JUPITER MYTH Read online

  JUPITER MYTH

  Lindsey Davis

  Lindsey Davis

  JUPITER MYTH

  Londinium, Britannia

  August, A.D. 75

  I

  It depends what we mean by civilization," the procurator mused.

  Staring at the corpse, I was in no mood to discuss philosophy. We were in Britain, where the rule of law was administered by the army Justice operated in a rough-and-ready fashion so far away from Rome, but special circumstances meant this killing would be difficult to brush aside.

  We had been called out by a centurion from the small local troop detachment. The military presence in Londinium was mainly to protect the governor, Julius Frontinus, and his deputy, the procurator Hilaris, but since the provinces are not manned by the vigiles, soldiers carry basic community policing. So the centurion attended the death scene, where he became a worried man. On investigation, an apparently routine local slaying acquired "developments."

  The centurion told us he had come to the bar expecting just a normal drunken stabbing or battering. To find a drowned man headfirst down a well was slightly unusual, exciting maybe. The "well" was a deep hole in a corner of the bar's tiny backyard. Hilaris and I bent double and peered in. The hole was lined with the waterproof wooden staves of what must be a massive German wine container; water came nearly to the top. Hilaris had told me these imported barrels were taller than a man, and after being emptied of wine they were often reused in this way.

  When we arrived, of course the body had already been removed. The centurion had pulled up the victim by his boots, planning to heave the cadaver into a corner until the local dung cart carried it off. He himself had intended to sit down with a free drink while he eyed up the attractions of the serving girl.

  Her attractions were not up to much. Not by Aventine standards. It depends what we mean by attractive, as Hilaris might muse, if he were the type to comment on waitresses. Myself, I was that type, and immediately as we entered the dim establishment I had noticed she was four feet high with a laughable leer and smelled like old boot liners. She was too stout, too ugly, and too slow on the uptake for me. But I'm from Rome. I have high standards. This was Britain, I reminded myself.

  There was certainly no chance of anyone getting free drinks now that Hilaris and I were here. We were official. I mean really official. One of us held a damned high rank. It wasn't me. I was just a new middle-class upstart. Anyone of taste and style would be able to sniff out my slum background instantly.

  "I'll avoid the bar," I joked quietly. "If their water is full of dead men, their wine is bound to be tainted!"

  "No, I'll not try a tasting," agreed Hilaris in a tactful undertone. "We don't know what they may stuff in their amphorae…"

  The centurion stared at us, showing his contempt for our attempts at humor.

  This event was even more inconvenient for me than it was for the soldier. All he had to worry about was whether to mention the awkward "developments" on his report. I had to decide whether to tell Flavius Hilaris-my wife's Uncle Gaius-that I knew who the dead man was. Before that, I had to evaluate the chances that Hilaris himself had known the casked corpse.

  Hilaris was the important one here. He was procurator of finance in Britain. To put it in perspective, I was a procurator myself, but my role- which involved theoretical oversight of the Sacred Geese of Juno-was one of a hundred thousand meaningless honors handed out by the Emperor when he owed someone a favor and was too mean to pay in cash. Vespasian reckoned my services had cost enough, so he settled up remaining debts with a joke. That was me: Marcus Didius Falco, the imperial clown. Whereas the estimable Gaius Flavius Hilaris, who had known Vespasian many years ago in the army, was now second only to the provincial governor. Since he did know Vespasian personally, then (as the governor would be aware), dear Gaius was the emperor's eyes and ears, assessing how the new governor ran the province.

  He did not need to assess me. He had done that five years ago when we first met. I think I came out well. I wanted to look good. That was even before I fell for his wife's elegant, clever, superior niece. Alone in the Empire, Hilaris had always thought Helena might end up with me. Anyway, he and his own wife had received me back now as a nephew by marriage as if it were natural and even a pleasure.

  Hilaris looked a quiet, clerkish, slightly innocent fellow, but I wouldn't take him on at draughts-well, not unless I could play with my brother Festus' weighted dice. He was dealing with the situation in his usual way: curious, thorough, and unexpectedly assertive. "Here's one Briton who has not acquired much benefit from Roman civilization," he had said on being shown the corpse. That was when he added dryly, "I suppose it depends what you mean by civilization, though."

  "He took in water with his wine, you mean?" I grinned.

  "Better not jest."Hilaris was no prude and it was not a reproof.

  He was a lean, neat man, still active and alert-yet grayer and more haggard than I had remembered him. He had always given a slight impression of ill health. His wife, Aelia Camilla, seemed little changed since my last visit, but Flavius Hilaris looked much older and I felt glad I had brought my own wife and youngsters to see him while I could.

  Trying not to show that I was watching him, I decided he did know the dead man at his feet. As a career diplomat, he would also be aware of why this death would cause us problems. But, so far, he was not mentioning his knowledge to me.

  That was interesting.

  II

  I'm sorry to drag you out, sirs," murmured the centurion. He must be wishing he had kept quiet. He was totting up how much additional documentation he had let himself in for, and had realized belatedly that his commander would give him all Hades for involving the civil powers.

  "You did the right thing." I had never seen Hilaris back off from trouble. Strange to think that this man had served in the army (Second Augusta, my own legion, twenty years before me). He was part of the Invasion force too, at a time for pragmatic dealings with the locals. But three decades of civic bureaucracy had turned him into that rare highflying wonder, a public servant who followed the rules. Even rarer, instead of stagnating uselessly out here, he had mastered the art of making the rules work. Hilaris was good. Everyone said so.

  By contrast the centurion covered his ineptitude by moving slowly, saying little, and doing even less. He was wide-bodied and short-necked. He stood with his feet planted wide apart, his arms hanging loose. His neckerchief was tucked into his armor with just enough untidiness to express contempt for authority, yet his boots were buffed and his sword and dagger looked sharp. He would be the type who sat around obsessively honing his weapons and complaining about higher offices. I doubted he grumbled at the Emperor. Vespasian was a soldiers' general.

  Vespasian would know that the army is stuffed with such characters: not as good as those in charge would like, but sound enough to coast along in a far-off province where the frontiers were fairly quiet and open rebellion was no longer an issue. The legions in Britain carried no dead wood. In a real crisis, something could be made of this centurion.

  We had a crisis here. Correctly, the centurion had sensed it. And to be fair, he responded properly. He had noticed the white circle around the dead man's neck where a torque had habitually sat, and he saw the grazes where the heavy twisted metal must have been wrenched off by a thief or thieves. He realized this was serious. It was not the theft itself that made for trouble, but in tribal Britain heavy gold and electrum neck torques were worn only by the rich and well-born. That torque, now missing, was a mark of rank. Persons of status do not usually die shabby deaths alone in taverns, whatever their culture. Something was up. So the centurion had sent a runner to the governor.

  Julius Frontinus was in his first year of office here. W
hen the message came, he was eating breakfast during an early-morning meeting with his right-hand man. We all shared the official residence so I was there too. "Gaius, go and see if you recognize the victim," Frontinus told Hilaris, who had been in Britain all those decades and so knew absolutely everyone. Since the governor had previously worked with me on a murder hunt in Rome, he then added, "Sounds your sort of thing, Falco. You should trot along there too."

  So here I was. I had been dispatched to the crime scene as an expert in unnatural death. But I was a thousand miles from my own patch. How would I know the motive for a local British murder, or where to start looking for the killer? I was on holiday, intending to claim that I had nothing to contribute. My own official mission in Britain was finished; afterward I had brought Helena to Londinium to see her relatives, but we were pretty well en route for home now.

  Then when the centurion presented the sodden body, Hilaris went quiet and I too felt queasy. I knew at once that I might have had a direct involvement in how the victim came to be here.

  So far, only I knew that.

  III

  Wonder who he is?" The centurion nudged the corpse with the side of his boot-avoiding the tip, where he might have touched dead flesh with his big bare toes. "Who he was!" He laughed sardonically.

  The dead man had been tall and well fed. The straggles of long hair that clung to his head and neck, tangling in the edges of his woolen tunic, were once wild and red-gold. The eyes, now closed, had been bright with curiosity and used to delight in dangerous mischief. I suppose they were blue, though I could not remember. His skin was pallid and swollen after drowning, but he had always been light-complexioned, with the gingery eyebrows and lashes that go with such coloring. Along his bare forearms, fine hairs began to dry. He wore dark blue trousers, expensive boots, a belt with hole-punched patterns into which the plaid tunic was gathered in thick clumps. No weapon was present. Every time I saw him alive, he had worn a long British sword.

  He had been always on the go. He dashed around; was full of vigor and crude humor; always accosted me in a loud voice; regularly leered at women. It seemed odd to find him quite so still.

  I stooped, picking up the cloth of a sleeve to inspect a hand for finger rings. One sturdy item in rope-twisted gold remained, perhaps too tight to drag off in a hurry. As I straightened, my glaze briefly caught that of Hilaris. Clearly he could see that I too knew the man's identity. Well, if he thought about it, I had just come up from Noviomagus Regnensis, so I would.

  "It is Verovolcus," he told the centurion without drama. I kept quiet. "I met him officially once or twice. He was a courtier, and possibly a relative, of the Great King-Togidubnus of the Atrebates tribe, down on the south coast."

  "Important?" demanded the centurion with a half-eager sideways look. Hilaris did not answer. The soldier drew his own conclusions. He pulled a face, impressed.

  King Togidubnus was a longtime friend and ally of Vespasian. He had been lavishly rewarded for years of support. In this province he could probably pull rank even on the governor. He could get Flavius Hilaris recalled to Rome and stripped of his hard-earned honors. He could have me knocked over the head and dumped into a ditch, with no questions asked.

  "So what was Verovolcus doing in Londinium?" Hilaris mused. It seemed a general question, though I felt he aimed it at me.

  "More official business?" asked the centurion meekly.

  "No. I would know of it. And even if he came to Londinium for private purposes," continued the procurator levelly "why would he visit an establishment as grim as this?" He now glanced directly at me. "A British aristocrat laden with expensive jewels is as much at risk of robbery in a hole like this as a lone Roman would be. This place is for locals-and even they have to be brave!"

  I refused to be drawn, but left the yard, ducked inside the bar, and looked around. As wine bars go this lacked charm and distinction. We had found it halfway down a short, narrow alley on the sloping hill just above the wharves. A few crude shelves held flagons. A couple of windows with iron grilles let in some light. From its filthy straw-strewn floor to its low shadowy rafters the bar was as lousy as bars can get. And I had seen some.

  I tackled the woman who kept the place.

  "I know nothing," she spouted immediately, before I could ask her anything.

  "Are you the owner?"

  "No, I just wait at table."

  "Did you summon the centurion?"

  "Of course!" There was no of course about it. I didn't have to live in Britain to know that if she could have hidden this crime, she would have done so. Instead, she had worked out that Verovolcus was bound to be missed. There would be trouble, and unless she made it look good today, the trouble would be worse for her. "We found him this morning."

  "You never noticed him last night?"

  "We were busy. Lot of trade in."

  I gazed at her calmly. "What sort of trade was that?"

  "The sort we get."

  "Can you be more specific? I mean-"

  "I know what you mean!" she scoffed.

  "Sinful girls, after sailors and traders?" I threw at her anyway. "Nice people. Businessmen!" Nasty forms of business, I bet. "Had this man been drinking here last night?"

  "Nobody can remember him, though he could have been." They should remember. He must have been of a higher class than any regulars, even the nice businessmen. "We just found him left here with his feet waggling-"

  "Excuse me! Why were his feet waggling? Was the poor sap still alive?"

  She blushed. "Just a manner of speaking."

  "So was he dead or not?"

  "He was dead. Of course he was."

  "How did you know?"

  "What?"

  "If only his feet were visible, how did anyone know his condition? Could you have revived him? You might at least have tried. I know you didn't bother; the centurion had to pull him out."

  She looked thrown, but carried on gamely. "He was a goner. It was obvious."

  "Especially if you already knew that he was crammed down the well last evening."

  "I never! We were all surprised!"

  "Not as surprised as he must have been," I said.

  ???

  There was nothing more to be gained here. We left the centurion to shift the body for safekeeping until the Great King was informed. Gaius and I emerged into the alley, which was used as an open drain. We picked our way past the daily rubbish and empties to what passed for a street. That was dingy enough. We were on terraced ground below the two low gravel hills on which Londinium stood. The area was right down near the river. In any city that can be bad news. The procurator's two bodyguards followed us discreetly, frontline soldiers on detached duty, fingering daggers. They provided reassurance-partially.

  From the badly cobbled lane that protected this enclave to larger, perhaps less unfriendly vicinities, we could hear the creak of cranes on the wharves that lined the Thamesis. There were pungent smells of leather, a staple trade. Some towns have regulations that tanneries have to be out in the country because they reek so badly, but Londinium was either not that fussy or not so well organized. Attracted by the river's proximity, we walked there.

  We came out among new warehouses with narrow fronts at the river's edge, running back from their tight-packed unloading berths in long secure storage tunnels. The river embankment was fringed with these, as if it had been planned. A great wooden platform, of recent construction, provided a landing stage and a bulwark against the spreading tide.

  I stared at the river gloomily. The Thamesis was much wider than the Tiber at home, its high-tide width more than a thousand strides, though at low water it shrank to a third of that. Opposite our wharf were reeded islands, which would become almost submerged at high tide, when for miles all up the estuary the Thamesis marshes would flood. Roads from the southern ports arrived over there on the south bank, conjoining at a spot where ferries had always crossed the river. There was a wooden bridge coming across from the main island, at a slight
ly odd angle.

  Standing beside me, the procurator clearly shared my melancholy mood. Death and misty gray riverbanks produce the same effect. We were men of the world, yet our hearts ached.

  Oppressed by our surroundings, I felt unready yet to address the Verovolcus death. "You mended the bridge, I see."

  "Yes. Boudicca used it to get at the settlement on the south bank- then her troops made a good attempt to put it out of action." Hilaris sounded dry. "If this one seems rather strangely aligned, that's because it isn't permanent." Clearly the bridge issue amused him. "Falco, I remember the post-Invasion bridge, which was intended to be for purely military purposes. It was just decking on pontoons. Later the supports were made permanent-but it was still wood, and we pulled it down. It was decided a decent stone bridge would signify permanence in the province, so this one was built."

  I joined in the satire. "You said this isn't permanent either?"

  "No. The permanent bridge will come straight across to link up with the forum; people arriving will have a splendid view, directly across from the river and up the hill."

  "So when is the permanent bridge planned for?" I asked, smiling.

  "About ten years' time, I'd say," he told me gloomily. "Meanwhile we have this one, which you could call the permanent temporary bridge- or the temporary permanent bridge."

  "It's offset so while you build the final version alongside, you can maintain a crossing point?"

  "Correct! If you want to cross now, my advice is, use the ferry."

  I quirked up an eyebrow. "Why?"

  "The bridge is temporary; we don't maintain it."

  I laughed.

  Hilaris then fell into a reflective mood. He enjoyed giving history lessons. "I remember when there was nothing here. Just a few round huts, most of them across the water. Orchards and coppices this side. By Jove it felt desolate! A civilian settlement struggled into existence after Rome invaded. But we were then away out at Camulodunum, the Britons' own chief center. It was bloody inconvenient, I can tell you. Our presence caused bad feeling too; in the Rebellion that was the first place lost."