Ovid (Marcus Corvinus Book 1)

by David Wishart

  'We asked him,' she said. 'At least my mother did, I was too young. But he wouldn't even tell her. He said it was too dangerous.'

  My scalp tingled. 'Dangerous? Dangerous to who?'

  'Himself, I suppose. Or maybe to my mother and me. Anyway, he wouldn't say.'

  I couldn't believe this.

  'Come on, Perilla! Sure, I know nothing was made public, but your mother must've known what he did, or be able to guess at least. They were very close, weren't they?'

  'Yes. Very,' she said softly.

  'And you're telling me he clammed up on her? Totally?'

  'Maybe she does know.' Perilla had lowered her eyes and her voice was barely a whisper. I waited for more, but it didn't come. There was something I didn't understand here.

  'Then why don't you ask her outright?'

  'Because it wouldn't do any good.'

  Again that phrase. I'd heard it from the secretary, and from Crispus. It sounded strange coming from Perilla. 'Didn't Ovid say anything before he left? Or give any clues in his letters? He did send letters, didn't he?'

  'Oh, yes.' Perilla plucked a sprig of leaves from the bush beside her and turned it absently between her fingers. 'He talked about...whatever he'd done quite often, in fact. Not just in his letters. In his poems as well.'

  Now we were getting somewhere! 'Okay. So tell me.'

  'He says he made a mistake. He saw something he shouldn't have seen, and he didn't report it.'

  'And?'

  'That's all.'

  I leaned back. Shit. The more I got into this thing, the more tantalising it became, and the more it slipped away from me. Hints and rumours. Like mist or water through the fingers.

  'What do you mean, that's all?'

  'Just what I say. Oh, there's more, lots more, but that's the gist of it. That and what he didn't do.'

  'Didn't do?' I was beginning to sound like a third rate tragedian's chorus.

  'He says he didn't profit personally from whatever it was. And he hadn't killed anyone, or committed forgery or fraud or treason.'

  'That doesn't leave very much.'

  'No, it doesn't.'

  'So what you're saying,' I spelt it out, 'is that Ovid did nothing whatsoever? That Augustus sent him to Tomi just for seeing something he shouldn't have seen?'

  'And for not reporting it. Yes, that's right.'

  'But it's crazy! It makes no sense at all! Jupiter's holy prick, we're talking about exile here!'

  'Nevertheless, Corvinus, that's all there is. And please don't swear. I don't like it.'

  'But what could he have seen that deserved that sort of treatment? To be packed off to the Black Sea for the rest of his days, without a trial, with no reprieve. Not even to be allowed back for burial.'

  'I don't know.'

  'Come off it, lady! You're his f... You're his stepdaughter!'

  Her lips set in a firm line, and she looked away.

  'I've told you that's all there is,' she said, 'and I would be grateful if we could drop the subject.'

  Now I may not know my Bion from my Moschus but I know damn well when a woman isn't telling me the truth. And if ever beautiful woman lied in her teeth that woman was Rufia Perilla. You expect obstructions from nit-picking bureaucrats and timeservers like my father and Crispus. You don't expect them from the client you're trying to help.

  I got up. 'Okay, don't tell me. I'll find out for myself. Anyway, I've got to be going now. I've a long night of debauchery ahead of me and I need to get tanked up first. Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Rufia.'

  She turned back to face me, and she had the grace to look guilty; but that was all.

  'Thank you for the book,' she said. 'It was kind of you to think of it.'

  'My pleasure.' I was almost as angry as I had been in the Secretary's office. 'I'll see you around, okay?'

  As I walked past her she laid a hand on my arm. 'I really don't know why my stepfather was exiled. I'm not hiding anything from you. Honestly.'

  'Sure,' I said; but I'd stopped. I could no more've carried on walking back to the house with those fingers burning into my skin than thrown a party for my father and that new wife of his.

  She lowered her eyes, but not before I'd seen the glint of tears. 'I may have thoughts of my own on the subject but they're just that. Thoughts of my own.'

  'Care to share them?'

  She shook her head. 'No, they're probably wrong anyway. Certainly they don't make much sense.'

  There was a lump in my throat the size of an egg. I told you I was a kind-hearted sucker. However, I had my pride as well. Valerii Messallae don't melt easily.

  'Suit yourself,' I said. I had my arm back now. There was nothing else to keep me.

  'You'll still keep on trying? To get the permission, I mean?'

  'Of course,' I said stiffly. 'You had my promise.'

  She got up and before I knew what was happening she'd kissed me lightly on the cheek. It was the sort of bird's peck you'd expect from your kid sister but from the effect it had on me you'd've thought she'd given me a complete no-holds-barred Corinthian tongue job. I muttered something suitably noble and patron-like about doing my best and escaped as quickly as I could.

  I'd given Perilla my word that she'd have her stepfather's ashes back, and I intended to keep it, whatever the cost. But as of this afternoon I'd as much idea of how to go about it as an oyster's got of woodcarving.

  * * *

  Varus to Himself

  Vela has just come in for the sentries' watchword. I gave him Inflexible Vigilance, a joke which, of course, he did not recognise as such. Numonius Vela is my second-in-command, with special responsibility for the cavalry. That, too, is a joke.

  I have always viewed horses as stupid creatures. They have as much sense (and no more) as will prevent them throwing their riders in battle and ensure that they go cheerfully to possible disembowelment. In other words, they are blessed with the perfect military virtues. Horses and Vela have much in common. He is a turnip-head incapable of following a reasoned argument beyond its first most obvious premise; a nonentity of staggering blandness. Solid is the word that springs to mind – or perhaps stolid, for Vela has no stiffness, no backbone. He is thick and starchy as overcooked porridge. You could reach out your hand and knead him, body and soul. This is not to say he is a moral man. If Vela is incorruptible (and he is; oh, he most certainly is!) his virtue is a product not of choice but of mental and spiritual sloth.

  In short, dear confidant, Numonius Vela is a bore of the first order. I view it as not the least of my trials that I am compelled to march through Germany in his company.

  Perhaps I should give you other names, and the faces to fit them. I will not weary you with a long list; we are few, we band of brothers, despite the thousands of breathing souls who surround us. Three – not counting Vela – will be sufficient.

  Egregious Eggius first, and least. My Camp Commander, or one of them. One of the Old Breed, a Roman par excellence, who might have stood with Horatius on the bridge but would have drawn the line at anything so cowardly as chopping it down. Where Vela is a cold-porridge soldier, Eggius is all pepper and fiery spices, a damn-your-eyes man destined for glory or the grave; the latter being his more likely destination, and good riddance to him so long as he does not drag the rest of us in as well. I cannot bring myself to like Eggius, but he has his uses, largely because of a natural antipathy for Vela. Which is, I may say, reciprocated and affords me much quiet amusement.

  Next, Marcus Ceionius, my other Camp Commander and, of necessity, ally. Venal, greedy (although as you know I speak as should not), cowardly and rotten as a ten-day-old fig, which facially he unfortunately resembles. He, too, may win through to glory, but it will be glory undeserved and achieved by guile rather than merit. If, as is more likely, the grave claims him before his time it will be with a common soldier's javelin in his back. The men hate him, and with good reason. It is rare to meet someone with no redeeming qualities. Ceionius comes as close as is humanly poss
ible.

  Third and last, your humble servant: Publius Quinctilius Varus. Ex-consul, ex-this, ex-that (I shall never, after all, see sixty again). Augustus's viceroy and general of this glorious army. Bon viveur, lover of coined gold and (not least, this!) traitor against the state. That, I think, will do for the present. After all, I do not wish to alienate your sympathies completely.

  You will notice of course that I have not described Arminius, who is the most relevant character of all. Patience. I must, like every good general, keep something in reserve. You will meet Arminius in his place, and I promise you that you will have your fill of him.

  Heigh ho. Off we go.

  6.

  I didn't go straight home when I left Perilla's. I'd left a signet ring in for repair at Cadmus's in Fox Street off the Saepta, which meant another trip up town. Not that I minded. I liked walking around the city, even in weather like this. Besides, it was an excuse for a stroll through the Subura.

  Yeah. I know. That's the sort of remark eager young heirs to the family fortune hope to hear their rich daddies making. It means that the old guys' lids have shaken loose and it's time to call in the lawyers and slap on a certificate of gross mental instability. No one in their right mind walks in Rome if they can avoid it. The crowds are thicker than fleas in a fourth rate whore's mattress, the climate's boiling in summer and freezing in winter, and the streets stink all the year round of effluent, rotten vegetables and everything from cheap incense to dead dogs and month-old fish. And that's just for starters. Step off the main thoroughfares in the poorer districts and you'll find that the more enterprising locals do a line in throat slitting, mugging and purse snatching that has anywhere else in the empire beaten hollow. Keep to the main drag and you've got a better-than-average chance of being hit by something thrown from a tenement. Or, if your luck's really out, even by the tenement itself. Don't laugh. I've seen it happen.

  So I like Rome. Sure, it may be a dump outside the bits that old Augustus found brick and left marble, it may stink worse than a wineshop privy in midsummer, but it's got character. Where else could you buy a pitch-black performing midget, have your fortune told by a cheiromantic goat and catch a dose of clap from a female sword-swallower, all within twenty yards?

  Like I say, Rome's strong meat. It may hurt you, it may even kill you, but it'll never bore you.

  The sky was beginning to cloud over in earnest as I left the slope of the Esquiline and cut down into the Subura. This was pretty bad news. Most people who have business in that part of town can't afford raincoats let alone litters, and the chances of finding a litter-team for hire between Pullian Street and the Argiletum is about as likely as seeing the Wart do a clog-dance for coppers on the Speakers' Platform. I wrapped my cloak tighter round me, pulled up the hood to keep the wind out of my eyes, and tried to think about something other than the soaking I was going to get between here and the Saepta.

  Like what I'd got on Ovid so far.

  Point one. The reason for his exile was no secret among what I'd call the arse-lickers: people like my father and Crispus who were on the inside of government and knew where all the dirty linen hung. If they were terrified to open their prim little mouths in case someone slapped them shut then whatever the secret was, ancient history or not, it was pretty sensitive.

  Point two. Ovid hadn't done any of the things that usually get you exile. Or at least claimed he hadn't. Not treason, not murder, forgery or fraud. And that, like I'd said to Perilla, didn't leave much. Sure, he could've been lying but I didn't think so. After all why take the trouble to deny what no-one was accusing him of unless he'd got a genuine axe to grind? Also Perilla had said that she and her mother still kept up the villa to the north of Rome, which meant that the emperor hadn't confiscated Ovid's property. If the crime was really serious then that didn't make sense either.

  Which brought me to the last point. Not only had Ovid not been charged with any of the crimes he'd listed, he hadn't been charged at all. No charge, no trial, no nothing, just a summons to a private interview with the emperor and a one way ticket by imperial decree. That sort of thing just didn't happen with a run-of-the-mill crime. More, Augustus had made it clear that whatever the guy had done to put his imperial nose out of joint the subject was closed. No questions answered, no explanations given. Stranger still, when the Wart came to power and some of the biggest men in Rome begged him to cancel the edict or at least move the poor bastard to somewhere the locals didn't trail their knuckles while they walked, Tiberius had refused. No pardon, no explanation, just that straight, bald refusal. And now the guy was dead the emperor wouldn't even make space in Italy for his bones.

  Big league stuff. And weird by any standards.

  I crossed over at the junction of Pullian with Orbian and took in a family of street musicians. They were good; grampa on finger cymbals, dad on hand drum and mum on the double flute, with a kid in a dirty brown tunic standing behind them picking his nose for light relief. The daughter – no kid by any standards – was collecting coppers. She wore a short girdle with bells, a leather bra, and an expression of total headbanging boredom. In that weather she must've been freezing. When she came round to me I slipped a silver piece under each bra cup, patted her rump and left quickly before Pa caught on to why she was grinning. Spread a little sunshine, that's my motto. Besides, she had marvellous tits. Then I cut down the first of the little alleyways that would take me through the heart of the district and, eventually, to Suburan Street itself.

  So what had Ovid done? All I had to go on was his own weird, coy statement that he'd seen something he shouldn't have and hadn't told anyone about it. Not exactly earthshaking stuff, and not the sort of thing to get you permanent exile in a godforsaken hole like Tomi. Let alone stop your kin from bringing back your ashes, which was something completely off the wall. Sure, the State might take a chunk or two out of the guy's kin if his crime had been bad enough, but that was a different thing to stopping them bury his bones when he coughed it. Whatever Ovid had been guilty of, this sustained knee-jerk reaction was unique, totally savage and just plain inexplicable.

  Okay, so where did that leave us? With some sort of scandal, obviously, that Augustus wanted buried deep and fast and permanent. A scandal was the only thing that would explain the secrecy and the lack of formal charges, and it could be private or political or both. My money was on the private. Ovid was no politician and like I said he'd had the moral reputation of an alley-cat. Also once he'd packed him off to Tomi Augustus had pulled his poems off the shelves of the city's public libraries. I knew that from personal experience. I remember a few years later as a spotty kid trying to get my lecherous hands on his Art of Love – a step-by-step guide to seduction–- and being sent off with a flea in my ear and a moth-eaten copy of Cato's Farming Is Fun. So. A social scandal involving sex, close enough to home for Augustus to take it as a personal insult, serious enough to get the guy exile and a strict warning to keep his mouth shut even where his wife and daughter were concerned. And it must've happened about ten years ago, about the time when...

  When...

  I stopped so suddenly that the stout woman a step or two behind me behind me piled into my back. The pole she was carrying with two chickens dangling upside down from it caught me a stinger on the side of the head.

  'You want to watch where you're going, sonny?' she said; or words to that effect. The Subura's no place to pick up refined diction.

  'Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry.' I was still dazed; and not because of the pole. The old girl gave me a funny look and moved off. The chickens weren't too pleased either.

  Julia! The Julia scandal!

  I couldn't remember all the details – I'd only been a kid at the time, hardly into double figures – but I knew the gist. It'd happened that same year, I was sure of that. Augustus's granddaughter Julia had been convicted of adultery and exiled to some flyspeck of an island out in the sticks. And Julia, when she hadn't been humping half of Rome, had been one of Ovid's literary patrons...r />
  I carried on walking, my head still buzzing like a beehive. I had to be right. It couldn't be a coincidence, not the two exiles coming so close together. If Ovid had been screwing Julia and the emperor had found out then Augustus had good reason to blow his toupé. The only problem was that I was sure some other guy had been named as having his hand down the lady's pants. Named and charged, publicly. And if Julia had been two-timing him with Ovid then why not say so? Why not charge Ovid as well and forget all this cloak-and-dagger crap? And if there was no cover-up involved, and Ovid simply knew Julia was on the job and didn't tell, then why not charge him publicly with that and be done with it?

  Sure, I know. None of this made enough sense to fry an anchovy in. But at least it was a start; whatever Ovid's crime was it had to be connected with the Julia affair. Had to be! It was only a question of fitting things together. More information would help, sure. The name of the adulterer for a start and what had happened to him. If I could just find someone who knew the facts and was willing to tell me then maybe I could take it from there. The first part was easy. The second...

  Yeah. The second part was the killer. The way people had been avoiding me recently had me sniffing down my tunic for body odour. If I was right about the Julia connection and started asking questions that involved embarrassing answers then things could get worse.

  I felt the first drops of rain as I reached Suburan Street. The Saepta was still a long way off, I was beginning to regret my detour and the clouds were heaping up like a herd of elephants mating. Maybe, I thought, it might be a good idea to make a dash for Augustus Square. There were always plenty of litters touting for business there, but if the rain came on in earnest they'd all be snapped up. The streets around the Square itself were always packed and I wasn't the only pedestrian without a hat or a raincoat with money in my purse. There was just a chance, though, that I might catch a litter-team before that. Suburan Street's a main thoroughfare and although it's still far from being a high class area you sometimes strike lucky. I turned round and looked behind me to check for anything heading in my direction.