Foreign Bodies

by David Wishart

  I went back downstairs. No sign, now, of Diligenta, but Cotuinda was waiting, and she saw me out.

  Right; where to now? There was still a slice of the morning left, and under normal circumstances I’d be reckoning I was due a cup of wine somewhere. However, a promise was a promise, so I was stymied. I still had my doubts about abstinence doing me any good, mind: far from feeling more chirpy and alert, I was going around half the time with my tongue hanging out.

  So. Perhaps a call on one of the also-mentioned: this phantom girlfriend of Titus’s, or at least on her father. Maybe a waste of time, but my gut feeling was telling me that the change in relationship between Titus and Cabirus was important in some way. Besides, he’d’ve had to have some reason apart from congenital secretiveness for deliberately lying to me about his love life. And the discovery on Cabirus’s part that his elder son was seeing – presumably, from the cover-up, with serious intentions – the daughter of a felon that he’d had publicly flogged would fit the bill pretty neatly.

  Doirus it was, then. With his farm, according to Biracus, out beyond the Western Gate. At least, starting from Diligenta’s, I was on the right side of town: the Gate lay at the west end of Boundary Marker Street, just down the road, in other words. I’d have to find the farm itself, of course, but there’d be enough locals around to direct me.

  There were plenty of farms on offer, mostly growing a selection of vegetables or grain: neither grapes nor olives were a viable crop here, as they would be as a matter of course on farms around a town in Italy, although I suspected that that might be more a result of cultural differences than of weather. Maybe things would change in the future. What you did get a lot of, and wouldn’t to the same extent back home, was livestock, particularly sheep and cows. Which was fair enough: wool is a major industry in Gaul, and they use far more dairy products than we do.

  I’d covered a scant quarter-mile when I spotted a guy hoeing a field of beans next to the road. I went over.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you can help me? I’m looking for Doirus’s place.’ He just looked at me blankly. Shit, of course; the language barrier. ‘Uh … I don’t speak Gallic. You speak Latin?’ Not a flicker. Hell. ‘Doirus? Farm?’ I put my hand palm down under my brows and mimed searching.

  He pointed further down the road. ‘Bridge. After—’ He tapped his right arm.

  ‘Got you.’ Well, evidently we’d reached the limits of his linguistic abilities; not that I could sneer, mind, because my command of Gallic was zilch. ‘Thanks, friend.’

  ‘Welcome.’

  I carried on. Bugger; now that was something I hadn’t thought of. So far, I hadn’t had anything to do with the local population, at least the ones outside the towns. Oh, sure, we’d passed through a fair stretch of rural Gaul on our way here, but that had been in a government-owned coach, with government-owned bought help to do the talking where talking had been needed, and stopping, between towns, at government-owned posting stations. We’d been effectively screened, all the way. I was assuming this Doirus guy – and, indeed, his daughter – spoke good Latin. Good enough to communicate in, anyway. If I was wrong then I was in complete schtuck.

  There was a bridge ahead, a small wooden one over a rush of stream-water, and, sure enough, a track leading off immediately to the right. I took it.

  The track ended in a farmyard: a wattle-and-daub cottage with outbuildings either side, a fenced-off area of tussocky grass with a few goats and a tethered cow, five or six geese, and a small flock of chickens running free about the yard. There was an oldish guy in a short tunic and trousers plus serious Gallic moustache and braids, forking dung-heavy straw out of one of the outbuildings into a wheelbarrow. He laid down the fork, wiped his forehead on his sleeve, and watched me in silence as I came closer.

  ‘Uh … you speak Latin, pal?’ I said.

  ‘Sure. Why shouldn’t I?’ A long way from friendly – I was getting a look that was suspicious, at best – but at least we were communicating. That was a relief, at any rate.

  ‘No offence,’ I said. ‘It’s just that the guy hoeing beans that I asked directions from half a mile up the road hardly had a word.’

  He snorted. ‘That’d be Iccavus. He was putting you on. A real joker, is Iccavus.’

  ‘Right. Right.’ Oh, ha! Well, Nerva had said that Gallic humour could be pretty gross. And no doubt the locals viewed any likely Roman as fair game. ‘You Doirus?’

  ‘I am.’ Still no smile, and the suspicion was there in spades. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘The name’s Corvinus. I’m looking into the death of Claudius Cabirus.’

  He spat to one side. ‘So?’

  ‘Your daughter Aia’s friendly with his son. Titus.’

  That got me a long, slow look. ‘Is she, indeed? That’s news to me.’

  Damn; now there was a complication I hadn’t thought of! ‘You mean you didn’t know?’

  ‘Too right I didn’t. I’d’ve had words with the little trollop otherwise. And I will, too, now that I do, the next time I see her.’

  Oh, hell; I’d really screwed that one up, hadn’t I? That was twice in one day I’d put someone’s back up. And Titus wasn’t going to be a very happy bunny when he found out, either; him and the lady both. Nice going, Corvinus.

  ‘You mean she doesn’t live here?’ I said.

  ‘No. She’s in service in town, has been for the past year. She lives in, naturally.’

  ‘Whereabouts? Just out of interest?’

  ‘“Just out of interest”, eh?’ He picked up the fork again. ‘What’s your game?’

  ‘Nothing, pal, nothing.’ I held up my hands. ‘I said: I’m looking into Claudius Cabirus’s murder. On behalf of the emperor.’

  ‘The emperor, is it? Fancy!’ But he’d lowered the fork. ‘All right. She works for the Valentus family. They’ve a house near the Ocean Gate.’ Interesting; not far from the Cabirus place itself. The two families would be practically neighbours. Maybe that’s how the two had met. ‘Now if that’s all you came for you can push off. I’ve work to do.’

  ‘I understand you had a brush with Cabirus yourself some time back.’

  Another long, slow look. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘The joint senior magistrate. Julius Biracus.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He sucked on a tooth. ‘Well, then.’ He laid the fork aside, pulled the tunic over his head and turned round. His back was a mass of healed scars. ‘There you are. That was my “brush” with Cabirus. Satisfied?’ He turned to face me again and put the tunic back on. ‘I’d’ve thought the girl would’ve had more pride than to take up with any relation of that bastard. She’s a good lass, Aia, at root, always has been. It hit her hard enough at the time, and with her mother dead of the fever when she was five, and her being the only one we had living, we were pretty close.’

  ‘So what was it for? The flogging? You mind telling me?’

  ‘We were behind with our taxes. The procurator sent his men to take most of the season’s grain in their place. We’d had a piss-poor harvest that year, and it would’ve meant either that there was damn all seed corn left for the next season or that we’d have a slim winter of it. I tried to stop them and one got hit. I broke the bastard’s nose for him.’ He shrugged. ‘I should’ve saved myself the effort. They took the corn anyway, and I got twenty lashes at the next assize. Courtesy of Claudius fucking Cabirus. So don’t ask me to be sorry someone stuck a knife into him, because you won’t get any tears from me.’

  Yeah, well; I supposed that that was understandable, under the circumstances. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll be getting back. Thanks for your help.’

  ‘What help?’ He picked up the fork again. ‘You see Aia, you tell her from me to drop that sod like a hot brick, find someone decent, or she’ll have me to reckon with. She’ll listen; like I say, she isn’t a bad girl at heart. But you know kids that age, they’ve no sense, particularly the girls. Think they know best, and to hell with everything else.’
r />   ‘Yeah. Way of the world, pal. Way of the world.’

  ‘It certainly is.’ He turned back to his work, and I started walking back up the track.

  Food for thought.

  EIGHT

  I got back to the residence in the middle of the afternoon. No sign of Perilla yet – she’d still be out on her culture jag with Caninia and, doubtless, Domitius bloody Crinas, over in Condate – so I settled down for a much-needed think in the conservatory with a cup of Bathyllus’s doctored-but-don’t-ask-too-many-questions wine.

  She rolled in – alone, this time – just short of the dinner hour.

  ‘Have a nice time?’ I said sourly.

  ‘Oh, yes. It was fascinating.’ She sat. Bathyllus materialized behind me. ‘The usual, please, Bathyllus. Marcus, the complex is huge. You should’ve come with us.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was working, wasn’t I? And I had a pretty interesting day of my own.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Profitable, instructive, and in places surprising. Who could ask for more? Except that it was a tad lacking in alcoholic content.’

  ‘Marcus …’

  ‘OK.’ I shrugged. ‘Even so.’

  ‘Did you tell Diligenta about Quintus?’

  ‘Yeah. Actually, she didn’t seem too concerned. Still, I can see her point: he is family, and every family has their black sheep. Or at least a seriously-off-white one. She evidently thinks she can sort things out for herself.’

  ‘That’s very generous of her. And very forgiving.’

  ‘Maybe. But I wouldn’t like to be in Brother Quintus’s shoes when that lady gets him on the mat and faces him with it. She’s no pushover, Diligenta. The problem is, it knocks the theory that Quintus is our killer into a cocked hat.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, she seemed to think that, even if he did know, her husband would’ve taken the same line. There would’ve been no reason for Quintus to kill him to cover up his tracks.’

  ‘Quintus might not have known that.’

  ‘No. All the same, she said that he would’ve done, she’s known him for a long time, and naturally it goes the other way as well. Plus, of course, the two men were brothers. If she says she doesn’t think Quintus is capable of murder – which she does – then her opinion carries weight; while on his part Quintus would’ve been able to lay a pretty safe bet that, even if he had been rumbled, he’d get away with no more than a smacked wrist. So yes, the guy could very well have been our perp in theory, but in practice there’re too many objections. Unless he had some other motive, of course. Bugger.’

  Bathyllus shimmered in with the lady’s barley water on a tray. ‘Dinner will be served shortly, sir. Madam,’ he said. ‘If that’s convenient.’

  ‘Fine, little guy,’ I said. ‘By the way, we don’t need the grand butler act when we’re by ourselves with no company, right? So tone it down a little, will you?’

  He sniffed, and exited.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ Perilla said.

  ‘Yeah, well, we don’t, and he should.’

  ‘What other motive could he have? Quintus, I mean?’

  ‘None that I know of. But crooked is as crooked does. I don’t altogether trust Brother Quintus any more. Besides, there’s something out of kilter about his past. About the whole family’s past, for that matter.’

  ‘Oh, yes? What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe – probably – nothing that’s relevant. But that was the second thing I found out today, from my talk with the senior magistrate, Julius Biracus. You know old Cornelius Lentulus? Lives up the road from us, on the Caelian?’

  ‘Yes, Marcus, of course I do. What has Lentulus got to do with anything?’

  ‘They’ve got a lot in common, those two, besides their size. Ask Lentulus anything about goings-on in the Senate and the murky back corridors of power any time these fifty-odd years and he’ll have the details at his fingertips. I reckon Biracus is the same where Lugdunum’s concerned. And like Lentulus he knows far more than he’s telling. Or in this case hinting; at least, reading between the lines, I think he was.’

  ‘So what, specifically, was he hinting about the Cabirus family?’

  ‘That it was no coincidence that they moved from Augusta to Lugdunum just after the Florus revolt.’

  ‘Perhaps not. And?’

  ‘What do you mean, “and”?’

  ‘Marcus, it would have been perfectly understandable, under the circumstances. Life couldn’t have been too easy there at the time. To begin with, in the aftermath there would probably be reparations to pay, so money would be tight in general. And because of the revolt, relations with their former customers outwith the region, Roman and otherwise, would have been soured, or at least tinged with suspicion.’

  ‘Only if they’d supported the wrong side.’

  ‘Did they?’

  I frowned. ‘That’s what I’m not clear on; not as far as the family as a whole is concerned. Biracus fudged it. Oh, he admitted he’d done as much, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that it didn’t matter any more, that the world had moved on these past twenty years. But he did say that Diligenta’s brother had gone in with Florus, and that the two of them – Diligenta and Licnus, that was the brother’s name – had been pretty close. The implication was there.’

  ‘Come on, Marcus!’ Perilla sipped her barley water. ‘Biracus is absolutely right: the revolt was a generation ago, it’s long over and done with, and who supported whom at the time is completely academic. Certainly it has no current relevance.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I was still frowning. ‘Even so, Diligenta didn’t at all like me bringing up the subject. She got quite heated, in fact.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Some Roman who only arrived two days ago goes poking his nose into a part of her private life that she’s long since left behind, then practically accuses a member of her family to her face of being a traitor. How would you feel yourself?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly—’

  ‘That’s what it sounded like to me, dear. And my sympathies are all with Diligenta.’

  ‘Well, maybe. And as you say it’s irrelevant now. Forget it.’ I shifted in my chair. ‘Anyway, there’s a lot more to report. Like I say, Biracus was a gold mine. First of all, young Titus Cabirus has a girlfriend called Aia.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Only that that’s curious in itself. When I talked to him yesterday about his plans for the future he said he was thinking of a career in the army, and that there was nothing barring his family to keep him here. I asked about girlfriends and he said no, he hadn’t got one.’

  Perilla laughed. ‘Marcus, be realistic! He’s – what – nineteen years old? For a start, she may be a casual attachment, and for another thing, again, it was no business of yours.’

  ‘Admitted. But you weren’t there at the time. It was a straight denial to a straight question. Why should he lie, which is exactly what he did, if it wasn’t important in some way? It was no skin off his nose, or it shouldn’t have been.’

  ‘There could be several reasons, all perfectly innocent. Is the girl from the same social class as he is? Because if not then he might consider that the fewer people who know about her the better, particularly since the information might get back to his family. Does Diligenta know she exists?’

  ‘No. Actually, she doesn’t. I know that for sure. But—’

  ‘There you are, then. Didn’t you have any dubious girlfriends yourself at that age?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, as it happens, now you come to mention it, off and on, but—’

  ‘And you kept them quiet from your parents too, yes?’

  Bugger. ‘Look, lady,’ I said. ‘Just cut it out and listen, will you? I know what I’m talking about. This is a different ball game altogether.’

  ‘Very well, dear. I’m sorry. You have the floor.’

  ‘I followed the girl up. Her father has a farm out in the sticks, and he was flogged on Cabirus’s orders a few years back for punching one o
f the procurator’s men’s lights out when they tried to take his grain for unpaid taxes; that’s the procurator’s men, note, the same outfit that her current boyfriend works for. Aia’s an only child, the mother’s long dead, and she and her father are very close. Given all that, what would be your conclusion?’

  She was twisting a lock of her hair. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Right. Ah. Chances are, the relationship is a set-up, and was from the start; she engineered it for reasons of her own. Which means that she’s a prime candidate for our perp.’

  ‘Oh, Marcus! That’s going just a bit too far, surely.’

  ‘Not at all. At least, not in my book. It makes sense, anyway, particularly if Titus knows nothing about the flogging part of things, which I’ll bet you he doesn’t. He’s never met the father himself, that’s for sure, so he’d have no reason to unless she told him off her own bat.’

  ‘Have you talked to her yet?’

  ‘No. But her father says she’s a maid or some such with a family by the name of Volentus, who’re practically neighbours to the Cabiri. I was planning on going round there tomorrow.’

  ‘My, you have had a busy day.’

  I grinned. ‘I’m not finished yet, lady. Take it in order. When I was at Diligenta’s I had another talk, if you can call it that, with young Publius. Upstairs in his room, which is where he spends most of his time.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Point is, he has a big work-table right under the window overlooking the garden, and when he’s working on his models that’s where he sits, facing the window itself. OK; so say on the afternoon of the murder Publius wasn’t asleep like he and his mother claimed. Say he decided to stay awake and work on the models instead.’

  ‘Then he couldn’t possibly have missed anyone going into or coming out of the garden.’

  ‘Right. Oh, sure, it’s not hundred per cent certain: the kid’s a complete geek where his hobby’s concerned, and that type tend to ignore the rest of the world when they’re absorbed in whatever they’re doing. But when I asked him if he’d gone to bed with the window-shutters open it fazed him for a moment before he told me he’d closed them; so my bet is that he wasn’t asleep at all, that he saw someone or something, and that he’s covering.’