We were silent. She was right of course. Snobbery can work two ways.
The fine rooms of the old house lay between the courtyard garden and the perimeter road. This meant the garden was peaceful, sheltered from traffic noise by the main structure. But on a still summer night we were aware of constant movement on the road behind. Voices and footsteps told their story: groups of men were making their way off-site. Most were on foot by the sound of it. They had eaten and were heading for their evening entertainment. Their destination could only be downtown Noviomagus to the low haunts that offered women, liquor, gambling, and music—the seedy delights of the canabae.
As the unseen irregular procession passed, I looked forward to the early hours, when they all would be returning. Helena read my thoughts. “I was too exhausted to notice last night. No doubt they creep back to their barracks like discreet mice.”
“Mice make a damned racket!” In Fountain court I had once lived with a rodent infestation who were all kitted out with army boots.
We were favored with visitors that evening. From the camp beyond the site huts came Sextius; someone else must be minding his cartload of goods because he brought Aelianus. I let them sit down and talk. We gave them beakers, though not food bowls. It would look fairly natural; we were all outsiders who came over from Gaul together and who had palled up. Sextius and his sidekick might have taken us seriously when we issued that old clichéd invitation, Do drop round for a drink some time. … When of course we really meant, Please don’t!
I was still carrying the baby, an informal touch.
Sextius fixed his attention on Maia, though he sat at a distance; he hardly spoke to her and made no overt move. She was still moping. Except when she wanted to insult someone, Maia kept to herself. Normally my sister was a cheerful soul, but when she moped, she intended the world to notice. Any one of my sisters in a bad mood could depress a whole family party; Maia, whose mood was usually the sunniest, now reckoned she was owed some deep gloom.
Hyspale dropped to her knees and for once started playing with Julia. That way, she too could distance herself. As a freedwoman, she was part of the family; we allowed her—indeed encouraged her—to join in when we conversed together generally. Her senatorial roots were showing again. Having to share space with a couple of statue-sellers horrified her. It took her some time to notice that the malodorous assistant was Camillus Aelianus, the spoiled darling of her previous refined home. Suddenly she squeaked with recognition. I did enjoy it.
He ignored her. She was the daughter of his childhood nurse. Aelianus was as much a snob as anyone around here. He was a thankless lout too.
He had rejected a seat, then roamed about, helping himself to leftover food from any bowl he could reach. Helena watched, taking note that I had let her brother almost starve. She would have fetched him a feast, but Aelianus was gorging on his own account. That’s the joy of a patrician background: it stuffs young lads with confidence.
“How did you get on with the architects?” I asked Sextius.
He shook his head. “They won’t see me.”
“Ah, well. Keep trying.”
Plancus and Strephon might well reject his tiresome novelties, so I hoped he would not try too hard. If he left Noviomagus, spurned, I would lose my handy plant. I wanted to keep Aelianus in the field.
Eventually the voracious lad stopped snacking. Equipping himself with a large beaker of undiluted wine, he sauntered closer to me.
“Falco!”
I rocked the baby, nuzzling her sweet-smelling head as if lost in purely paternal thought. “Any news?”
“Nothing much. I did see one of the managers having a big row today. Couldn’t get near enough to listen, but he was laying into a carter roundly.” From his subsequent description, I thought it could be the surveyor, Magnus.
“Hmm. I saw him poking about the delivery wagons this morning. Was he neatly dressed, smart boots, maybe a shoulder bag?” Aelianus shrugged uselessly. “What was in the cart?”
“Nothing; it looked empty. But the cart seemed to be what they were arguing about, Falco.”
“Is it still there?”
“No. Drove away later.”
“Heading where?”
“Umm …” he tried to remember. “Can’t be sure.”
“Oh, that’s helpful! Keep looking. This could be part of some materials racket. Anytime you are on your own near the parked-up wagons, try inspecting them surreptitiously, will you?”
He scowled. “I was hoping I could finish skulking.”
“Tough!” I said.
Not long after that, Favonia was sick on my shoulder—a good excuse to break up the party and retire for the night.
“Oh, it will sponge off!” jeered Maia as we went to our rooms. I was too experienced to be fooled. I had run out of tunics too.
The workmen who had been out to the canabae started coming home just as I nearly fell asleep. They rambled back in dribs and drabs, mostly quite unaware they might be disturbing people. They probably thought they were really quiet. Some were happy, some obscene, some full of loud animosity for the group in front. At least one found that he needed an extremely long pee, right against the palace wall.
Way into the hours of darkness, their noise finally ceased. That was when little Favonia decided to wake up and cry nonstop until morning.
XXV
MULSUM SERVED on a building site is disgusting. Unpalatable beverages must be provided to laborers deliberately, to discourage them from taking time off for drinks. To troops, stuck at the back end of nowhere, marching a long road through dense forest or trapped in some windswept frontier fort, even sour wine seems welcome—whilst in an emperor’s Triumph, when the army returns home to Rome in splendor, they are awarded real mulsum. That’s four measures of fine wine mixed with one of pure Attic honey. The farther you go up to the outposts of the Empire, the less hope there is of an elegant wine or genuine Greek sweetener. As nourishment deteriorates, your spirits droop. By the time you reach Britain, life can get no worse. Not, that is, until you are sitting on a building site and the mulsum boy arrives.
Refreshed by my night’s rest (that’s another bitter quip), I had crawled to my office. Bleary-eyed, I set to, peering at some wages bills in case I could find Gloccus or Cotta listed. I had been first up in our household. There was no breakfast. So I fell on my beaker cheerfully once the sniffing boy arrived. A mistake I would only make once.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Iggidunus.”
“Do me a favor—just bring me some hot water next time.”
“What’s wrong with the mulsum?”
“Oh … nothing!”
“What’s wrong with you, then?”
“Toothache.”
“What do you want water for?”
“Medicine.” Cloves are supposed to dull the pain. They did not work on my dying molar; Helena had tried cloves on me for the last week. But anything would taste better than the mulsum boy’s offering.
“You’re an odd one!” Iggidunus scoffed, hurrying off in a huff.
I called him back. My brain must be working in its sleep. I had not found Gloccus and Cotta, but I had spotted an anomaly.
I asked whether Iggidunus served a brew to everyone, the entire site. Yes, he did. How many beakers? He had no idea.
I told Gaius to provide Iggidunus with a waxed tablet and a stylus. Of course he could not write. Instead, I showed the boy how to create a record using five-barred gates. “Four upright sticks, then one across. Got it? Then start another set. When you finish, I can count them.”
“Is this some clever Egyptian abacus trick, Falco?” Gaius grinned.
“Do one round of the site, Iggidunus.”
“I only do one. It takes all day.”
“That’s hard on the people who miss you.”
“Their mates tell me. I leave their cup with a tile on top.”
“So there’s no escape! Count every mulsum cup you serve. Also, put down
a stick for anyone who should get a beaker but who says no thanks. Then bring the tablet back to me here.”
“With some hot water?”
“That’s right. Boiling would be nice.”
“You are joking, Falco?”
Off Iggidunus went. I placed my beaker of mulsum on the floor for Nux. My shaggy hound took one sniff, then stalked off to the clerk’s side of the office.
He stared at me. “Gaius, can you find me the tallies for the caterer’s regular food order?”
He shuffled around, identified them and heaved them over to me. Then he leaned across, so he saw which records I was already working on and the notes I had scribbled. It took him no time to make the connection. “Oh, rats!” he said. “I never thought of that.”
“You see my point.” I was cradling my cheek gloomily. “Nothing matches, Gaius. The wages bill is high. Money drains away through a sieve—and yet look at these food invoices. The quantities of wine and provisions brought in don’t marry up for those numbers of men. … I’d say the supplies quantities are about right for those I’ve seen on-site. It’s the labor figures that are suspect. If you look around outside, we have hardly any of the trades, other than basic heavies who can dig trenches.”
“The workforce is low, Falco; that’s proved by the way the program keeps slipping. The clerk who keeps the program doesn’t care, he just plays dice all day. The project team explained it as ‘delays due to bad weather’ when I queried it.”
“They always say that.” Trying to employ Gloccus and Cotta back in Rome had taught me the system. “Either rain threatens to spoil their concrete—or it’s too hot for the men to work.”
“None of my business anyway; I’m here to count beans.”
I sighed. He had tried. He was just a clerk. He had so little authority, everyone ran rings around him.
“It’s time you and I counted heads, not beans.” I took him into my confidence. “Here’s my theory: it looks like at least one of our merry supervisors is claiming for a phantom labor force.”
Gaius leaned back with his arms folded. “Whew! I like working with you, Falco. This is fun!”
“No, it’s not. It’s very serious.” I could see a black hole opening up. “It may explain why Lupus and Mandumerus are at odds. There could be a turf war for control of the labor fiddle. That’s bad news. Whichever of the supervisors is running the racket, Gaius, listen: take great care. Once they know we’ve found out, life will become extremely dangerous.”
Gaius then continued with his own work rather quietly.
I slipped out later, to look into another aspect. I had been thinking about Magnus and his peculiar behavior yesterday around the delivery carts. He had claimed he was “checking a marble consignment.” I thought it unlikely—but clever frauds often deceive you not with lies but with cunning half-truths.
I wanted to find the area where marble was being worked. I was led there by the screeching and scraping noises of saw blades. With Nux at my heels, I made my way into the fenced enclosure. Men were preparing and squaring up newly delivered irregular blocks, using hammers and various grades of chisels. Nux ran off with her tail down, alarmed by the din, but I could only put my fingers in my ears as I hung around, inspecting various upright slabs.
Four men were pushing and pulling a multibladed saw to split a blue-gray block into pieces for inlay. The untoothed iron blades were supported in a wooden box frame, its progress lubricated by pouring water and sand into the cuts. By a slow and careful process, the men were slicing through the stone to produce several delicately fine sheets at once. From time to time they lifted the saw, resting their hands. A boy then moved in to brush away the damp powder produced by their labor, the marble “flour,” which I knew would be collected and used by the plasterers, mixed into their topcoats to give an extra fine glossy finish. The boy then fed new sand and water into the saw grooves to provide abrasion, and the sawyers resumed their cutting.
The resulting slabs would then be stacked vertically according to their thickness and quality. Lying around haphazardly were a number of broken blocks, which must have shattered under the saw. Elsewhere fine sheets had been laid out on benches and were now being smoothed to a high finish with ironstone blocks and water.
As I wandered around, I was amazed by the color and variety of the marble being worked on. It all seemed a little premature, given that the new building was only at foundation stage. Perhaps that was because the materials were coming from far-flung places and needed to be acquired well in advance. Preparation on-site would take a very long time, in view of the huge scale of the proposed palace.
The head marble mason found me watching. He dragged me into his hut. There I readily accepted the offer of a hot drink—since he had despaired of Iggidunus and was brewing up his own on a small tripod.
“I’m Falco. You’re—?”
“Milchato.” They were a cosmopolitan bunch here. Who knows where he hailed from with a name like that? Africa or Tripolitania. Egypt, possibly. He had grizzled gray hair, but his skin was dark; so was his narrow beard. His origin must be somewhere the web-footed Phoenicians left their mark. Or raking up old sores, let’s call it somewhere Carthaginian.
“Worth the fire risk.” I grinned as he blew on the charcoal burner, heating up wine in a small bronze folding saucepan. A man who tolerated life in a temporary camp by bringing his own battery of comforts. It reminded me, with a pang, of my efficient friend Lucius Petronius. Britain was where he and I served in the army. I was seriously missing Petro. “I’ve been looking at your stock. I thought most of the planned decoration on the palace would be paint—but Togidubnus seems to like his marble too. I’m staying in the old house; there’s quite a range there. Surely it’s not local?”
“Some.” He sprinkled dry herbs in two beakers. “You’ll see a bluish colored British stone. Slightly rough.” Ferreting among the clutter, he tossed me a piece of it. “Comes from down the coast to westward. And what else has the old fella got? Oh, there’s a red from the Mediterranean—and some brown speckled stuff from Gaul, if I remember.”
“You worked on the old house?”
“I was just a lad!” He grinned.
Like the other craftsmen, he had a vast array of samples scattered around him. Irregular pieces of multicolored marble lay everywhere. A few had tablets pegged under them, with what must be firm orders for the new scheme. Leaning casually against the hut’s doorframe, used as a doorstop, was a superb finished panel of inlaid veneers with a pentagon set in a circle. I picked up a delicate molding with a seductive shine. It looked like a dado rail or a border between panels.
“Fillets!” exclaimed Milchato. “I like a few carved fillets.”
“This is exquisite. And I’ve rarely seen so many types of marble in one place.”
Milchato demonstrated offhandedly. They came from places far apart: the blue stone, plus a similar gray, from Britain and then crystalline white from the central hills of distant Phrygia. He had a fine green-and-white-veined type from the foothills of the Pyrenees, a yellow and white from Gaul, more than one variety from Greece. …
“Your import costs must be staggering!”
Milchato shrugged. “That’s why there will be quite a lot of paintwork—including mock marbling.” He seemed relaxed about it. “They’ve brought a lad over to do it. Naturally it’s not his field; he’s really a landscape specialist—”
“Typical!” I sympathized.
“Oh … Blandus knows him. Jobs for the guild, you know. Some smartarse from Stabiae—it’s no problem; I can train him in what marble really looks like. The young fellow’s all right, quite bright really—for a painter.” Milchato drained his beaker. He must have a throat that could swallow hot bitumen. “My contract is big enough to keep me busy and, believe me, Falco, I can buy what I want. Free hand. Authority to draw on resources from anywhere in the Empire. Can’t ask for more than that.”
But could he, though? Was he somehow padding his salary? I would have t
o check how much stone was being imported and whether it was all still here.
“I’ll be frank,” I said. “You know I am here to look for problems. There may be diddling with the marble.”
Milchato gazed at me, wide-eyed. He was giving his most careful attention to this theory of mine. If he studied it any more seriously, I would think he was mocking me. “Whoops! Do you think so?”
“I wouldn’t insult you by claiming it, otherwise,” I replied dryly.
“That’s terrible. … Surely a mistake.” He ran one hand over his beard which rasped as if he had tough hairs and dry skin.
“Do you rule it out?” Only an idiot rules out fraud anywhere on a building site.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Falco.” Now he was being open and helpful. “No, it’s entirely possible. … In fact, you may well be right.”
This was easy. I always like that. “Any ideas?”
“The sawyers!” cried Milchato at once, almost eagerly. Yes, it was very easy. Loyalty to his labor force was not his strong feature. Still, I was the man from Rome; he would feel even less respect for me. “Bound to be them. Some of them deliberately use too coarse a grain of sand when they’re cutting. It wears away more than necessary of the slabs. We have to order more material. The client pays. The sawyers split the difference with the marble supplier.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“I have had my own suspicions for a while. This fiddle is famous. Oldest trick in the book.”
“Milchato, that is extremely helpful.” I rose to leave. He came to the door with me. I slapped him around the shoulders. “I’m glad I called on you. This will save me days of work, you know. Now I’m going to leave you with it for a while; I want you to look out for the trick, and see if you can put a stop to it. I could order the bastards to be sent home again, but we’re really stuck out here. I can’t lose them. Obtaining new labor for a specialism is too difficult.”
A Body in the Bathhouse Page 16