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  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  ( Marcus Didius Falco - 16 )

  Lindsey Davis

  Lindsey Davis

  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  OSTIA, ITALY

  AUGUSTI, AD 76

  Ostia Environs

  I

  'If he chucks a stone, he's done for,' muttered Petronius. 'I'll have the little tyke.'

  It was a hot day along the waterfront at the mouth of the Tiber in Ostia. Petro and I had badly needed a drink. It was so hot we only made it to just outside the vigiles patrol house and into the first bar.

  This was a sad backtrack. Our principle had always been, 'Never go into the first bar you see because it is bound to be rubbish.'

  For the past fifteen years or so, since we met in the queue to enlist for the legions, whenever we sought refreshment we had always strolled a good distance away from home and work, in case we were followed and found. Actually we had sat in numerous bars that were rubbish, but not many that were full of associates we wanted to avoid and very few that our women knew about.

  Don't get me wrong. We two were pious Romans with traditional values. Of course we admired our colleagues and adored our womenfolk. Just like old Brutus, any orator could say of us that Marcus Didius Falco and Lucius Petronius Longus were honourable men.

  And yes; the orator would make that claim with an irony even the most stupid mob would understand…

  As you can see, in the heat I had drunk up too quickly. I was already rambling.

  Petronius, the experienced enquiry chief of the Fourth Cohort of vigiles in Rome, was a measured man. He had his large hand clamped around his wine-shop beaker but his heavy right arm was currently at rest on the warm boards of our pavement table while he enjoyed a long, slow descent into tipsiness.

  He was here after putting his name down for detached duty. It was a pleasant life, especially since the villain he was waiting for never turned up. I was here to look for someone else, though I had not told Petro. Ostia, the port for Rome, was vibrant but its vigiles patrol house was falling apart and the bar outside was terrible. The place was little more than a shack leaning against the patrol-house wall. After a fire, the vigiles rankers would block the side street as they crowded around with mugs of liquor, desperate to soothe their raw throats and usually just as desperate to complain about their officers. At present the street was almost empty, so we could squat on two low stools at a tiny table with our legs stuck out across the pavement.

  There were no other customers. The day shift were having a lie-down in the squad house, hoping that nobody set fire to an oily pan in a crowded apartment, or if they did that nobody sounded the alarm.

  Petro and I were discussing our work and our women. Being still capable of two things at once, Petronius Longus was also watching the boy. The little lad was too intent; he looked like trouble.

  A giggling group would be annoying enough.

  But if this loner did hurl a rock through the doorway of the patrol house, then shout abuse and run away, he would run straight into my old friend. Mind you, he was only about seven. Petronius would probably not break his arms or legs.

  After Petronius had narrowed his eyes and watched for a while, he carried on talking.

  'So how's your billet, Falco?' He was teasing and I scoffed.

  'I can see why you don't want to stay in it!' Petro had been assigned a room inside the Ostia patrol house. He refused to occupy it, but had loaned the grim cell to me this week.

  We two had had our fill of barracks life when we were in the Second Augusta, our legion in Britain. Even marching camps in that remote province had been better organised than this dump.

  Ostia was mainly a four-month assignment, on rotation among the seven Rome cohorts; the provision was constantly under review, and it showed. Off the Decumanus Maximus a short way inside the Rome Gate, the buildings had been thrown up in a hurry three decades ago when Claudius built his new harbour.

  He first brought some of the rough and ready urban cohorts to guard the spanking new warehouses. Fires in the granaries subsequently caused a rethink; they had upped the provision and replaced the urbans, who were general troops, with the more professional vigiles, who were specialist fire-fighters. Rome's vital corn supply ought to be safe with them, the people would be fed, the city would be free from riots, and everyone would love the Emperor, who had arranged it all.

  The same happened here as in Rome. Whilst on fire watch, especially at night, the vigiles found themselves apprehending not just arsonists but every kind of criminal. Now they policed the port and kept an eye on the town.

  The Ostians were still trying to get used to it. Petronius, who knew how to run rings around his superiors, only got involved in day-to-day issues when it suited him. His special operation had no time limit, so he had brought his family with him.

  Nowadays Petro cohabited with my sister Maia, who had four children, and in Ostia he had a young daughter of his own with whom he wanted contact. To house them all he had managed to fiddle the loan of a mansion, borrowed from a very wealthy local contact of the vigiles.

  I had not yet worked out the angle there. But as a result, his unwanted room in the patrol house was mine.

  Lucky me.

  'This squadron coop has well outlived its usefulness,' I grumbled.

  'It's too small, it's dark, it's cramped, plus it's full of bad memories of villains who have been dragged in through the gate and never seen again. The latrine stinks. There is no cook-house. Equipment is left all over the exercise yard because every detachment thinks if they are only here for four months they can leave it rotting there for the next group to tidy up.'

  'Yes, and there's mould in a big cistern underground,' Petronius agreed cheekily.

  'Oh thanks. Don't tell my mother you have stuck me above some stagnant sink.'

  'I won't tell your mother,' he promised, 'if you promise not to tell your wife.'

  He was frightened of Helena Justina. Quite rightly. My high-rank sweetheart had much stricter morals than most senators' daughters and she knew how to express her views. Petronius faked a contrite look.

  'Well, the room is rough and I'm sorry, Marcus. But you're not staying long, are you?'

  'Of course not, Lucius, old pal.'

  I was lying. Lucius Petronius had welcomed me as if I had just come on a visit to see how he was. I was withholding news of my own commission in Ostia. Last year, when the Emperor sent me to Britain on some murky palace errands, Petro had followed me out there. Only by chance did I learn that he was the lead player in a serious hunt for a major gangster. It still rankled that he had kept quiet. Now I was paying him back. He drank his wine. Then he winced. I nodded. It was a filthy vintage. Without a word, Petronius stood up. I stayed put. He walked slowly over to the little lad, who was still motionless outside the gate. They were about five strides from me.

  'Hello, there.' Petro sounded friendly enough. 'What are you up to?'

  The small boy had a thin body under a worn tunic. It was fairly clean, a muddy shade, a size too big for him, with one sleeve of a white undertunic showing. He did not look like a native of Ostia. It was impossible to tell his nationality, but the layers of clothes suggested Mediterranean; only crazies from the north strip off in the heat. He wore no belt, though he had beaten-up brown sandals with their straps curled by age. His hair was too long and there were dark circles under his eyes. But he had been fed. He was fit. His was the normal look of a lad from the artisan classes, maybe required to work hard at the family trade and then allowed to stay up far too late on long summer nights.

  He stared up at Petronius Longus. What the boy saw was a big man waiting silently with a friendly expression, someone
who might throw a beanbag about in an alley with the local children. The boy seemed streetwise yet clearly unaware that this was an officer whose slam-bang interrogation methods were a legend. All vigiles are hard, but Petronius could persuade incorrigible criminals to bleat out damning evidence against their favourite brothers. He could make them do it even if the brothers were innocent, although mostly he did prefer confessions of real guilt.

  'What's your name?' I heard him ask.

  'Zeno.' The worst Zeno would suspect was an approach from a pervert. He looked the kind who knew to yell loudly and run.

  'I am Petronius. So what's up, Zeno?' Zeno said something, very quietly. Then Petro offered his hand and the boy took it. They walked over to me. I was already dropping coins on the table to pay for our wine. I had heard the boy's answer, and I knew what my friend would do.

  'Falco, Zeno says that his mummy won't wake up.' Petronius hid his foreboding. Shall we go and see what has happened to her?' From long experience, he and I reckoned that we knew.

  II

  The boy led us, with Petronius still gripping his grubby little hand. We walked along the Decumanus Maximus. Ostia was a long habitation, so it had a long and very hot main street. As a major route for trade commodities, it was already packed with an endless line of carts jostling their way out of town, in order to arrive in Rome at sunset as the daily ban on wheeled vehicles ended. We were walking against the traffic.

  They were heading towards Victory Square and the Rome Gate. In our direction, far ahead and way beyond the Forum, lay the Marine Gate and the open sea. Roads to our left passed through mixed habitation towards the Laurentine Gate, the exit into the lovely countryside on which our forefather Aeneas set his sights. Short roads to the right led to the Tiber.

  It would be chock full of boats and ferries, bound for the markets and the great Emporium. Beyond the Tiber lay another road to Rome, which would also be jammed with laden transports, those too all trundling towards the Golden City on the Transtiberina side.

  'You're not from hereabouts,' Petronius probed.

  'So where is home, Zeno?' Zeno had been trained to look dumb or daft.

  'Far away?' This time the child let himself nod.

  'Did you come on a ship?' Too specific. Zeno relapsed into vagueness.

  Petro glanced at me over Zeno's head, then stopped asking. Questions would be better when we had seen whether the unresponsive mother had been battered by her husband or lover or whether [less likely] she had just faded away in her sleep from some natural illness. We passed the Theatre. Opposite that tight-arsed Augustan edifice were various old monuments and guild assembly rooms. Then came a podium holding a neat row of four little temples, all elderly in style, just before the approach road to the massive granary built by Claudius.

  We stayed on the Decumanus to the end of that block. Then the boy turned right, facing the river. He stopped in front of what had once been a fortified gatehouse, when Ostia was much smaller and much, much older. This would have been the boundary wall of the original settlement. It probably dated back to the supposed founding of the port by Ancus Martius, one of the traditional Kings of Rome. They built to last in those ancient times, using massive square blocks.

  The stolid gate, made redundant when the town expanded, had now been redeveloped into shops. Above them were a couple of rooms let to visiting foreigners. Petronius left Zeno with me; he made a brief enquiry at one of the shops, then went up alone by an outside stair. I sat on the kerb alongside the child, who meekly squatted by me.

  'Who told you to come to the vigiles for help, Zeno?' I asked nonchalantly, as we pulled in our feet in front of a heavy cart full of marble blocks.

  'Lygon told me, If anyone ever doesn't wake up, the vigiles will want to know.' Lygon instantly became a key suspect.

  'Is he one of the family?'

  'My uncle.' The child looked embarrassed. There are uncles and uncles. Some uncles are no relation, as children understand.

  'Where is he at the moment?'

  'Gone away on business.'

  'When do you think he will come back?' Zeno shrugged. No surprises there. Petronius stuck his head out of a window on the top storey.

  'Come up here, Falco.' He sounded annoyed, not like a man who had just found a domestic tragedy.

  'You can bring the boy.'

  'Sounds as if your mother is all right, Zeno.' We went up.

  The gatehouse contained a warren of small rooms, all kept cool by its massive construction. Zeno lived in a cheap let, a single airless room with no amenities. The mother was unconscious on what passed for a bed. It was the only one; Zeno must either sleep with her or on the floor. She was from the scrag end of womanhood; we had suspected that. She was dressed, in several layers, a traveller who wore all her wardrobe, as a deterrent to theft. The folds of cloth were richer than I expected, though when sleeping it off she wore them in bedraggled swathes. Sprawled face up on the mattress, she looked sour and middle-aged, but I guessed she was much younger and had fallen pregnant with Zeno in her teens. That was the type of menage it was.

  'Uncle' Lygon would be her latest lover; we could guess what he was like. Some scrounging swine who was now playing the big fellow in a wine shop by the port. Presumably they both liked a tipple. Zeno's mother had imbibed so much she had passed out cold. I guessed that was yesterday.

  'Drunk as a dog.' Petronius [a cat man] closed her drooling mouth with his thumb. This was a gesture to spare her young son. He wiped his thumb on his tunic at thigh level, with an expression of weary distaste. Much of his working life had been spent among this sad level of society, and he despaired of it. Had the child been any older, that would have ended our interest. Instead, since my sister was only around the corner in the loaned house, Petro made me stay at the gatehouse while he fetched Maia to sit with the mother until she came round. We would look after Zeno. Maia was furious to be given this task, but she had children herself.

  We took Zeno to play with her brood; Petro and I claimed that both of us would need to supervise them. Cursing, Maia stayed behind. Two hours later the woman revived. Maia came home with a ripe black eye, cuffed Zeno around the ears, told him to go and keep his mama out of trouble, then made us feel guilty all that evening.

  'Your lush is called Pullia. The family come from Soli, wherever that is. There's a man no one ever sees much. Pullia is dumped on her own while he goes out and has his fun; she's bored, but she never leaves the apartment. The child roams the streets. A neighbour in the cushion shop told me.'

  'That's more than I found out,' Petro soothed her admiringly. 'I didn't even notice that it was a cushion shop!'

  'Eyesight qualifications don't apply to the vigiles? Drop the flattery.'

  Maia and Petro were in love. Happiness had failed to soften the cut and thrust of their repartee. Maia distrusted men who tried to ingratiate themselves and Petro was finding out fast just what he had fallen for. They were made for each other, though that did not mean this relationship would last. Petronius had always sought out fair-haired women previously, apart from his ex-wife. Arria Silvia looked a little like Maia, who was dark and smart, with a fiery temper and a brisk manner even when nothing had offended her. My Helena reckoned Petro had married Silvia because Maia was married herself at the time and refused to look at him. I knew Petro, and I could not believe it, but I saw the similarity.

  'Do the tipsy family pay their rent?' he asked Maia, pretending he was only making conversation.

  'Find out for yourself,' snarled Maia, as she prodded her battered cheekbone.

  She was my favourite sister. I made sure Petronius applied soothing liniment to her eye as soon as Maia calmed down enough for him to get near her. I wouldn't risk it myself. The feckless folk from Soli were a typical splash of colour in the hectic marine society of Ostia. The place was awash with temporary visitors from all ends of the Empire. Attached in some way to nautical trade, they stayed weeks or months, awaiting a cargo, awaiting a payment, awaiting a friend, awa
iting a passage. Some found work, though mostly the locals had the jobs and clung on to them. Now that Pullia had had a meeting with officialdom, her little group would probably be up and off.

  I was off myself, back to the patrol house. I could have stayed to dinner. The moneybags who had lent Petro the house had left his slaves behind, in accordance with the hospitality rules of the rich. They served up regular meals of excellent quality, for which Petronius was not billed. 'The food is here, eat, don't let it go to waste!' the steward urged. No one needed to be told twice. It was not for me, however. I was hoping that Helena would arrive that evening.

  The patrol house was somewhere no well-brought-up young lady would want to find herself alone.

  III

  A donkey cart was standing outside the gate. Helena had already arrived. She was just inside the entrance, keeping her cloak tightly around her. In late July it was far too hot for cloaks, but a respectable woman's duty is to be uncomfortable in public. The Sixth Cohort duty boys would not have interfered with her, but nobody made her welcome either. The vigiles rankers are ex-slaves, doing a horrid job as the quick route to citizenship; their officers are citizens, normally ex-legionaries, but few and far between.

  Helena glanced around the quadrangle, with its many shadowed doorways; they led to equipment stores, the bare cells where the men slept, and the offices where they skilfully brought pressure to bear on witnesses. Even the entrance to the shrine at the far end looked forbidding. As harsh voices sounded loudly from indoors, she flinched. Helena Justina was a tall, spirited girl, who could always fend off trouble by citing her position as a senator's daughter, but she preferred to avoid the trouble in the first place. I had taught her some tactics. She disguised her nervousness, though she was glad to see me.