Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery)

by Lindsey Davis

  She falls hopelessly in love with Musa, the handsome Nabataean priest. She is passed off as the daughter of grande dame, Phrygia – after which Byrria is guaranteed the best parts. We may want to imagine that back in Rome, Byrria may be the unnamed beautiful actress with whom Justinus has an infatuation.

  She is a character I have placed where she could be useful again if I wanted (as could Musa). Perhaps one day in the future, when Byrria had exhausted her dreams, they would meet again and it might not be too late … [LAP]

  Cornix

  This Cornix was an obscene bully of a foreman, a real specialist in administering tortures to slaves. A slab-shouldered sadist with a face marbled like a side of beef by his depraved life. He had picked on me mercilessly from the day I arrived, but owned just enough working ooze in his chickpea brain to be wary in case one day I went back to some previous life and talked … [SP]

  First encountered as one of the miseries at the Mendips lead mine, Cornix is deeply corrupt; he breaks several of Falco’s ribs with a pit prop then nearly kills him through deliberate neglect. Eight books later, at the Castulo mine in Baetica, Cornix reappears: Of all the pig-ignorant debauched men in the Empire, he was the last man I would ever wish to see … [DLC] But I am not merciless to my boy. Positions are reversed. Another gallery prop is swung, and I am with Falco when he says: Suddenly I felt a lot better about a lot of things.

  Lentullus

  Lentullus arrives in The Iron Hand of Mars, the dimmest recruit ever, a role he still occupies when we meet him again years later: the daftest, silliest, clumsiest and untidiest. He had no idea. He had no luck either. If there was a large hole with a great notice beside it saying Don’t fall in here; this means you, Lentullus! Lentullus would home in and tumble head first down the hole. [SA]

  ‘Have you learned to march yet?’

  ‘No he bloody hasn’t! [SA]

  Given to stumbling on horrors, in Germany he is nonetheless brave, swinging on the tail of the mighty aurochs. Back in Rome, he loyally defends Justinus, gaining a near-fatal leg wound which forces him to leave the army. Justinus takes him in, Lentullus strikes up a friendship with Albia, and he may have a future role.

  Cornella Flaccida

  Wife to the gangster Balbinus, Flaccida was first described as a hard moll: a short, thin woman, a blonde of sorts, about forty-five. From twenty strides away she would have looked fabulous. At six feet she showed signs of a troubled past. She wore a gown in material so fine its threads were tearing under the weight of its jewelled fastenings. Her face and hair were a triumph of cosmetic attention. But her eyes were restless and suspicious. Her mouth set in a hard straight line. Her hands were too big for her arms. Size mattered here. On both wrists she wore bangles that were trying too hard to tell people how much they cost, and on her fingers two full rows of high-budget rings. Her voice had a smoky rasp that came from a mis-spent life in ill-lit places. She would lie even if there was no reason to do so. Lying was her way of life. [TTD]

  This is a dangerous woman, capable of the worst legal shenanigans and terrible physical cruelty. Soon she is aiming to take over where her husband left off; initially she out-manoeuvres Florius: scheming to beat him to the profits, a hard-faced bitch whose idea of a quiet hobby was arranging the deaths of men who crossed her. [THF] We glimpse her, arrayed in finery paid for with cash her late husband secreted away, living with her daughter. There was a reason why other people stayed honest. Who wants to be parboiled, roasted, skewered through every orifice, and served up trussed in a three-cheese glaze with their internal organs lightly sautéed as a separate piquant relish? [THF] She furiously tries to prevent Petro’s affair with Milvia, no doubt aware of its dangers, but also perhaps trying to stop his influence with Milvia.

  She must have thought she would never be missed, and if missed never traced … Once the narrowness of her escape hit home, she subsided into deep shock. [THF]

  But Flaccida becomes the victim of a terrible crime herself; she is physically abused and mentally crushed so badly that it will end her brief criminal ascendancy.

  Balbina Milvia

  She was about twenty, dark, sharp-faced, very pretty. She was dressed in an extremely expensive gown, none too practical for eating pears in a sloppy honey sauce. I doubted whether young Milvia had ever worried about a laundry bill. She saw us without any chaperone, so I could not check whether the maids who wielded the curling tongs in this mansion had to endure being thrashed if they misplaced a ringlet. Milvia had a bright intelligent expression that suggested she could manage staff by guile. Or bribe them, anyway. [TTD]

  Neglected by her husband, Florius, Milvia claims to be unaware of the criminal background that supplied her education and luxurious home lifestyle; this innocent bud is fair game for Petronius Longus, who shamelessly has an affair with her. If Petronius forms this liaison in order to spy on the gangsters, he never really articulates that. I found myself wondering whatever possessed Petro to involve himself with miniature puppets like this: all big trusting eyes and piping little voices, and probably just as deceitful under the heartfelt innocence as the bold, bad girls I once fell for myself … I wondered whether to tell Milvia about all the others, but it would only give her an opening to assume she was the one who was different. As they all did. [THF] As Petro’s marriage unravels because of her, any innocence Milvia once had disappears. The truth was, the glitter covered dirt. Milvia could no longer pretend not to know that her finery was financed by theft, extortion, and organised gang violence. She gave me a bad, metallic taste in the mouth. [THF]

  Milvia settles back down with Florius, just as he begins to take over her father’s crime empire. I left her positioned where she could reappear if I wanted.

  Florius (Gaius Florius Oppicus)

  Florius starts as an incidental wimpish character – though gangland families traditionally have a tight bond and I became more interested in him as I wrote. Characters who change are always good value.

  First he is a shapeless lump, too heavy for his own good. His dress and personal hygiene are neglected; left to his own devices, and with his arranged-for-legal-skulduggery marriage to Milvia faltering, he is an obsessive gambler. I had seen him scribbling away with his stylus so rapidly that in minutes his squiggly figures filled a whole waxed board. [TTD] Witnessed surveying his dead father-in-law’s properties – a natural equestrian action, thinks Falco – it’s in fact a short leap to Florius taking over the crime empire. Falco realises that destroying Balbinus Pius has not destroyed his evil. I had a dark sensation as Florius loped off with his scrolls and stylus. Maybe I had just witnessed the beginning of another depressing cycle in the endless rise and fall of villains in the underworld … [TTD]

  I first intended to leave it at that. As I conceived The Jupiter Myth (eight years later), I saw how to set up Petronius with an ongoing crime-fighting feud. Florius now poses a much greater threat: All agree he is vindictive, cruel and out to prevent any attempts by the authorities to interfere. [JM] Toughened up and running protection rackets and brothels, he is physically unrecognisable: lean, tanned, and shaven-headed. He wore natty dark brown leather trousers and navvy’s boots; he had bare arms tightly tied up with rope bracelets to make the muscles stand out. He looked like any tough from the Subura, and that’s a scary look. [JM] Of course he is a coward. He may have shaved his head, but he still had all the personality of a dirty rag. He was so scared he was dribbling. But he fights dirty and, although he normally lets others do his killing, almost to his own surprise, he kills Chloris. He has already debauched and raped Albia. Then his torture of Petronius in the supposed kidnap of Maia is evilly conceived and near-fatal.

  Will Petronius Longus ever catch him? You have to have faith that the answer is yes. There must be a book there.

  Gloccus and Cotta

  Coming on the scene in One Virgin Too Many, these monsters of bathroom supply cause gasps of recognition wherever they are mentioned. I am proud to have devised the bastards – aided as I was b
y enraging encounters with modern tradesmen.

  They were late starting; their previous contract overran. They have to keep returning to Rome for more materials – disappearing for the rest of the day. They need money in advance but if you pay them upfront as a courtesy they take advantage and vanish again. I gave them a clear list of what I wanted but every item they supply is different from what I chose. They drink; they gamble, and fight over the results. If I come here to work on other parts of the house, they interrupt me constantly, either asking for refreshments or announcing that I have a problem with the design. Every time I take them to task, they just admit they have let me down in an intolerable fashion, apologise cringingly, promise to apply themselves diligently from now on – then vanish from sight again. [OVTM]

  I never had a bathroom contractor who left a dead body under the floor. But it was inevitable Gloccus and Cotta should fire up the plot in A Body in the Bath House. There we meet them. Gloccus, in a scruffy old tunic but good boots (stolen from the murder victim) could be anyone who has worked on your house. He needed a shave and a haircut. He was one of those men who looks as if he never settled, but wears an outsized wedding ring. He was well-built, at least around the midriff; he could be prosperous. He had a direct, friendly air. [BBH] As Falco prepares to arrest him, Gloccus bolts for freedom and is killed. I can still hear Gloccus in his dying moments. I mention it purely to give comfort to those of you who have found raw sewage backing up a waste pipe in your new caldarium, three days after your contractors vanished off the site. [BBH] I wrote the scene for the same reasons.

  Next Cotta, disguised as a dentist in an old forge: The tooth-puller was a skinny stoat, with nervous eyes and thin tufts of hair. He had perfected a manner that must make all his patients terrified … Just in time, Falco realises his personal danger, captures the man and tells him he must go to the silver mines to die a slow death.

  ‘Falco, what have I ever done to you?’

  ‘Something really criminal. You built my bath house, Cotta’ … [BBH]

  Minas of Karystos

  As soon as Aelianus steps off the boat at Piraeus, he is snatched to become a pupil of this gregarious professor: He earns his money. He takes me to the very best dinner parties, sometimes several in an evening. He introduces fabulous women and exotic boys. He shows me drinking games, dancing girls, flautists, and lyre players – and then we talk. We talk at length, and about all moral issues – though in the morning I remember not a word. [SDD] There were contemporary complaints about the hard partying of Athenian academics, so don’t blame me!

  Minas made a curious figure. He was small, elderly and keen, like a grandfather taking his grandsons to a stadium. He wore a long tunic in a gaudy hue, with a six-inch embroidered border in which precious metal glinted. Beneath a neatly placed wreath of flowers, grey hair hung in wet straggles. [SDD] He manages to organise a party where the killer will be revealed: ‘It is a long while since I conducted a murder trial.’ He was planning to enjoy it. [SDD] When he comes to Rome, intent on social advancement, he behaves like a drunk until the senator is being subjected to a house search. Minas rallies (in order to advertise himself to neighbours): He rushed from a late breakfast to pronounce loudly on the rights of a citizen to live without interference. Unbeknown to us previously, he was a populist democrat, fiery on the subject. Even with omelette in his curly beard, he was good. [NM]

  We never see his wife, but his daughter Hosidia Meline appears in Nemesis when Minas arrives in Rome. Her presence causes Albia much grief.

  The Vestal Constantia

  Constantia approached the ancient watering hole with the stately gait that her sisterhood cultivates. Carrying a water vessel on the head certainly draws attention to a full womanly figure … She looked to be in her early twenties. She must have completed the first ten years of learning her duties and was now equipped to carry them out in a reverential – though slightly distracting – style. [OVTM] From the moment she slips on moss and lets out an expletive, we know this young lady is a tease and a terror, not above groping an innocent man who just happens to be hiding with her in a dark secluded place. Personally I am shocked and distressed to have to write about such scandalous behaviour.

  Constantia was a game girl. So friendly, in fact, that in the confines of my home, I preferred not to mention her.

  [AC]

  She made an impression on Falco; he mentions her with slightly nervous recollection in The Accusers.

  Aedemon

  Aedemon, an Egyptian from Alexandria, weighed about three hundred and sixty pounds. Like many overweight men, he gave no sign of recognising that he was enormous. He was an empiricist. He believed all disease started in the bowels. The only cure was purging and fasting. He had a square, dark-skinned face with lightly crinkled hair, but almost European features. He seemed honest, and perhaps he was, yet he gave the impression he was alien and devious. [SA]

  He returns to Alexandria to join the academic board of the Museion, giving Falco useful advice about the victim and suspects when the Librarian is killed.

  Nothokleptes

  Dr Jenny March assured me the nickname means thieving bastard in Greek.

  Falco’s banker, who would probably describe himself as put-upon and patient, haunts the series, but only really appears in Ode to a Banker: He was seedy and suspicious, just about convincing as a Roman citizen, yet by birth probably Alexandrian. A heavy man, with jowls that were designed for pegging a napkin under his chin. He spent a lot of time at his barber’s where you could find him at ease as if the shaving chair were an extension of his business premises.

  Falco hires a bank box from Nothokleptes which contains important documents like his legionary discharge but often not much else. We had held many conversations about whether it was even worth my while to pay the hire-fee. On these difficult occasions, Nothokleptes had impressed me with both his commonsense and his ferociously unyielding attitude. Like many men who wield power over unfortunates, he looked like a soft slob who would never find the energy to come down on them. How wrong that was … He enjoyed handling money the way tailors fondle cloth. [OB]

  In Nemesis, Nothokleptes claims he always knew Falco would come good, though for nineteen books it must be merely a fond hope.

  Place

  Place is extremely important both to Falco as a Roman and to me as a writer. Our maps have to be crude at this size, but at readers’ request I have included a Gazeteer by province/country.

  Gazetteer with Modern English Place Names

  Achaia (Greece)

  ‘What’s the attraction in Athens?’ ‘You mean apart from art, history, language and philosophy?’ [SDD]

  Alphaios River Alpheus

  Athenae Athens

  Chaironia Chaeronea

  Copais (lake now drained) Kopaida plain

  Corinthos Corinth

  Delphi Delphi

  Dodona Dodone

  Elis Elis (Ilia)

  Epidauros Epidavros

  Helike Mount Helicon

  Hercyna River Herkyna

  Itea Itea

  Karystos Karystos

  Kenchreai Kenchreai (eastern Corinth)

  Lebadeia Levadhia

  Lechaion Lechaion (western Corinth)

  Letrinoi Pyrgos

  Megara Megara

  Olympia Olympia

  Patrae Patras

  Pheia Feia

  Piraeus Piraeus

  Rhodus Rhodes

  Tegea Alea

  Aegyptus (Egypt)

  Alexandria Alexandria

  Crocodilopolis (Arsinoe) Medinet El-Fayum

  Giza (Babylon) Cairo

  Heliopolis Heliopolis

  Lake Mareotis Lake Mariout

  Naucratis Naucratis (Kom Gi’eif)

  Nicopolis Nicopolis

  Africa Proconsularis

  Carthago Carthage

  Cydame Ghadames

  Lepcis Magna Lepcis Magna

  Marcomades Sirte

  Oea Tripoli


  Sabratha Zouagha

  Arabia Felix

  Yemen

  Arabia Nabataea

  Bostra Bosra

  Canatha Qanawat

  Petra Petra

  Batavia

  The Island The Rhine Delta area (Netherlands)

  Noviomagus Batavodurum

  Nijmegen

  Belgica

  Augusta Treverorum Trier

  Britannia

  Britain, where whichever way you turned, somehow the filthy weather always met you in the face. (SB)

  Abona Sea Mills, Avon

  Aestuarium Sabrinae Bristol Channel

  Aquae Sulis Bath

  Camulodunum Colchester

  Dubris Dover

  Durnovaria Dorchester

  Eboracum York

  Fretum Gallicum Straits of Dover

  Glevum Gloucester

  Isca Dumnoniorum Exeter

  Lindum Lincoln

  Londinium London

  Mona Anglesey

  Oceanus Britannicus

  English Channel

  Rutupiae

  Richborough

  Sabrina River Severn

  Tamesis River Thames

  Vebiodunum (deduced from Veb …)

  Charterhouse (in the Mendips)

  Vectis Insula Isle of Wight

  Verulamium St Albans

  Viroconium Wroxeter

  Chersonesis Taurica (the Crimea)

  It was a terrible place to be sent. If he wasn’t eaten by brown bears, he would die of cold or boredom, and however much money he managed to take with him, there were no luxuries to spend it on … [TTD]

  Commagene

  ‘Stuff Commagene’ (a small, previously autonomous kingdom) … [LAP]

  Crete and Cyrenaïca

  Antipyrgos Tobruk

  Apollonia Marsa Susah

  Berenice (Euesperides) Benghazi

  Cyrene Shahhat

  Ptolomais Tolmeitha

  Tocra Teuchira

  Dalmatia (former Yugoslavia)