Graveyard of the Hesperides

by Lindsey Davis

  Maybe not. Not if you thought Gavius was talking about when he was attacked in his home. But it made every sense if he really meant the night those murders happened at the bar.

  LV

  When I left and walked back down the alley, as I passed the parents’ house I did look up at Rufia’s old room. It was not yet dark so there would be no lamp lit; I saw no sign of life at all. Mind you, the old woman I had glimpsed struggling on two sticks would find those narrow stairs too hard. Her time of serving customers in rooms above bars must be long over. All she would manage nowadays was organizing others to do it.

  Tiberius had said he would not come back that evening. He had too much to finish at the house, and he would visit the aediles’ office, his last duty call before the wedding. I bought some cold sausage, Lucanian, and a few pickles for a private supper in our room. I went for ablutions, considering whether to walk down to the great new Baths of Titus. An imperial edifice might be run more hygienically than the local pit here. But it was almost as far as the Forum. The day had become ominously sultry. I would only grow hot and sticky again walking back; besides, I was in no mood for the evening crowds.

  Enduring a fast scrape and splash at the local baths nearby, I changed into my last clean tunic. Well, it was passable once I turned it inside out. I ate my solitary meal, then sat combing my hair dry. Here by myself, it struck me how much I felt the silence. At Fountain Court I was once so used to it, I never noticed. Now Tiberius lived with me there, a friendly presence even if he was in another room.

  I missed that man. Yes, it was time for a new domestic routine; we both needed company.

  I was tidying our cramped room, not a long process, when someone hammered on the door below. It was evening now, late evening; clouds had come over even though it was summer. Perhaps my awareness of loneliness had unnerved me. Perhaps I was affected by what happened to Gavius. Anyway, I did not want to go down and answer. For a few moments I sat paralyzed, but the thunderous knocks continued. It was not a door-to-door prophecy-seller calling on spec. They were all shysters, but if nobody answered their knocks, most were able to prognosticate that no one was in.

  This could be about the inquiry. I forced myself to descend the stairs and call out to ask who it was.

  “Morellus! Stop shagging that aedile, dust him down nicely and send the man out to me!”

  Feeling shakier than I expected, I opened up. “Sorry. You’re unexpected. I got nervous.”

  “Calm down, it’s not a rapist, only your cuddly uncle Titus. I’ve come all the way from the Aventine,” Morellus complained. “In my state. You know I’m still on ‘light duties’ and even that’s only so I can be grudgingly paid a few coppers.” When he was attacked in April, he had come close to death. It was still far too soon for him to return to work, but I supposed his tribune wanted to help. The government has harsh rules on sick leave. Soldiers are either in their fort’s hospital or on parade. The vigiles had no hospital; they recovered on their own or they died, but they counted as soldiers for payroll purposes.

  “Stop moaning. Here you are, let out to enjoy a pleasant evening stroll, instead of getting your hair singed off, rushing into burning buildings. You don’t have to combat criminals with bad breath who tell you to stuff yourself in a gourd and feed it to a donkey. You get to converse with refined people like me.”

  “Where’s the man?”

  “Not here.”

  “Hades with all its phantoms! Why didn’t you tell me he would be out?”

  “We didn’t know you were coming, perhaps?”

  “I need to see him. Got something to tell.”

  I was cool. “Have to tell me instead, Morellus.”

  “I’m not telling a bloody woman.”

  “I’m not a bloody woman, I’m an informer—a bloody good one. Tell me. Then if I think Tiberius Manlius wants to know, I can pass it on with improvements to your grammar and a more elegant speaking voice.”

  “Elocution! I bet he likes that.” Being Morellus, he made it sound like an advanced sexual position. “Give me a drink, Albia, I’ve come all this way, I deserve something.”

  “I am about to become a married woman. I cannot go into bars to buy drinks for strange men…” I ended the snooty banter and admitted honestly, “Morellus, I’m absolutely fed up with nasty drinks places. Let’s go for a walk and find somewhere else for a sit-down. And that will stop us being overheard too.”

  *

  As we strolled through the streets full of early revellers, off-duty workers and their families, I brought him up to date with my discoveries. The panpipes player who annoyed the bars passed us on his way to cause torment. A donkey came by with a bean sack.

  “Manlius Faustus unearthed all this?” Morellus asked admiringly.

  “No, you swine, I did.”

  “You’re a gem! And eminently—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Talking to you was much more fun before you were a bride.”

  “Not for me,” I replied bluntly. “Cut it out, Titus sunshine. I bet your Pullia is looking forward to my wedding. You don’t want me spoiling it for her by mentioning that smart woman from the Street of the Plane Trees you tangled with.”

  Morellus failed to look ashamed. “Not me.”

  “You were seen! The full carnality.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I have my spies.” He was seen by Tiberius and me. “The word is, you didn’t bother to shag her; you just lay back and let the grand lady do the work.”

  “People tell such lies,” Morellus disagreed demurely. “Do you want to hear what I found out or not?”

  We decided to perch on a stone bench outside someone’s house. I felt revived after my bath and supper, but Morellus badly needed to sit down. I did repent; I went to a bar and fetched him a beaker of mulsum. While I was doing that, he lit a couple of lamps someone had blown out, ordering all the evening loafers to move on. Two pickpockets were cruising that part of the Vicus Longus. “Trot off and rob somewhere else!” shouted Morellus. They could tell he was from the vigiles. Without complaint they did as they were told.

  A porter put his head out aggressively from the house whose bench we were using. Morellus gave him a smiling nod, as we had every right to be there. The porter shrugged and went back inside.

  “Watch out for pots being emptied from upstairs,” I said. “Now what have you to impart, sordid Fourth Cohort snoop?”

  He had to spin it out, of course. “I know what you think, Flavia Albia! I could tell it with Macer the other day. You don’t believe we ever look into anything, or open a case file, or keep records.”

  I nodded. That was what I thought. Why pretend?

  “Well, you are wrong.” He dug a finger into me. “And this is why. I’ll tell you, then I’ll enjoy hearing you apologize.”

  “Better be good then. Speak, Morellus!”

  He sipped his mulsum annoyingly. He smacked his lips, wiped his chin, had a drop more, gazed up and down the street. I folded my hands, waiting patiently. I wouldn’t ask again. If his information had any worth, he had not marched all this way from the Aventine only to go home without thrilling someone with it.

  “Those five men. You said they were salesmen.”

  “That’s what I was told. Now it’s old news. The supposed salesmen were marble-suppliers, who seem in the clear for the bodies. By virtue of them still being alive.”

  The joke was lost. Morellus was having none of it. “You said salesmen, so I proceeded on that basis, woman.”

  “They might have been,” I agreed. “The marble lads have been ruled out, so those corpses could have been anyone.”

  “You said salesmen. Foreign salesmen.”

  “All right.” I was being quiet with him now. “Foreign isn’t definite, though it seems a possibility. What’s your point?”

  “You said—”

  “I know what I said. So what?”

  “So I thought, where do salesmen congregate? Especially f
oreign buggers? Whatever they are selling?” I let him take his time. Anyone with a good story should be allowed to gauge their moment. “They all come upriver to the Emporium.”

  I nodded.

  “Think about it, woman.”

  I nodded again, still unable to see why this was so significant.

  The Emporium, otherwise called the Porticus Aemilius, lies on the bank of the Tiber, below the Aventine, beside the Marble Embankment. It is a stupendous collection of warehouses for unloading and storing imports. It is noisy, chaotic, full of dealers and swindlers, wharfingers and wholesalers, plus absolutely endless piles of merchandise from all over the world, much of it high range, every kind of desperately valuable commodity and material. Yes, salesmen would go there. No question.

  “So this is what I decided,” said Morellus. “Those five men, nobody around here knew who they were, nobody in the High Footpath missed them ever. Macer’s never going to be able to tell you anything about them. If they were lodging near here, the landlord just thought they had bunked off without paying. He stole their luggage as compensation and never said anything. Usual practice. But here’s the winning dice for you, Albia. If anyone connected to those dead men wanted to find out what happened to them, they would not come here to inquire. They would start in the one place they knew any salesmen were bound to have gone to. If they wrote from abroad, they would contact the cohort which oversees that place. So,” he said, with his emphasis portentous, “the missing-persons report wouldn’t be sent anywhere near bloody Macer and the cruddy Third. The Emporium is our beat. It would come to us, come to the Fourth.”

  I reminded him it was a decade past. He said, so what? I laughed.

  Morellus thought about his information. “Now this is where your injustice about our working practices are going to let you down, young woman.” He drained his beaker in a long, slow draft.

  Our conversation was proceeding on the usual lines for us: a mix of horrible and useful. Each of us thought the other was a social menace, yet we gave one another credit for reliable work.

  I said I apologized.

  “Accepted.”

  “The Fourth Cohort is always professional and wonderful. So now tell me.”

  “This is what I think. Suppose,” said Morellus, leaning toward me confidingly, “salesmen at the Emporium who deal in anything high quality are going to have people who will raise merry Hades if they don’t come home. They could be so well off they are persons of standing in their own society. Their people might even, if they had enough push, persuade high-ups in their province to get involved officially. Even a provincial governor, if they bribed him, might write to Rome asking questions about their mysterious disappearance. Governors love stirring with their big sticks.”

  “Agreed. At least if his bribe was big enough … So then the vigiles or even the Urban Cohorts, gods deliver us, would certainly be instructed to investigate. But, Morellus, it was still ten years ago.”

  “So what? You are speaking not about the ingrates in the Urbans or those loons in the Third, but us, the glorious Fourth. Our patch. Our interest. Our investigation. And with a governorial query, it struck me there would be a scroll concerning this. I had a look for it,” he uttered proudly.

  “You big fat darling!” I was genuinely impressed. “So did you find it?”

  “I looked,” stated Morellus, “in the special place we keep for old scrolls that may be required for embuggerance avoidance in years to come.”

  “Where is that?”

  “On a shelf in the clerk’s office, right at the back with all the horrible spiders, behind the giant beaker we keep for when the tribune visits.”

  “Does he?”

  “Not if he can help it. But when he does, we can give him his own special cup, can’t we? He loves us for that. He’s not to know the doctor mixes laxatives in it with a big spurtle, when the lads are all bunged up with constipation.”

  “They need to eat more beans.”

  “Too farty. You ever been in a station house surrounded by mass flatulence?”

  I duly shuddered but let him see my impatience. “So come on, you swine. Did you, or did you not, find a scroll with old missing-persons records?”

  Morellus gazed at me, almost sadly, to think I had doubted. He reached into his tunic and pulled out a scroll, which he handed to me. It was not as sweaty as it might have been.

  “Of course I did, Flavia Albia. Ten years ago, we were horribly badgered over five missing men. They were foreigners. Procedures were put in place. That is to say, our duty inquirer went along to the warehouses and asked questions—smart, expertly phrased ones. There was no trace, we never found them. Our verdict was anything could have happened to them; most likely they fell off the boat home and were all drowned. But for twelve months our man kept being asked for further developments, of which naturally there were none. You can see where he has initialled his scroll every time he was asked, very patiently. And he put it away on our special shelf behind the tribune’s beaker, so here it is, for you to read.”

  I held it as if it were fragile, which indeed in so much time it had become. “So who were these men the Fourth had to look for?”

  Morellus was enjoying his dramatic reveal so much, he looked liable to drop his mulsum beaker. “I give you their names, poppet: Julius Ptolemaïs was their leader; he had a very bad limp, we were told. The others were Pylades, Hermogenes, Isidorianus and Sesarion. All Egyptian. From Alexandria.”

  “And what were these men?”

  “They were specialist exporters of very high-quality Egyptian lentils.”

  LVI

  I wrote down the missing men’s names in my note tablet. I opened the scroll and read it. Questions had indeed been asked of Rome by a provincial governor on behalf of supplicants. Diligent checks were conducted; polite answers were sent to Alexandria. No trace. Regret was stated. The initials recording any action were always: LPL. That was Morellus’ predecessor: Lucius Petronius Longus, my uncle, now retired. He must have hated the waste of time, but he would have been efficient.

  I bought Morellus another cup of mulsum, having one myself. It tasted sweet. Progress on what had seemed an impossible case lightened my heart. We shared a laugh that after all I had found myself investigating lentil-supply wars. “Only you, Flavia Albia!”

  “Only me!” I found a grateful grin for him. “Thank you, Titus Morellus. You are a worthy friend. You shall have double barley cakes at my wedding.”

  “Barley!” We both giggled helplessly at the mention of a grain.

  Morellus, childlike, made more flatulence jokes. Having four young children, he was very good at sound effects. I lifted my face to the evening sky where the fast clouds scudded, as I enjoyed the unexpected breakthrough.

  Promising to keep him informed, I said goodbye to the raddled inquiry chief before I returned to the hired room. Tomorrow would be a big day. At its end, I must abandon work, whether finished or not, then transport myself to my parents’ house where I was supposed to sleep overnight—assuming a nervous bride could sleep at all—before my wedding.

  I tried to sleep tonight at least. After a brief session of thinking through the lentil aspect, I went out like a blown lamp. Not long later, when the street noises were still loud, I awoke with a start. Someone was coming upstairs to the room.

  Of course I could be under attack like Gavius, but instinct took me to the door. Still bleary, I seized no weapon. I was less alarmed this time, partly because the previous visitor was only Morellus, but mainly because even through sleep the footsteps sounded familiar. The thoughtful arrival carried a small pottery lamp to aid immediate recognition. I wondered which bar counter he had stolen it from.

  “Tiberius! I thought you weren’t coming back tonight?”

  “Missed you!”

  He ran upstairs, enfolding me in a hug. After clinging for a few moments to assure himself I still existed, he blew out the lamp. We went to bed, for sleeping purposes. Lying in the dark, I summarized my f
inds. Then it was his turn. He told me the house was now habitable. “I hope you like it.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I do.”

  “Then so will I. We have the same taste. We share the same habits, which is what makes a home work. I only remember Lesser Laurel Street as a neglected wreck, but if you think it suits us, I am happy, love.”

  Tiberius murmured, satisfied. Just before we fell asleep he felt obliged to give a wedding progress report; I duly listened. “They are all set to start baking tomorrow. A fashionable cook, highly exclusive, has been ordered. Name of Genius.”

  I let out a huge groan. “Genius! What is anybody thinking of? I know him. He is terrible. Genius was one of my father’s big slave-buying disasters. Every time we hear of him doing some smart banquet, we all fall about in hysterics. His fame is a complete con. Genius absolutely cannot cook.”

  Once I stopped ranting, Tiberius soothed me. “Don’t worry, he has become too famous to rustle up anything himself these days, so comes with a battery of elegant, competent under-chefs who do all the work. My wedding planners assure me Genius idolizes Falco as the man who gave him his start, and adores him so much he will gratefully produce superb wedding food—all at cost too.”

  “My wedding is on the cheap!”

  “I don’t think so. They tell me Genius is now a legend for his unheard-of exotic ingredients.”

  “Oh, not ostrich tongues! That is so out of date…” I sighed and gave up. “I just hope he knows that the best, most desirable lentils in the Empire are produced in Egypt.”

  Chuckling, Tiberius cuddled up to me. We slept.

  30 August

  Three days before the Kalends of September (a.d. III Kal. Sept.)

  One day before the wedding of Tiberius Manlius Faustus and Flavia Albia

  LVII

  Next morning, Tiberius and I rose early. We went out to grab a fast breakfast at the snackery. Lepida was not there but her daughter was clearly waiting to give me a message. She spoke almost angrily. “My mother says to tell you this. That woman you were asking about has left town.”