Saturnalia

by Lindsey Davis

  Rubbish, Falco. Nobody welcomes work when all of Rome is playing. Titus would rather play solo draughts all day than be tied to the office.

  Just as I braced myself to barge past the flunkeys and invade the audience, things became even trickier. Word of what was afoot must have reached the Chief Spy’s office. Suddenly Anacrites appeared and demanded that we unload the chair and give him Veleda.

  At the same moment, ten-foot double doors with gilded handles silently swung open and the women reappeared. Titus was graciously escorting them out. He always looked fetching in purple, and today was bedecked with an extra-large Saturnalia wreath. His hair, normally barbered to a crisp, had been allowed to grow shaggy as a sign of being broken-hearted at the loss of Berenice, but even so a careful valet had spent time positioning the wreath fetchingly on the curly mop.

  ‘You’ve lost the game—hand her over, Falco!’ the Spy was commanding, as he dragged open the half-door and started pulling Veleda from the chair.

  He was stopped in his tracks by the frigid tones of the elderly Vestal Virgin: ‘Tiberius Claudius Anacrites—Unhand that woman immediately!’

  Titus Caesar had an eye for a beautiful foreigner. At once I saw him sizing up the priestess. As she recovered from the Spy’s mauling, she gave a rapid assessment to the imperial prince who controlled her fate. In view of her reputation, Titus thought better of flirting, though he inclined his head politely as far as a heavy wreath allowed. Perhaps Veleda looked more hopeful for the future—though I could see she thought Titus a typical, sexually voracious Roman male. Behind everyone’s backs, Helena Justina winked at me.

  Her mother had noticed, and smacked Helena’s wrist playfully.

  The Vestal was in charge. ‘You are to be sent to a shrine at Ardea,’ she told Veleda. Thirty miles from Rome, Ardea was close enough to supervise yet far enough away to be secure. I thought it had been used as an exile for political prisoners before. ‘Your life will be spared. You will live out your days as a temple cleaner.’

  Veleda bridled. Helena grasped her hand and muttered quickly, ‘Do not despise the honour. Being housekeeper to the gods is a worthy occupation—the Vestal and her colleagues traditionally have that role. It is neither onerous nor demeaning.’

  Titus came forward. ‘These three noble women—Helena Justina, Julia Justa and Claudia Rufina—have pleaded for you most movingly, Veleda. The Vestal Virgins, who see you as a sister, support them. Rome is pleased to accept their request for clemency.’

  I stepped forward. I could see Claudius Laeta hovering. With Justinus at my elbow, I formally asked, ‘Priestess, Helena Justina promised she would do her best for you. Do you accept these terms?

  Will you live out your days at Ardea quietly?’

  Veleda nodded her head, in silence.

  Then Justinus and I formally completed my mission. We handed over Veleda into imperial control. Giving her up must have been as hard for Justinus as pleading had been for Claudia. I had insisted that Justinus accompany me, in his normal role as my assistant. I hoped this would reinstate him in imperial favour. Perhaps it would even impress his wife. We knew Claudia would make it a condition of their marriage that he never went anywhere near Ardea. As far as I ever knew, Quintus promised her, and he stuck to the promise.

  When Veleda was taken away by the Guards, she kept her gaze cast down and did not look at him. Justinus stood quietly and sadly as she left. Only a cruel cynic would have pointed out that he had the air of a condemned man.

  LXIV

  I had all of my sisters, and some of their husbands, and most of their children, in my house for the last night of the festival. We were also entertaining Zosime and the soldiers. To help Quintus and Claudia mend their marriage, we had asked them too. Helena had invited my mother, though fortunately she did not stay long; invited by me inadvertently, my father turned up, but he was late as usual. They must have passed in the street. At least we escaped having their first confrontation in twenty years in our dining room. Who wants violent recriminations over the mustcake at a feast dedicated to reconciliation?

  There were complaints. ‘Everyone else had puppets or ghosts, Marcus. Couldn’t you have made an effort to fix up some entertainment for the last night?’ The troops had made plenty of mustcake, however. Nux thought it was wonderful and spent the day trying to steal pieces. We had a large log in a hearth, filling everywhere with smoke and threatening to bum down the house, plus green boughs shedding pine needles and dust. My lamp-oil bill would take about three months to payoff. By a deft sleight of hand, I arranged that our King for the Day was my nephew Marius—a lad with a dry wit, who accepted the bean with a wink that suggested he knew he had been chosen on purpose for his discretion. He enjoyed the role, but kept the antics within acceptable limits.

  It was a decent night. A night for generosity of spirit. Gifts appeared at appropriate moments, and nobody made too much fuss if their gift cost less than they had hoped. The men were allowed to come dressed as they liked; the women wore their newest jewels. Claudia was showing off the satyr earrings Quintus bought from Pa; Helena kept her more tasteful ones for another occasion so as not to upset Claudia. Everyone was comfortable. Everyone ate just enough, and drank only a little more than sensible. None of my family would ever remember it; there were no fights and nobody was sick on Junia’s dog.

  My dog Nux spent most of the time hiding in the little room that I was turning into a masculine study. As soon as I could, I joined her.

  We were both there, doing nothing much, when Helena looked in, threw a nut at me, and said Petronius had just arrived. He had been invited with Maia, who was still being stand-offish, but had come with Ma and had stayed on. After he grabbed food and drink, Petro took me aside. He told me what he thought of my wine; it did not take long.

  ‘It’s leftover primitivum I cadged from Junia. And before you say it belongs to the cohort then, this will pay me back for the bribe I handed over to Rubella for help at the Quadrumatus house.’

  ‘Oh we drank your cash up yesterday!’ grinned Petro.

  ‘That was for next year’s party.’

  ‘Nuts. As a bribe it didn’t cover the aggravation that you’ve handed us at that villa.’

  We settled in for a discussion. ‘Look, Petro, it’s all very well saying there’s no crime. My view is that Mastarna let Scaeva die—genuine accident, maybe—but then Mastarna is unlikely to have decapitated the corpse. For one thing, if he did, he’s just a hired man and the Quadrumati would have had no compunction in exposing him. No, they are trying to shield one of their own. I am sure the freedwoman, Phryne, was malevolent enough to grab a knife and do the deed—and then she carried the head to the pool.’ I remembered now, how she had looked when I asked whether weapons or treasure were found in the atrium pool with the head: Should there have been? ‘Even if that’s all she did, somebody needs to tell Quadrumatus to stop looking away and deal with the woman. I thought I might write to Rutilius Gallicus and make him responsible for stiffening up his so-called friend.’

  Petronius shrugged. ‘Well you do that, and I’ll get Rubella to ram home the message too.’

  ‘I think there was more to it, Petro. I think that the poor flute boy saw what she did. The family covered it up but he was terrified of her. That’s why he ran. When he was brought back to the villa, he may have become hysterical; Phryne killed the boy to keep him quiet.’

  Petronius looked troubled. ‘It’s not her.’ ‘Alibi?’

  ‘Her mistress vouched for her… Surprised? I’m still baffled by this flute boy death, Marcus. Scythax is being a menace over it—he is sticking to his theory, that the boy was killed like the street vagrants. The freedwoman can’t have been constantlyout of the house at night, killing runaways. I’ve explained to Scythax that the boy was found dead by you, indoors, and it just doesn’t fit. Scythax wants to do more work on the corpse, but the Quadrumati won’t allow it—’

  ‘I told you; they are covering. They don’t want a scandal.’ ‘Well,
Scythax is rambling. There can’t possibly be a link between that villa’s household and what’s happening to runaway slaves on the streets of Rome. We’re stuck, Marcus.’

  I had reached the mellow stage by then. I told him we could think about the flautist tomorrow, when everything returned to normal. Most likely, since there was nowhere else to go with the case, we would have to forget about it.

  The night went on. Pa and some of my sisters went home. Zosime returned to her temple. ‘Will you continue your work with the homeless?’ Helena asked her as we bade farewell.

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve been doing it ever since I was first trained.’ ‘Well, good luck to you!’

  A few favoured people remained and we would probably stay up for hours yet; it was the soldiers’ last night with us and they were melancholy to be losing domestic comforts. I sat fairly cheerfully among my family, waiting for the next angrily slammed door, the next whining child with a sore throat, the next tipsy woman to tread on the dog’s tail…

  I thought I was cheerful, but melancholy thoughts came drifting through my brain. I found myself thinking about the runaway who had told me his life story on the Via Appia—the ex-architect with the long tale of woe. I had learned that man’s whole history, yet never even knew his name. I would never see him again, never know his fate. He had been sickly and could by now have died of December cold. His run of bad luck could even have ended with a final gasp, strangled by the unknown killer who bent over sleepers in doorways and choked the life out of them. I wished I could have asked him if he had ever seen the killer at work.

  Then, as the oil lamps flickered and wine wafted me halfway to oblivion, the truth hit me: Scythax was right. There was a link between the villa and the dead runaway slaves. The flute boy may have been killed at Phryne’s instigation yet it was not one of the household who took his life, but somebody who came in from outside. One of the doctors employed by the Quadrumati had let a patient bleed to death by accident. That was nothing; another was far more menacing.

  I ordered Justinus to stop smooching Claudia and come with me after Petronius, who had left to go on duty at the patrol house. Once there, I asked Petro if his famous lists of undesirables included doctors. Since medicine is akin to magic, he had a list all right. He would not let me see it, but he found the address we needed and we set off to apprehend the man whom I was now convinced must be the killer.

  ‘He hates all slaves. I’ve heard him disparage them—Hades, he even sneered at me when he supposed I was one—and people have been telling me about his attitude ever since I first met him. He follows the same broad Hippocratic doctrine as Zosime and the doctors at the Temple of AEsculapius. Zosime, or maybe it was someone else, told me a long time ago that he trained her. She calls the way they work, “softly, safely, sweetly”—but he has foully perverted that…’

  We were going to see Cleander.

  The streets were a nightmare, full of revellers who could not understand our need to pass through the crowds quickly. Petro had brought a few men, but most were too busy attending fires that night.

  The smell of smoke hung on the air, as thickly as the noise of merriment. We found the house. It seemed to be in darkness, but after muted knocking by a vigilis who pretended to be a patient, Cleander himself opened the door.

  Petronius Longus led him back inside and began to interrogate him. In response, Cleander only glared haughtily. We were all beneath him. He treated the charge of murdering the runaways with chilly contempt. Soon he began refusing to answer any questions at all. Petronius eventually had him taken away to the patrol house.

  ‘Seen it before, Marcus. He will never confess. I can put Sergius to work on him, but this man is so arrogant he will think it a challenge to withstand the pain.’

  ‘Maybe his slaves—or his patients—will give up information.’

  ‘I bet they’ll protest his innocence just as much as he does.’

  ‘All his patients thought he was wonderful.’

  ‘And his household won’t admit that they should have seen what he was doing.’

  ‘Well, keep at it, lad. If you let it be known among the vagrants that he’s in captivity, you may just find more witnesses. His activities were known among the runaways, but fear kept them silent. Even Zosime should help. He trained her, but I never had the impression she was particularly loyal to him. She hates what has been done to the runaways, for one thing. Shock her with the facts; she’ll give evidence. ‘

  Petronius was called away. He left a man to guard the house, ready for a full search of the property next day. Justinus and I cast a quick eye over various rooms, and were about to leave ourselves. Then the vigilis called to us; he had found a locked closet. We could not discover a key to it; Cleander must have taken it. For half a beat we nearly left it for the lads to search the following day. But in the end, Justinus put his shoulder to the door and forced it open.

  The interior was in darkness. As we crashed in, a faint groan alerted us to human presence. We ran for lights. Then we saw that Cleander had left a patient, or a victim, strapped to a pallet. He was gagged, and blood trickled inexorably from his arm into a by now very full bowl.

  We could have left him there. Sometimes afterwards, I wished we had. But even when we recognised the patient as Anacrites, our humanity won. We removed the gag. We held his arm in the air until the blood flow stopped, then the vigilis, who knew basic bandaging, swathed his arm in tom cloth.

  ‘I thought Cleander strangled his victims, Marcus.’

  ‘He did normal doctoring as well, Quintus. Mastarna letting Scaeva die may have given him the idea. Perhaps Cleander hated Anacrites as an ex-slave, but thought a spy should die slowly… Drip, drip, drip—softly, safely, and sweetly over the Styx to the Underworld…’ Anacrites was reviving enough to glare at me. We sat him up. He fainted, but we soon revived him. We were not gentle.

  ‘There is always the chance of getting the bastard next time,’ I told Quintus drily, letting the Spy overhear me. Anacrites hated having his life saved by me. Nothing good could come of it.

  But for now, my assistant was overcome by kinder feelings. Since Camillus Justinus had left Claudia Rufina throwing herself into revelry at our house, he was returning there with me. Perhaps he felt that his time as Anacrites’ house guest had given him a host/guest bond of duty; perhaps he wished to explain about the turnip. Whatever the reason, everyone else in Rome was indoors with happy ti-iends and relatives. Anacrites had no friends and probably no relatives. So I heard Justinus issue a good-natured invitation to the enfeebled Chief Spy. He asked Anacrites to come home with us and share our family celebration on the last night of the festival…

  Io, my dear Quintus. Io, Saturnalia!

  AFTERWORD—‘ALL POSY POSY ON THE VIA DERELICTA’

  ‘Words are real,’ says Falco to Albia in Chapter XVIII of this novel, ‘if other people understand their meaning.’

  ‘Is this,’ enquires my editor in the margin of the manuscript, ‘your defence for your many neologisms?’ (most of which he has singled out with underlining and exclamation marks). I pacify him with a promise of an Afterword and talk of lunch.

  I write about another culture, where people spoke another language, one which has mainly survived either in a literary form or as tavern wall graffiti. Many an argot must have existed in between. People sometimes discuss whether the Romans would really sound as I portray them—forgetting firstly that the Romans spoke Latin not English, and that on the streets and in the provinces they must have spoken versions of Latin that did not survive. I have to find my own ways to make narrative and dialogue convincing. I use various methods. Much of it is done by ‘ear’, and is difficult to describe even if! wanted to reveal the secret. Sometimes I merely deploy metaphors and similes, but even that can cause difficulties; I treasure the conversation with my Swedish translator who was puzzled by Thalia referring to male genitalia as ‘a three-piece manicure set’ and who had gone so far as to consult a medical friend…

 
Sometimes I invent words; sometimes I am not even aware I have done it, but through nineteen books my British editor has diligendy challenged me when he believes I have erred. Some years ago we reached an agreement that each manuscript might contain one neologism, or Lindseyism.

  For a time I stuck to that. Once, there was even a competition where readers could identify the invented words. It foundered rather, because many American readers suggested perfectly good items of English vocabulary and in any case I could no longer remember what some of the allowed Lindseyisms were; however, I feel that ‘nicknackeroonies’ was identified at that time as the word some of us would most like to see absorbed into real life. (Let me credit my late Auntie Gladys with providing the inspiration.) A movement to establish ‘nicknackeroonies’ in current idiom began in Australia, where delicate finger-food is of course a speciality.

  Then there was Fusculus. He loves words as much as I do. It has always been clear to me that there must have been Roman street language, specialist underworld cant in Latin and vigiles’ slang expressions, all of which are so far lost to us but all of which Fusculus would know. It is no use hoping that the carbonised papyri from Herculaneum that are now being so painstakingly unravelled by scholars will produce clues; so far they are all Greek to me, and indeed to everyone. If Calpurnius Piso, thought to be the villa’s owner, owned a Slang Thesaurus, we have not found it. I am on my own with this. I cannot use the rich seams of English and American equivalent terms from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, for the secret languages of coney-catchers, spivs and drug barons are tied too closely to their periods. So when Fusculus speaks, odd words appear.

  It will be noted by bean-counters that Chapter XVIII of Saturnalia contains more than my strict allowance of neologisms. Chapter XVIII is a celebration of the tolerance and understanding that have always been shown to me by my editors. Literary novelists, fuelled by booze and their own pretensions, are customarily permitted to write gobbledegook yet to be praised for their high-flown inventiveness, but in the field of the light page-turner, it is generally assumed that nothing offered by an author will offend a publisher’s standard spellchecker. Time and again I have been allowed to deviate. Apart from the lady who felt ‘The’ was ‘too heavy’ for her readers in the United States (a severe prescription that I constantly bear in mind, I promise), my editors have been models of restraint in the face of heartless prose misrule. In this Afterword, I salute them. In particular I salute Oliver Johnson, who is a serious, cultured Englishman and in his heart does not want flighty bits of author messing him about with funny stuff. This man has spent nearly twenty years patiently training me in plot development and chronological description, listening to my prejudice against Chardonnay, and crossing out distasteful sex. He knows I can’t spell ‘alter’, when it’s ‘altar’. He accepted the one-word chapter. He let me kill the lion. He himself devised ‘tribute plagiarism’, which we hope will become recognised legal terminology for bandit usage of another author’s material. (Of course I know ‘bandit’ is improper adjectival use of a noun. Still-good, isn’t it?) I am rightly devoted to my editor, and this is where I get the chance to say: don’t blame him!