Deadly Election Read online

  Contents

  Also by Lindsey Davis

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Character List

  Rome, the Caelian Hill: July AD 89

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  Also by Lindsey Davis

  The Course of Honour

  Rebels and Traitors

  Master and God

  The Falco Series

  The Silver Pigs

  Shadows in Bronze

  Venus in Copper

  The Iron Hand of Mars

  Poseidon’s Gold

  Last Act in Palmyra

  Time to Depart

  A Dying Light in Corduba

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  Two for the Lions

  One Virgin too Many

  Ode to a Banker

  A Body in the Bath House

  The Jupiter Myth

  The Accusers

  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  See Delphi and Die

  Saturnalia

  Alexandria

  Nemesis

  The Flavia Albia Series

  The Ides of April

  Enemies at Home

  Deadly Election

  Falco: The Official Companion

  DEADLY ELECTION

  Lindsey Davis

  A Flavia Albia Novel

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Lindsey Davis

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2015

  Map by Rodney Paull

  The right of Lindsey Davis to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 444 79420 5

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  CHARACTER LIST

  Flavia Albia an informer, feeling seedy

  The Camillus brothers her useful uncles

  L. Petronius Longus her father’s old crony, another uncle

  Maia Favoniaher laid-back aunt

  T. Manlius Faustus a magistrate, not her lover

  Tullius Icilius his uncle, with big plans

  Dromo Faustus’s slave, with little sense

  Laia Gratiana Faustus’s unforgiving ex-wife

  Gornia a very old auction porter

  Staff porters, security, messenger, donkey boy

  T. Claudius Laeta a retired bureaucrat

  T. Claudius Philippus his son, a chip off the old stylus

  Abascantus a mandarin, on gardening leave

  Candidates for Plebeian Aedile and their manifestos:

  Trebonius Fulvo devoted wife, strong core, harsh attitude

  Arulenus Crescens disappointed mistress, weak principles

  S. Vibius Marinus missing wife, good intentions

  L. Salvius Gratus loyal sister, cynical manipulator

  Dillius Surus rich wife, convivial appeal

  Ennius Verecundus quiet wife, stern mother, no hope

  Volusius Firmus loving wife, thwarted hope, standing down

  Callistus Valens who has gone to the country

  And his family – sons, nephew, wives, ex-wives, granddaughter, slaves

  Julia Verecunda the mother-in-law from Hades

  And her family – daughters, son, in-laws, grandchildren

  Marcella Vibia and her husband proud parents

  Strongbox Man a mystery

  Titus Niger an efficient agent

  Claudia Galeria his wife, a good manager

  ‘Puce Tunic’ a loafer with a terrible dress sense

  Fundanus an undertaker with a horrible job

  Priestess of Isis a wounded plaintiff

  The financial fraternity

  Nothokleptes and Son Egyptian bankers

  Balonius a Gallic banker

  Other bankers Greek, Syrian, unavailable

  Claudia Arsinoë a different kind of banker

  Miscellaneous

  Consul/‘Incitatus’ a spirited hound

  Venus with the Big Behind popular art (in quadruplicate)

  Boy with a Thorn in His Foot unpopular art

  Ursa a mouldy bear, unsaleable

  Patchy a deplorable donkey

  ROME, the Caelian Hill:

  July AD 89

  1

  Never hold an auction in July. In Rome, who’s around then? People who can escape will have fled to rural retreats in cooler parts of Italy. The rest are on their deathbeds or have stayed here to avoid relatives.

  Hopeless. Everybody’s tunic is sticking to them; sweat pours down their greasy necks. Porters drop things, then storm off in a huff. Sellers vacillate and buyers renege. Dockets go missing. Payments ditto. Wild dogs invade and scatter the punters. Afterwards, somebody points out that no advertising notice was ever put up in the Forum. Rival auctioneers are not bothering to gloat at your poor takings: it’s too damned hot.

  My father owns an auction house and in high summer he hides away at his seaside villa. His staff keeps the family business chugging along. It’s always a quiet period.

  Nothing was different in the year of the consuls Titus Aurelius Fulvus and Marcus Asinius Atrantinus, except that before one sale in July our workers found a corpse.

  I was in Rome. I had been at the coast, carried off there by my mother – ‘rescued’, she said – during an illness that had nearly killed me. She plucked me from my apartment and
took me off to the family spread, south of Ostia. After three weeks of people fussing, I was longing to come back. A friend had originally found me lying half dead and gallantly saved my life, so I wanted to thank him properly and believed I was now strong enough for city life.

  You may be thinking this friend and I were lovers. How wrong you would be.

  It was an all-day journey by rackety cart down the Ostia Road to Rome. That really drained me. As soon as I stepped into my stuffy and silent apartment on the Aventine, I knew I was too weak. I stayed in bed for two days, fortunately sustained by a hamper of dainties from my mother. Lonely and tearful, I propped myself on pillows and munched my way through everything. I thought I had no appetite, but I had been a starving street child once. I hate waste.

  All too soon, I licked out the last little dish of aspic salad. I would now have to fend for myself – or crawl back to the parents ignominiously. No chance of that.

  Still, I love them. They adopted me when I was lice-ridden and desperate, a difficult teenager to whom they were loyal and affectionate when others would quail. They had turned a lost soul from far-away Britain into a fairly normal Roman daughter. I was now twenty-nine and an independent widow, but I had whined and argued to come back from the coast, worming away at it like my two younger sisters when they wanted new sandals.

  ‘Go, then. We’ll keep your bed made up!’ the parents scoffed. So now I had to live up to my claim of being fit.

  I forced myself to drag on a tunic. Slowly, I descended a flight of outside stairs towards a balcony walkway. This half-rotten structure, a so-called fire escape, was inaccessible to most tenants. It ran around the bare interior courtyard, once a laundry but nowadays deserted. I lived in the Eagle Building, Fountain Court: one of many dark, creaking, stinking tenements in which miserable, poverty-stricken Romans – most of us – endure what passes for life. The edifice was full of inadequate apartments and prone to extremely odd smells. Father owned it, I regret to say. This did not add lustre to his reputation, though since he was a private informer, it was low to start with. People were amazed he had the money to possess a building – though much less amazed once they heard he was also an auctioneer, a profession that is famous for wealth.

  I was an informer myself. Public opinion was even harder on me, because a respectable woman ought to remain at home all day. I should be weaving at my loom in a gracious atrium, between beating my inoffensive slave-girl or screwing a litter-bearer rather than my husband. Stuff that for a game of knucklebones. ‘Loom’ was a dirty word among my mother, sisters and me. I didn’t own a slave-girl and my husband died ten years ago. I worked. Not that I felt like it at the moment.

  I crept down the steep stairs a few at a time. It was always worth taking care in this building in case part of it fell down on you. Who wants a broken back and dry rot in their hair?

  I was testing myself. If I felt faint, I had a one-room bolt-hole off the first-floor walkway, where I could fall onto an old couch and recover my strength. Otherwise, I could shout myself hoarse, which just might summon the building’s porter, Rodan. Given clear instructions and some loose change, he would go for help.

  Not needed. I made it down to the walkway. I felt better than expected. Aspic salad is full of goodness. Helena Justina might be annoyed with me for running off, but she knew how to impress on me that I still needed a mother. I was the craziest of her four stubborn children, but she would not let me fade away.

  I leaned on what passed for a handrail, though I applied my weight with caution. Particularly unpleasant lichen gave clues to the rotten bits. Touch it, and your hand came up covered with grey-green slime. Something about its texture was even worse than the pigeon guano, although there was plenty of that too.

  For once Rodan was in sight. An elderly ex-gladiator, scarred by rent-collecting among the violent poor rather than by fights in an arena, he was a heavy lump of lard who stood in the porch, arguing (his reaction to any request). He was with a runner I recognised from Father’s auction house. I watched them.

  Messengers in Rome are used to hassle. This man, Cyrus, stood in silence letting Rodan’s pointless pushiness wash over him. If Cyrus had come from the Saepta Julia, where the office was, he would have had a good walk here, with a steep climb up the Aventine at the end of it. He was taking a breather in case he had to turn around and go straight back, mission unaccomplished. In contrast to Rodan’s ugly shaved head and the huge sweat stains on his ragged tunic, Cyrus was neat. In his forties, he had trimmed hair, laced footwear, a white tunic that was limp in the heat though not grimy. He was slim, though not from going hungry. My father still remembered what poverty was like, so he was a decent employer. Nor were his employees crushed by constant beatings, unlike many in our supposedly civilised city.

  Father employed Rodan too, but Rodan was beyond help.

  I called out. Rodan immediately slunk back into his smelly cubicle. Cyrus came across the courtyard and gazed up at me, one level above. Still light-headed, I was trying not to sway.

  ‘Flavia Albia! We heard you were home.’ He looked relieved to have found me. ‘I don’t suppose your father will be city-bound himself any time soon?’

  ‘Sorry, Cyrus, it’s July. Falco is out in a small boat every day, with one hand glued to a fishing rod and the other clasping a wine gourd.’

  ‘Any fish biting?’

  ‘No, he just likes wearing a silly hat and dreaming. But once in a while he lands a very beautiful statue that he claims he found floating on a current … He’s turning into his old man.’ My grandfather had often rowed home from a day on the water, towing a small skiff full of gorgeous Greek art that had ‘fallen off the deck of a ship’. Such a good way for an auctioneer to avoid import tax. Wide-eyed and shameless, Geminus could make the story sound almost true.

  The auction staff knew Father gave me authority to act for him, so I apologised briefly, ‘Cyrus, you’re stuck with me. How can I help?’

  The messenger shrugged. ‘Oh, it’s nothing we can’t handle, but the head porter thought we should tell someone. They are getting ready for the Callistus sale. One of the lads heaved up the lid of a big box − and next thing, he’s gazing into the eyes of a dead body curled up inside.’

  That revived me. I said if Cyrus whistled for a hired carrying chair, I would come at once.

  2

  The best way to endure a journey by chair is to close your eyes, take a tight grip on any part that is not too splintered and ponder the meaning of life. I normally shun philosophy, but I needed to take my mind off the bearers flinging me around. As we jogged downhill on the craggy Aventine, which has bad roads and a slope like a hypotenuse, I was afraid of being tipped out.

  What is this? − a woman who mentions hypotenuses? Well, when Falco and Helena adopted me, they gave me education as freely as if it were one more new kind of food and drink. I gobbled it up until I knew more than most women and many men too. I happily consult encyclopaedias and I can write my own notes; if I want to show off, I can jot them in Greek. Sometimes even with the accents.

  Another thing is that Apollonius, the head waiter at the Stargazer, our local poisonous eatery, once taught geometry. Since he was forced out of teaching years ago, he had served a large amount of fake Falernian in my aunt’s bar, waiting for conditions to improve so he could open a new in-the-street primary school. Under our current emperor, Domitian, that was never going to happen. People do not waste education fees on their children when a tyrant might have them executed as soon as they grow up. Try discussing Euclid with the gaoler in a death cell: the bonehead will thrash you until you can hardly totter to the lions.

  So, thanks to parents and waiter, musing on triangles saw me down to the level and onto the Field of Mars. In between, I prayed that no feral dogs ran out and caused the bearers to drop me. Or to start running. That’s worse than being dropped.

  In fact I was safely carried right into the Saepta, an elegant galleried exchange on two levels, where my father, like his fa
ther before him, rented a fortified lock-up for their best antiques. Upstairs they also leased an office that filled up with trash they couldn’t sell – a batch of terrible stuff they grew foolishly fond of.

  I had been deposited in one of those grand monuments at which Rome excels. Still new, it combined flagrant expense with beauty and functionality – in so far as anyone could remember what this building’s function was supposed to be. It had been a counting house for election votes but emperors can’t risk democracy, so nowadays real elections were never held. In place of voting, men-about-town came here to be seen, and to buy jewellery for their mistresses to be seen in. Though no longer needed for political purposes, the Saepta Julia had been rebuilt lavishly by Domitian after a huge fire swept across this area in the reign of his brother Titus.

  Titus had lasted barely two years. Some thought Domitian saw to that. In my family we kept quiet because insulting Domitian was suicide. He called himself a god, therefore we became deeply religious. With luck, either the real gods or some angry human agent would deal with our monstrous ruler. Quack fortune-tellers prophesying when Domitian would die were as common as garlic salesmen. Occasionally a prognosticator was good enough to see him coming, so hopped it. But mostly Domitian did put them to death − along with a lot of other people, one or two of whom were genuinely plotting to assassinate him.

  Somebody would do the deed. You could smell plots in the air.