‘The Emperor never spoke to him,’ I interrupted. I edged the clutter onto a shelf. ‘Vespasian ordered your brother an honourable funeral, and he himself,’ I mentioned drily, ‘paid for this urn. When you can bear it, I’ll try to explain—’
The Priest of Hera seized a small bronze handbell which he rang with bitter violence. ‘Remove yourself from my house!’
Well, I never expected to be asked to stay to lunch.
Members of his household were tumbling into the room; they stopped at the intensity of the priest’s agitation. Before he could order them to frogmarch me out, I made him hear the facts:
‘Curtis Gordianus, your brother fell victim to a freedman connected with Atius Pertinax Marcellus. You will be aware how Pertinax died. Apparently blaming his old master’s associates, this Barnabas has killed your brother, he may come for you next! Sir, I am here to convey Vespasian’s offer of his good will. You will need the nine days of formal mourning; I hope to see you after that.’
Out in the hall I bumped into Milo, just arrived. He had a gloomy bruise surrounding a vivid cut.
I tutted gently, ‘That’s a nasty knock! Don’t worry about the urn; I washed off the blood!’
I bounced out of the door before he could reply.
I reappeared at the Temple as a tired procession stumbled up the beach. The goat was leaning back obstinately all the way. Something about her predicament aroused my fellow feeling; I too spent most of my life bleating and being led towards certain doom.
There was nobody else in authority, so the senior suppliant consulted me.
‘Go home,’ I commanded, inventing cheerfully. ‘Sweep out your house with cypress twigs-‘
‘What about the goat?’
‘This goat,’ I pronounced with dignity (thinking of tasty ribs, roasted in the open air with sea salt and wild sage), ‘is sacred to the Goddess Hera now. Leave her with me!’
The pilgrims collected their wreaths then trekked away homewards; the acolytes scampered into the Temple to get up to whatever horrible young servitors play at together when they find themselves unsupervised. With a grin, I took charge of the goat.
The animal shuddered woefully on a long piece of rope. She was a pretty little thing. Luckily for her, although I had nothing to eat, as a priest I suddenly felt much too pure-minded to contemplate devouring Hera’s sacred goat.
Better own up; I was incapable of slaughtering any creature who looked up at me with such melting, mournful eyes.
XIX
I can never remember if the nine days of formal mourning apply from when a person dies or from when you hear the news. Gordianus reckoned the latter; wretched for my hygiene, but it gave him longer to recuperate.
For nine days I roamed the foreshore, while my goat investigated driftwood and I lectured her on the finer things in life. I survived on goat’s milk and wheatcakes off the altar. To sleep I snuggled in between my mule and the goat. I bathed in the sea, but I still smelt of animals and there was nowhere for a shave.
When people visited the Temple I kept out of the way. No one wants to find a shrine they are attending for religious reasons inhabited by a bearded derelict and a runaway goat.
After two days a deputy priest turned up to stand in for Gordianus. By then I had organized the acolytes into handball teams and was running a league on the beach. Once the lads were exhausted, I used to sit them down and read aloud from my Gallic Wars. Fresh air and Vercingetorix kept them out of trouble for most of the day though I preferred not to investigate their habits at night.
After dark when everywhere lay silent, I usually went into the Temple alone and sat before the goddess of Matrimonial Love, thinking about nothing while I munched her wheaten cakes. I requested no favours, and the Lady never destroyed my scepticism by appearing as a vision. She and I had no need to communicate. The goddess Hera must have known that Zeus, her thunderous husband, had failings in common with private informers; too much free time - and too many fancy women suggesting ways of using it.
Sometimes I stood at the sea’s lisping edge with my feet in the water, thinking about Helena Justina who knew this too. Remembering that young porter at the Senator’s house refusing me admission on a flimsy excuse, insight smote me; she was sensible and far-sighted. Helena Justina had left me!
I strode back into the Temple and stood angrily before the goddess of Matrimonial Love. The Queen of Olympus surveyed me with a face of stone.
On the tenth morning, when I was light-headed with starvation and solitude, one of the acolytes came down the shore to see me. This sinful little minnow was called Demosthenes - a typical altar boy, old beyond his year yet visibly unwashed behind the ears.
‘Didius Falco, people are getting bad ideas about you and your goat!’
‘Nonsense,’ I rallied miserably. ‘This goat is respectable!’ Demosthenes gazed at me with fathomless eyes in a handsome, untrustworthy face. So did the goat.
The acolyte sniffed. ‘Curtis Gordianus is at the Temple, Falco. He says you can use his private baths. Want me to scrape your back?’ he suggested offensively. I told him accepting favours from him would only cause me problems with my goat.
I had learned to live with Croton’s lack of amenities. I went straight to the Temple, tied my nanny in the portico, then marched up to Gordianus in the sanctum.
‘Thanks for the chance of a bathe!’ I cried. ‘I admit that by now I’d sell myself into slavery to some one-eyed Nabataean camel-drover if he promised me an hour in a hot steam room first! Sir, we need to talk about your being here-‘
‘Domitian Caesar approved my travel leave-‘
‘I meant, whether Croton is safe for you. The Emperor will uphold your leave of absence.’ He looked surprised. ‘Imperial policy is to support Domitian Caesar’s official acts.’
‘What about his unofficial ones?’ he laughed bitterly. ‘Oh, the policy is to tut at him fiercely - then smile and knee down.’
We walked outside to the steps.
Gordianus moved slowly, drugged with exhaustion after his bereavement. He sat and sagged like sour dough in a crock, almost visibly shrinking, then gazed at the ocean as if he saw in its shifting lights and currents all the world’s philosophies - saw them with a new understanding, but a deep new distaste.
‘Yours is an unenviable job, Falco!’
‘Oh it has its attractions: travel, exercise, meeting new people from all walks of life -‘ The goat strained at the end of her string so she could chew my tunic sleeve. I held her off with both hands; she bleated with a foolish look.
‘Acts of violence and announcing misery!’ Gordianus scoffed. I watched him over the goat’s forelock, while I stroked her wide white ears; she knelt down and settled to munching at the end of my belt. ‘Falco, what do you know about this mess?’
‘Well; let’s be discreet! There are many people - apart from supporters of the late, not-much-lamented Emperor Vitellius - who view the new Imperial dynasty less than wholeheartedly. But it’s clear the Flavian circus is here to stay. The Senate fully ratified Vespasian. He is halfway to becoming a god, so all wise mortals are putting on a more reverent face… Are you willing to tell me what your brother intended saying to the Emperor?’
‘He was speaking for both of us. We had, as you put it, put on a reverent face for the Flavians.’
‘That’s hard,’ I sympathized, falling in with his low mood. ‘So your brother’s accident must seem a bitter blow-‘
‘His murder you mean!’
‘Yes - so tell me, what could he have intended to say to the Emperor that someone wanted to prevent so badly?’
‘Nothing!’ snapped Gordianus impatiently. I believed him. Which meant one thing: it was something Longinus had only found out after he returned to Rome… While I was pondering, Gordianus frowned painfully. ‘You must reckon we had only ourselves to blame.’
‘Not entirely. Curtius Gordianus, you can die by misadventure in a thousand ways. A clerk in the Censor’s office told me once th
at lead pipes, copper saucepans, mushrooms cooked for elderly men by young wives, swimming in the Tiber, and women’s face creams are all deadly dangerous; but perhaps he was a pessimist-‘
Gordianus rocked on the step restlessly. ‘My brother’s suffocation was deliberate, Falco. And a horrific way to die!’
I stated at once very quietly: ‘Asphyxia is very swift. As far as anybody knows, it is not a painful death.’
After a moment I sighed. ‘Perhaps I see far too many deaths.’
‘So how do you stay humane?’ he demanded.
‘When I look at a corpse I remember, he must have parents somewhere; he may have had a wife. If I can, I find them. I tell them what happened. I try to be quick; most people want time to react alone. But some of them come back to me afterwards and ask for the details all over again. That’s bad enough.’
‘What’s worse?’
‘Thinking about the ones who want to ask, but never come.’
Gordianus still looked hunted. I could see that once he had drummed up the grit to oppose Vespasian, failure utterly deflated him.
‘My brother and I,’ he explained with a struggle, ‘believed Flavius Vespasianus was a Sabine adventurer from an untalented family, who would bring the Empire into ruin and disrepute.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m a staunch republican-but I won’t run Vespasian down.’
‘Because you work for him?’
‘I work for the money.’
‘Then opt out?’
‘I do my duty!’ I retorted. ‘My name is on the tax roll, and I never fail to vote! More importantly, here I am, trying to reconcile you and Vespasian to give him breathing space to rebuild the ruins he inherited from Nero.’
‘Is he capable?’
I hesitated. ‘Probably.’
‘Hah! Falco, to most of Rome he’ll still be an adventurer.’
‘Oh I believe he knows that!’
Gordianus went on staring out to sea. He had slumped like a sea anemone, a soft grey blob clinging to the stonework, weakening as the sun moved onto us.
‘Do you have any children?’ I asked, fumbling for a way to reach him.
‘Four. Plus my brother’s two now.’
‘Your wife?’
‘Dead, thankfully -‘ Any woman with much about her would want to kick his anklebone; I was thinking of one in particular. Perhaps he saw it in my face. ‘Are you married, Falco?
‘Not exactly.’
‘Someone in mind?’ When the people who asked were not entirely cynical, it was easiest for a bachelor to pretend.
I paused, then nodded. ‘No children then?’ he went on.
‘Not as far as I know - and that’s not flippancy. My brother had a child he never saw; it won’t happen to me.’
‘What happened to your brother?
‘Casualty; Judaea. A hero, they tell me.’
‘Was this recent?’
‘Three years ago.’
‘Ah… you can say then: in this situation, how do we cope’
‘Oh, we tolerate the crass intrusions of people who hardly knew them; we set up expensive memorials which fail to impress their real friends! We honour their birthdays, comfort their women, make sure their children grow up with some parental control-‘
‘Does this help?’
‘No, not really… No.’
We both smiled grimly, then Gordianus turned to me.
‘Evidently Vespasian sent you because he considers you persuasive,’ he sneered. I had won his confidence, though what happened to my brother in the desert was nothing to exploit. ‘You seem to be genuine; what do you recommend?’
Still thinking of Festus, I did not answer at once.
‘Oh Falco, you cannot imagine what has been going through my head!’ I could. Gordianus was the sort of tormented defeatist who could easily put his whole brood to the sword, then persuade some loyal slave to butcher him too. I imagined it clearly; everyone sobbing and making a mess of good floor rugs with their pointless blood - his type should never attempt treachery. If he brazened this out, he had done no worse than many senators contemplate every day over lunch.
Of course, that was why these people mattered. That was why the Emperor was treating them so carefully. Some plots are dreamed up over Tuesday’s cold artichokes but fade out by Wednesday’s anchovy eggs. Curtius Gordianus displayed a mad insistency. He had ganged up with amateurs who were pressing on in defiance long after self-preservation would steer anyone else back to respectable pastimes like drinking and gambling and seducing their best friends’ wives.
‘So what alternatives are left, Falco?’
‘Vespasian will not object if you withdraw to your private estate-‘
‘Retire from public life? ‘ A true Roman, the suggestion shocked him. ‘Is he ordering that?’
‘No. Sorry-‘
Caught out by my mistake, I was starting to lose patience. He shot me a quizzical look. I remembered his brisk attitude when he first greeted me as Chief Pontiff; I decided this squashed pillow needed plumping up with a public role.
‘The Emperor was impressed by your adopting a religious post, though he would prefer you to accept a more demanding place -‘ I sounded like Anacrites; I had been working at the Palace far too long.
‘Such as?’
‘Paestum?’
Now Gordianus sat quiet. After exile on this bleak shore, the mighty complex of temples at Paestum represented sheer luxury. ‘Paestum,’ I continued seductively. ‘A civilized city in a delicate climate, where the violets are the sweetest in Europe, and all the perfumers’ roses bloom twice every year…’ (Paestum: on the west coast in Campania - well within Vespasian’s reach.)
‘In what position?’ Now he was talking more like a senator.
‘I have no authority to confirm that, sir. But during my journey here I did learn they have a vacant post at the great Temple of Hera…’
He nodded at once.
I had done it. Everything was over. I had hooked Curtius Gordianus back from his exile, and with luck earned myself a contract bonus. (Or, being realistic, I would earn it if Vespasian agreed to the solution I had suggested, if we ever managed to agree what that solution was worth to the Empire - and if he paid.)
I stood up, easing my spine. I felt grimy and tired; familiar hazards of my trade. Lack of decent conversation had left my speech sluggish. I became aware of countless scratches stinging my legs from forging through maritime brushwood at the whim of my goat. I was a wreck. I had ten days’ ferocious stubble; I must look like a mountain bandit. My hair had coarsened and my eyebrows stiffened with salt.
While I watched Gordianus beginning to gloat at his own good luck, I blotted out the irony of my own predicament. If I did earn this bonus, it would be one small instalment towards the four hundred thousand sesterces that might have helped me approach Helena. Informing is a drab old business. The pay’s filthy, the work’s wane, and if you ever find a woman you don’t have the money, or the time, or the energy… And she leaves you anyway.
I told myself I would feel better once I enjoyed a long and steamy hour, with decent hot water in ample quantities, in the pontiff’s private baths. A good bathe when you really need it can get you over almost anything.
Then I remembered that clumsy bastard Milo had broken my favourite oil flask at the Croton mansio.
XX
I was clean at last, well scraped and starting to relax, when the commotion occurred.
As the bathhouse was private, several glass and alabaster jars of interesting oils lived permanently on a marble shelf. I dipped in discreetly and had my eye on a particular green flagon of hair pomade for a final therapeutic touch…
As I unwound in the luxurious hot steam room, I felt I had the measure of what had been going on. The Curtius brothers owned a family tree so ancient that Romulus and Remus had carved their names in its moss. To them Vespasian was a nobody. His good generalship meant nothing; nor the forty years of service he had already given Rome. He ha
d no money and no famous ancestors. You cannot let people who own nothing but talent rise into the highest positions. What chance is there then for the upper-crust bunglers and fools?
Longinus and Gordianus, two impressionable boobies with more status than sense, must have been easy prey for stronger men with wickeder ideas. Longinus had paid for it cruelly, and all Gordianus really wanted now was an escape he would be able to explain away to their sons—
At this point heavy running footsteps interrupted my reverie.
As I rushed out with the slave who had come to fetch me, a stricken figure was being carried from the Temple to the house on a makeshift sling. Milo was arguing fiercely with Gordianus in the porch; when I appeared, all wet curls and wonderful unguents, and wrapped in a skimpy towel, the Chief Priest exclaimed idly, ‘Falco was in the bathhouse!’
I said, ‘Thanks for the alibi; so what was the crime?’
Gordianus, whose normal greyish pallor had become a sickly white, nodded as the unconscious man was hurried past us indoors; the deputy priest, the one who had been in charge while the pontiff was in mourning. The veil that would have covered his head at the altar was still tangled round him, soaked in crimson.
‘Poor fellow was found bleeding from a head wound. He had been felled with a lampstand. Someone had left your goat there in the Temple-‘
‘If that was an attempt to implicate me, it’s clumsy!’ I interrupted angrily. ‘I never take her inside the Lady’s sanctum, as you well know!’ A slave had brought me a tunic so I fought my way into it, with some difficulty since I was still wet.
‘Falco, the blow was badly aimed; he may live - but if so he will be fortunate-‘
‘Stop wondering; the blow was meant for you!’ I plucked at my clinging tunic as I turned from Gordianus to his steward, who was giving me a cross-eyed scowl. ‘Milo, I kept away from the Temple while pilgrims were there. Were you on watch?’ The huge oaf looked uncooperative, still remembering how I had brained him at Croton. ‘Think, Milo! This is urgent! Has there been anyone who looked less than genuine? Anyone asking questions? Anyone who for any reason sticks in your mind?’
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