Bodies Politic

by David Wishart

  ‘Uh...sorry, lady. A cramp in my right foot.’ I banged it on the ground two or three times. ‘That’s fixed it. Mika, thanks for the hospitality. We’ll see you again before we leave in case you want us to take anything back for you. Give my regards to Nikos and tell him to hang on to that vineyard friend of his.’

  We left. On the way back Perilla insisted on ticking the box with the Temple of Serapis in it. You do not want to know. Believe me.

  Not that I was paying much attention to what she told me Philo had to say about the place, because that last exchange with Mika had started up a whole new train of thought.

  Interesting idea, right?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Clarus met us practically at the door. He was limping and he had various cuts and bruises and the beginnings of a beautiful shiner.

  ‘We’re fine,’ he said. ‘We’re both fine, all right? Just don’t go off the deep end, either of you, okay?’

  I stared at him like someone had slugged me. Behind me I heard Perilla gasp. ‘What happened?’ I said.

  Marilla had appeared at his elbow. As far as I could see, unlike Clarus’s, all her bits were undamaged. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘We were attacked,’ she said. ‘In the Park of Pan. At least, attacked’s not quite the word. I think they were trying to kidnap me. Only Clarus got in the way.’

  ‘Inside,’ I said. ‘Let’s have this from the beginning.’

  We were in our own bit of the house, the east wing. We went through to the big sitting area that looked out through the portico onto the garden courtyard, me in a numbed, guilty silence. Jupiter, this was what I’d been afraid would happen! The kids were evidently unhurt, or comparatively so in Clarus’s case, but still -

  When I next got in reach of the bastard responsible I’d kill him with my bare hands. Not if. When. I put it at two hours, max.

  ‘Now,’ I said, when we were settled on the couches. I was trying to be calm, and I knew I wasn’t succeeding too well. Perilla, I noticed, was deathly pale and shaking. ‘Tell us. The whole thing.’

  ‘We’d -’ Clarus began.

  ‘We’d decided that it was such a nice morning we’d just take a walk,’ Marilla said. ‘Clarus didn’t want to do any more sightseeing for the moment’ - she glanced sideways at Perilla, and I found myself despite everything smothering a grin: the guy was human after all - ‘so we went to the Park of Pan.’ Yeah; like I said, that’s the other high spot in Alex, mostly natural but part man-made. A half-wild area with plenty of walks and trees, where from the top there’s a good view over the city. ‘It gets crowded later on, seemingly, but early in the day it’s quite quiet. Anyway, we -’

  ‘They must’ve followed us,’ Clarus said. ‘There were five of them, with clubs. Anyway, we were on one of the little paths that lead off the main spiral track to the top when they came at us from behind and grabbed Marilla. I managed to put one of them down, but two of the others grabbed me and the one who wasn’t holding Marilla hit me.’ He touched a bruise on his forehead.

  ‘I managed to kick him in the -’ Marilla hesitated. ‘Well, I managed to kick him hard, anyway, and he didn’t like it, but it meant one of the men holding Clarus let go of him. Then everything got a bit fraught.’

  ‘We were shouting blue murder, of course,’ Clarus said. ‘There wasn’t anyone else around that far off the main drag, but you must’ve been able to hear the racket half way to the town square. I was slugging it out with two of the guys, getting the worst of it, and the rest were dragging Marilla off, when a young local and a couple of his slaves came round the bend and piled in to help. That was it.’ He shrugged. ‘The men let Marilla go and ran off. End of story.’

  Gods! ‘You’re not hurt, Clarus?’ I said. ‘Seriously, I mean?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Just a sprained ankle and bruises, nothing that won’t mend quickly. I’m a doctor, I know.’ He shot Perilla a quick glance and smiled quietly. ‘I, ah, won’t be up to any more temples or monuments for the next few days, though. Unfortunately.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Perilla said tightly. The lady had got her colour back, and she was looking grim. ‘Marcus -’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I know,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘Good. This has to stop.’

  ‘It’ll stop, lady.’ I got up. ‘I’ll see to that.’

  Her face changed. ‘Marcus, where are you going?’

  ‘To the fucking Palace. Where else?’

  ‘Corvinus, no!’ Clarus said. ‘I told you: we’re fine, and there’s no harm done. We’ll just be more careful next time we go out, take a few of Stratocles’s slaves with us.’

  I carried on walking. ‘There won’t be a next time, pal,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘I guarantee it. There shouldn’t’ve been a first.’

  ***

  I ought to have taken the carriage, but Frontis would’ve unharnessed the horses by now and I was too angry to wait. Besides, it was less than a mile in a straightish line, which was possible the way the city was laid out, and I’d got my bearings now well enough to use the side streets. What had been going on was pretty obvious. Marilla was right, it had been an attempted kidnapping, not an attack, and the guys had been armed with clubs, not knives, which showed they’d been told to injure at worst, not kill. Not that that made me feel any better. As I said, targeting me was one thing, I was fair game, but trying to put the pressure on through family was completely off the board.

  The only problem was, who was I going for?

  The obvious answer, on surface evaluation, would’ve been Flaccus: the theory held there, right enough. But after that talk with Mika I wasn’t certain that Flaccus was the guy I wanted after all. There was what lawyers would call an area of reasonable doubt, and it centred on the business of the Jews’ message of congratulations.

  Oh, sure, I could see how it could be argued, and Mika had made the point herself: sending a separate, official message could be interpreted as an indication that Flaccus - and so Rome, since Flaccus was her representative - recognised the Alexandrian Jews as an independent, autonomous body, which politically they weren’t. On the other hand, any governor with an eye to his immediate future career would think twice before actually suppressing it altogether, in any form. Especially if the intended recipient was a vain, touchy bugger like Gaius. Especially if he already knew he wasn’t exactly flavour of the month already with said vain, touchy bugger. And especially, finally, because he’d already promised the Jews that he’d send their message on...

  So maybe he had. Or thought he had.

  We’d got another theory here, or rather we were back to the original one, which was equally valid: Flaccus was a complete innocent after all, and being set up for some reason with involvement in the fake Gemellus conspiracy. And after what Mika had said I could see how that worked.

  Let’s say someone in Rome - not Lepidus and Agrippina, but high up all the same - wanted the Egyptian governor very, very vulnerable where the emperor was concerned; totally dependent on the someone’s continued support and so ready to be manipulated by any agent they sent to Alexandria. If they could control the contents of the diplomatic bag that carried all the official correspondence between the Egyptian governor and Rome then because that would be what the governor was judged by back home they could engineer things how they liked. And to do that all they’d need was a key man at the Alex end. Someone who acted as the middle-man between Flaccus and the bag. Someone like the governor’s aide, Acilius Glabrio.

  Shit. It was beautiful. Flaccus hands the Jews’ message of congratulation to Glabrio, telling him to put it in the diplomatic bag, and forgets about it, as he naturally would: job done, duty fulfilled. Only Glabrio, on instructions from X in Rome, burns it instead. Oh, official communications channels are much faster than the ones for the use of the ordinary punters, sure - the government has fast cutters, or triremes that can row against the wind, and once any message is on Italian soil there’s the imperial courier service - but it h
ad to be a clear month at least, probably a lot longer, before Flaccus smelled a rat and realised the Jewish letter hadn’t got through. By which time it was too late to send a copy, not without providing a reasonable excuse with evidence to back it, which he didn’t have. And even if he did it might just make matters worse: Gaius might well interpret the whole thing as a deliberate, studied insult on the part of a man he didn’t like or trust in any case. Better, then - and I’d guess this was what Flaccus decided to do - to leave it alone and hope it would be quietly forgotten about. He wouldn’t automatically think of blaming Glabrio either; why should he? Glabrio - as far as he knew - had no reason to monkey with the mail, and under the circumstances it’d be much more likely that the funny business had happened at the Rome end, where he knew he had real enemies; a passed-on message of congratulation isn’t exactly hush-hush confidential stuff, so it wouldn’t go direct to the emperor, for Gaius’s eyes only...

  I stopped. We kept coming back to the same area, like a tongue probing a bad tooth. I might not have a name for X, but I sure as hell had a job. Who, in Rome, besides the emperor, had unrestricted access to the contents of a provincial diplomatic bag? Who could control what went in and what came out; at least, if they were high enough up to get away with it? Who was likely to be Greek themselves, and so use a Greek as their prime agent? And who, finally, would be close enough to Claudius Etruscus for me to scare the willies out of him by turning up at civil service headquarters?

  Right. X was one of his immediate colleagues, a top civil service freedman probably working at the same level or higher. No wonder he couldn’t approach me through official channels, or propria persona. And no wonder the poor guy had been running shit-scared: if he’d found out somehow that one of his senior associates, maybe even his boss, was eyeball-deep in a plot against the emperor...

  Only that didn’t square, did it? Unless he’d been lying to me through his teeth and was the best actor since Roscius, Etruscus didn’t know anything about the Lepidus/Agrippina plot. So what - to the best of his belief, anyway - was X up to?

  Hell. I was so close I could smell it. Still, there was no point in speculating, not yet. And I was ninety-nine percent certain now that Glabrio was the man. Which in a way was a relief; even I could see that forcing my way into Flaccus’s private office and punching an Egyptian governor’s lights out was not such a hot idea.

  I could see the roofs of the Palace up ahead now.

  Here we went.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I had no problems getting past the front desk: appointments with the governor were controlled, sure, but evidently people were in and out of his aide’s room all the time. Also, the clerk recognised me, so as far as he was concerned I was persona grata. He didn’t even bother to send up an accompanying slave.

  Which meant when I walked into Glabrio’s office I took the bastard completely by surprise.

  He was dictating to a secretary. He glanced up at me and blinked, but he recovered quickly enough.

  ‘That’s fine, Crito, we’ll finish later,’ he said. The secretary went out. ‘Valerius Corvinus, isn’t it? Delighted to see you again. What can I do for you?’ He rose and held out a hand.

  I didn’t take it. ‘You can explain why you didn’t forward the Jews’ letter of congratulations on the emperor’s accession to Rome. What you, Isidorus and that poor sap Cineas that you use as your courier have cooking between you. How much you’re being paid for helping to put the skids on the governor, who in the Roman civil service is doing the paying, and why. And finally, pal, what you meant by sending your thugs to kill me and - which is worse - trying to kidnap my adopted daughter and beating up her fiancé.’

  He’d frozen, smile and hand together. Then he dropped both.

  ‘Corvinus, are you out of your mind?’ he said. ‘Why should I -?’

  I was over to the desk without being aware that I’d moved, one hand gripping his mantle and the other at his throat. He stiffened.

  ‘Look, you bastard,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m not interested in lies, or protestations of innocence. All I want, barring at this precise moment to break your fucking neck, is some straightforward answers. But it wouldn’t take much to make me put pleasure before business, so when I let you go you bear that very carefully in mind, okay?’ I stepped back and he collapsed into his chair, gasping and rubbing his throat: I could see the red weals and where my nails had drawn blood, although I hadn’t been aware of squeezing that hard.

  ‘I can’t...’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t...’ He swallowed. ‘How dare you come in here and..?’

  My fist came down on the desk, making the inkpot jump and spreading ink all over the surface. ‘I warned you once,’ I said. ‘I won’t do it again. You’re up shit creek without a paddle, friend. I’m under personal instructions from the emperor to find out what’s going on here’ - his eyes widened - ‘and if you don’t tell me willingly then -’

  The door opened; the secretary, back. Bugger!

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,’ he said, ‘but I had a question about -’ He stopped when he saw our faces. ‘Is there any problem?’

  ‘No.’ Glabrio straightened his mantle. ‘No problem, Crito. But Valerius Corvinus was just leaving. Show him downstairs at once, will you?’

  The guy gave me a suspicious look. ‘Yes, sir, of course. Valerius Corvinus? If you’d like to come this way?’ He waited.

  I didn’t move. I was still looking at Glabrio, whose face was the colour of old parchment. ‘It doesn’t end here, sunshine,’ I said. ‘Don’t be a fool. You know where I am. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think it over and get in touch. After that I go to the governor, and believe me by the time I’ve finished with you that’ll be the least of your worries. Have a nice day.’

  I walked past the gaping secretary and down the stairs.

  ***

  It took about three blocks for the fog of anger to lift and for me to start thinking clearly again. Not that, on sober reflection, I would’ve done things differently now: I’d known the minute I walked into the room and saw his face that he was our villain. Or one of them, at least. And every shot had gone home. When I’d let the bastard go he was practically gibbering.

  That bit about having the emperor’s commission had been a smacker, too, even if it wasn’t quite true and I’d said it on the spur of the moment. Whoever Glabrio was working for ultimately in Rome - and I didn’t have a clue who it might be - he wouldn’t trump Gaius. It was an indication to Glabrio that if the game was up - which it was - then there was nowhere to run and no one who could protect him. He was well and truly screwed, and he knew it. I wasn’t bluffing about going to the governor either: if I’d no actual hard proof the circumstantial stuff would be good enough, and if I was right it would all add up for Flaccus already. The only fly in the ointment was Isidorus; but then if Glabrio believed me about having Gaius’s backing then I didn’t see why Flaccus shouldn’t as well, and if I didn’t miss my guess the poor bugger would need every influential friend he’d got shortly.

  So the chances were that Glabrio would be in touch as per instructions, especially if he had twenty-four hours to stew in his own juice and weigh the pros and cons of keeping his mouth shut. I reckoned I’d done a good - and certainly satisfying - day’s work. If I could just ferret out the details of the Macro connection, now, we’d be off and rolling. It was a pity that Glabrio could only keep official documents out of the diplomatic bag, not put them in. That way he could -

  The thought hit me like a hatchet. Oh, gods! Bloody Jupiter and the whole sodding pantheon!

  Of course he could! Only not official documents, and not in the bag. Certainly not the first; in fact, you didn’t get any more unofficial than these had to be, and that was what Cineas was for.

  I was passing a horse trough fed by the overflow from a fountain: water’s no problem in Alex, with the system of covered-over canals and ducts bringing it in from Lake Mareotis and the Nile, and there are more fountains th
an you can shake a stick at. Near the centre, at least. This needed thinking out in detail, and barring a convenient wineshop a seat on the edge of a horse trough would do me fine. I sat down and ignored the curious stares of the other pedestrians and the couple of nags who’d got there first.

  A scenario. Let’s say at the time of Gaius’s illness Flaccus writes a perfectly innocent letter to Macro - who deals with provincial policy and who’s himself written to the various governors apprising them of the situation - asking for instructions in the unfortunate event of Gaius’s death; perfectly reasonable, because the odds on that happening at the time had been pretty good, and as the emperor’s personal legate he’d be acting within his remit. X - we’ll call him X, the civil service guy - handles the letter and sees his chance. He’s already, for reasons I didn’t yet know, targeted Flaccus and is looking for ways to burn him at some future date. The two men - Macro and Flaccus - are acquainted personally, as well as officially; and Flaccus, although he was a personal friend of old Tiberius, is already suspect with Gaius because he was heavily involved on the prosecution side in the trial of Gaius’s mother Agrippina. Okay; so X decides to fabricate a conspiracy between them, one that neither will know anything about until it’s too late, but will kill both birds with one stone: Macro literally, and Flaccus metaphorically, because by the time X has finished he’ll be so stitched up in circumstantial evidence that he’ll be a cinch to blackmail...

  I stopped. Shit, no, that didn’t quite work. If my theory was right, then X only wanted one bird, Flaccus: it was Lepidus and Agrippina who wanted rid of Macro, and if X had no connection with them, then...

  Bugger. Leave it.

  So anyway. X is sitting pretty. The evidence for the conspiracy will take the form of an exchange of letters, all forged, between Macro and Flaccus, having the first two genuine ones as their starting point. Only they won’t be official, governor to imperial rep, but just Flaccus to Macro and vice versa, and they’ll be carried sub rosa to and fro by a fall guy, Cineas, who if and when the shit hits the fan will be expendable. X will handle the Roman end, producing the ‘Macro’ letters; Glabrio, who’s seen the governor’s signature often enough to be able to forge it, writes the ‘Flaccus’ ones. Obviously, they never reach their ostensible recipients: Glabrio collects the former and X the latter. The whole package ends up eventually back in Rome, in X’s hands. After Macro is chopped, X hands the package to Isidorus and sends him on his merry way to Flaccus with his blessing...