'They are not ready for sale. Chrysippus must have been deciding which to publish. He was reviewing them – then interviewing some of the authors. Make sense?'
'Yes!' Passus consulted a note-tablet. 'I found some rejections among them. Poems by someone called Martialis had had scrawled on them, "Who is this? No – crap!" in red ink. And Constrictus – one of his regulars – had a submission where Chrysippus put "Usual fluff – Small edition; reduce payment."'
'Any good?'
'Sex and waffle. I couldn't be bothered to read it. The poetry was straightforward and I've just listed it. Now I'm stuck. But what's left is more my taste anyway.' He gestured to the untitled scrolls he was still trying to sort out 'Adventures; they have a romantic story, but the people spend most of their time separated and in trouble, so they never get too sloppy.'
I laughed. 'You're a fan of Greek novels!' Passus looked offended, then went red. 'No, I'm sorry. I'm not sneering, Passus. It's a change to have some culture in the vigiles. Look, Helena likes a yarn.' Helena Justina read everything. 'I want these with the missing titles to be fully evaluated. If you can carry on reading the one you've already started, I'll take the other scrolls home and get Helena to skim through – she's a very fast reader.'
Passus looked crestfallen. I told him with a smile that when Helena had finished he could have the scrolls back to read. He cheered up.
'Well, perhaps she can sort out the story that has two versions,' he suggested, quick to shed the most awkward job.
'I can try her with it… I'm going upstairs now for a word with the lovely Vibia.'
'I'll keep an ear out, Falco. If I hear a scream, I'll know you need rescuing.'
'Watch it. You stick with that adventure scroll. It might even tell us something useful.'
A staircase led to the upper reaches from near the main entrance door. It was curtained off; until I had seen Vibia gliding up on her glittery sandals earlier today, I had hardly noticed it.
Nobody stopped me. I walked quietly, as if I had permission. Self-confidence can take you a long way, even in a strange house.
There were various small rooms, frescoed yet not so grand as the ground-floor reception area. Most were bedrooms, some looking unoccupied as though they were kept for guests. One grand set of rooms, silent and shuttered, contained the master bedroom with the marital bed. If Vibia slept there now, she must feel like a lost little flea.
Eventually I found her in a smaller salon, propped up on a couchful of well-plumped cushions, chewing a stylus end.
'Writing! Dear gods, everyone's at it. I wish I had the ink-supply contract around here.'
Vibia flushed and put away the document. I wondered why she had been scribing it herself. 'No secretary? Don't tell me you are composing a love letter!'
'This is a formal notice asking a tenant to remove his possessions from my property,' she retorted frostily. I chanced my luck and held out my hand to look at it, but she clung on fiercely. It was her house. I was an uninvited male visitor. I knew better than to force her to do anything.
'Don't worry; I'm not going to make a grab for it. Informers avoid being accused of assaulting widows. Especially young attractive ones.'
She was naive enough to let any kind of compliment soften her. Lysa, her rival, would never have fallen for anything so routine. 'What do you want, Falco?'
'A private conversation, please. Business, regrettably.' I had lived with Helena Justina for three years, but I could still remember how to flirt. Well, I liked to practise on Helena.
'Business?' Vibia was already giggling. She signalled to her maids, who fluttered off. They would probably listen outside the door, but Vibia did not seem to have thought of that. No hardened campaigner apparently. Yet perhaps no innocent.
She was sitting up now, with one little foot bent under her. I joined her on the reading couch. Cushions jammed themselves into my back; their striped covers were packed hard with filling, uncomfortably reminding me how Glaucus had pummelled me; I hooked out a couple from behind me and dropped them on the floor. A lavish carpet, imported a vast distance from the East by camel-train, waited to receive these discards. My bootstuds caught slightly on the fine woollen tufts.
Vibia had perked up, now that someone handsome and masculine had come to play with her. How fortunate it was that I had bathed and shaved at Glaucus' comprehensive establishment. I would hate any hint of uncouthness to offend. And we were at close quarters now.
'What a lovely room!' I gazed around, but even Vibia cannot have supposed it was the creamy plaster covings and the painted swags of flower garland that concerned me. 'The entire house is striking – and I gather that you, lucky girl, have acquired it?'
At that she looked nervous. The smile on the wide mouth shrank a little, though the gash was still generous. 'Yes, it is mine I have just made an arrangement with my late husband's family.'
'Why?'
'What do you mean, why, Falco?'
'I mean, why did you have to ask for it – and why ever did they agree?'
Vibia bit her lip. 'I wanted somewhere to live.'
'Ah! You are a young woman, who had been married and mistress of her household for three years. Your husband died, rather unexpectedly – well, let us assume it really was unexpected,' I said cruelly. 'And you were faced with the prospect of returning like a child to your father's house. Unpalatable?'
'I love my papa.'
'Oh of course! But tell the truth. You had loved your freedom too. Mind you, you would not have been stuck for very long; any dutiful Roman father would soon find someone else for you. I'm sure he's surrounded by people he owes favours to who would take you off his hands… Don't you want to remarry?'
'Not now I have tried it!' scoffed Vibia. I noticed she did not argue with my assessment of her father's attitude.
I sucked my teeth. 'Well, you had a thirty-year age difference with Chrysippus.'
She smirked – not sweetly, but viciously. Interesting.
'Everyone else thinks you were a schemer who stole him from Lysa.'
'Everyone else? What do you think?' she demanded.
'That it was deliberately fixed. You probably had little to do with it originally. That doesn't mean you objected – any sensible girl would approve of such a rich husband.'
'What a horrid thing to say.'
'Yes, isn't it? Chrysippus probably paid your family a grand figure to get you; in return he acquired a connection with good people. His enhanced status was intended to help his son Diomedes. Then because Chrysippus gave so much to your father on your marriage -'
'You make it sound as if he bought me!' she shrieked.
'Quite.' I remained passionless. 'Because the price was so high, the bargain absolved Chrysippus from leaving you much in his will. Just the scriptorium – not a thriving concern – and not even the house attached to it. I dare say, if there had been children, other arrangements would have been made. He would have wanted children, to cement the connection with your family.'
'We were a devoted couple,' Vibia reiterated, churning out the same false-sounding claim she had presented to the vigiles and me the day her husband died.
I appraised her slim figure as we had done at her first interview. 'No luck with a pregnancy though? Juno Matrona! I hope nobody tried interfering with nature here?'
'I don't deserve this!'
'Only you know the truth of that fine declaration…' As I continued to be openly insulting, she said nothing. 'Devoted or not, you cannot enjoy having been purchased like a barrel of salt meat. Chrysippus treated his authors that way, but a woman prefers to be valued for her personality. I think, you were aware – or in time you became aware – of the reasons the Chrysippi – all of them, including Lysa in the interests of her beloved son – had wanted your marriage.'
Vibia no longer disputed it: 'An alliance for the improvement of all parties – such things happen frequently.'
'Discovering that Lysa had supported the idea must have been a shock though. Di
d you turn against your husband then? Enough, perhaps, to rid yourself of him?'
'It was not a shock. I always knew. It was no reason for me to kill my husband,' Vibia protested. 'Anyway, Lysa had a shock herself – Chrysippus soon realised that he liked being married to me.'
'I bet that pleased her! Did she turn against him?'
'Enough to kill him?' queried Vibia sweetly. 'Oh, I don't know – what do you think, Falco?' I ignored the invitation to speculate.
'Let's accept that you and your husband rubbed along together happily. When Chrysippus died unexpectedly, you were threatened with losing everything you had here. That made you harden your attitude. So you persuaded Lysa to let you have the family home. Marriage for the purposes of others will never happen to you again.'
'No, it won't.' It was a simple statement, impassively made. Not, I thought, a confession of murder.
The marriage was probably complex, as all marriages are. It had not necessarily been miserable. Vibia had possessed money and independence. As I saw her when we first met, and as Euschemon had described her, she was a wife whose domestic and social place was worth having. Chrysippus had doted on her, and he loved to show her off. Expecting only a marriage of convenience, Lysa had been genuinely angry at what had been sprung on her after so many years.
'Were you happy in bed?'
'Mind your own business.'
Vibia gave me a level stare. She was no virgin. That look was too confident – and too challenging. Nor did she carry the wounds, mental even more than physical, which would have resulted from three years of sexual abuse.
'Well, I don't think you suffered. But did you hunger for better, sweetheart?'
'What does that mean?'
'The staircase to your private apartment lies unguarded and, as I found today, it's deserted. Did a lover ever stroll upstairs to visit you?'
'Stop insulting me.'
'Oh, I am full of admiration – for your courage. If Chrysippus was often working in the library, you were taking quite a risk.'
'I would have been – if I had done it,' said Vibia harshly. 'As it happens, I was a chaste and loyal wife.'
I gazed at her and murmured gently, 'Oh hard luck!'
Although she had, as they say, kept the keys of this house for three years (though in practice, I suspected Chrysippus was the kind of man who clung on to the keys), Vibia lacked experience. She was at a loss how to make me remove myself- or to summon up heavies to have me removed. She was trapped. Even when I was rude, she could only complain feebly.
'Tell me,' I challenged with a bright smile. 'Diomedes used to see his father often; was he able to come and go freely?'
'Of course. He was born and brought up here.'
'Oh! So had the loving son been allocated a room here?'
'There was a room he had always had,' Vibia replied frigidly. 'From childhood.'
'Oh how sweet! Near yours, was it?'
'No.'
'Proximity is such a fluid concept I shall not test this with a measuring rule… When he visited so regularly, nobody would think much of it?'
'He was my husband's son. Of course not.'
'He could have been visiting you,' I pointed out.
'You have a dirty mind, Falco,' retorted Vibia, with that trace of coarseness that had always stopped her being entirely respectable.
'Young stepmama, and idle stepson of her own age – it would not be the first time nature secretly held sway… Somebody told me, you wanted more to do with Diomedes than was proper.'
'That person slandered me.'
I tipped my head on one side. 'What – no secret hankering?'
'No.'
These flat little negatives were starting to fascinate me. Every time she came out with one, I felt it hid a major secret. 'You were quite rude about him when you were first interviewed.'
'I have no feelings either way,' said Vibia – with that deliberate neutrality that always means a lie. During all this part of my questioning, she had been looking at the oriental carpet evasively.
I changed the subject suddenly: 'So how do you feel about Diomedes marrying your relative?'
For one brief moment that wide mouth pursed. 'It is nothing to do with me.'
'Lysa said you helped arrange it.'
'Not quite.' She was scrambling to recover her composure. I sensed that Lysa had bullied her into something here. 'When I was asked what I thought, I did not raise objections.'
'And was that failure to object,' I demanded, 'so important to Lysa and Diomedes that they rewarded you with all this lovely property?'
At that, Vibia did look up. In fact, she became elated. 'Lysa is so annoyed to lose it. That's the best part for me – she is furious to see me living in what used to be her house.'
'For a matchmaker's pay-off,' I told her bluntly, 'the price is extortionate. As a banker by proxy, I am astonished that Lysa agreed.' No reaction. 'Now that you are a lone woman living without masculine protection, what, may I ask, are you doing about your stepson's childhood room?'
Vibia was well ahead of me. 'Obviously it is no longer respectable for him to come here. People might suggest something scandalous. This letter I am writing'- she produced the document she had been frowning over when I first walked in – 'says Diomedes must remove his things – and not come here again.'
'Such concern for propriety. His bride will be grateful to you, Vibia!'
She was very anxious to distract me. By chance, it seemed, the young lady had lifted her arm onto the back of the reading couch and her richly beringed hand had lolled against my left shoulder. Was it chance, or was Fortune for once looking after me? Now, with a faint jingle from a delightful silver bracelet, her small fingers began slowly moving, caressing my shoulderbone as if she were unaware of doing it. Oh very nice. She was definitely moving in on me. Feminine wiles. As if I had not encountered enough of them in my career.
I leaned back my head, like a man who was perplexed, and fell silent. Then, just as the fingertips began exploring that sensitive, rather tingly area of my neck where the tunic edge met my hairline, Passus knocked on the door. I breathed a sigh of relief – or was it regret?
'I'm just off now, Falco.' He had a scroll bundle with him. 'This is the stuff you wanted -'
'Thanks, Passus.' Both of us managed not to grin, as I jumped up from the couch and collected the scrolls from him. 'I'm finished here.' That was one way of putting it. 'I'll walk along with you. Vibia Merulla, thank you for your help.'
I bade a rapid farewell to the widow, and safely fled.
XXXIX
Again, I decided against lunch at the Clivus Publicius popina, part from not wanting to give Passus the idea that I dallied atfood stalls – where Petronius and the rest were bound to have told him informers flocked like summer pests. I could now see two of the scriptorium authors leaning on the bar. Had it been the playwright or the love poet, Urbanus or Constrictus, I would have gone down there and joined them but it was the gangling Scrutator spouting at the flashily dressed Turius. Not in the mood for either, I went the other way, up towards the crest of the Aventine and home. There I invited Helena out for an early lunch at a more local eatery.
'Falco, you have a shifty look about you!'
'Certainly not.'
'What have you been doing?'
'Talking to Passus about literature.'
'Lying dog,' she said
Even when I gave her the scrolls to read she still looked suspicious for some reason. She leaned over and sniffed my shoulder; my heart pounded a little. I dragged her out to eat before the interrogation became too drastic.
Flora's Caupona was always quiet, though not normally as tense as we found it today. A couple of self-effacing regulars were sitting up straight at the inside table obediently waiting for their order. Apollonius, the waiter, walked forward to welcome us. He was a retired teacher – in fact, he had taught me at school. We never mentioned that. With his usual dignity, he ignored the peculiar atmosphere, as if he had not notic
ed it.
'We have lentils or chickpeas today, Falco.'
'Jupiter, you're taking the pulse regulations seriously.' Most other food stalls had probably just disguised their pots of fish and meat by leaving them off the chalked-up menu.
'Or perhaps something cold?' he enquired.
'Something cold!' Helena gasped. It was so hot outside, we couldhardly move two yards without sweat drenching us. 'Junia, just because the edict says you can only serve pulses hot, doesn't mean you are forced to provide steaming porridges even in August!'
My sister clasped her hands upon the spotless pot-counter. (Not her effort; Apollonius took a strange pride in his demeaning work.) 'We can make you a salad specially – seeing as you are family,' she condescended primly.
Her son was playing with a model ox-cart where a second table had once stood. We put Julia down with Marcus Baebius and they soon started screaming at each other noisily. I waited for the customers to leave because of the racket. They stuck it out like a bunch of stubborn thick-ribbed limpets that had been excrescences on a harbour groin for twenty years.
Helena and I took a bench outside, the only remaining seat. Junia had made Apollonius prepare the salad, so she came out to patronize us.
'How are you two getting on? When is that cradle going to be occupied again?' Helena stiffened. From now on, she would go to enormous lengths to keep her pregnancy from Junia. 'And how is that wonderful new house of yours?'
'Are you trying to make us weep?' Helena demanded, freely acknowledging that the house purchase – her purchase – was a bad mistake. 'Apart from the fact we are lumbered with the worst building-contractors in Rome – recommended by your father – I have now realised it is far too distant from the city for Marcus to do his work properly.'
'Father is talking about selling up,' suggested Junia. 'Why don't you do a swap with him?'
Neither of us answered her, though we both had difficulty withholding our delight at the idea of Pa having to deal with Gloccus and Cotta. Even if this had been the best solution possible – and if there was any chance Pa would agree to do it – we would still not have allowed Junia the triumph of suggesting it.
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