Death in the Ashes

by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  “Here’s a receipt for some Falernian,” Tacitus said. “It’s almost three years old.”

  “If he could afford Falernian then, why is he buying swill now? When did he make the change?”

  As we laid receipts out on the table, going from oldest on the left to newest on the right, I could see that Calpurnius’ spending habits began to change about two years ago. He started purchasing cheaper varieties of wine, olive oil, garum—all essentials for a Roman household.

  “He and Aurelia have been married for only a year,” I said, “so this would appear normal to her. She must think her husband is just thrifty.”

  “ ‘Miserly’ would be my word for him.”

  “Do you see any references to the sale of slaves?” I asked.

  Tacitus shook his head.

  “I’m not seeing any recent reports from stewards on other estates,” I said. “These are all two or three years old.”

  “The newer ones could be in the strongbox. Let’s get Diomedes back in here and see what he knows.”

  I reached for the door. “What he knows and what he’ll tell us might be two different things, no matter what orders Aurelia gave him.”

  Diomedes was not forthcoming at first, but we gradually coaxed some general information out of him. He had helped Calpurnius keep his records for over twelve years. For the first six years Calpurnius had still been under his father’s potestas, so the old man had to see everything. During that time, Calpurnius’ spending habits were unremarkable. When Fabatus emancipated his son six years ago, Diomedes noticed, Calpurnius began to spend more than he accounted for.

  “Do you have any idea where the money was going?”

  “My lord, I have opened this room for you and told you as much as I can. Please don’t ask me to betray my lord Calpurnius any further.”

  “I’m not asking you to betray anyone,” I said sharply. “Don’t talk to me in those terms.”

  Diomedes cringed.

  “Do you understand that Calpurnius is accused of murder? If convicted, he could be put to death.”

  “Yes, my lord, I understand that.”

  “Do you also understand that we’re trying to help him? And the only way we can do that is if the people in this household will help us.”

  Diomedes nodded several times.

  “If you’re not going to help us,” Tacitus said, “we might as well go back to Rome in the morning and leave you people to fend for yourselves.”

  “No. No, please don’t do that, my lord.” The dismay on Diomedes’ face seemed genuine. “It’s just that…these last couple of years have been so…so difficult for this family. And now this. I don’t know how we’re going to survive it.”

  “The only chance you have of surviving,” Tacitus said, “is to tell us everything you can, no matter how unimportant it might seem.”

  With a sigh Diomedes seemed to decide to step over whatever line he had been shying away from. “Very well, my lord… I asked him about the money, but he said he would not be held accountable to me or to anyone else, any more than Pericles was held accountable to the Athenian assembly.”

  I nodded. In the glory days of Athens, Pericles had set aside large sums under a miscellaneous item in the budget. Only after his death did people learn that the money went to bribe Sparta not to attack Athens—a kind of blackmail, and all it did was postpone the attack, not prevent it.

  “We need to see what’s in the strongbox,” I said.

  “Of course, my lord.” Diomedes pulled the box out from under the table without much effort and unlocked it.

  “It doesn’t seem very heavy,” Tacitus said.

  “No, my lord, it’s not,” Diomedes admitted. “Not nearly as heavy as it was six years ago.”

  “Is this the only box he has here?” I asked. Like most men of my class, I have money stored on each of my estates, entrusting the steward of each place with the key and the accounting. In my house in Rome I have two strongboxes.

  Diomedes looked at the fresco of the Cyclops and then back at me. “It’s the only one he has at all, my lord.”

  “He doesn’t have money stored on his other estates?”

  “He doesn’t have any other estates, my lord. Not anymore.”

  And, I realized, he didn’t have this one. It belonged to his wife’s family.

  “This is all the money he has, my lord.” Diomedes raised the lid of the strongbox and stepped away from it. “I’ll be in the garden if you have any more questions.”

  †

  Tacitus and I lifted the strongbox onto a stool so we wouldn’t have to bend over every time we took something out of it. The box contained gold and silver coins and pieces of papyrus, most of them rolled up and tied with cord but not sealed. We put the documents on the table and made a quick count of the money.

  “This won’t last a household of this size more than a couple of months,” I said, wondering if Aurelia knew her husband was teetering on the precipice of financial ruin. Did she have the money to keep the household solvent? I looked around the storeroom as though we were missing something. “He must have more somewhere else, no matter what Diomedes says.”

  Tacitus untied and unrolled one of the documents. “Let’s see if these tell us anything.”

  The first little scroll proved to be the receipt for the sale, three years ago, of a house and land on the road from Naples to Capua. Without knowing the exact location of the property or its size or condition, I couldn’t speculate on whether Calpurnius had made a good deal. To judge from the other scrolls, he had made a number of similar sales in the past three years—properties in Naples and Misenum, an estate on Sicily.

  “This box ought to be more than full,” Tacitus said, dropping the record of another sale on the table. “Or at least there should be receipts for what he’s spent. He seems pretty careful about that with household expenses.”

  “It’s as though the money just disappeared,” I said, “washed away like the waste in a latrina.”

  “Could he have loaned it to someone?” Tacitus asked.

  “If he did, he didn’t get anything in writing. His father said he has a good business sense, so I would expect more careful records.”

  “Maybe he has a gambling habit he’s managed to keep hidden from his wife. Or a mistress. Or both, if he’s a really lucky bastard.”

  “Whatever the reason, he is desperate for cash.”

  Tacitus unrolled another scroll—a larger one—glanced at it, and handed it to me. “He said he was being blackmailed. That’s not an expense you would record.”

  “In order to blackmail somebody, you have to know something about them that they don’t want anyone else to know.” I ran my eye over the document Tacitus had given me.

  “We haven’t found a confession to a murder or to a plot against the emperor,” Tacitus said. “What would someone have to hold over him?”

  I didn’t answer because my attention was focused on the papyrus in my hands. It was a list—several lists, actually, made over a period of four years—of the sales of slaves, usually in groups of up to a dozen. At the beginning of the document was the first group of slaves Calpurnius had sold, over four years ago, to a man in Puteoli. In that group I saw the name Proxena, Thamyras’ woman. She was described as “blond and short.” The most recent sales came at the end of the document. And there was the name I was looking for—Sychaeus, sold to a man in Capua six months ago. He was even described as “missing small finger on right hand.”

  “How far is Capua from here?” I asked. Tacitus has a much better sense for directions and distances than I do.

  “No more than twenty miles. It’s northeast of here. Why?”

  “That’s where Sychaeus was sent.” I tapped the papyrus.

  “Then it wouldn’t be difficult for him to get back here.”

  “No more difficult than it would be for us to send someone up there to see what he’s up to.” I found a scrap piece of papyrus that was blank on one side. The ink in the pot on
the table was a bit dry, but I managed to write down the name of the man to whom Sychaeus had been sold. Then I added another name.

  “Who’s that?” Tacitus asked, reading over my shoulder.

  “That’s the man who purchased Proxena.”

  Tacitus smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. “And you, the incurable romantic, are going to try to find her, aren’t you?”

  “What harm would it do? It might even make someone happy.”

  Somebody ought to be happy, I thought. If I couldn’t make myself happy, the next best thing would be to bring a bit of joy into another man’s life by reuniting him with the woman he loved.

  Would I ever know what that felt like?

  XIII

  The next morning dawned gray, with a misty drizzle. An October chill was settling over us, creeping into my bones. I put on a second tunic when I got up.

  I didn’t like dispatching servants in such unpleasant weather on a journey I would not willingly make, but I could see no way around it. Two of my men would be going to Puteoli. One of Tacitus’ men and a servant of Aurelia’s would ride to Capua. Aurelia supplied horses and leather cloaks to protect the men from the rain. I supplied only the vaguest of explanations to her for why they were being sent. “We just have some questions about what we read in Calpurnius’ records. This will help us clear up a couple of things.”

  Aurelia, professing not to understand finances, seemed to accept my reasons, but not Bastet. The Nubian, I thought, wanted to bore a hole in me with her narrowed eyes and reach in and dig out the truth, like a bear scooping honey from a beehive.

  “Is your need so urgent, my lord, that you have to send these messengers out on a day like this?” she asked. “Perhaps you just haven’t asked the right questions to the right people in our house.”

  I refused to be drawn into a debate with her. With her arms folded over her ample chest, she seemed formidable, even malevolent. I dictated letters, using one of my own servants as a scribe instead of Aurelia’s household scribe so no one could report on the contents of the letters. The names of the men they were being sent to were written on the outside of each letter.

  “Find these men,” I instructed each set of servants as they prepared to mount. “The letters will provide an introduction and explain what I want. This man Furius, in Puteoli, will probably know my uncle’s name and recognize my seal.” I use my uncle’s seal ring, bearing a dolphin with his name, now mine, around it—G. PLIN SEC. “The fellow in Capua, Marcus Jucundus—well, I don’t know. Whatever you learn, each of you should be able to get back here by tomorrow evening. Just don’t linger along the way.”

  “The sooner you get back,” Tacitus said, “the larger reward you’ll get.”

  Once the servants were gone, we turned our attention to getting ourselves down to Calpurnius’ house. We decided to take a wagon, in case Calpurnius was injured badly enough that he couldn’t ride a horse.

  “If you’re going to take the wagon,” Aurelia said as we walked out to the barn where the family’s equipment was kept, “let me go with you.”

  I shook my head quickly. “No. As close as you are to delivering your baby, I won’t take that risk.”

  “My husband needs me.”

  “We already have one person in danger,” I said. “I’m not going to expose someone else to this kind of risk.”

  “I was attacked in my own house two nights ago. Am I any safer here than I would be with you?”

  The argument broke off when a servant opened the door of the barn and Aurelia looked into it. “Where’s the other raeda?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, my lady,” the servant answered. “We haven’t traveled much lately, so no one’s been out here in a while.…”

  The cobwebs and the mustiness of the place testified to the truth of his statement.

  “Could someone have stolen it?”

  “I doubt it, my lady. The lock wasn’t broken. Someone must have been able to open it.”

  “You had two raedas in here?” I asked.

  “Yes. The other one was newer than this one and quite nice.”

  Tacitus and I looked at each other. A decent raeda could fetch enough money to warrant selling it, if a man was desperate for cash. We hadn’t seen a receipt, but that didn’t mean the transaction hadn’t taken place.

  “Who has a key?” Tacitus asked.

  “There’s only this one key,” Aurelia said. “My steward has charge of it. He would not use it without consulting Calpurnius or me.”

  “So no one could have opened this door without you or your husband knowing about it.”

  Aurelia nodded, then turned to me. “Please take me with you, Gaius Pliny. I have to ask Calpurnius what’s going on.”

  I put my hands on both her shoulders. “No. I doubt that he’s going to want to talk about a missing wagon right now. We’ll bring him home and get him tended to, then we both have a lot of questions to ask him.”

  “I should go with you,” Bastet insisted. “No one here knows that house—or its master—as well as I do.”

  Before I could object, Aurelia said, “That’s true. Take her with you, Gaius Pliny.” She put her hand on Bastet’s arm, as though she would push her toward me.

  “But what if you should deliver the child before we get back?”

  “There are other women here who’ve helped with a birth. I’ll be fine. Take Bastet with you.”

  When I looked into her eyes I realized she was pleading with me.

  †

  We took only one servant with us, one of Aurelia’s, to drive the raeda. I wanted to leave as many men of my men and Tacitus’ as possible to protect Aurelia, even though I was sure we would be back before dark. As much as I would have liked to have more protection on the road, there was no room in the wagon, since we had to take the Nubian princess and still have room for Calpurnius on the return trip. Something about Bastet—something I could only call her manner or her presence—seemed to fill the interior of the wagon and left little room for anyone else. I hoped we could squeeze Calpurnius in on the return trip.

  Aurelia’s raeda was old and had never sported much decoration. It must have belonged to her father, but it had been kept in good condition. It was completely closed in, with only a small window on one side, and covered with a rounded roof to let the rain run off. The driver sat in front, outside, and drove a team of two horses. This particular raeda was about three paces long and less than two paces wide, with the entrance on the side opposite the window. The three of us could sit comfortably, Tacitus and me on each side and Bastet in the seat behind the driver, facing to the back. Between her feet she had the baskets of food and medical supplies that Aurelia had prepared.

  “How long will the trip take?” I asked.

  “At this pace, perhaps half an hour, my lord,” Bastet said. “This wagon is a little heavy for only two horses, but they were all we had left, after you sent your messengers…here and there.” She waved her hand to show her opinion of the errands I had assigned the servants.

  We rode in silence—Tacitus even closed his eyes—until the wagon stopped. I heard the driver talking to someone.

  “Are we there already?” Tacitus asked, jerking awake.

  “It seems too soon,” Bastet said.

  “I hope the horses are all right.” I got out of the raeda and was surprised to see a boy standing in front of the horses. He couldn’t have been more than ten and was as gray and ash-covered as the terrain around him, like a statue come to life—an emaciated statue. His tunic was too long, a cast-off from someone older, ragged at the hem and badly patched in several places.

  I glanced around, my unease growing as I saw the mounds on either side of the road, formed by structures buried by Vesuvius. Titus, the princeps at that time, had sent soldiers and slaves to clear the roads as soon as possible after the eruption. They could do little more than pile the ash up on either side. At some places the roads were as narrow as mountain roads, with barely room for two vehicle
s to get past one another. At this particular point they had created a narrow pass that offered perfect cover for an ambush. I got between the raeda and the mound on the side of the road only with some difficulty.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “The boy’s begging for food, my lord,” the driver said. “Says he hasn’t eaten in three days.”

  “I can believe that,” Tacitus said, standing on the steps of the raeda. “Don’t you think we could spare him a bite?”

  Before I could answer, someone grabbed me from behind and I felt a knife at my throat.

  “Don’t nobody move,” a desperate voice said in my ear, “or I’ll slit him from ear to ear. You, driver, get down.”

  When the driver hesitated, I was afraid he might be an accomplice, but then he tied the reins to the railing beside him and dropped to the ground.

  “Now I don’t want to hurt nobody,” my assailant said. “Really, I don’t. Just do what I tell you. I’m only tryin’ to feed my boy.”

  “We’ll give you—”

  The knife pressed against my throat. “You’ll give us your scraps, I know. But we need more than that. And we need a few coins. In fact, all your coins. All right, boy, tie ’em up.”

  The boy reached into a cleft in the rock beside the road and pulled out several lengths of cord.

  “Get the big one first,” the man said, gesturing with his head toward Tacitus. “Tie him to the railin’ on the wagon. If you please, sir.”

  “Please,” I managed to gulp. I wasn’t actually frightened because I could tell the poor man was leaning on me to support himself. I felt confident we could overcome him at some point, but I wanted to wait until the knife was not so close to my throat.

  Tacitus did as the man ordered and the boy trussed him up expertly. This was not their first robbery.

  “Now the driver.”

  In a moment the driver’s hands were securely fastened near Tacitus’. Then the man pushed me toward the wagon. When I offered the least resistance, the pressure on the knife increased.