‘During a festival devoted to misrule? Laeta, you’re an optimist!’ Glancing at the names on the list, my heart sank even more. I recognised one of them. Rutilius Gallicus must be the kind of bright commander who instinctively picks his most useless men for the most delicate tasks. ‘Right—’ I braced myself ‘I need a full briefing on Veleda’s host at this so-called safe house, your Labeo character.’ Meekly, Laeta proffered another prepared scroll. I made no attempt to unravel it. ‘What’s my target completion date?’
‘End of Saturnalia?’
‘Oh flying phalluses!’
‘My dear Falco!’ Laeta was now smiling slyly, ‘I know you will see this as a race against time, a challenge to beat Anacrites.’
‘And that’s another thing: I don’t want to be pissed about by him. I want the right to overrule him. I want command of the exercise.’ Laeta pretended to be shocked. ‘Can’t be done, Falco.’
‘Then I’m out.’
He had anticipated trouble. ‘I offer you one concession: Anacrites will have no right of command over you. He keeps his normal reporting line; you remain a freelance. You will work to me, of course, but you are nominally acting direct for Titus Caesar. Will that suffice?’
‘Have to. I don’t want bloody Anacrites getting his debauched hands on the priestess before me—’ I grinned salaciously. ‘Claudius Laeta, I do know what she looks like, remember: the priestess Veleda is a beautiful girl!’
V
A genuine virgin was waiting on my doorstep when I returned home. That did not happen often now. In fact, I had always preferred my women to possess a degree of experience. Innocence causes all kinds of misunderstandings, and that’s even before you get tangled up with your conscience.
This one told me her name was Ganna. She was late teens and tearful, and she begged me to help her. Some informers would have palpitations just thinking about this. I invited her in politely and fixed myself up with a chaperon.
I had never acquired a doorman. Ganna’s scared rap on our dolphin knocker had been answered by Albia, our foster-daughter, who was scared of very little except perhaps losing her place in our family. Orphaned as a baby in the Boudiccan Rebellion in Britain, Albia was now also late teens and lived with us, learning to be Roman. With fierce defence tactics against any young woman who looked like a rival, she had commanded Ganna to stayoutside. Then she forgot to mention to Helena Justina that a new client had called.
A young female client who was tall, lithe and golden haired… I knew I would enjoy telling my mend Petronius Longus about Ganna. He would be jealous as all Hades.
I made sure I told Helena straight away. I had put Ganna in quarantine in the small blue salon where we saw unexpected visitors; there was nothing to steal and no back wayout. Nux, our dog, sat by the door as if on guard. Nux was really a crazy, mendly, frowsty little mutt, always keen to give visitors a guided tour of the rooms where we displayed valuables. Still, I had told Ganna not to make any sudden movements, and with luck she had failed to spot Nuxie wagging that disreputable tail.
Outside in the corridor with Helena, I applied a concerned expression and tried to look like a man she could trust. Helena’s chin was up. She looked like a woman who knew exactly what kind of fellow she had married. In an undertone, I sketched in a rapid resume of Laeta’s brief. Helena listened, but she seemed pale and tense; she had a slight frown between her dark, definite eyebrows, which I smoothed away with one finger gendy. She said she had failed to find her brother. Nobody knew where Justinus was. He had stonned out that morning and still not returned home. Apart from the one sighting by Pa at the Saepta Julia, Justinus had disappeared.
I hid a smile. So the disgraced Quintus was managing to evade confrontations.
‘Don’t laugh, Marcus! It’s clear that his quarrel with Claudia was serious.
‘I’m not laughing. Why spend money on a very expensive present for Claudia, yet not hand it over?’
‘So you are as concerned about him as I am, Marcus?’
‘Of course.’
Well, he would probably turn up here this evening, blind drunk and trying to remember in which seedy wine bar he had left Claudia’s present.
We marched in on Ganna.
She was perched on a seat, a thin, hunched figure in a long brown gown with a plaited girdle. Her gold torque necklace study told us she came from some predominantly Celtic area and had access to treasure. Perhaps she was a chieftain’s daughter. I hoped her papa did not come looking for her here. She had ice-blue eyes in a sweet face, upon which an anxious expression was making her look vulnerable. I knew enough about women to doubt that.
We seated ourselves opposite her, side by side formally like a husband and wife on a tombstone. Stately and brisk, with her best agates nestling on the rich blue gown that covered a wonderful bosom, Helena led the conversation. She had worked with me for the past seven years and regularly handled interrogations where my direct participation would not be respectable. Widows and virgins, and good-looking married women with predatory histories.
‘This is Marcus Didius Falco and I am Helena Justina, his wife. Your name is Ganna? So where do you come from, Ganna, and are you happy to speak our language?’
‘I live among the Bructeri in the forest beyond the great river. I speak your language,’ Ganna said, with the same slight sneer Veleda had had when she made the same boast five years ago. They learned from traders and captured soldiers. The reason they learned Latin was to spy on their enemies. They enjoyed the way their Latin startled us. ‘Or would you rather speak Greek?’ challenged Ganna.
‘Whichever is most comfortable for you!’ countered Helena, in Greek—which put a stop to that nonsense.
As a supplicant, Ganna was fiery but desperate. I listened, watching her in silence, as Helena drew out her story. The girl had been Veleda’s acolyte. Captured with Veleda, she had been brought here as her companion to give an appearance of propriety. According to her, Rutilius Gallicus had told them they would be honoured guests in Rome. He had implied they would be treated as noble hostages, like princes in the past, who were taught Roman ways, then returned to their home kingdoms to act as friendly client rulers. This was the explanation for placing the women in the safe house, with the senator Quadrumatus Labeo, a man Gallicus knew. They were there for some weeks, then Veleda overheard that she was really to end up paraded in chains in a Triumph and ritually killed.
‘Very distressing for her.’ Helena thought intelligent women should have foreseen it.
‘You call us barbarians!’ scoffed Ganna.
Like Cleopatra before her, Veleda was determined not to be made a spectacle for the Roman crowd. I muttered to Helena, ‘Luckily the Bructeri have never heard of asps.’
Ganna said Veleda had made up her mind to escape immediately and being both determined and ingenious, she did so. She went alone. It was very sudden. Ganna was left behind; in the hurried investigation that followed, she was terrified to learn that the Chief Spy intended to interrogate her, probably using torture. She took advantage of the confusion at the Quadrumatus house and also ran away, not knowing where she could find her companion or how to survive in a city. Veleda had told Ganna that there was one man in Rome who might help them return to the forest, giving her my name.
I like to be thought of as a man of honour—but returning these women to the wild woods a thousand miles to the north would be harder than Ganna seemed to realise. For a start, the logistics would be appalling. But I had no intention of allowing either to go back to the Free German tribes, carrying yet more stories of Roman duplicity. Even if I could manage it, if the truth came out here, I would be a traitor, crucified by a high road and damned to the memory.
There was more. With extra tears and entreaties Ganna wrung her hands and beseeched me to help with a desperate problem. She wanted me to find Veleda before harm befell her
‘This is a very serious request,’ I said gravely. Helena Justina glanced across sharply. I always loved having duplicate
commissions, if they came with a double fee. ‘And for a private informer, perhaps it is inappropriate.’ Helena shot me another sarcastic glare.
It did not stop Ganna. She was determined that I was the man for the business—for much the same reason as Laeta had been: I knew Veleda. Ganna believed that would make me sympathetic towards her missing companion, for whom she expressed worse anxieties. With more of those entrancing tears running down her pale face from her delicate blue eyes, Ganna said that ever since Veleda had arrived in Rome, she had been suffering from a mysterious illness.
Veleda was sick? That really was bad news. Captives who are destined to adorn famous generals’ Ovations are not supposed to pass away from natural causes first.
It was bad news for me too. ‘Abate the fee’ was the Flavian emperors’ motto: I would lose the extremely generous reward I had been promised by Titus Caesar if, when I produced Veleda, she was already dead.
I told Ganna I was obliged to work for money and she assured me that she had it to give. She left her gold torque as a surety. I say ‘left’ because I quickly moved her out; I was uneasy about keeping her at our house. Apart from Albia’s hostility, there was the coming problem of ten disgruntled brutes from the German legions. They would know who Ganna was and might report us to the authorities for harbouring a fugitive. Helena knew nothing about them yet, so I kept quiet about the soldiers.
I persuaded my mother to take in the blue-eyed forest virgin. Ma was suffering badly from cataracts; although she hated needing a guide around her own kitchen, she was in so much trouble with her vision, she admitted she could use help. Ganna knew nothing of Roman domestic procedure now—but by the time my mother had finished with her, she would. It amused Helena to think of her one day returning to the wilds of Bructeran territory, able to make an excellent pounded green-herb dip. In Free Germany, she would never be able to find the rocket and coriander to show off at the tribal feast, but she would spend the rest of her life dreaming of Ma’s egg white chicken souffle…
I wanted Ganna kept somewhere under my control. Apart from the fact that it would salt her away from Anacrites’ clutches, I was not fooled by the tears and hand-wringing. This young lady clearly had something she was not telling us. Ma would keep her under strict guard until either I found out the secret for myself, or Ganna was prepared to tell me.
I was right about her hiding something. When I discovered just what she had omitted from her story, I saw why. She should have known I would find out, though. I was going to the Quadrumatus house next day.
VI
The day opened on a cool, crisp morning with a bite in the air that would make your lungs hurt if you had anything of a cold. Most people in Rome did. It was the time of year when a visit to a public library was orchestrated by coughs, sneezes and snorts as constantly as the rattle of snare drums and rime of flutes at some dimly lit dinner party where your millionaire host’s parting presents would include the pretty serving boys. If you didn’t have a wheeze when you started the day, you would catch something by your return. I had to walk along the Embankment towards the meat market, where some snotty stallholder was bound to catch me with his filthy spittle as I passed.
I was visiting a senator with consular connections, so I had dressed to a high standard. I was wearing a good woollen cloak, with oily waterproofing, my current best boots, which were leather with bronze tags on the laces, and a seductive Greek Mercury’s hat. All I needed was wings on my boots to look like a messenger of the gods. Beneath this striking outer ensemble was a triple layer of long-sleeved winter tunics, two of them almost unworn since the last laundering, a belt with only three buckle-holes ripped beyond use, an empty money purse attached to the belt and a second money purse, half full, hidden between the second and third tunic to thwart any thieves in the Transtiberina. If I wanted to pay for anything that cost more than a bruised apple, I had to show off my privates as I fumbled through these layers of clothing to reach my cash. The swankyouterwear was not because I am impressed by senators, but because their snobbish door porters inevitably reject anyone who looks remotely faded.
I was an informer. I had spent seven years tracing stolen art, helping hapless widows manoeuvre themselves into legacies their ruthless stepchildren coveted, pursuing runaway teenagers before they got pregnant by handsome delivery boys, and identifying the blood soaked killers of nagging mothers-in-law when the vigiles were too busy with fires, chicken races and arguments about their pay to bother. While carrying out this fine work for the community, I had learned all there was to know about the arrogance, awkwardness, ineptitude and prejudice of the bloody-minded door porters of the city of Rome. That was just the ones who decided at first sight they disliked my chirpy face. There were also plenty of sloths, gossips, drunks, petty blackmailers, neighbourhood rapists and other scallywags out there, who were just too busy with their personal careers to let me in. My only protection was to find out that a porter was having a passionate affair with the lady of the house so I could threaten him with revealing all to his jealous master. It rarely worked. In general the debauched mistress couldn’t give two figs whether her antics were known, but even if she was terrified of exposure, the door porter was usually so violent the betrayed master would be scared of him.
I had no reason to think Quadrumatus Labeo had a porter who fell into any of those categories, but it was a good stroll to where he lived so as I loped along I amused myself with the lore of my craft. I liked to keep the brain active. Especially in cold weather, when my feet were so cold from tramping the travertine that thought became too tedious. The last thing an informer needs is to arrive for a big interview with his once-incisive mind frozen like a snow-sorbet. Preparation counts. No point in meticulous planning of penetrating questions if you lapse into a coma as soon as they give you a warm welcoming drink. The best informer can be lulled into uselessness by slurping an insidious hot wine toddy with a lick of cinnamon.
Don’t drink and delve. Hot toddy after a long walk goes straight to the bladder, for one thing. You’ll never persuade the guild treasurer to admit he defrauded the funeral club so he could take three girlfriends to Lake Trasimene, if you are absolutely bursting to relieve yourself.
Quadrumatus Labeo lived outside the city on the old Via Aurelia. I trotted out of Rome through the Aurelian Gate, and kept going until I found a finger post with red letters announcing that the right estate lay up the next carriage drive. It took less than an hour, even in the dead of winter when days are short so the hours into which they are divided are also at their shortest.
I supposed his home’s location was what had made Quadrumatus attractive as a potential host for Veleda. He had an isolated villa on the western side of Rome, so she could be brought up from Ostia and slid into the house without passing through any city gates and without too much attention from nosy neighbours and tradesmen.
There was one significant disadvantage. The priestess was the responsibility of the Praetorian Guard. I considered it critical that the Praetorian Camp layoutside the city too—but on the eastern side. The captive and her minders were thus separated by a three-hour walk across the whole of Rome, or four hours if you stopped for refreshments. Which, in my opinion, you would have to do.
That said, there was not much wrong with the place. Since Quadrumatus was a senator, he had a decent boundary thicket to stop sightseers watching his summer picnics in the grounds. These grounds were stuffed with shady stone pines and much more exotic specimens, jasmine and roses, topiary that must have been maturing since the time of his grandfather the consul, dramatic long canals, miles of triple box hedges, and enough statues to fill several art galleries. Even in December, the gardens were awash with groundsmen, so intruders looking for a priestess to snatch would be spotted long before they reached the house. If intruders came on foot, they would be weary anyway. I was, and my home was well placed for this adventure. I had only had to stroll along the Aventine embankment gazing at the muddy, swollen Tiber, nip across the Probus Brid
ge and head out through the Fourteenth District, the Transtiberina, which is the roughest part of Rome so you don’t linger. I had passed the Naumachia on my left, the imperial arena for mock sea battles, then the Baths of Ampelidis on the right, and met the old Via Aurelia which travels into Rome by a shorter route than I had come on, passes the station house of the Seventh Cohort of Vigiles, and crosses the Tiber at the Aemilian Bridge, close to Tiber Island. I mention all that because as I surveyed the house on arrival I was thinking, I bet the old Via Aurelia was the way Veleda fled on her escape.
The Villa Quadrumatus lacked imposing steps, though it had a white marble portico that fully made up for that, set with very tall columns on a circular centrepiece, covered by a pointed roof. Pigeons had behaved disrespectfully on the big finial. It was too high for the household slaves to get up there on ladders and clean off the revolting guano more than once a year. If the steward was safety conscious, he probably made them build a scaffold when they had to do it—which I guessed was when they held their annual party to celebrate the master’s birthday and invited half the Senate for a feast at which, undoubtedly, they had a full orchestra and a troupe of comedians, and served their own vineyard’s Falernian specially brought up from Campania in ten ox wagons.
You see their style: Veleda, fresh from the dark forests of Germania, had been placed where she could witness the cream of Roman society in all their insane wealth. I wondered what she made of it. In particular, what she made of it once she realised these ostentatious persons would also one day be holding a glamorous garden party with two hundred guests, to celebrate the Ovation where she would be humiliated and killed…
Saturnalia Page 3