Ode To A Banker

by Lindsey Davis

  Urbanus smiled. ‘The wild warriors on the fringes probably believe they will lose their souls if they wash in a bathhouse. Others accept the gifts of the Empire. Since becoming Roman was inevitable, I grabbed it; my family had means, luckily. The poor are poor wherever they are born; the well-to-do, whoever they are, can choose their stamping ground. I was a lad who could have turned awkward in adolescence; instead, I saw where the good life lay. I went hotfoot for civilisation, all the way south through Gaul. I learned Latin - though Greek might have been more useful as my leaning was to drama; I joined a theatregroup, came to Rome, and when I understood how plays work, I wrote them myself ‘

  ‘Self-taught?’

  ‘I had a good acting apprenticeship.’

  ‘But your gift for words is natural?’

  ‘Probably,’ he agreed, though modestly.

  ‘The trick in life is to see what your gifts are,’ Helena commented. ‘I hope it is not rude to say this, but your background was very different. You had to learn a completely new culture. Even now you would, say, find it difficult to write a play about your homeland.’

  ‘Intriguing thought! But it could be done,’ Urbanus told her genially. ‘What a joke, to dress up a set of pastoral Greeks, modernise an old theme, and say they are prancing in a British forest!’

  Helena laughed, flattering him for his daring. He took it like a spoonful of Attic honey from a dripping cone. He liked women. Well, that always gives an author twice the audience. ‘So you write plays of all types?’ she asked.

  ‘Tragical, comical, romantic adventure, mystical, historical.’

  ‘Versatile! And you must really have studied the world.’

  He laughed. ‘Few writers bother.’ Then he laughed again. ‘Theywill never own as many cows as me.’

  ‘Do you write for the money or the fame?’ I enquired.

  ‘Is either worth having alone?’ He paused, and did not answer the question. He must have the money already, yet we knew there was public muttering about his reputation.

  ‘So,’ I put in slyly, ‘what did Chrysippus have to say to you the day he died?’

  Urbanus stilled. ‘Nothing I wanted to hear.’

  ‘I have to ask ‘

  ‘I realise.’

  ‘Was your conversation amicable?’

  ‘We had no conversation.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I did not go.’

  ‘You are on my list!’

  ‘So what? I had been told that the man wanted to see me; I had no reason to see him. I stayed away.’

  I consulted my notes. ‘This is a list of visitors, not just people who had been invited.’

  Urbanus did not blink. ‘Then it is a mistake.’

  I drew a long breath. ‘Who can vouch for what you say?’

  ‘Anna, my wife.’

  As if responding to a cue she appeared again, nursing a baby. I wondered if she had been listening. ‘Wives cannot appear in a Roman law court,’ I reminded them.

  Urbanus shrugged, with wide-open hands. He glanced at his wife. Her face was expressionless. ‘Who wants to prosecute me?’ he murmured.

  ‘I do, if I think you are guilty. Wives don’t make good alibis.’

  ‘I thought that was all wives were for,’ muttered Helena, from her stool. Urbanus and I gazed at her and allowed the jest. Anna was nuzzling her child. A woman who was used to sitting quietly and listening to what went on around her, one perhaps who could be so unobtrusive you forgot she was there…

  ‘I had no reason to meet Chrysippus,’ the playwright reiterated. ‘He is - was - a bastard to work for. Plays do not sell well, not modern plays anyway; the Classics are always desired reading. But I manage to be marketable, unlike most of the sad mongrels Chrysippus supported. As a result, I found a new scriptorium to take my work.’

  ‘So you were dumping him? Were you on contract?’

  He humphed. ‘His mistake! He had not allowed it. I did think - that is, Anna thought - he might be seeking to tie me in. That was another reason to keep out of his way.’

  ‘And would it have been a reason to kill him?’

  ‘No! I had nothing to gain by that and everything to lose. I earn ticket money, remember. He was no longer important to me. I deal separately with the aediles or private producers when my work is performed. When I was younger royalties on scrolls were make or break, but now they are just incidentals. And my new scriptorium is one with a Forum outlet - much better.’

  ‘Did Chrysippus know?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  I wondered what happened to the heaped chests of box office money, after the family paid the bills for their frugal life. ‘Do you bank with him?’

  Urbanus threw back his head and roared. ‘You must be joking, Falco!’

  ‘All bankers screw their clients,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Yes, but he made enough from my plays. I saw no reason to be screwed by the same man twice over.’

  While I sat thinking, Helena contributed another question: ‘Falco is looking at motives, of course. You seem more fortunate than the others. Even so, there are jealous murmurs against you, Urbanus.’

  ‘And what would those be?’ If he knew, he was not showing it.

  Helena looked him in the eye. ‘You are suspected of not writing your plays yourself ‘

  It was Anna, the wife, who growled angrily at that.

  Urbanus leaned back. There was no visible annoyance; he must have heard this accusation before. ‘People are strange - luckily for playwrights, or we would have no inspiration.’ He glanced at his wife; this time she ventured a pale half-smile. ‘The charge is of the worst kind - possible to prove, if true, yet if untrue, quite impossible to refute.’

  ‘A matter of faith,’ I said.

  Urbanus showed a flash of anger now. ‘Why are mad ideas taken so seriously? Oh of course! Certain types will never accept that literate and humane writing with inventive language and depth of emotion can come from the provinces - let alone from the middle of Britain.’

  ‘You’re not in the secret society. “Oh only an educated Roman could produce this”…

  ‘No; we are not supposed to have anything to say, or to be capable of expressing it… Who do they say writes for me?’ he roared scornfully.

  ‘Various improbable suggestions,’ Helena said. ‘Maybe Scrutator had told her; maybe she had pursued the gossip herself. ‘Not all of them even alive.’

  ‘So who am I - this man before you - then supposed to be?’

  ‘The lucky dog who counts in the ticket money,’ I grinned. ‘While the mighty authors you are “impersonating” let you spend their royalties.’

  ‘Well, they are missing all the fun,’ Urbanus responded dryly, suddenly able to let the subject rest.

  ‘Let’s get back to my problem. It could be argued,’ I put to him quietly, ‘that this is a malicious rumour, which Chrysippus began spreading because he knew he was losing you. Say you were so affronted by the rumour you went to his house to remonstrate, then the two of you argued and you lost your cool.’

  ‘Far too drastic. I am a working author,’ the playwright protested in a mild way. ‘I have nothing to prove and I would not throw away my position. And as for literary feuds - Falco, I don’t have the time.’

  I grinned and decided to try a literary approach: ‘Help us, Urbanus. If you were writing about the death of Chrysippus, what would you say had happened? Was his money a motive? Was it sex? Is a frustrated author behind it, or a jealous woman, or the son perhaps?’

  ‘Sons never rise to action.’ Urbanus smiled. ‘They live with the anger for too long.’ From personal experience, I agreed with him. ‘Sons brood, and fester, and permanently tolerate their indignities. Of course, daughters can be furies!’

  Neither woman present took him up on that. His wife, Anna, had not contributed to the discussion, but Urbanus now asked her the question: whom would she accuse?

  ‘I would have to think about it,’ Anna said cautiously and with som
e interest. Some people say that as a put-off; she sounded as if she meant she really would mull it over. ‘Of course,’ she put to me, with a teasing glint, ‘I may have killed Chrysippus, for my husband’s sake.’ Before I could ask if she did it, she added crisply, ‘However, I am too busy with my young children, as you see.’

  I was satisfied that Urbanus would have been stupid to kill Chrysippus. He was in the clear, but he interested me. The conversation drifted into more general matters. I confessed to having experience as a working playwright in a theatre troupe myself. We talked about our travels. I even asked advice on The Spook Who Spoke, my best effort at drama. From my description, Urbanus thought this brilliant farce ought to be turned into a tragedy. That was rubbish; perhaps he was not such an incisive master of theatre after all.

  While we chatted, Anna was still holding the small baby on her shoulder, smoothing its gown over its back when it grew fractious. Both Helena and I noticed that she had inky fingers. Helena told me afterwards that she thought it might be significant. ‘Have the rumourmongers picked up something genuine? Is it Anna who has the way with words?’

  Nice thought. You could make a play about a woman taking on a man’s identity. If it turned out to be a woman who actually wrote Urbanus’ plays, now that really would be a piece of theatre!

  XXXI

  LAST NIGHT Petro and I had summoned Lucrio to an interview today. Although Petro had given him an hour at which to arrive, we were prepared for him not to show, or at least to turn up late. To our surprise, he was there.

  We all became extremely friendly by the light of day. We had all had time to adjust our positions.

  Petro and I had, in the Roman way, appropriated the only chairs as the persons in authority. Lucrio did not care. He walked about and calinly waited to be put through the grinding-mill. He was constantly masticating nuts of some sort; he chewed with his mouth open.

  He was a definite type. I could imagine him in his younger days, turning the contractual tricks - cutting corners and boasting about deals with his brash friends, all belt buckles and big-bossed cloak brooches. Now he was maturing; changing from loud to subtle; from risky to absolutely dangerous; from a mere chanter to a much smoother operator, able to guide clients into lifetimes of debt.

  Before I came to the patrol-house, I had been to see Nothokleptes. He had given me some interesting information about Lucrio’s past. Petronius started the interview by agreeing that, since the tunic-thief had returned to jail of his own accord after he thought about the consequences, he would now release Lucrio’s slaves (sending them home without letting Lucrio talk to them). Unbeknown to him, they had been well grilled. Fusculus had volunteered to come in on the day shift; after they had been starved all morning he took them bread and unwatered wine, and ‘made friends’ with the six of them. That had been productive too.

  ‘Your documents have all been returned to you, Lucrio, so that’s in order,’ said Petro, taking charge, while I just wrote notes in an ominous manner. ‘I would like to discuss the general situation and management of the Aurelian Bank Chrysippus set it up, with the aid of his first wife, Lysa. Did he come from a financial background originally?’

  ‘Old Athens family,’ Lucrio asserted proudly. ‘He was in shipping insurance; most of that business is conducted in Greece and the East, but he could see there was a gap in the market so he and Lysa moved here.’

  ‘He specialised in loans?’

  ‘Cargo loans mostly.’

  ‘That’s risky?’

  ‘Yes and no. You have to exercise your judgement - is the ship sound? Is the captain competent? Is the cargo likely to fetch a profit and will there be another available for it to carry home? And then -‘ He paused.

  Petronius, in his quiet way, was on top of the subject: ‘You make a loan to a trader to cover the cost of a voyage. Insurance. If a ship founders, there is no obligation on the trader to repay the loan. You cover the loss. And if that ship returns home safely, the banker is repaid - plus an enormous profit.’

  ‘Well, not enormous,’ Lucrio demurred. He would.

  ‘Because of the risk of miscarriage in a storm, shipping lenders are exempt from normal rules on maximum interest?’ Petro went on.

  ‘Only fair,’ said Lucrio. ‘We end up paying for all the voyages that come to grief.’

  ‘Not all of them, I think. You protect yourselves as much as possible.’

  ‘Where we can, legate.’

  ‘Tribune,’ Petro corrected him briefly, assuming Rubella’s title without a blush.

  ‘Sorry. Just a form of words.’

  My friend Lucius Petronius inclined his head loftily. I hid a grin. ‘This protection of yours,’ he continued, worrying away, ‘it can take the form of limiting the period of the loan?’

  ‘Routine condition, tribune.’

  ‘So a journey you are insuring must be completed within a specified number of days?’

  ‘During good sailing weather. There will normally be a date for completion of the voyage written into the contract.’

  ‘So if the ship sinks, you as lender do pay the costs - but only provided the journey has been undertaken in the right period? But if the ship delays sailing until after the loan’s expiry date, and then it sinks in the drink - who is liable?’

  ‘Not us!’ exclaimed the freedman.

  ‘You, of course, like that,’ Petronius returned, rather coolly. ‘But the owner does not. He has lost his ship and its cargo - and he still has to repay your loan.’

  ‘He loses twice over. But that’s his fault.’

  ‘Well, his captain’s.’

  ‘Right - for dilly-dallying. These are the rules of the sea, tribune. It’s traditional. Was there some reason,’ enquired Lucrio, very politely, ‘why you were interested in this aspect?’

  Petronius folded his arms and leaned forwards on them. I knew this action. He was about to bring out the gossip we had acquired. ‘You have a client at the bank called Pisarchus?’

  Lucrio managed to retain his affable, unflustered dodger’s attitude. ‘Of course this is confidential - but I believe we do.’

  ‘Big debtor?’

  ‘Not too clever.’

  ‘He lost two different ships, both sailing out of time, last winter?’

  ‘A foolish man. Now he needs to readjust his investments rather sharply.’

  ‘Does he have anything left to invest, though?’ asked Petronius.

  ‘Well, you could have a point there!’ chortled Lucrio, treating the reference to big debts as a big joke.

  Petro remained cool. ‘Shippers are notorious for having no personal capital. A little mouse has been squeaking to me that Pisarchus is in severe distress over his losses, that he may not be able to repay what he owes, and that Chrysippus and he had a quarrel.’

  ‘My, my!’ marvelled Lucrio. ‘Somebody must have been pulling really hard on this little mouse’s tail. I hope no naughty members of the vigiles have been asking questions of my slaves without clearing it with me?’

  That was when I moved in and took over. ‘No, we learned about Pisarchus from a private source.’ Nothokleptes. ‘It is freely available gossip in the Janus Medius.’ This must have been the first time in history Nothokleptes had given me something for nothing. ‘I hear the odds there are on Pisarchus as the killer, in fact. My interest centres on him too. I’m wondering if he was the man with the sour mood I myself saw at the scriptorium, the very morning Chrysippus was killed.’

  Lucrio shook his head, sorrowing ‘I’m grieved to hear that, Falco. Pisarchus is one of our oldest clients. His family has dealt with the Chrysippus trapeza for generations back in Greece.’

  I flashed a smile. ‘Don’t fret. Maybe it’s not him. Still, it has given us a clear picture of how your trapeza operates.’

  ‘Nothing illegal.’

  ‘Nothing soft, either!’

  ‘We have to protect our investors.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure you do.’

  I let Petronius resume the q
uestioning. ‘Let’s clear up one tricky item, Lucrio.’ Now he would definitely try out the stuff that Fusculus had squeezed from the slaves. ‘I have a tip that you and Chrysippus went through a crisis once?’ Lucrio looked annoyed. Petronius spelled it out: ‘You have been the bank’s freedman-agent for a number of years. Before that, while you were still in service as a young slave - this must have been before you reached the age of thirty, when you could be freed - you were given a portfolio to manage on your master’s behalf, It was the usual situation: you were allowed to run the fund and to keep any profits, but the capital - what is called the peculium - still belonged to your master and had to be returned to him in due course. Now tell me - was there not a problem when you were first manumitted from slavery, and had to hand back the peculium and render an account of your management?’

  Lucrio had stopped casually pacing the room, though he continued chewing nuts. ‘It was a misunderstanding. There were queries on the figures; I was able to answer all of them.’

  ‘What sort of queries?’ insisted Petronius.

  ‘Oh - whether I had mixed up the peculium float.’

  ‘Mixed it with your own money? Had you?’

  ‘Not intentionally. I was a lad, a bit slapdash - you know how it is. We sorted it out. Chrysippus was never bothered. It was others who made much of it - jealous, probably.’

  ‘Yes, I assume Chrysippus ended up happy, because he went on to let you - in effect - run the bank ‘

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe he even thought that a slight tendency to sharp practice was just what he wanted in a manager?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lucrio, showing us a flash of teeth.

  Petronius Longus glanced through his set of note-tablets calmly. ‘Well, that seems to be everything covered.’ Lucrio let himself relax. Not that it was easy to tell, because he had been strikingly at ease all along. He made a move towards the door. ‘Any queries on your side, Falco?’ Petro asked.

  ‘Please.’ Petro sat back and I started the whole round from my viewpoint. Swapping control once Lucrio thought it was all over might unnerve him. Probably not, but it was worth a try.