The Jupiter Myth

by Lindsey Davis

  “You need to organize some shade,” I warned.

  “Oh, I like to enjoy the sun while I can.” He eyed me up. He could tell I was not nautical. Well, I hoped he could. I do have standards.

  “Name’s Falco. I’m looking for my good friend Petronius Longus. Somebody said he was seen down here yesterday, talking to you.” There was no reaction, so I carefully described Petro. Still nothing. “I’m disappointed then.” The customs officer steadily blanked me. Nothing for it: “He’s an elusive character. I bet he told you, ‘If anyone comes asking for me, say nowt.’” I winked. The customs officer winked back, but this jolly fellow with the red shiny face may have reacted automatically.

  I slipped him the proverbial coin that loosens tongues. Though a public official, he took it. They always do. “Well, if you do see the man who wasn’t here, please tell him Falco needs to speak to him urgently.”

  He gave me a cheerful tilt of the head. I was not encouraged.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Firmus.” We were on moneyed terms. I thought it fair to ask.

  “Handy to know. I may want to list your sweetener in my accounts.”

  He opened his palm and looked at the coins. “This is business, then? Thought you said he was a friend.”

  “He is. The best. He can still go on expenses.” I grinned. Conniving always makes new pals.

  “So what business are you in, Falco?”

  “Government food regulations,” I lied, with yet another friendly wink. “In fact, I’ll ask you, Firmus: some of the hotpot hawkers up back of the stores seem to be having trouble. Have you seen any evidence of the local bars being threatened?”

  “Oh no, not me,” Firmus assured me. “I never go to bars. It’s home straight after work for Chicken Frontinian and an early night.”

  If his habits were so abstemious, I was surprised he had put on so much flab. “Frontinian has too much aniseed for me,” I confided. “I like a good Vardarnus. Now Petro, he has disgusting taste. He’s happy as a sandflea sitting down to braised beets or beans in the pod . . . What’s the word on the docks about that Briton dead in the well?”

  “He must have upset someone.”

  “Anybody suggesting who he upset?”

  “Nobody’s saying.”

  “But everybody knows, I bet!”

  Firmus gave me a knowing head tilt, indicating assent. “Lot of questions about this stuff lately.”

  “Who’s asking? Long-haired Britons from the south?”

  “What?” Firmus looked surprised. The team King Togidubnus had sent out could not yet have worked this part of the wharves.

  “Who, then?” I drew up short. “Surely not that old friend of mine, the one you haven’t seen?” Firmus made no reply. Petronius must have given him a bigger sweetener than I did. “So what would you have told this invisible person, Firmus?”

  “It’s supposed to be out-of-towners,” said Firmus, almost matter-of-factly, as if I should know it already. “I mean a long way out of town. There’s some group taking an interest in the Londinium social scene.”

  “Where do they hail from? And who’s the big meatball?”

  “What?”

  “The man in charge.” But Firmus clammed up. Even though he had been enjoying the attention as he held forth as the expert on the local situation, something now proved too much for him.

  He might know the answer to my question about who ran the rackets, but he wasn’t going to tell me. I recognized the look in his previously friendly eyes. It was fear.

  XX

  I walked back past the warehouses and into the unpromising interior streets where the racketeers seemed to operate. I had agreed with Hilaris: this happened everywhere. Yet that big-time frighteners would try taking over the commercial outlets in Britain still seemed unlikely.

  There was so little here. Retail outlets selling staples: carrots, spoons, and firewood bundles, mostly in rather small quantities. Oil, wine, and fish-pickle sauce, all looking as if their crack-necked amphorae, with dusty bellies and half the labels missing, had been unloaded from the boat several seasons before. Dim eating houses, offering amateur snacks and piss-poor wine to people who hardly knew what to ask for. One obvious brothel that I saw yesterday; well, there must be more of those. A respectable husband and father—well, a husband with a scathing wife who missed nothing—had to be careful how he looked for them. What else? Oh, look! Between a sandal-seller and a shop full of herbal seeds (buy our exciting borage and caress away care with curative coriander!), here was a placard scrawled up on a house wall that advertised a gladiatorial show: Pex the Atlantic Thrasher (really?); the nineteen-times-unbeaten Argorus (clearly some old frowsty fox whose fights were fixed); a clash of bears; and Hidax the Hideous—apparently the retiarius with the niftiest trident this side of Epirus. There was even a furious female with a cliché name: Amazonia (advertised in much smaller letters than her male counterparts, naturally).

  I was too grown-up to be lured by nasty girls with swords, though they might be sensational for some. Instead, I was trying to remember the last time I had had any borage that was more than mildly interesting. Suddenly I became aware of excruciating pain. Somebody had jumped me.

  I never saw him coming. He had slammed my face against a wall, pinioning me with such brutal force that he nearly broke the arm he had twisted up my back. I would have cursed, but it was impossible.

  “Falco!” Hades, I knew that voice.

  My fine Etruscan nose was squashed tightly against a wall that was so deeply rough-cast it would imprint me for a week with its hard pattern; the daub was bonded with cow dung, I could tell.

  “Petro—”I gurgled.

  “Stop drawing attention!” He might have been bullying some thief he had caught fingering women’s bustbands off a laundry drying line. “You sapheaded blunderer! You interfering, imbecilic rat’s bane—” There were more hissed insults, all meticulously spittable, some obscene, and one I had never heard before. (I worked out what it meant.) “Get this, you flakewit—leave it, or I’m a dead man!”

  He released me abruptly. I nearly fell over. When I staggered around to tell the swine he had made himself quite clear enough, he had already gone.

  XXI

  I was having a frustrating time: when I retraced my steps to the Swan, Albia had disappeared too.

  “Went off with a man,” the proprietor enjoyed telling me.

  “You should be ashamed if people are using your bar as a pickup point. Suppose she was my darling little daughter and you had let her be dragged off by a pervert!”

  “But she’s not your darling, is she?” he sneered. “She’s a street child. I’ve seen her around for years.”

  “And was she always with men?” I asked, nervous now about what type of bad influence Helena had imposed on the children at the residence.

  “No idea. Still, they all grow up.”

  Albia was fourteen, if she really was an orphan of the Rebellion. Old enough to be married off, or at least politely betrothed to a poxy tribune, if she were a senatorial brood mare. Old enough to get pregnant by some layabout her father hated, if she were a plebeian needed in the family business. Old enough to be wise in ways I could not think about. Yet she was childishly slight, and if her life had been hard as I suspected, she was young enough to deserve a chance, young enough to be capable of being saved—if she had stayed with us.

  “She’ll be at it all over the forum soon, even if she’s a virgin now.”

  “Sad,” I commented. He thought I had cracked. And I did not like the way he watched me walk away down the street.

  I had no plan when I set off walking, just a need to get out of there. I felt there were too many eyes watching me, from people in doorways or even people unseen.

  I had gone about three streets. I was starting to be aware that there was more activity in Londinium than most Romans would expect. All the regular commodities were sold. The dark little shops were open in the day; life in them just had a
duller pace than I was used to. Buyers and sellers lurked inside, just as they always did; even when the sun was so hot that I was sweating after fifty strides, people here forgot they were allowed to sit in the open air. Otherwise I felt at home. In the daily markets, selling fresh veg and sad-eyed dead game, the traders’ shouts were vibrant and their wives’ jokes were coarse. The men could have been tricky barrow boys around The Temple of Hope back home in the Tiberside Vegetable Market. The stench of old fish scales is the same anywhere. Walk your boots around a newly sluiced butchers’ street, and the faint odor of animal blood will haunt you all day afterward. Then pass a cheese stall and the warm, wholesome waft will draw you back to buy a piece—until you are sidetracked by those remarkably cheap belts on the stall next door that will fall apart when you get them home . . .

  I turned my back on the belts eventually (since I would not be caught dead in brick-red leather). Mooching into a shop full of jumbled hardware, I was trying to work out how I could carry back home with me ten stupendously good-value, but heavy, black pottery bowls. Despite a generous discount offered by the pleasant shopkeeper, I said no and started to inspect some interesting skeins of hairy twine. You can never have too much hairy twine around the house, and he assured me it was the best goat’s hair, neatly twisted, the skeins only going for a song because of overproduction in the goat-hair-twine-making trade. I loved this tempting hardware emporium, where next I spotted a quite hilarious lamp. It had naked young ladies at either side of the hole, looking over their shoulders to compare the size of their bottoms—

  No chance to linger. I happened to glance outdoors and there were the two enforcers strolling past the shop.

  The amiable seller caught the direction of my glance, so I muttered, “Know those two?”

  “Splice and Pyro.”

  “Know what they do?”

  He smiled bleakly. Pyro obviously set the fires, while Splice must have some painful specialty on which I would not speculate.

  In two heartbeats I was out of there and dodging after them. Informers learn not to load themselves up with shopping, just in case of such emergencies.

  I held back as the pair walked unconcernedly. I had recognized them at once: Splice, the short, well-built one, who probably did the chat and the brutality, and his leaner chum Pyro, who stayed on guard or played with flame. Splice had a square face decorated with two intriguing old scars; Pyro sported dirty beard-shadow and a speckled crop of moles. A snipper who knew how to wield steel had given them fine Roman haircuts. Both had muscled legs and arms that must have seen some nasty action. Neither looked like a man to argue with about the outcome of a horse race.

  Watching from behind, I could sum them up from how they walked. They were confident. Unhurried but not loitering. A bulge under Splice’s tunic hinted that he might be carrying swag. Once or twice they exchanged words with a stallholder, light greetings in passing. These men behaved like locals who were old faces about the district. Nobody showed much fear; they were an accepted part of the scenery. People almost seemed to like them. In Rome they could have been typical spoiled wastrels: everyday adulterers who avoided work, lived with their mothers, spent too much on clothes, drink, and brothel bills, and dabbled with the sordid end of crime. Here, they stood out as Romans because of their Mediterranean coloring; they both had facial bone structure that was straight off the Tiber Embankment. Maybe that hint of the exotic attracted people.

  They had melded in, apparently very fast and without effort. Londinium had accepted extortion as easily as it accepted mist every morning and rain four times a week. That was how the rackets worked. The enforcers arrived in a place and made out that their methods were a normal part of the high life. People could sniff money when near them. Moneyed bastards will always attract sad people who yearn for better things. These thugs—they were no better—soon acquired status. Once they had beaten up a few stubborn customers, they carried another smell too: danger. That also has a perverse attraction.

  I saw it all working when they led me right back where I came from earlier, straight past the Swan to the other caupona, the Ganymede. They were well known to the waiter, who came out at once and chatted as he laid their table, a private one set slightly apart from the rest. It was lunchtime and a lot of people were calling for a hasty bite, but the enforcers were able to take all the time they liked over whether they wanted olives in brine or in aromatic oil. Wine came automatically, probably in their special cups.

  Pyro went inside, perhaps to visit the latrine, more likely to stash the money from their morning round. I had obviously found their operating base. Here, Splice and Pyro were openly holding court. Male visitors came and went constantly, like cousins at a Greek barber’s. On arrival there would be formal standing up and handshakes. The two enforcers then got on with lunch, rarely offering hospitality, rarely being bought drinks. The point for everyone was to make contact. They were businesslike and even abstemious; they ate stuffed pancakes with simple side salads, no sweetmeats, and their wine flagon was the small size. The visitors would sit and gossip for a respectable period, then leave after more handshakes.

  I saw no sign that Splice and Pyro were being brought bribes or payments. People just wanted to register respect. Just as in Rome a great man holding public office will receive clients, supplicants, and friends in the formal rooms of his pillared house at set hours every morning, so these two lice allowed fawners to assemble at their table on a daily basis. Nobody handed out presents, though it was evident that this was a favor exchange. On one side, reverence was being offered in a way that made me bilious; on the other, the enforcers promised not to break the supplicants’ bones.

  Passersby who did not choose to stop and grovel used the far side of the road. There were not many.

  I had positioned myself outside a booth selling locks. Unfortunately, as I pretended to peruse the intricate metalwork, I was standing in full sun. Only I could land myself a job in a province famous for its chilly fog on the one week in a decade when the heat would make a sand lizard faint. My tunic had glued itself to my body right across my shoulders and all down my back. My hair felt like a heavy fur rug. The inner soles of my boots were wet and slippery; a boot-thong that had never given trouble before had now blistered my heel raw.

  While I stood there, I was pondering a complication: Petronius. Had I been working alone, I would have returned to the procurator’s residence to request a posse to arrest Splice and Pyro and search their base. I would then have the thugs incommunicado for so long that some of their victims might be reassured enough to speak out. The governor’s inquiry team, his rough quaestiones, could meanwhile have played with the enforcers, using their nastiest instruments of coercion. The interrogators, who must be bored out here, were trained to persist. If Splice and Pyro felt enough pain and found their isolation too terrible, they might even scream out the name of the man who was paying them.

  It seemed a good solution. But I could still hear those terse words from Petronius: leave it, or I’m a dead man.

  Whatever he was doing, we had been wrong to suspect flirtation or debauchery. He was working, the devious hypocrite. He was under cover somehow. On what? The Verovolcus case had clearly intrigued him, though I failed to see the draw myself; I was puzzled by it, but I was only pursuing out of loyalty to Hilaris, Frontinus, and the old King. Petronius Longus had no such ties. I had no idea why Petro should get involved. But if he was watching these two bullies, I would not move against them before consulting them. That was a rule of our friendship.

  I was still fretting over this when a passerby who did not know the local respect system came tripping along: my sister Maia. What was she doing? Unaware of the two enforcers, she walked straight past the Ganymede on their side of the street. That meant I had no chance to warn her off, or ask why she was here. Wanting to stay unobtrusive, I could only watch.

  Maia was striking to look at, but she had grown up in Rome. She knew how to pass safely through streets full of obnoxious typ
es. Her walk was quietly purposeful, and although she looked briefly into every shop and food place, she never met anyone’s eye. With her head and body wrapped in a long veil, she had disguised her private style and became unremarkable. One man did lean over a rail and say something to her as she passed—some mutt who on principle had a try at anything in a stola—but as my fists balled, that chancer was treated to such a savage look he shrank back. He certainly knew he had encountered proud Roman womanhood.

  Mind you, my sister’s self-possessed disdain could itself attract attention. One of the men with Splice and Pyro stood up. At once Pyro spoke to him and he sat down again. Maia had by then gone past the Ganymede.

  Nice thought: that the enforcers had a noble regard for women! But they just left women alone to avoid attracting the wrong public notice. Gangs who work through fear understand, if they are efficient, that normal life should be allowed to flow through the streets unhindered. Some even go so far as to batter a known rapist or threaten an adolescent burglar, as a sign that they represent order, men who will protect their own. This implies they are the only force of order. Then the people they are threatening feel they have nowhere to turn for help.

  They had finished their lunch. They stood up and left. As far as I saw, there was no attempt to offer them a bill. Neither of them left money anyway.

  I followed them around for the early part of the afternoon. From place to place they went like election candidates, often not even speaking to people, just making their presence felt. They did not appear to be collecting. That would be better done after dusk. More worrying, and the wine bars would have more cash in the float.

  Soon they returned to the Ganymede and this time went indoors, no doubt for a good Roman siesta. I gave up. I was ready for home. My feet were taking special care to remind me how many hours I had been out walking. When I saw a small bathhouse, the feet headed that way on their own. I stopped them when I spotted Petronius Longus already on the porch.