Flavia Albia, adaptable, easy to use, cheap, plastic, permanent, seamless—”
“Sosthenes, I keep reminding you, I am a contractor’s wife. I know the Seven Virtues of Concrete.” I had cut him off at six. Don’t ask me for the last. “Show me tomorrow.”
Tomorrow was shaping up to be a busy day.
* * *
Cousin Marcia had gone back to the Saepta Julia to take Patchy, the intransigent donkey, finally home to Gornia. She was hoping the porters would be celebrating their good auction with a bonfire and a merry fry-up in the big Saepta courtyard. Marcia intended to drink herself silly so she could forget Corellius. She was set on seducing some rich goldsmith from the Saepta arcades.
Rescuing her from whatever situation she got into could be another task for me tomorrow.
All I would want to do was spend time with my returning husband.
* * *
At least I managed my client report. I brought Cluventius up to date as soon as possible. With no Patchy, I was forced to walk.
“A man has been arrested.” I took his hand and folded into it his late wife’s beautiful gold chain and pendant. “I assume this is something you recognise.” He had not been able to describe this when requested to give details, but he knew Victoria’s missing jewellery when he saw it. He wept. Being tired out by that time, I wept briefly myself. It must have done us both good.
We talked quietly about the outcome. Nothing could bring Victoria Tertia back, or eliminate the memory of her corpse lying in the Grove that day, but Cluventius had shed his terrible urge to rave at Fate and blame the authorities. Everything that should have been done had been. No other women would be attacked by Rullius. The Grove of the Caesars had received its last desecrated corpse. Allowing my client to leave his rage behind was the critical part of my job; at last I felt good.
I let him decide if he wanted to attend when Rullius went to his death, whether the convicted man was to be eaten by lions or forced to fight as a gladiator. I never go to such events.
The family would recover to some degree. The youngest children might forget, or merely remain subdued. Cluventius’s elder son would go into the family business, seeming to shrug off the tragedy in time, though of course he was marked for ever, as his father also would be. I heard later from other sources that the daughter found respite in music; Cluvia, apparently, began attending a lot of concerts.
I would be paid. I hardly liked to take money for this, but I had been professional for too long to go soft. You do the work; you earn the fee. I had promised the family to make sure the truth was uncovered, as it had been. Perhaps Ursus with his surveillance team could have solved the case eventually, but I had pointed the way to the sanctuary of Hercules. I made Cluventius aware of that, though with a light touch. He understood.
He escorted me to his door in person. I asked him to have a slave call for a hired chair as I was exhausted. Engeles, whom I had met the day Victoria was found, went to get out their own. While we waited, I made a joke about Patchy being so awkward, smiling over my dread of trying to buy a new donkey for us. Cluventius, who had worked with pack animals all his life, laughed. He said he would find me one. “Not too young nor too old. A beast of all burdens for light home use? Good with children?”
I drew in a long breath. “Yes, probably.”
“Leave it with me, Flavia Albia.”
The chair came. I climbed in. As Engeles and the other bearer turned for home, I let myself assume my long day was done at last. All my experience let me down. I should have known never to fall for that nonsense.
LXI
Never work with family. My cousin Marcia would have to go. She was still out on the gad at the Saepta so I couldn’t tell her.
I had a memory of telling Marcia to go back to the Temple of Minerva, to ask the Writers’ Guild for details of hacks who composed letters for people. I did not expect that, while I was busy, Marcia Did
ia would fly off madly to follow up on it. Or that she would find the man. If I, with my wealth of experience, had asked the dreary Guild to suggest a contact, they would have produced either nothing or a possibles list as long as a tragic play.
What she had done was to trip up at Minerva Aventina, flirt, flollop her figure enticingly, extract a few suggestions, then unerringly pick out the correct scroll shop to descend upon. When I saw who had now come to see her, I knew why. Marcia was determined to implicate someone she loathed: Tuccia. This is no way to conduct business as an informer. You have to be impartial or your case goes bendy.
Not Marcia. On her way down to the Saepta, she had stopped at the shop. There she had left a message with a couple of slaves who had never seen her before, so when the amanuensis came back from an errand, they sent him up to an address none had recognised. Marcia was still out, of course. I had to deal with it. Now the scribe was trapped in my courtyard by Gratus, who quickly explained as he dumped the witness on me.
I was surprised he was from the Mysticus workshop, though not as surprised as the slave. If he had known, it was unlikely he would have come.
“Flavia Albia!” He was a repairer, the silent young man I had seen hunched at a bench, copying in lost papyrus sections. In a week of ordinary-looking people, this was an ordinary-looking slave. He had long hair and a short, patched tunic, no distinguishing features, not much hope or joy.
While I was there the other day, he had never joined in with the conversation, though I reckoned he had been well aware of the others joshing Tuccia. “I was told somebody wanted to know about some letters I wrote for a woman called Alina.”
“They do,” I said, trying to fuel interest. “If I’d known where you worked, I could have asked Tartus to tell you—I saw him today at the auction.” The response to that was wary, which at last piqued my interest. I dropped onto my dolphin-ended bench, ready to endure this task.
“You seem apprehensive. Don’t the others know you carry out work on the side?” They probably did, but he looked vague about it; any money he earned ought to belong to the shop, specifically to Tuccia, who owned him. Some people would have let him take on outside jobs; she, I suspected, would be a mean owner. She was enjoying her new life too much. For me, it was promising if he resented her.
“You can talk to me in confidence,” I assured him gently. “I am sorry if my cousin has exposed you in some way. At least you still came to see us, for which I thank you. What is your name?”
“Diocles.”
“Tell me about working for Alina, please.”
Diocles had heard what had happened to his one-time customer, so even before I started, he knew everyone was dead with no risk of comeback. Many people would think there was no point in my asking. None of the parties were clients of mine. The only crime was adultery, which some see as a sport.
He had liked Alina, and was sorry she had died, especially in such a terrible way. He was upset enough to open up. Alert to the slave’s unease, and perhaps to my increased interest, Gratus brought him a beaker of mulsum. The steward then sat with us, watching and encouraging Diocles.
The slave told a simple tale of a woman from a poor background who had never been to school, but who in adult life had acquired a lover who taught her to read. She could write a little too, thanks to Berytus, though she was still unsure of herself with composition. She came to Diocles instead. Berytus had been given his name by someone who owed him a favour for providing advice about plants.
Berytus had had Alina use a collection of poems for reading practice; whenever she wanted to write to him, she would suggest quotations. The lovers were particularly taken by a conceit they found somewhere of Cupid watering plants from an amphora; clearly the god of love looking after plants tenderly was made for them. Diocles thought it all rather sweet.
While he sipped his mulsum, Diocles suddenly said, “When I saw you, I thought it was a trick. I thought you had got me here to your house so you could ask me about those scrolls from the Grove.”
I looked at him, full of innocence. “Goodness. I never thought of it! But while you are here, if there is anything you can tell me, I would love to hear it.”
Now he was sorry he had spoken. He downed his drink as if he was intending to leave. Gratus swiftly gave him more mulsum.
“Alina seems to have loved those poems by Thallusa,” I said. “To be honest, I had been thinking Thallusa was invented by someone.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Diocles. “She’s real enough.”
I jumped on that. “Some other authors in my scrolls might not be?” He turned shy. I cursed internally. My rule for interrogation is to prepare as much as I can. Here, I had not even expected him, let alone that he would talk about the buried scrolls. “To be honest with you, Diocles, I know much of what we discovered at the Grove of the Caesars is fictitious. I had reached a conclusion that the scrolls were produced quite recently at your shop. If your expertise is copying, have you yourself ever been involved in producing new works?”
“No,” he said.
“But you do not deny their origin is the Mysticus shop?”
“I know nothing about what they get up to.” He was digging himself into a hole, because he still implied the fraud went on there.
“Of course,” I mused, “this all started when Mysticus had a complaint about the Didymus Dodomos scroll when he offered it to Marcus Ovidius. It was about gardens, I believe. Lovely subject!”
“We never wrote that scroll,” Diocles burst out. As he fell deeper into his hole, he became more and more unhappy. “Mysticus bought it from someone. Another dealer.”
“Really!” I kept playing innocent. “All right, I accept Mysticus bought the Didymus scroll, so someone else must have faked it. But afterwards, this is what I think: that first counterfeit scroll gave people at your shop the idea to produce more. Tuccia says the Ovidius controversy happened before her time—but did she want to make more fakes? Everyone says Mysticus was very honest. My guess therefore is that he wanted nothing to do with any cheating, but after he died, once she possessed the shop, it was Tuccia who started to produce other scrolls. New owner, new régime.”
Diocles answered darkly, “A lot of things changed at the scroll shop after Mysticus died!”
“Like?”
He was deeply unhappy. “Not for me to say.”
“Oh, go on!” I said, with a fey giggle. I could have been Tuccia herself.
Diocles stood up. He was leaving—but would he drop a crucial hint before he fled? “I like to keep my nose clean,” he said. “I only ever once wrote out one new fragment for them, which was the Philadespoticus. I mend things by recopying missing bits, but that’s all above board. I didn’t want to do the fakes.”
“You are a slave. Could they compel you?”
“If they wanted, but they were afraid I might be so upset that I’d go and snitch to someone. So, they leave me alone. And I’m sorry, Flavia Albia, but I can’t talk to you no more.”
I let him go. I try never to get slaves into trouble; their lives can be hard enough.
I believed there was truth in what he had said. He had explained why the supposed “Philadespoticus of Skopelos” had only a fragment in the buried collection. He had confirmed, in effect, that the buried scrolls had originated with Tuccia and others of her staff. Presumably today Tuccia sent Tartus to buy some back at the auction because it might disguise the fact that she had produced them in the first place. They had put a lot of work in and she might believe there was still profit to be made. Once the heat died down, Tuccia and those of her staff who were willing might produce even more scrolls. Maybe she would have fun inventing even more terrible authors.
I liked the fact that Diocles believed Thallusa was a real poet.
LXII
I slept. It was bliss. I only awoke because of noises in a nearby room. Gratus had decided to clear out the painters and their equipment so it could be a bedroom, as intended. Paris was helping him. Dromo was watch
ing. The painters were on the opposite side of the balcony, for once not quarrelling with each other. They were plotting how to quarrel with Gratus and Paris.
I dressed without aid, since Suza was downstairs hearing from Marcia about her adventures at the Saepta last night. Neither took any notice when I appeared, so after my breakfast, I found my messages left on a tray by Gratus, read them and picked out an address from one. I left that note displayed for Gratus to know where I was. Then, without saying anything to anyone, I picked up something I needed and took the dog for a walk.
I passed Sosthenes. He was coming on site with his workmen and what appeared to be sacks of mosaic tesserae. “Flavia Albia! Blue or green for preference?”
“Turquoise.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see a man about a scroll.”
Barley wagged her tail.
I had the Didymus Dodomos fragment in my satchel, and the address of the secretive Marcus Ovidius learned by heart.
LXIII
The garden room of Marcus Ovidius was truly beautiful. One of his slaves took me, then left me to marvel while he told his master I was there. I could happily have waited for hours.
You came in through a single small door. Light was supplied from above, though it was muted. Once closed, everything including the door was painted—painted so exquisitely it looked like a real garden. The mural ran around the corners and over the ceiling. Trees seemed to sway gently. Birds looked ready to take wing as they raised their beaks from trickling fountains, looking up to butterflies alighting on fronds. You could almost smell the roses and violets.
And yet it was not meant to be real. You could acknowledge playful visual deception. You felt contained within a grove, yet knew you were standing on a marble floor indoors. The sky was a frieze; the ceiling dangled golden boughs yet was coffered plaster, so clearly not sky. You gazed at a dark dado, painted with criss-crossing reed fences to enclose the garden on the walls, an inviting representation, yet you could not enter. You were meant simply to admire. You could sit or stand in the room, sheltered from weather, private from people, cut off from the sounds and stresses of real life, losing all sense of time. Trees, shrubs and flowers in delicate pale blues, bright greens and yellows soothed you. Fruit, flowers and even the fencing were picked out in flecks of contrasting gold, like sparkles. There were repeats and regularity, yet each plant, insect or bird was sufficiently different for new delightful discoveries wherever you looked.
The Grove of the Caesars Page 30