I had seen frescos with enchanting panoramas of fantasy buildings set in imaginary landscapes. I had heard of a room like this one in the private villa of an empress. I am afraid my first reaction was that of wife: I was glad my husband was not here or he would have bankrupted us, wanting one. Holy horticulture, I wanted one myself.
That, of course, was the point. The motive for Marcus Ovidius’s eager collecting was for other people to know what he had. He yearned for the world to envy him.
* * *
When the slave came for me and took me to his master, there was nothing about Ovidius to suggest his reputation as a recluse. Dammit, he had been at the auction. (Why had Donatus said otherwise?) I immediately recognised him—not always bidding himself, presumably because his agent had been there. He had bought things, though I could not remember what; when he settled up, he must have used an alias. People did that. The auction world was full of secrecy, often pointless. Ovidius had presumably left his agent to get what he really coveted, though later it had seemed to be the agent’s idea to set up this meeting.
Marcus Ovidius was not long past fifty. His features were nothing special. Clean-shaven, he reeked of an expensive skin lotion. He had a crease-free white tunic and several cameo rings, plus a vivid belief in his own fine mind. He must possess money, probably inherited: his house was an enormous property on the right bank of the river, where anyone else would have built a large warehouse and profited. Tiberius, with a storage business in his family, would have groaned that the home was a waste of access to the river. I thought the area was too busy for leisurely enjoyment of a domestic property, even one that was provided with elegant grounds.
Ovidius wanted to start. His agent had not yet turned up and neither had Tuccia, though he assured me he had invited her, as I had stipulated. I was early. Ovidius did not object; he was desperate to compare the Didymus scroll with my Didymus fragment. No need for anyone else to get in the way. We laid out the documents and began without them.
They were in Latin, and not written by the same hand. That was not significant: even so they could have originated with the same author. The style definitely matched. In both, the author spoke passionately of gardens and the joy they could give, yet he was intensely practical. He discussed the layout of terraces and walks, the virtues of topiary where wild nature was tamed, a striking variety of plants. He went into minute detail on how to propagate by sowing seeds, grafting or rooting cuttings.
“Not hoary philosophy, like some other scrolls I found buried,” I said. “It seems to have been written by someone with deep knowledge of growing things. I believe you used an expert to evaluate your potential scroll? Nobody seems to remember who it was, but would he be able to comment on comparing the texts?”
“I was my own expert,” said Ovidius, surprising me. “I study widely. I have immense experience of textual evaluation.” I would not want to be sued by this self-assured pompous man; he was bound to act in court on his own behalf—and to do it tiresomely. My uncles, who practise law, say “presenting his own defence” is guaranteed to make them abandon a case.
“You had almost accepted the scroll as genuine?”
“Influenced by Mysticus. He believed in it. He was generally trustworthy—though one must always take one’s own precautions. I had wanted to buy something on the idealistic Greek ‘paradise’ concept, but I came to the conclusion this work is a Roman cultivation handbook, with no history I valued. Solid stuff—not ancient. The author has literary merit, though he is no Theophrastus or Xenophon. A close reading suggests that, whoever he is, basic information had been supplied to him by a skilled gardener for…” He paused.
“Enhancing?” I suggested. “Fancifying?”
“Quite. Adding more elegant turns of phrase … As the purchaser, it was not for me. I am all for intertextuality, Flavia Albia, but I desired a thesis on the ideal of a walled enclosure, an exquisite plot that contains and inspires peace, prosperity and plenty. Food for the soul, not ‘How I prefer to graft cherry trees.’ You may disagree, but I had my agenda. Mysticus knew that. When I decided he was passing off an ancient author, that settled it.”
“Had you gone to Mysticus asking him to find something?”
“No, my agent alerted me that he might have this.”
“But you had bought from Mysticus previously?”
“Oh, yes. He had a great knowledge and was personally popular.”
“You trusted his judgement?”
“Completely.”
“Had you ever come across the writer Didymus Dodomos before?”
“No.”
“Had Mysticus?”
“He said not.”
“That made the material more desirable, to you as a collector … Is it possible that this scroll was deliberately put together in order to appeal to you?”
“If so, then it is not simple fraud, but a fraud aimed at me personally! And at least they could have written what I wanted!” His self-concern was alienating. Probably better if he stayed a recluse.
“So has today’s comparison of the two pieces satisfied your concerns, Marcus Ovidius?”
“The same person concocted both, no doubt about that.”
“If I proved it was deliberate fraud, would you want to take it further?”
He looked vague. “I decided against before. One never wishes to look too easily fooled … Still, what shall I do?” Ovidius mused. “I might even buy the scroll after all. What about your fragment, Flavia Albia? Will you sell it? Will you sell it to me?”
I had no intention of letting him have it. “I shall keep it. It has a useful section on pomegranates, which I want to grow in my peristyle.” I made sure I picked it up; I tucked it safely into my satchel. “Your agent seems to have let us down today. Of course, he may have to answer the demands of other clients. I saw him buy items for you yesterday, even though you were present.”
“Incognito produces a better price for me. I am so well-known.”
“Have you worked with the same agent a lot?”
“Some years. He is much more than an agent; he is very widely read and has a good intellect. He understands what I am looking for. That was why he pointed me to Mysticus for my Didymus scroll.” I found it typical that Ovidius called it “my” even though he had never owned it. I was amused he spoke so highly of the man who had nudged him towards a fraud.
“I never caught his name,” I said. “Your agent?”
“Xerxes.”
I felt my eyebrows shoot skywards. “The sleeping partner of Donatus?”
“I wouldn’t call him a sleeping partner. They work closely all the time.”
I had been led to believe Xerxes was an invention. Now it seemed he was real and active—and involved with the first fraudulent scroll.
“Did you ever know,” I asked narrowly, “how Mysticus had acquired that scroll?”
Ovidius looked surprised I had asked. “That was no secret. It was how Xerxes knew of its existence—Mysticus first had it from Donatus.”
By this point nothing surprised me. I was buying my husband’s encyclopaedia from a two-timing double-dealing scroll rat.
LXIV
Since our business was concluded, I flattered Ovidius, begging him to show me his garden room again. It was just as beautiful the second time. Using my husband’s building firm as an excuse, I screwed out of him the name of the artist who had designed and painted it. Of course, we would never be able to afford anything like it. Still, you can dream. I knew if Tiberius had been there, he would have collected the contact details, just in case they came in handy.
To walk back across the Tiber, I took the Pons Aemilius, the big old stone bridge below Tiber Island. Instead of turning right for home, I went left, down the Vicus Jugarius into the Forum, across to the Argiletum, then straight to Donatus’s lock-up. He was there. So, looking surprised, was Ovidius’s agent, the supposedly invented partner, Xerxes.
“Xerxes! He does exist,” I said to Donatus, as if he mig
ht not have been aware of it. “So here you are, mysterious Xerxes!”
“I didn’t think I would be needed,” Xerxes explained brazenly, while Donatus had the grace to look sheepish.
“Right. Marcus Ovidius and I managed to have a very successful meeting without you or Tuccia.” Perhaps the two men were apprehensive, though they were braving it out. I leaned on the shop counter, straightening bangles: an old trick, but it makes people nervous sometimes. “Now I’ve had a walk across the river with time to assess what I learned from him. How dubiously intertwined scroll-dealing is! How sickeningly devious are scroll-sellers!”
They laughed it off. Donatus had recovered his dash. “The collectors won’t ever talk to each other—but we dealers are one big happy club.”
“I see what you are, Donatus. It’s not pretty. One of you invents an author and creates a scroll; he fudges the issue by selling it on, your dodgy partner points a client to it, and if everything should go skew-whiff because the client smells a rat, that scroll has been fitted out with too murky a history for anything bad to happen for you pair. Its fudged chain of ownership will keep you out of trouble.”
“‘Invents an author?’” Donatus quoted back at me sweetly. Never trust a man whose hair broadcasts that he does not own a comb.
I smiled. “You and Berytus. It’s a pity he’s dead—not only because I can’t ask him about your collaboration on gardening but that poor man wrote a damned good handbook, from which he himself should have benefited. Instead, ‘Didymus Dodomos’ is discredited and scandalous, while the only people who gain from the superintendent’s vast knowledge are underhand, unethical shysters. All of you. Even Mysticus, ‘trustworthy’ though he was supposed to be, manages to escape blame—but only through inconveniently dying.” I took a deep breath as a new thought reached my indignant brain. “And there’s a question!”
Donatus and Xerxes applied expressions of puzzlement. Their acting was as fake as their literary credibility.
“Suppose,” I suggested, “Mysticus was genuinely honest. A good man, as everybody said. Suppose he realised you and Berytus had deliberately faked Didymus, so he was about to expose you. He might have felt he had no choice, with Ovidius threatening to sue him. He was a fit man, not old, had a family, was used to working in the Vicus Tuscus in all weathers—yet he died. That illness of his sounds suspicious. Donatus and Xerxes, should I be wondering whether Mysticus died of unnatural causes? If so, was it down to you two? He put you under threat—so did you help him into Hades?”
I caught them on the hop. They had thought only that they faced a tricky argument about their fake scroll. I realised I did not care about that, nor the others. My concern was protecting human beings or, if I was too late to save their lives, finding them justice.
“If you want, go into your shop and confer about how to stop me exposing you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I am an informer. That is what I do.”
Letting them discuss it was generous, though not too unsafe, since I had been in the shop enough times to know there was no back exit for escape. They did step away, heads together. I watched them consider my accusation: Donatus, still unkempt and possibly unwashed, Xerxes with his abrupt, chopping hands as they talked. Leaning on the counter, I linked my own hands together on my waist girdle. I waited, gazing at the sky, as if with a sudden interest in winter clouds.
They sidled back.
“Was the Mysticus death suspicious?” I demanded.
“It looked that way.” Donatus was happy to make the accusation.
“But it wasn’t us,” his partner pleaded.
“No.” I was cool with them, but fair. “I believe you. But if somebody removed Mysticus, the question is, who benefited? Who wanted his business? Didn’t I hear from someone that Mysticus was married with family?” Glaucus had said it, right at the beginning.
“Wife and young children,” Xerxes confirmed.
“Why didn’t they inherit? What happened to them?”
This time it was Donatus who knew: “There were two little ones. They died in similar circumstances to Mysticus. Very soon afterwards. Same kind of illness. Never recovered. Afterwards his missus just disappeared.”
“Did a doctor look after the sick?”
“Probably not. Tuccia helped the family. She nursed them.”
“Very conscientiously?” I asked, very drily. The two men considered what I meant.
“And who would benefit from removing that family?”
“Tuccia,” they chorused.
I straightened, preparing myself. “I was talking to a law-and-order agent, who reckons that when women kill they fool themselves it is out of pity. Women are nurses and nurturers, so if someone is suffering, they want to take away their pain. But Karus, my contact, was cynical. He believes ‘I wanted to help them’ is a lying excuse. He says when women murder others, it is always for financial gain.”
“Gaining a shop, for instance!” Xerxes contributed.
Donatus, keenly accusing her, gave me details: how Tuccia first appeared as a relative, helping out in the scroll shop. Very soon Mysticus was ill. Tuccia insisted on nursing him, as she did later for the two small children. She sat with the patients day and night; nothing was too much trouble for her. None survived. Tuccia seemed sad, yet somehow untouched by the tragedies. She took on a bigger role in the scrolls business. She had appeared to be extremely kind to the invalids—while, as Donatus suggested, giving them the wrong medicine. No one had suspicions—or none they could prove.
“And what about the wife?” I asked. “The dead children’s poor mother? Tuccia once told me the bereaved woman ‘quietly disappeared,’ so we could suppose she was too upset to stay after she had lost Mysticus and her babies. Or was she afraid she would be the next victim? Tuccia suggested she went home to her own people. Apparently, she was from the country?”
Xerxes jumped on that. “Rubbish! Callista was a Transtiberina girl, through and through a city woman. If she’s gone to her family, they live near the Via Aurelia.”
“Oh!” I knew a man who could find her, then. “Of course,” I argued, “Tuccia may turn and place blame on her. She may say guilt and fear of discovery were why Callista went into hiding. Have there been any other mysterious deaths close to Tuccia?”
Xerxes shook his head, but again it was Donatus who knew the gossip. “Oh, hers is such a sad story, Albia! She had a mother she looked after, but her mother died during an illness.”
“That fits!” snapped Xerxes.
“A sister,” added Donatus, drolly. “And even the sister’s baby.”
“Brother-in-law?” I demanded.
“He’d run off with a fishwife. But that meant there was no one left behind to ask awkward questions.”
“Was Mysticus alive at the time? What did he think?”
“The situation bothered him. He felt very unhappy,” said Donatus. “I had a drink with him one evening, which is how I know all this. He told me Tuccia seemed to be strangely unlucky. He wasn’t going to say anything, though, because what had happened to her relations looked quite ordinary. He was letting her work in the shop because he felt so sorry for her. Next thing, he was gone himself, the two poor little babies died, his wife not there—and suddenly we had Tuccia running his business.”
“A lucky break—or planned? Was she left it in a will?”
“She just sort of took over. Someone had to run the place, and Callista was nowhere in evidence, so it ended up being hers.”
“The staff treat her contemptuously. They dislike what happened.”
“They don’t like her! But they are slaves,” said Xerxes, the agent and realist. “She’s taken charge. They have to get along with her.”
I threw in the other complaint against Tuccia: “Then your escapade with Didymus gave her the idea of profit in fakes. Well done for that! She started to use the slaves’ expertise to make more, and she tried burying them for an aged appearance. A woman and man were spotted i
n the Grove of the Caesars with a spade…”
“Tuccia with Tartus,” suggested Xerxes.
“Maybe. Once that happened, her staff were complicit. She might have kept them sweet by promising cash?”
“Slaves,” repeated Xerxes. “They would go along with anything, if Tuccia gave them money.” He was quiet for a moment. “She seems to have been very clever.”
“Oh, she is,” I told them both. Grimly, I summed up: “She has murdered a number of people without anybody noticing. She has set herself up financially, with a life she adores. But what she can be most proud of, thanks to your original idea and the enduring greed of bibliophiles, are her wondrous creations: Epitynchanus the Dialectician and Philadespoticus of Skopelos.”
Xerxes murmured blithely that he particularly liked Philadespoticus; he had bought that solo fragment yesterday on behalf of Marcus Ovidius.
LXV
I struck a shameful bargain, of which I am proud. I would never proceed against this amoral pair for their Didymus Dodomos fraud, so long as they sold Tiberius’s encyclopaedia to me at special rates: two scrolls for the price of one. As an auctioneer’s daughter, I insisted on written terms. They had to sign an affidavit, even though they claimed a scroll-dealer’s word was his bond and a simple handshake was traditional. I said cheating seemed even more conventional; I had their signatures witnessed at the apothecary’s booth opposite. He was Egyptian, so literate in seven languages. Or so he told me.
The Grove of the Caesars Page 31