The Accusers mdf-15

by Lindsey Davis

  'I heard Carina stayed aloof from your family,' I said, as I packed him off in Helena's litter. 'That's where you gain when the rest of your family dumps you, I suppose. Tell me, had they dumped Carina too?'

  'There was some trouble a few years ago,' said Birdy. 'She disagreed with things. And her husband had a tussle with my father over money…

  Rome seemed to be stuffed with people fighting over dowries. 'Instalment of her portion not paid?' I was getting the hang of life at aedile level.

  'You guessed.'

  'Has it ever been handed over?'

  'Yes. Verginius Laco gets his way.'

  Such problems did not afflict my section of society. Helena did not bring a dowry; our children would be fed, clothed and educated out of my income and a legacy of hers. There must have been a dowry set aside for Helena once; she had been married to a senator. Given that Helena's parents were mortgaged up to their hairlines, I had done them a favour. By my forgoing a marriage ceremony, they had been able to forgo setting us up in life.

  Negrinus went off to his sister's house, and I trotted into the city to research that other source of friction: the will. After they are read, wills are stored in the Atrium of Liberty. I spent a couple of hours there, growing frustrated. Eventually I was attended to by a sad-eyed public slave, some ill-nourished clerk with no hopes and no incentive. Since the Metellus will was recent, he did find it. If it had been an older deposition I would never have seen it. I had the impression I was the first member of the public who had asked for a viewing of anything.

  Still, this gave me curiosity value. Finally I had access, while there was still enough light to read through the will quietly and find out its secrets. Or so I had thought.

  The limp clerk laid the will on a table. It was a double-fold wooden tablet. It was tied up with legal thread – and it was sealed seven times on the thread.

  'I can break these seals?'

  'No, Falco!' He snatched it back and snuggled it against his tunic protectively.

  I took a fierce breath. 'Oh excuse me! I thought this document had been opened and read. I came here to study its provisions.'

  'Keep your temper.'

  'Am I missing the point?'

  The clerk still clutched it. 'This is the usual form.'

  'It is the will of Rubirius Metellus?'

  'Gnaeus Rubirius Metellus -' From a safe distance he showed me the label on the outside of the tablet. 'Did they not read it?'

  'Yes they did.'

  'So why is it still sealed?'

  'Resealed… Do you want to know the procedure?'

  'Teach me!' I growled.

  'Say you are holding a reading. You fetch the will from the Temple of Vesta, or wherever it was put in safe keeping. You break the seals, in the presence of all or most of the original witnesses.'

  'They know what is in it?'

  'Not necessarily.' The clerk paused, seeing me stare. 'The testator was not obliged to show them. Sometimes as long as they are alive they really want it a secret.'

  'If the bequests are likely to cause trouble, you mean?'

  'Exactly. When people first witness a will, they are merely signing to say the outside of the document has been shown to them formally as the man's testament. That,' explained the clerk carefully, 'is why they must then be present when he dies and the will is read, to see that their seals have not been tampered with. They can't vouch for the contents, you see.'

  'Go on, then.'

  'The will is opened and read. A copy is usually made. Then it is resealed, with thread and wax, and placed in our archive.'

  'Very funny! Where's the copy?'

  'With the heir, presumably.'

  'And how,' I asked, 'am I supposed to know who the heir is, if you won't let me unseal the sealed original that names him?'

  'Ask somebody who knows.'

  'You don't have that information?'

  'We only store the tablets,' he protested. 'We don't know what is written in them, it isn't our job!'

  A good day. Such a typical day in an informer's life.

  I went up on the Arx to clear my head. At the Temple of Juno Moneta lived the Sacred Geese who guarded the Citadel and the augurs' Sacred Chickens. I checked them out. This was my public sinecure: religious bird guardian.

  'Someone was asking about you,' the custodian told me as I prodded around the chicken huts, looking for eggs. Eggs were my official perk. I could have expended time and effort pretending to investigate the feathered ones' health and happiness, but they didn't need it. I knew they were all thoroughly spoiled. Anyway, the darling geese always had a go at me. Who wants to be pecked?

  'Asking for me? Who was that?'

  'He didn't say.'

  'So what did you say?'

  'I said we hadn't seen you up here for months.'

  Nobody normal who wanted me would look for me on the Arx. I had no idea what this could mean, so I did not let it trouble me.

  Being in the neighbourhood, I then explored an angle I had not listed in my notes. I walked down to the Forum and gave myself another unpleasant hour of officialdom. I wanted to know more about why Metellus and his son had been exposed in the corruption case. Where better to start, than the aediles' office?

  Wrong, Falco. There was a new young brat in charge of Rome's road contracts. A friendly one would have thought the sins of his predecessor were good for a gossip, but this gilt-edged dong fell back on 'issue of national security' and maintained I was not entitled to enquire into such matters. I mentioned working as an agent for Vespasian; he still blocked me. He did not know what happened under Metellus Negrinus. He could not discuss previous errors. He was far too busy with muddy streets, crooked market weights, and endless complaints about rats rioting all night by the Altar of Peace. I could go and ram myself head-first into a narrow drain.

  I should have known. The corruption case had made the aediles' scams too obvious. Audits had been instituted. Procedures had been tightened. This new young fellow might have made a killing, but for the Metellus trial. How was he now to assemble enough cash to finance lavish public Games in order to obtain the votes to move up his career ladder to the next flashy post?

  He clearly wished he had jurisdiction over temple maintenance, where the bribes were notorious.

  Being thwarted can damage an enquiry; I get hooked on beating the system. But it makes me more determined. So never mind the fine detail of poison and timescales which I was supposed to investigate today. I decided to find Verontius. Verontius was appalling, but he would talk to me. I knew how to make sure of it.

  Normally I would walk barefoot across a mile of burning bitumen before I would encounter Verontius. He was a shifty, shambling worker in the semi-public world of road contracts. He could bend figures better than a conjurer stuffing doves up his fundament. I would be lucky if I could get away from him without a burst blood vessel and having to lend him my carpentry plane (if I ever let him get his hands on it, I would never see it again). He stank of armpits and feet. He despised me. I loathed him. Except in this emergency, we would, avoid each other from one Saturnalia to the next – though at Saturnalia we were always compelled to meet. Unluckily for me, he had been married to my lumpish sister Allia for the past twenty years, so we were bonded inescapably: Verontius and I were family.

  Allia was out, thank the gods. A pitiful slave with scurvy let me in. I had to wade past pallid children to reach the back room where Verontius hunched like a toad down a well. He had a tablet of official looking tables, but was doodling at speed on a separate piece of old fish wrapper. (He had a secret second job as a squid-negotiator.) He would scribble like fury, work out a long sum, then carefully insert a single figure in the tender table with a better pen and new ink. Everything about his rapid calculations suggested he was up to no good. When he was not fiddling new contract applications, Verontius worked long hours supervising the bent contracts he had already won. I won't say he and Allia lived in squalor. We all knew that they had money. It was squi
rrelled away somewhere. Hoarded meanly, never spent. They would both die early, worn-out victims of a hard life they need not have had.

  'Marcus!' He was colourless, bald, squinty and half deaf. He always had been, even way back. Such a catch for Allia! He had long ago learned to avoid looking guilty, but I watched the doodles being smoothly shunted into a fruit bowl while the tender was speedily rolled up under his stool. Even before he knew what I had come for, Verontius was clearing a sanitised space for his nosy in-law.

  Once he knew that I wanted him to finger someone else, he was happy. 'Metellus Negrinus? Lovely boy, smashing little aedile – oh we did all like him!'

  'Because he was on the take? Don't go coy on me. I don't want a dangerous commitment from you – I just need to understand how it worked. You knew about the corruption, I imagine?'

  Verontius winked. 'Oh no!'

  'Liar.'

  'I have to live, Marcus. But I'm a small player.'

  'You never gave evidence at the father's trial?'

  'Hardly ever encountered the father. He dealt with the mighty consortiums. For the trial, I had too little to tell about that. But I was approached!' He was proud to have been considered. 'Approached by whom?'

  'One of your lot.'

  'Mine?'

  'An informer came scouting, just before the trial.'

  'But you chose to keep quiet to protect yourself'

  'To protect a way of life, Marcus! Listen, road construction and maintenance is a specialist business. We operate in traditional ways, ways that go back centuries.'

  'That old apology for cheating practices! What informer was it?'

  'Don't remember.'

  'Don't try too hard, you might wear out your brain -'

  'Said he was called Procreus.'

  'Never heard of him. What would you have told him, if he had bribed you enough?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Really?' I knew enough about Verontius to obtain a second version. 'Ever see that slave girl with the intriguing entablature you used to be so friendly with? What a pretty caryatid. Very architectural!'

  He shuddered. She was somehow connected to his squid-peddling – that moonlight work Allia never seemed to notice, despite the smell. So my threat was about the secret money he earned, as well as his fishy playmate. Verontius still fooled around with the girl, and he knew I knew. 'O griddled goat's goolies, Marcus my son! I'm at home here -'

  'So you are, Verontius old boy! Let's get the men's talk over before Allia comes back, shall we?'

  It was not often I had the beautiful pleasure of extortion from a relative. Life was good for an hour. Allia came home to find Verontius a crumpled ghost of himself By then he had confided this: the road contractors' guild always carried out background checks on new officials. Prior to his arrival in post, Negrinus had been a worry to them. He had come from his earlier position, as quaestor, with a reputation for resisting sweeteners. The road contractors were expecting this but straight away it became apparent that the father was on hand, not just open to persuasion, but insisting on it.

  'Money?'

  'Oh grow up, Marcus! What else? You know, there was a funny atmosphere. At first we thought,' Verontius confided, 'they had had a bust-up.'

  'It looks as if the father turned against the son. Negrinus has been left out of the will -'

  'Not the impression we got. They were never at odds with each other. The father gave the orders; the son followed through – but there were no fights. Something had shaken them; they were like men who had just walked away from an earthquake. The shock left them operating very much as a team, a team in frantic need of cash.'

  'Failed investment? Disaster at a property? You don't know what?'

  'Enquiries failed to dig it out.'

  'Your guild uses the wrong people!' I grinned, but stopped it quickly. The contractors' guild members are worse than virulent headlice. I didn't want their trade. 'So Negrinus came into his aedile post at just the right moment, and they wrung it dry?'

  'Correct.'

  'Any idea why Silius Italicus picked on them for it?'

  Verontius shrugged. 'He must have been desperate for cash too.' My brother-in-law gave me a sickly leer. 'But then he's an informer, so that figures!'

  Luckily for him, that was the moment we heard my sister Allia struggling to work her latch-lifter. I let her into her house; she and I glared at one another in our customary fashion; I left.

  I went back to see the archivist who had the will.

  'Can I see that will you fetched out this morning again? Is there an original date on it?'

  There had been a date when it was first sealed. When it was opened and resealed, that old date was efficiently blanked out. I tore my hair.

  There was more frustration awaiting me. I went to see Negrinus at his sister's house that evening. I arrived at Rubiria Carina's home in the usual state for an informer. I was tired, depressed, struggling to make any headway on the case – and ready to chuck it all in. I should have done so. Negrinus had found himself an extra defence lawyer. I could not believe it. Birdy had let himself be preyed on by the lax fathead of an assistant who had worked for Silius: Honorius.

  XX

  Negrinus was sitting with his sister in her elegant white saloon. The room was one of understated luxury. The furniture seemed plain, but its fittings were gilt. Gold Doric columns held lamps that burned with the finest oil. A single exquisite half-size Aphrodite adorned a hemispherical niche. The husband, Verginius Laco, must own an enviable portfolio of estates.

  Carina looked very much like her sister Juliana. Birdy must take after their father; he was completely different. Unlike Negrinus with his light colouring, sharp-cut nose and diffident, almost studious face, this young woman was dark-haired, wide-cheeked and had a direct stare. Her mother's confidence glared out of her, though I could see why people called her nice to know. She was quiet in manner. Just as fashionable as Juliana, she copied the ladies of the imperial court in dress, hairstyle and jewellery. It was all more expensive than Helena would think necessary for an evening at home.

  Helena had not come with me; the children were playing up. I could have used her calming influence.

  'This is Honorius,' our client told me proudly. 'He wants to plead my case.

  I managed not to snort: why in the name of Olympus had Birdy taken on a spy from the viper's nest of his enemies? I caught Rubiria Carina's eye; she gave nothing away. But she was tellingly silent. An intelligent woman. Fond of Birdy, perhaps.

  I sat back on the couch where I had been placed to be irritated and insulted. I let Honorius explain himself.

  He still looked about eighteen, but told me he was twenty-five. Only child; father deceased; making a career for himself in law. He could use a good bout of army discipline to toughen him up – but a week of the recruits' training regime would send him weeping home to Mother. He did not mention his mother, but I could see her handiwork in his buffed shoes and beautifully braided tunic. I bet her poor old eyes were failing after stitching on those purple bands and neck-rings. I bet that signet ring had belonged to his dead father, and perhaps the old belt too. He must have come in his toga, which now lay folded over a couch back, as though the house slaves had not taken it away because they hoped to be rid of him rapidly. If he had managed to annoy them, he would annoy a court too.

  'I have walked out on Silius.'

  He was faintly pink. He thought he knew what I was thinking. I continued to watch him in silence, letting him worry.

  In fact I was thinking that I could see why Silius Italicus had taken Honorius into partnership. He was good looking. Slightly gaunt, and the thick crinkled hair was too short, but women would go for the decent body and the eyes. He would fill out one day – but he would always be half a foot too short. I reckoned his judgment was suspect too, but most people never see past handsome bones and self-confidence. He would get by, and get by easily. Could he do the work? I withheld judgment.

  The purple tunic bands conf
irmed he was of senatorial rank. Probably the dead father had left the family too poor to enable the son to try for the cursus honorum. For that he would have needed backers too. The official route of quaestor, aedile, praetor and consul might be closed to him, yet he had status and education, and an underlying sureness of purpose. Walking out on Silius must have stiffened him up. Where I had once thought him virginal, I now felt he might keep a mistress somewhere, some petulant, expensive piece whom he visited for vigorous but short-lived sex while the adoring mother believed he had gone to play handball at the gym. Then he would buy the mistress silver bracelets, and the mother flowers.

  'Why have you left Silius?' I asked.

  'We quarrelled over ethics.'

  'After four years in practice with him, isn't that a bit late?'

  Honorius learned fast. He copied me and held his peace.

  Negrinus burst in, eager to set me straight: 'Honorius has watched Silius and Paccius combining against our family – particularly against me. He knows it is an injustice. His conscience is aroused.'

  'He knows,' Rubiria Carina told me pointedly, 'that my brother will not find anyone else qualified or willing to take on his case.'

  'So you will do it?' I smiled at Honorius. 'Highly commendable! And you should make quite a name for yourself…' I paused. This young man was after the money, just as we were. He must have been badly disappointed to find Falco and Associates were already handling the case. 'Sorry to be blunt, but I wonder if Silius deliberately stirred up your sense of outrage, knowing that in court you would be easy meat?'

  Now Honorius went pale. If he had not thought of this himself, he managed to disguise the fact. He made out he was mature enough to know all Silius was capable of. 'I shall have to prove him wrong, Falco.'

  'How?'

  'Without being immodest -'

  'Be truthful.'

  'I am a decent advocate.' Somehow he made himself sound very modest.

  'Are you? Oh face facts, man! You have attended your principal at some high-profile, highly political pleadings. You have spoken for him sometimes; I saw you in the Metellus corruption case.' Honorius had been handling minor evidence; he was competent, but the stuff was routine. 'I also know this: you are slapdash back in the office, you look to me as if you want to be a playboy, and the worst thing is – if you really came here out of idealism, that is not what we need. Your motive is naive. You're dangerous. We don't want a luminous conscience; we need someone to kick balls!'