Solid Citizens

by David Wishart

  ‘Well, obviously,’ I said.

  Scaptius grinned. ‘Going to the big funeral?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’ I sipped my wine.

  ‘I hear the senate’s asked you to look into the death. That true?’

  ‘Did you, now?’ Well, I shouldn’t’ve been surprised, really. Gossip in a wine shop goes both ways, and in a small town like Bovillae most secrets don’t stay secret for long. Not that there was anything to hide in this instance. And it made asking straight questions easier. ‘Yeah, it’s true enough. Popular man, was he, old Caesius?’

  ‘He was OK. For a politician. Straighter than some.’

  ‘Straighter than fucking Manlius, for a start,’ said one of the other punters further along the counter to my left. ‘Him and his mate the fucking quaestor, they’re a right pair of chancers.’

  Par for the course: slagging off the local politicians over a jug of wine is the national pastime wherever you go. It’s done on principle. Me, I don’t pay much attention, normally: if the guys weren’t crooked in some way, or at least on the make, then they wouldn’t be in politics in the first place. Ipso facto.

  Why state the obvious?

  There were a few chuckles, and I noticed one or two heads nodding. Scaptius grunted.

  ‘Manlius?’ I said to him. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘One of the aediles,’ he said. ‘Quaestor’s Sextus Canidius.’ The aediles were the two top magistrates in a normal year; the quaestor was the guy in charge of the town’s finances. ‘Manlius ran against Caesius for censor. He’s big in the wool business.’

  ‘Big in the wool burning business,’ the guy along the row said. Chuckles again, and a ‘Too bloody right, mate’ from someone else in the line.

  ‘Well now, Battus, my boy,’ Scaptius said equably, turning round to face him, ‘we’ll never know the truth of that, will we?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s for fucking sure.’

  ‘Indeed it is. So just shut it, please. And watch the language.’

  I took a bit of the garlic sausage. Strong stuff – more garlic than sausage by the taste of it. I’d be pretty unpopular when I got back home. Maybe I’d stick with the pickles.

  ‘Wool burning?’ I said.

  Scaptius turned back to me and shrugged. ‘The town farms out the right to broker the sale of wool from the public herds every season to a private dealer,’ he said. ‘This year the guy’s business folded just after the contract was signed, and Canidius got the senate to transfer it over to Manlius. The bales were stored in a warehouse that caught fire and burned down—’

  ‘Mysteriously and unaccountably caught fire and burned down.’

  Scaptius sighed, but this time he didn’t turn. ‘Sod off, Battus,’ he said. ‘I’m telling this, right? Anyway, it burned down, June, that’d be, just after the shearing, with a year’s worth of wool in it, and—’

  ‘What Manlius claimed was a year’s worth of fucking wool.’

  Scaptius’s hand slammed down on the counter and he glared along the line. ‘Battus, you bastard,’ he said, ‘one more word – just one – and you’re barred until the festival, right? And I’ve already told you: less of the sodding language, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  He turned back to me. ‘Anyway, when Caesius ran for censor he promised that if he won there’d be a full investigation. That’s not going to happen now, is it? Not with Manlius himself practically dead cert to replace him.’

  I tried a pickle and spat it out. Jupiter! The gods knew where Scaptius bought them from, but I was surprised they hadn’t burned a hole in the jar. When he was crossing the Alps, Hannibal was supposed to have broken up the boulders from avalanches by heating them and pouring on vinegar. This must’ve been the stuff. Come to that, it could’ve done the job on its own. ‘There’ll be a new election, surely,’ I said when I’d stopped coughing. ‘From scratch.’

  ‘Oh, sure, but the chances are that no one else’ll run. With Caesius gone Manlius has the senate in his pocket. Or he and Canidius have between them. Their two families have been the top ones in Bovillae for the past three hundred years. Caesius, sure, he was old-Bovillae too, but his family’s only notched up one magistracy to every ten of theirs. And they’re rich as Croesus into the bargain. If Caesius hadn’t been so highly thought of, Manlius could’ve bought his way into the censorship easily. When he lost it really put his nose out of joint.’

  ‘He can buy my vote any time,’ a punter – not Battus this time – growled. ‘And he gives decent games; you have to say that for him.’

  ‘Come on, now, Thermus,’ Scaptius said wearily. ‘You’re the sort of materialistic bastard that keeps these sods in office!’

  ‘Yeah, that’s me. Materialist to the core. Wouldn’t be anything else. Proud of it.’

  I pushed the plate of suspect nibbles away to where it wouldn’t do any more damage and took a throat-clearing swallow of wine. ‘So,’ I said. ‘This fire. No one knows how it started?’

  ‘Sure they do,’ Scaptius said. ‘That was just Battus sounding off. The night watchman was drunk; he tipped over a lamp and set some straw alight. Or that’s the official version, anyway.’

  ‘Fucking right it’s the official version.’ Battus again. ‘And it’s a lie from start to finish, because old Garganius never touched a drop in his life when he was on duty. If you want to hear the true story you talk to him, pal. Sextus Garganius. Lives over by the fucking meat market.’

  ‘Battus, I warned you! Out!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ The punter set his cup down. ‘It’s OK. Keep your hair on, Scaptius, I was just going anyway. See you later, guys. Enjoy the festival.’ There was a chorus of grunts, whistles and cat-calls. He lurched towards the door, and – finally – through it.

  ‘Prat!’ Scaptius muttered and reached for a cloth to wipe the counter.

  ‘Just out of interest,’ I said to him, ‘do you happen to know where I can find Caesius’s brother?’

  ‘Lucius?’ He gave me a sharp look and put the cloth down. ‘What do you want with him?’

  ‘I just need a quick word, that’s all. For the sake of completeness.’

  ‘To do with the death?’ I said nothing. ‘Well, it’s no business of mine, sir, and no skin off my nose. Sure I know. Far as I remember, he rents a room in the first street to the right of the square, above Cammius’s bakery.’ He turned to the other punters. ‘That so, lads?’ There were a few affirmative grunts. ‘You might see him at the funeral, but I wouldn’t count on it. He and his brother weren’t exactly on friendly terms.’

  ‘So I’m told,’ I said. Rents a room, right? So the guy was obviously seriously strapped for cash. Something that was probably just going to change, and pretty drastically, from what I’d seen of the Caesius ménage; if he was the dead man’s only heir, he’d be worth quite a bit, shortly. I sank the remaining wine in my cup and stood up. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Catch you later.’

  ‘Have a good festival if we don’t see you before,’ Scaptius said.

  ‘You too, pal.’

  Right. Back to the job in hand. Or at least to the victim’s funeral.

  FIVE

  The market square was beginning to fill up, with crowds starting to form in the porticoes which surrounded it. They’d erected a temporary dais in the centre, wreathed along its edges with cypress, and there were a few curule stools on top for the dignitaries and the actors that’d be playing the dead man’s magistrate ancestors. I found a place with a good view, next to a pillar, and leaned my back against it to wait.

  ‘Down from Rome, are you, sir?’ the guy beside me said. He was chewing on a sausage.

  ‘Yeah. Just through for the festival.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said smugly. ‘I could tell straight away from the haircut. Me, I’m a barber by trade. That’s a Big City haircut you’ve got there, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It is.’

  ‘Thought so. Easy to spot, when you know the trick of it.’ He nodded in the direction of t
he dais and took another bite of his takeaway lunch. ‘They’re giving him a good send-off, at any rate, the randy old devil. Visiting brothels at his time of life, eh? Who would’ve thought it, a respectable man like Caesius, too. You live and learn, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘Yeah. You certainly do.’

  ‘Still, good on him, whatever anyone else says. Showed he was human after all, with a bit of red blood in his veins. That’s what a lot of these cold bastards need, a bit of good red blood. Too much thinking – well, it isn’t good for you, is it?’

  I grunted vague agreement and looked away. The facts of the case had got around fast enough, that was for sure. Not that it was surprising, mind: Bovillae’s a small place, and nothing spreads quicker than scandal. Plus the guy was a barber, after all. Gossip – particularly salacious gossip – is part of a barber’s stock in trade. Forget the Daily Register: if you want to keep up with the breaking news anywhere in the empire the way to do it is to go down to the local market square every morning for a shave and trim.

  We were about ready for the off: I could hear the wailing of flutes and the clashing of cymbals from the direction of the Arician Gate, and a couple of minutes later the funeral procession itself appeared. They were giving him a good send-off, right enough; the Bovillan Senate, bless their little cotton socks, had pulled out all the stops. The musicians and professional mourners came first, then the bier with the dead man on it. Behind were his magistrate ‘ancestors’ in mourning mantles, the actors wearing the original death-masks. Scaptius the barman had been right; there were only half a dozen of them, quite a poor showing. Finally, the senate themselves, the town’s greatest and best, led by the two current aediles with their attendant rod men. Among the follow-ons, I recognized Nerva and the fugitive from an Egyptian tomb that was old Publius Novius, Bovillae’s sharp-as-a-knife lawyer.

  The procession filled the centre of the square. The death-couch was set down, and the ‘ancestors’ plus the chief magistrates and top town officials took their places on the dais. One of the aediles raised his hand for silence. The music stopped. He took a scroll out of his mantle-pouch and unrolled it. So. They hadn’t asked Brother Lucius as next-of-kin to read the eulogy, which would’ve been the normal way of doing things. Or – and I guessed it was the more likely explanation – he hadn’t offered. Interesting.

  ‘Who’s giving the speech?’ I said to my barber pal.

  He spat a piece of gristle from the sausage into his palm and threw it away. ‘Marcus Manlius,’ he said.

  The guy involved in the wool-store scam. If it was a scam. Yeah, Scaptius had said he was one of the aediles. I took a more careful look. A bit younger than Caesius had been, mid-fifties, maybe, with that sleek, plump, self-satisfied look you often get with rich political types: the fat-cat who’s swallowed the canary and then gone on to lick up whatever cream’s going before complaining that they’ve been short-changed, and besides, who had been responsible for providing the cream in the first place?

  Manlius was definitely someone else I had to talk to.

  ‘How about Canidius?’ I said to the informative barber. ‘He here?’

  ‘The quaestor?’ He pointed. ‘That’s him, behind Manlius’s shoulder. The long drink of water.’

  I followed the pointing finger with my eye, and grinned: ‘long drink of water’ summed the guy up perfectly. Tall, thin as a rake, early- to mid-forties, pasty-faced, looked like his nose had a permanent drip, and that there was something nasty under it. A prime candidate, obviously, for a pint or two of my barber pal’s good red blood.

  Manlius was getting into his stride. As eulogies went, it was standard, off-the-peg, ten-sesterces-the-yard stuff, delivered in the po-faced, self-consciously pious manner common to politicians and priests everywhere: pillar of the community, honest, reliable, honourable, life devoted to the service of the people of Bovillae, tragic loss, never see his like again. Pick-and-mix, like I say, all pretty general, but with the noticeable omission of the usual bits concerning sterling moral rectitude and the closeness of the dead man’s family ties. Either Manlius – if he’d written the speech himself, which was possible, judging by its banality – wasn’t a total hypocrite, or more likely he just wasn’t risking catcalls from the less respectful members of the crowd. That sort you always get, at politicos’ funerals, and if their comments aren’t always exactly PC at least they inject a bit of honesty into the proceedings.

  Which reminded me … I turned to my chatty neighbour.

  ‘Any sign of the dead man’s brother here, pal?’ I said. ‘Lucius Caesius? Or his nephew Mettius? You know either of them by sight?’

  ‘Sure.’ The barber scanned the crowd, taking his time and chewing on the last of his sausage. ‘I can’t see the brother,’ he said finally. ‘Although that’s not surprising. The two couldn’t stand each other, no secret about it. But there’ – he pointed again, over to the far left – ‘that’s your Mettius. Standing over there by the shrine of the Goddess Rome, next to the fat woman with the chickens.’

  I looked. There was only one possible candidate, a middle-aged guy in a sharp tunic and hairstyle years too young for him. His back was against the shrine, his arms were folded, and he was smiling with the relaxed air of someone just out to enjoy the show.

  Which was just about over. Manlius had delivered his last pompous phrase and was rolling up the text of his speech and nodding to the slaves carrying the death-couch; at least, most of them were slaves, but I noticed that one of them was Anthus, in his new freedman’s cap. So they’d let him carry his master on his last journey. I was pleased about that.

  The flute and cymbal players struck up again and the cortège moved off, followed by the dignitaries and whoever was going on to attend the final burning outside the town limits. Quite a few of these last, it seemed, and a fair number of them were ordinary punters: despite the circumstances, Caesius must still be popular. There again, in these small country towns you have to take what amusement you can get, and maybe even a funeral wasn’t to be sneezed at. I said goodbye and thanks to my barber pal and tagged along, glancing over my shoulder to see who else was coming.

  Surprisingly – at least, it was a surprise to me – it included the nephew, who’d slipped in at the tail-end of the crowd. An even bigger surprise was that walking beside him was the brothel owner, Opilia Andromeda.

  Interesting.

  We went through the town, back the way the procession had come, past Caesius’s house and out of the Arician Gate, where the tombs started. A few hundred yards on, there was a big funeral pyre covered again with branches of pine and cypress, next to what was presumably the family pile. The bearers manoeuvred the death-couch on to the top of the pyre and stepped back while one of the undertakers’ men handed Manlius, as chief mourner, the lighted torch. He pushed it into the oil-soaked wood, the flames leapt up and smoke billowed, caught by a freshening breeze and shrouding the corpse.

  Once the fire had properly taken hold a fairly large chunk of the crowd began to drift off back in the direction of town, leaving a hard core mostly consisting of mantle-wearers. Me, I stuck around too: this is the point in the proceedings for socialising, while the corpse is burned and the chief mourners plus the undertakers’ men wait for the fire to die down so that they can cool the ashes with wine and collect the bones for burial. I looked for the lawyer, Publius Novius – after all, I’d have to talk to him before too long – but I couldn’t see him. That was understandable, sure: the day was turning cold, no weather for an old man to be out for long in, and he’d probably have packed it in as soon as it was decent. Nevertheless, most of the senators were still around, chatting in groups; I got a nod from Silius Nerva, although he didn’t come over. Also hanging on for the final rites – surprisingly, I thought, all things considered – was the nephew Mettius. Not Andromeda, though, who I’d noticed slipping away practically as soon as the pyre was lit – out of tact, probably, since the odds were that the high-profile mourners included some of her regular
customers. But there again, maybe I was doing her an injustice. She’d come to the burning, after all, and she was a busy lady with a business to run.

  Mettius was standing on his own, looking at the flames and obviously lost in his own thoughts. I drifted across to him, and he glanced up when he saw me coming. He did a double-take, and his eyes widened slightly.

  I might’ve been wrong, but I had the distinct impression that the guy was steeling himself.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m—’

  ‘Marcus Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know who you are. You’re down here from Rome, and you’re investigating the old man’s death, right?’

  Old man. Not my uncle. Well, it made sense, I suppose, given the background and the fact that they’d had no contact for over ten years. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Although there’s no actual connection between the two. So how did you know, exactly?’

  He shrugged; an elegant lifting of the shoulders. Ageing lad-about-town was right: the guy might dress and be barbered like a twenty-year-old dandy, but he was at least thirty-five, probably closer to forty, and he looked ten years older; it’s not the mileage that gets you, sometimes, it’s the booze, and I reckoned Mettius had sunk his fair share over the years. Not that I’m one to talk, of course.

  ‘Andromeda told me,’ he said.

  ‘Right. Right.’ I nodded. ‘I noticed you were together. You, uh, know her well?’

  ‘That all depends on what you mean. We’re on familiar terms, yes, of course we are, as no doubt you’ll’ve guessed from the fact that we came out here in one another’s company.’ His eyes were challenging. ‘Knowing her well, however – in the sense in which I suspect you used the word – is something else entirely. I’m not married, Corvinus, but like a lot of other men in this town, married and single, I enjoy sex for its own sake and am willing to pay for it, so I’m a customer of hers. The big difference between me and a large number of her other regular clients is that I’m not ashamed to admit it.’