Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery) Read online

  About the Book

  Lindsey Davis began writing about the Romans with The Course of Honour, which tells the real-life love story of the Emperor Vespasian and Antonia Caenis. Her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy. She has also written Rebels and Traitors, a serious novel on an epic scale, set in the English Civil War and Commonwealth. Her books are translated into many languages, recorded for audio and serialised on BBC Radio 4. She has won the CWA Historical Dagger, the Dagger in the Library, and a Sherlock for Falco as Best Detective. She has been Honorary President of the Classical Association and is a past Chair of the Crimewriters’ Association. In 2009 she was awarded the Premio de Honor de Novela Historica by the Spanish City of Zaragoza, for her career as a historical novelist.

  Lindsey Davis

  FALCO

  The Official Companion

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781446455234

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Century 2010

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2010

  Lindsey Davis has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

  Century

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  www.lindseydavis.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

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

  ISBN 9781846056734

  The publisher has made serious efforts to trace the copyright owner of Atlas of the Classical World and has been unable to do so. The publisher is willing to acknowledge any rightful copyright owner on substantive proof of ownership and would be grateful for any information as to their identity.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title

  Copyright

  Also by Lindsey Davis

  Key to Abbreviations

  Introduction

  Background, Writing and Research

  The author’s Birth and Background

  Being a Writer

  The Writing Process

  Influences

  A Sharp Discourse on Errors

  Research

  The Novels

  The Characters

  Falco and Helena, with Their Household

  Falco’s Relatives

  Helena’s Relatives

  Historical Characters

  The Public Sector: Vigiles and Bureaucrats

  Other Regular Characters

  Place

  Map of the Roman Empire

  Gazetteer, with Modern English Place Names

  Map of Rome, City and Vigiles Jurisdictions

  Street Plan of Rome

  The Forum

  Falco’s Rome

  Lindsey’s Favourite Roman Places

  Romans and the Country

  Travel and Transport

  Time

  A First Century Roman Timeline

  Significant Events

  The Daily Routine and the Hours of the Day

  Status, Family and Empire

  Social Status

  The Concept of Empire

  Law and Order

  Praetorians, Urbans and Vigils

  Crime in Rome

  Legal Procedure

  Informers and Their Work

  Who Were Informers

  The Workload

  Clients

  Skills

  Some Other Aspects of Roman Life

  The Roman Home (and Its Frequent Refurbishment!)

  Food and Drink

  The Daily Gazette, or Acta Diurna

  Games

  Roman Names: the Trianomina

  Religion

  Medicine, Dentistry, Contraception

  The Armed Forces

  Music

  The Baths

  Money and Measurement

  Clothes and Accessories

  Latin Words and Pronounciation

  Frequently Asked Questions

  Where Next for Falco?

  Appendix: Fragments from the Casa della Spia Principale, Rome

  CSP.1: Speech of Paccius Africanus

  CSP.2: The Forum Informers’ Handbook

  CSP.3: Recipe

  CSP.4: The Spook Who Spoke

  Acknowledgements

  Text

  Illustrations

  This was in the Olden Days, when the Romans were top nation, on account of their classical education, etc.

  SELLAR AND YEATMAN

  The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure …

  CHANDLER

  ALSO BY LINDSEY DAVIS

  The Course of Honour

  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

  Rebels and Traitors

  Key to Abbreviations

  The Course of Honour

  [CH]

  The Falco Novels in chronological order:

  The Silver Pigs

  [SP]

  Shadows in Bronze

  [SB]

  Venus in Copper

  [VC]

  The Iron Hand of Mars

  [IHM]

  Poseidon’s Gold

  [PG]

  Last Act in Palmyra

  [LAP]

  Time to Depart

  [TTD]

  A Dying Light in Corduba

  [DLC]

  Three Hands in the Fountain

  [THF]

  Two for the Lions

  [TFL]

  One Virgin Too Many

  [OVTM]

  Ode to a Banker

  [OB]

  A Body in the Bath House

  [BBH]

  The Jupiter Myth


  [JM]

  The Accusers

  [AC]

  Scandal Takes a Holiday

  [STH]

  See Delphi and Die

  [SDD]

  Saturnalia

  [SA]

  Alexandria

  [AL]

  Nemesis

  [NM]

  Introduction

  As the girl came running up the steps, I decided

  she was wearing far too many clothes … [SP]

  With these words I launched the career of Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman informer, in 1989. Twenty years and twenty books later, he has discerning and devoted followers worldwide and I have had a wonderful career. It seems time to offer the Companion volume so many readers have asked for.

  It won’t be a textbook, definitely not a full handbook of Roman life.1 2 There are hundreds of excellent books on the Roman world, written and illustrated by experts, something I have never claimed to be. The Internet is crowded with information, some of it even reliable. I will mention some of my sources, but remember, that’s what they are – the particular books, sites and museums that I used for the series. For serious study you should seek out your own. I shall merely touch on aspects of Roman life that have caused puzzlement. My opinions may be grumpy and maverick. On the other hand, I hold those opinions because, after twenty years of loving and living with this subject, I think I am right.

  I won’t create a comprehensive encyclopaedia of every character, place, murder weapon, stuffed vineleaf and cockroach in the books. How ghastly that would be! My intention is to shed light on how the books are written, why I tackle particular subjects and what I believe to be important in portraying my characters. I will talk a little about my own background, because that is what made me think, imagine, believe, love and hate the way I do. My early life partly explains where the books came from. This is probably as much as I will ever write autobiographically, containing family anecdotes even my family have forgotten, because families and the mad myths that colour their generations are central to the Falco series.

  I wanted to give you glossy illustrations, pull-out maps and give-away models. Sadly, we are constrained to simple and black-and-white illustrations; this is ‘due to the Recession’ (That old story! Falco would scoff). Rodney Paul, who has always created our maps, has produced some brilliant technical drawings of Roman inventions; Bernard Frischer has very kindly allowed us to use stills from ‘Rome Reborn’. Many photographs are from my own collection, so while they may not be of the best professional standard, they are the specific photos Richard and I took on our trips, my personal reminders of useful things we saw. They go back over twenty years and often I can’t tell now who took which, when it was – or even where. We never catalogued anything; we just piled them into drawers. You may disapprove, but this is one authentic source of the books’ relaxed style. For us, life was too short to keep minute records and until very recently I had no thought that we might one day need to impress the stern public.

  Linda Hodgson and Roger Walker at Random House who designed this book have done wonders with the often unpromising material I offered them. And poor Katie Duce in Century editorial, who found herself unexpectedly landed with organising me on two books at once, has been kind, calm, and unfailingly efficient throughout. Beth Humphries has done a wonderful job of copy editing, as she always does. Vicki Robinson produced a professional, helpful index; she is not responsible for the joke entries someone slipped in afterwards.

  People have been extremely generous with permissions; they are listed and thanked in the Acknowledgements. Mary Fox at Penguin went to particular trouble to unravel aged copyrights.

  I want to give a special mention to the close team who encouraged and helped me slowly produce this book: my agent, Heather Jeeves, who lightly whipped me to finish, and my editor, Oliver Johnson, who championed the idea and scrutinised the manuscript as meticulously as ever. Janet Jenvey supervised my homework chart. And my great thanks to Ginny Lindzey and Michelle Breuer Vitt, for their contributions and unfailing interest.

  This has been a hard, sad year for me personally. I lost Richard, and then Oliver resigned. To carry on with Falco, while surveying my past career, was a surreal experience. But it helped me remember why you, my loyal readers all around the world, enjoy and love the books so much. Even in times of trouble, that gives a validation to my life. I am very proud to have provided so much pleasure, intrigue and consolation. I cherish the friendships I have made, often with people I have never met or may never hear from. But I know you are there. This book, this little extra bit of fun, is all for you.

  Lindsey Davis

  London, 2010

  1 There will be no footnotes

  2 Except this one

  Background, Writing and Research

  The Author’s Birth and Background

  Anyone planning to be a writer needs to start before they are born.

  People ask for advice. It’s simple: be the child of a famous published author; use their surname. You will be published immediately. Join writers’ cliques; your books will always be reviewed.

  You must: be blond, stay young, be photogenic. Or, write in your eighties, a different ploy, which carries risks and leads to a short career. Even then, you must be a well-spoken charmer with snowy white hair and elegant attire.

  Never reveal that you write in a paint-stained velour leisure suit, with orthopaedic inserts in your thermal slippers.

  Once born: organise your book jacket biography. Work on a tramp streamer in the South Seas. Serve a prison term; treasure that transsexual’s bigamy claims against you (boast or deny this, according to taste); catalogue your experiences with your pet lion cub (make it die in poignant circumstances). You must have an abusive father, a cheating husband, delinquent children and whimsical cats to write about. What else is there?

  I knew none of this. I had no authors in my pedigree, though my father had done academic editing for Robert Maxwell’s press. Connections in publishing have helped many new authors. But Mum made Dad give up his Maxwell work because she did not trust the man. In this, as in so many things, Joanie’s perceptiveness glowed bright.

  I was born in Birmingham. Many authors have come from there, though most keep quiet about it.

  Brum has no Roman heritage. We pretend there is a ‘fort’ beside the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, but it’s just a signal station. I grew up in an inventive manufacturing city with a strong Nonconformist background, still famous then for cars, guns, jewellery, chocolate, HP sauce. All gone, sadly. The dictionary definition of Brummagem is counterfeit, sham, cheap and showy, so like all Brummies, I droop under a permanent sense of shame.

  My background was working-class. One grandfather was a foreman electrician – at the Gas Works – and the other a toolmaker. My cousin Jennie researches my mother’s family; the Barkers were butchers and hairdressers. Auntie Eleanor had a wool shop, Flo and Glad a general store. Lovely Uncle Wally Stephens founded the Thor Hammer Company. Great-Grandfather Barker, who lived in the Black Country, had kept a pub; he drank a bottle of whisky a day and would brandish a shotgun at closing time. He was thought eccentric. For instance, he believed handkerchiefs were dangerous; people should blow their noses on a piece of old rag, then throw it in the fire.

  … your relatives, given you by nature with no effort on your part …

  HORACE

  (telling us something?)

  And he was an atheist, a follower of Charles Bradlaugh, the Northampton MP who secured the right of affirmation (instead of taking a religious oath)for Members of Parliament and witnesses in court. Bradlaugh’s Secular Society argued that freedom from religion was as much a human right as freedom of religion. One aim was to allow children to be withdrawn from religious assembly at school, though there were penalties for it: Stand up, the little boy whose father does not believe in God! Grandad Barker was so traumatised that our family never did this again – until me. My own secondary school had a strong religious foundation, but I was
allowed to withdraw from the service at assembly so long as I promised not to do homework instead; I said, I’ll knit, then! (Not meant as offensive, but a practical solution.) My Aran and Fair Isle became exemplary.

  On Dad’s side, his father was a toolmaker and his mother’s father a lamp-lighter. My great-great-grandad was a clockmaker, Martin Benzing, from Germany. A Socialist who had wanted to assassinate Bismarck, allegedly he lay in wait in a park where the Iron Chancellor went riding. Bismarck trotted past, slapping his riding crop, which broke; he hurled it into the bush where Martin was lurking. He grabbed it and fled. True: I have the yellowed ivory handle.

  Supposedly, a Benzing became the Benson of ‘& Hedges’ but of course I am not a tobacco heiress or I could be a Celebrity Author and wear diamanté jumpsuits. Wealth stuck to my people only fitfully. Grandfather Davis went to Canada; a trustful man, he made a fortune in apple orchards, but his partner stole the money (twice). My father in turn left everything – nearly half a million pounds – to a woman he met through the small ads who, like a villainess in Falco, claimed she wasn’t good with money. The worst part of this was my estrangement from Dad. Incidentally, it was long after I invented Geminus.

  As you see, my people lacked privilege. They all had trades or shops, though, rather than labouring or being servants. My family were not the intellectual class, effete, snooty and unable to wire an electric plug. We had no goofy twerps in plus-fours at big country-house parties, no female pioneers in Edwardian skirts sipping cocoa at early women’s colleges. Ours was an urban Victorian heritage: the Barkers doing moonlit flits when they could not pay the rent; Mum (young and appealing) being dispatched to beg pub landlords to send Grandad home so he didn’t spend all his wages; Grandma Davis hiring a barrel organ to raise money for the Jarrow miners. On both sides of my family was at least one man whose wife died in childbirth, after which – whatever gender historians maintain – the widower brought up the children.

  My old man said ‘Follow the van!’ and don’t dilly-dally on the way …

  MUSIC HALL SONG

  The Barkers were one such family. It was said that Grandad could get his wife pregnant just by hanging up his trousers on the end of the bed. Seven children survived, though we know there were others. A terrible tale is told that when my grandmother was in labour the last time, the doctor came downstairs and said, I can’t save your wife, but I can possibly save the baby – to which Grandad said no. Thereafter he brought up the rest with an iron hand, famously cooking with a dangling cigarette; the ash provided flavour. Stories of this hungry, noisy, teeming tribe, and the songs Grandad sang, permeated my childhood. Cousin Dorrell remembers life at their house, with her as a child scampering from room to room, not knowing where to settle because there was always something exciting going on somewhere else. Their catchphrase to visitors was Come in, sit down, what’ll you have to eat and drink?