Old Bones (Marcus Corvinus Book 5)

by David Wishart

  Yeah; that last bit was true enough, but as far as a mad killer went I wasn't taking any bets. Whoever had put Navius away – and Hilarion – had done it for a reason. The problem was, I still didn't know what that reason was.

  There wasn't much else to say. I thanked her for the wine and left.

  13.

  The morning was wearing on and I was getting peckish. I decided to give Clusinus a miss for the moment and rejoin the main road, call in at the Gruesomes' in passing in the hopes of catching Vipena, then go home for a quick bath, something to eat and a jug on the terrace while I waited for the family to come back; sleuthing was all very well, but a holiday's a holiday, and you don't want to kill yourself over it. Besides, when I finally met Bright-Eyes I wanted to look my snappy sartorial best.

  The sisters were on the terrace as usual: peas this time instead of beans. They sniffed a bit when they saw my tunic, and a bit more when they caught my scent –a couple of hours' strenuous walking in the September heat overlaid by a spell of ditching is enough to put paid to the most persistent of bath oils, and I stank like a camel – but Perilla's influence still lingered and they were politeness itself.

  'Gnaeus is inside, Valerius Corvinus,' Tanaquil said, 'talking to his foreman. Just go through.'

  'Inside' was an exaggeration: the ground floor, at this point at least, was an unroofed work area. I walked through the small cobbled entrance court into what was obviously the main fermenting yard. The wide necks of half a dozen huge buried vats projected above the floor, and a slave with a long-handled brush and a bucket of hot water was on his knees next to one of them scrubbing at its innards.

  'The boss around?' I said.

  He jerked his thumb to the left. There was a big conduit running about three feet above the floor with an arrangement of sluices and piping at the near end that fed directly into the vats, its other end disappearing through a hole in the wall into the next section of the yard. Beside the connecting door was a stack of wine jars. I glanced at them in passing and noticed that the potter's stamps were botched: the letters in the centre had come out clear, but the two either side were a mess. Vipena must've got them cheap in a job lot. Yeah, well: priests and augurs, you've got to get up early to be ahead of those guys. Every one I've ever met with is near enough to skin a flint.

  I went through. This was where the press was, and I could see why it was unroofed too: the press was huge, with a wooden lever fully thirty feet long. There were two guys there: a squat bruiser with a broken nose who I took to be the foreman and a tall thin vinegary-looking man who looked so like the Gruesomes that he had to be Vipena.

  'Hi,' I said to this guy. 'Sorry about the interruption, but your sisters said just to come on in. My name's Marcus Valerius Corvinus.'

  'Ah.' The thin man put his hand out. 'Yes, they told me that you and your wife had visited yesterday. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, Corvinus.'

  'Likewise.' I took the hand. It felt like wash-leather, which was par for the guy's skin texture in general.

  Vipena turned to the bruiser. 'We'll talk later, Baro,' he said. 'The gods willing.'

  Jupiter! Well, he was in the business, after all.

  The bruiser left. I glanced around with interest.

  'So this is where it all happens, right?'

  Vipena gave me a quick sideways look. 'Where what all happens?' he said.

  'Making the wine.'

  'Ah, yes!' He smiled, or maybe it was dyspepsia. 'To be sure! Lord Bacchus's gift. You've never seen a winery before?'

  'Uh-uh.' I shook my head. 'I tend to be more into the consuming side of things.'

  'It's simple enough.' He cleared his throat. 'The grapes are loaded into the press here and the juice extracted. It flows along the conduit into the vats next door where it is fermented uncovered. Wine ferments best in the open air, exposed to the elements; that is what gives it its character and its body.'

  'Yeah?'

  'Indeed. After pressing the portions of the pulp mat which overflow the press are cut around and pressed separately: were the juices to be mixed the resultant wine could have rather a chalybeate tang.'

  '"Chalybeate"?'

  'It would taste like an iron skillet. Not that I've ever tasted an iron skillet, of course.' He sniffed. 'I’m sorry. A small joke.'

  'Ah...yeah. Yeah, right.' Jupiter! Or Bacchus, rather. Well, I'd asked for the guided tour, and if I'd got it I couldn't blame anyone but myself. It was a shame Perilla wasn't there; she loves that kind of high-tech stuff. I pointed to a series of deep cisterns ranged along the wall with spigoted lead pipes projecting from them at waist level. Underneath the cisterns there was an iron grid like you see in bakers' shops to hold the burning charcoal. 'So what're these things for?' I said.

  'These?' The frown was back. 'Oh, we don't use these very often. They're a stage in a sub-process which it would be tedious to explain.' He took my arm. 'Shall we go out and join my sisters?'

  'Fine,' I said. There was something adrift somewhere, but whatever it was I couldn't quite put my finger on it. 'If I'm not interrupting your work.'

  'If you are then it was foreordained, and so not your fault.' Gods! A weird bugger, this guy, but then he was an augur after all when he wasn't pressing skillets, and these bastards are half out of their skulls at the best of times. It comes of spending a large chunk of your life up to your wrists in sheep guts reading livers.

  We went back outside. The girls were still slitting pea-pods, but they put the bowl away and brought out the honey wine and cake. The four of us settled down for what promised to be a not-so-jolly chinwag.

  'So, Corvinus, you must be settling in at Vetuliscum quite nicely now.' Vipena poured me some honey wine. 'Becoming – if you'll excuse yet another joke -–somewhat of an "old hand".' Another sniff, longer this time, followed by a snuffle which I decided must be the augurial equivalent of a belly laugh.

  Joke? Well, maybe I was missing something. 'Yeah,' I said. 'It must be all of four days. And two murders kind of let you get a feel for a place.'

  'Indeed. Indeed.' Vipena sipped his wine. I didn't: I reckoned I'd been poisoned enough by that stuff already these past two days. How any self- respecting winemaker can drink that bilge, let alone serve it to guests, just beats me. 'A sadly misguided young man, Attus Navius. In more ways than one. Tut. A tragedy, an utter tragedy.' He shook his head slowly. 'I hear they've arrested Larth Papatius.'

  'Yeah. This morning.'

  'The gods be good to him, then. It would have been better if he had controlled his wife instead of killing her lover, but there' – he sighed – 'we are all in the hands of fate.'

  'Yeah.' I paused. 'Uh...you said "in more ways than one".'

  The yellow poached-egg eyes came up. 'I beg your pardon?'

  'You said that Navius was misguided "in more ways than one". I know the one, at least I think I do. But what was the other way?'

  He stared at me for a long time, his mouth opening and shutting. Then he blinked and turned away.

  'It was only a figure of speech,' he said finally.

  Sure; and I was Porsenna's grandmother. Still, I let it pass for the moment...

  Which was lucky, because at that point Tanaquil leaned forward and said something to the guy in Etruscan: I remembered that Mamilius had said they spoke it at home. I only caught two words: lupuce and tular. The first you can't be around Priscus for long without knowing, the second Jupiter knew where I'd picked up from but I knew that too.

  'What's that about boundaries?' I said. 'And who's dead?'

  Vipena's jaw dropped and he went pasty white.

  'You speak Etruscan?' he said.

  I shook my head. 'Uh-uh. Two or three words, that's all. My stepfather's the one for dead languages. He's -'

  I stopped: Vipena was holding up a hand like Jupiter himself preparing to smite the ungodly with a thunderbolt.

  'Etruscan is not a dead language, Valerius Corvinus!' he snapped. 'Not yet! But if it is moribund then it is the fault
of you Romans.' Shit, that was a change-around! One minute the guy had all the drive and force of a wilted lettuce, now you could've shoved a knife between his teeth, given him a sign saying 'no prisoners' and used him as a model for Hannibal before Cannae. 'And as for your stepfather desecrating our ancestors' tombs that is sheer unadulterated blasphemy!'

  Uh-oh; there went the spittle and the manic gleam. We had serious problems here. Time for bridge-building. 'Hey, hold on, pal!' I said mildly. 'Priscus doesn't break in. He just borrows the keys and lurks. And he doesn't touch anything, either. The owners are welcome to frisk him when he comes out.'

  I might as well have saved my breath. Vipena's eyes were blazing. It was like watching a praying mantis suddenly metamorphose into a very tetchy basilisk.

  'Our history is not a sideshow,’ he said. ‘And Helvius Priscus may not steal himself, but he encourages others to do so.'

  Yeah, well, the guy had a point: the more shady antique shops in Rome were full of bits and pieces that had probably seen the inside of a tomb somewhere if you went back far enough. And a lot of the tombs Priscus visited had already been cleaned out over the past hundred years by entrepreneurs working nights and weren't worth the trouble bricking up again. The bastards may not have gone to the length of lifting the paintings off the walls, but it was only a matter of time before someone developed the technique.

  Ramutha had her hand on Vipena's arm. He was literally shaking with rage. 'I think you should go, Corvinus,' she said quietly.

  That made two of us. If I stuck around any longer a curse was the least I could expect to be hit with. I stood up. 'Fine,' I said. 'Thanks for the –'

  'No.' Vipena was taking deep breaths. 'No. Wait. My apologies.' Wheeze. 'I get...rather upset over the – ah – cavalier way your ancestors treated mine.' Wheeze. 'Of course it's not your fault, either individually or collectively.' Wheeze. 'I'm speaking cosmically, of course.'

  'Cosmically.' Jupiter on wheels! Still, I sat down again. 'Is that right, now?'

  The guy picked up his wine cup and took a long swig. Under it I could see his adam's-apple working as the honey wine slipped past his tonsils. I winced. Finally he set the cup down empty and wiped his lips. Foul stuff or not, it seemed to have done the trick and the manic glare was gone. Now he just looked like a mad dishcloth.

  'Perhaps if I explain,' he said.

  'Go ahead, pal.' Well, anything was better than being on the receiving end of another Wrath of God speech. And if it calmed him down to speak cosmically, then that was fine with me.

  'The limits to the Etruscan race's existence were set long ago. We were allotted ten cycles of time. The ninth ended at the death of your Julius Caesar, and the tenth cannot have long to run; perhaps I may see it end myself. When that happens everything will be gone: not simply independence but history, language, way of life. Perhaps even the Etruscan name itself. Everything. Gone and irrecoverable. Imagine, if you can, your Rome in the same position, Corvinus. How would you feel? How would you view the culture responsible for its death, and the representatives of that culture?' I didn't say anything. Vipena sighed. 'Well, let it pass. As to your question, or questions, rather. I was concealing no great secret. The spring near the boundary I share – shared – with Navius dried up recently. I hoped that I could persuade him to rent me at least partial water rights to the perennial stream that flows through his own land some twenty yards from my own. He refused, and I count that decision "misguided" in the sense that we were neighbours and the advantage to me would far outweigh the loss to him. Tanaquil was simply advising me to tell you that.'

  'Okay,' I said. 'And lupuce – "he's dead"?'

  'Latin and Etruscan share an axiom, Corvinus: "Speak of the dead nothing but good". It's a fine rule, and one I try to put into practice. I was therefore reluctant to speak ill of Navius. Tanaquil disagreed; it was her opinion that, Navius being dead, information concerning a quarrel which shows him up in a poor light cannot possibly harm him.' He cleared his throat. 'And now if you'll excuse me I really must go and talk with Baro.' He stood up. 'I've enjoyed our meeting. You and your charming wife will be most welcome should you choose to call at any time.'

  I said my goodbyes and left.

  On the way home I thought about that last little gem. Sure, it was plausible, if you twisted it a little, looked at it sideways and allowed for the wind, but that was the point; otherwise it stank. My gut feeling was that my pal the augur had been lying through a hole in his fillet. Language is one thing, tone of voice is another; I'd got the distinct impression that whatever Tanaquil had said she'd been warning him, not advising him. And whatever the ins and outs of it, the admission of a quarrel was yet another indication that everything wasn't all sweetness and light in Vetuliscum where Navius and his neighbours were concerned. Whatever his mother might tell me, the guy wasn't popular. And somehow, somewhy, his unpopularity had killed him.

  14.

  Perilla had arrived back just before I did, so while she got changed out of her formal mantle and purified herself from the funeral I got Bathyllus to lay us out a cold lunch and a jug of wine on the terrace.

  'Hey, little guy,' I said while he dished out the cheese and olives. 'Where's the Princess disappeared to?'

  Bathyllus sniffed. 'She went straight out with the donkey, sir,' he said. The tone that went into the penultimate word would've fitted a loathsome disease. Like I said, Bathyllus is no animal lover.

  'She's missing a meal?' Gods! That would be enough to bring the end of Vipena's tenth saeculum on.

  'No, sir. She took half a loaf and a bagful of sliced sausage with her.'

  Half a loaf and a bagful of sliced sausage, eh? Yeah, that made a lot more sense. As did taking Corydon. I grinned and settled back in my chair with my feet propped against the terrace wall. Today was the day the brute's probation ran out, and subject to the original owner turning up to claim him he was officially ours, for which read Marilla's. We'd done all we could. Alexis had tramped about the countryside for three days asking at every farm, but no one had bitten. I didn't blame them; if I'd finally managed to get shot of the bugger I'd be keeping quiet too.

  I was tucking into what the Princess had left of the sausage when Perilla came out, looking cool in her lightest lounging tunic. She leaned over and kissed the back of my neck.

  'So, Marcus. And how was your day?' she said.

  I gave her the full details while she made inroads on the cold pickled tongue with sweet-sour sauce that Meton had sent up. 'So we've got too many suspects,' I finished. 'Every time I talk to someone I find another reason why Navius should be dead and why they could've killed him.'

  'What about Hilarion?'

  'Perilla, I can't even begin to guess about Hilarion! His death fits in, sure, but the gods know where. Leave him out for now.'

  'All right.' She reached for a stuffed olive. 'So let's go through the various motives for murdering Navius.'

  Fair enough. It was about time I got them all straight in my own head anyway. I pushed away the sausage plate and filled myself a cup of proper brain food.

  'Okay,' I said. 'We'll start with the biggie, Larth Papatius. Points for: all the circumstantial stuff we'd got already, plus this new angle that Arruns handed me. Papatius has two motives for murdering Navius, unconnected but reinforcing each other. One, the kid threatened to blow the whistle on Thupeltha, not just about his own affair with her but Clusinus's as well. Papatius had already killed a man for that, although after all this time we'd be hard pushed to make that stick, so a second murder's well within the grounds of possibility. Agreed?'

  'Agreed.' Perilla sipped her grape juice. 'There's one thing more. The Clusinus affair is still going on, or I assume it is. If Navius had made it public then Papatius's everyday relations with Clusinus would be under considerable strain. To say the least. In a small community like Vetuliscum that would be an important factor.'

  'Right. If nobody talked about it it didn't exist, and eventually, Thupeltha being the lady she is, it'd
probably go away of its own accord. Letting Navius dig the dirt in public would open up a whole new can of worms. As motives go they don't come much bigger.' I took a swallow of wine. 'Two. Navius's plans for his property. These hit Papatius where it really hurts. The guy may not care who's screwing his wife, but vines and wine are a different thing. He's built up a good business over the years and he has a reputation as the best vintner in the district. Now he's faced with the prospect of all that going down the tube; worse, of Caeretan becoming the sort of junk you only find on the boards of Suburan slop- shops. For any self-respecting winemaker that'd be the equivalent of seeing your grandmother sell herself for a copper a throw under the Sublician Bridge. In fact –'

  I stopped. Something was teasing at the back of my mind; something I'd missed. And nothing to do with Larth Papatius...

  'Marcus?'

  'Hmmm?'

  'Your eyes have glazed over.'

  'Yeah?' I shook myself. 'Sorry, lady. Just wool-gathering. Where was I?'

  'The Sublician Bridge.'

  'Oh. Right.' I took another belt of wine. 'So. Papatius is still a prime contender. Points against.' I paused. 'Shit, there are no points against. We've got rid of these already. The guy had motive, means and opportunity, the whole ball game.'

  'So he's guilty.'

  'Yeah.' I was frowning; it didn't seem right somehow, but exactly why I couldn't put my finger on. Maybe it was something to do with his insistence against the teeth of the evidence that he'd gone into Caere. That just didn't fit, no way, nohow, never...

  'Marcus, will you please stop doing that!' Perilla snapped. 'We're supposed to be having a discussion here!'

  'Uh, yeah.' I blinked and refocused. 'I'm sorry. Okay. Let's leave Papatius and look at some of the others. Larcius Arruns for a start. He's had his knife into the family for years over that stretch of vineyard.'

  'Is that a bad pun or was it an accident?'

  I grinned. 'Accident. But it's true enough all the same. He's got a motive –'