A Body In The Bath House mdf-13 Read online

  Pomponius had been aware of this sub-plot too. He already had the rigid air of one who knew his client spent too much spare time reading architectural manuals. 'Naturally there will be areas where we need to compromise.' Nobody who says that ever believes it.

  It was soon apparent what had made the King so angry. 'Compromise? I, for my part, have conceded that my garden colonnade shall be ripped out, its fine rams' horns hacked off with bolsters, and its smashed capitals stacked up haphazardly for re-use as hardcore! I make this sacrifice for integrity of form in the new complex. That is as far as I will go.'

  'Excuse me, but including the old house is a wasteful economy. Remedying the levels-'

  'I can endure that.'

  'The disruption would be intolerable, but my point,' argued Pomponius in a taut voice, 'is that the approved scheme envisages stripping the entire site for a clean new build.'

  'I never approved that!' The King was dogged. Approval is always a problem when a project is to be paid for by the Roman Treasury yet constructed a thousand miles away for local occupation. Scores of liaison meetings routinely produce deadlock. Many a project founders on the drawing board. 'My current palace which was an imperial gift to symbolise my alliance with Rome will be incorporated into your design, please.'

  The 'please' was simply terse punctuation. It marked the end of the King's speech, nothing more. The speech was meant as an order.

  'Your Majesty may not appreciate the finer -'

  'I am not a fool.'

  Pomponius knew he had patronised his client. That did not stop him. 'Technical details are my sphere-'

  'Not exclusively! I shall live here.'

  'Of course!' It was already a hot quarrel. Pomponius tried wheedling. He ruined everything. 'I intend to convince Your Majesty '

  'No, you have failed to convince me. You must honour my wishes. I had an equitable relationship with Marcellinus, your predecessor. Over many years I would appreciate his creative skill, and Marcellinus in turn knew that his skill must be allied to my needs. Architectural drawings may look beautiful and be admired by critics but to be good, they have to work in daily use. You, if I may say so, seem to be planning only a monument to your own artistry. Perhaps you will achieve such a monument – but only it your vision is in harmony with mine!'

  With a flick of his white toga, the Great King was on his feet. Gathering his entourage, he swept out of the plan room. Servants scampered in his wake as if well rehearsed. Verovolcus, who probably spent much useless effort trying to advance his master's views in project meetings, shot the architect a triumphant glare then strode after the King, clearly well satisfied.

  I might have guessed what would happen next. As his two assistants (who had previously let him suffer unaided) now swarmed up to mutter their sympathy, Pompomus turned on me. 'Well, thank you, Falco,' he snarled with bitter sarcasm. 'We were in quite enough trouble before you caused all that!'

  XV

  Helena and I walked out into the air. I felt subdued. This client project manager conflict was one of the problems I was supposed to clear up. It would not be easy.

  Pomponius had rushed out ahead of us, supported by one of his junior architects. The other happened to leave later, while we were still getting our breath.

  'I'm Falco. Sorry, you are…?'

  'Plancus.'

  'That was a bitter little scene, Plancus.'

  Troubled by the tension, he seemed relieved to be approached about it. He was the one with the flash scarab. It was pinned on a tunic he had worn too many times. Crumpled, yes; probably stained too. I preferred not to check. He had a thin, bristly face, with elongated arms and legs to match.

  'So does this happen all the time?' I asked quietly.

  It met with embarrassment. 'There are problems.'

  'I was told the project is behind time and over budget. I assumed it was the old problem – the client kept changing his mind. But it looked today as though the Great King's mind is too firmly made up!'

  'We explain the concept, but the client sends along his representative, who can barely communicate… We tell him why things must be done one way, he seems to agree that, then later there is a huge fight.'

  'Verovolcus goes back and talks to the King, who sends him back to you to argue?' Helena suggested.

  'It must be a diplomatic nightmare keeping things simple – I mean, cheap!' I grinned.

  'Oh yes,' agreed Plancus weakly. He did not strike me as hot on cost control. In fact, he did not strike me as more than lukewarm on any subject. He was as thrilling as a flavoured custard that had been left on a shelf growing green fur on its skin. 'Togidubnus demands endless impossible luxuries,' he complained. That must be their cliched excuse.

  'What, like keeping his existing house?' I reproved the man.

  'It's an emotional response.'

  'Well, you can't allow that.'

  I had been inside enough public buildings to know that few architects owned or could appreciate emotions. Nor do they understand tired feet or wheezy lungs. Nor the stress of noisy acoustics. Nor, in Britain, the need for heated rooms.

  'I saw no hot-air specialist on your project team?'

  'We don't have one.' Plancus was probably intelligent in some ways, but failed to apply his brain to wondering why I had asked. It ought to be a professional issue. He ought to see my point immediately.

  'How long have you been out here?' I asked.

  'About a month.'

  'Take my word then, you need to mention it to Pomponius. If the King has to use naked fire braziers all winter, your unified concept with the fine sight-lines is likely to go up in grandiose flames.'

  Helena and I walked slowly, hand in hand, across the spacious site. Seeing the plans had helped. Now I was finding my way around better; I could appreciate how the different ranges of rooms had been laid out. The neat footings ended feebly near the old house; this had been left as 'too difficult'. We found Magnus, the surveyor I met yesterday, pottering there. His groma was plunged in the ground, a long metal-tipped stave with four plumb bobs hung from two metal cased wooden bars; it was used for measuring out straight lines and squares.

  While one of his assistants played with the groma for practice, he himself was using a more complicated gadget, a diopter. A sturdy post supported a revolving rod set in a circular table, marked out with detailed angles. The whole circle could be tilted from the horizontal using cogged wheels; Magnus was underneath, tinkering with the cogs and worm screws that set it. Some distance away, another assistant waited patiently beside a twenty-foot-high sighting rod with a sliding bar, ready to measure a slope.

  The chief surveyor squinted up at us, then looked around longingly at the unbroken ground; he badly wanted to set out the last corner of the new palace, where the south and west wings would meet and where the disputed 'old house' stood.

  I told him about the scene we had witnessed between architect and client. Crawling out from his gadget, leaning away so as not to disturb the setting, he stood upright. He reckoned the animosity was normal, confirming what Plancus had told me. Pomponius had not dared to ban King Togidubnus from meetings, but he kept him at arm's length. Verovolcus came along instead and blustered, but he was a third party, with language problems. Pomponius took no notice of anything he said.

  'Who was Marcellinus?' I enquired.

  Magnus scowled. 'Architect for the old house. Worked here for years.'

  'Know him?'

  'Before my time.' I wondered if he had paused slightly. 'He was halfway through planning his own rebuild when Vespasian approved this complete redevelopment.' Magnus pointed out where areas of the site contained unfinished foundations for some vast buildings, not in the current design. 'The Marcellinus scheme stopped dead. I can't work out what his plans involved. But his foundations are hefty, a real menace to our own west wing. Not that we let a dirty great outcrop of unfinished masonry get in our way! Ours is just slapped on top…'

  'Togidubnus seems to have been on good terms wi
th Marcellinus. What happened to him? Dismissed? Died?'

  'Just too old. He was retired. I think he went quietly. Between ourselves,' muttered Magnus, 'I've got him down as an evil old bastard.'

  I laughed. 'He was an architect, Magnus. You would say that about any of them.'

  'Don't be cynical!' quipped the surveyor – in a tone of voice that showed he shared my view.

  'Did Marcellinus go quietly?'

  'He's not entirely gone,' grumbled Magnus. 'He keeps niggling at the King about our plans.'

  Helena had been gazing around. I introduced her. Magnus accepted her with much better grace than had Pomponius.

  'Magnus, is it feasible to incorporate the old house in the way the King wishes?' she asked.

  'If it is decided at the outset, it's perfectly possible and will save money!' He was a problem-solver, who happily set about proving his point to us. 'You understand that we had a serious problem of levels here? The natural site slopes with a big gradient to the west – plus another tilt south towards the harbour. Streams feed into the harbour. In the past there have been drainage problems, never really solved. So, our new scheme raises the ground base in the lower-lying areas, hoping to rise above the damp.'

  'The old house will then be left stranded too low? 1 I put in.

  'Exactly.'

  'But if the King accepts the disruption of having all his rooms in filled…'

  'Well, he knows what a building site is like!' Magnus laughed. 'He enjoys change. Anyway, I sketched out a drawing myself to see if it's do-able. His garden courtyard would be sacrificed '

  'For schematic unity?' Helena murmured. She had listened well.

  'Integrity of concept!' Magnus quipped back. 'Otherwise, Togi can keep pretty well the same room layout, with new floors which he will love choosing – new ceilings, cornices, et cetera, and redecorated walls. Oh, and he preserves his bath house, handily at the end of his domestic corridor. With the Pomponius plan, Togi would have to live way across the site – traipsing around in a loincloth with his oil flask whenever he wants a scrape down.'

  'Hardly regal,' said Helena.

  'No fun during an October gale!' I shuddered. 'With an equinoctial wind howling in off the Gallic Strait, you could feel as if you were right among the breakers, shaking hands with Neptune. Who wants sand in his privates and sea spray messing up washed hair? So,' I asked lightly, 'is the bath house to be rebuilt at all?'

  'Upgraded,' replied Magnus, perhaps a little shiftily.

  'Oh! Pomponius is making a concession, then?'

  Magnus was turning back to his diopter. He paused. 'Stuff Pomponius!' He glanced around, then told me in a low voice, 'We have no official funding for a bath house. Pomponius knows nothing about this. The King is organising the bath house refurbishments himself!'

  I let out a breath.

  'Have you been involved, Magnus?' Helena asked with cheerful innocence. She could ask brazen questions as if they just came to her coincidentally.

  'The King asked me to walk the area with him,' Magnus admitted.

  'You could hardly refuse!' Helena sympathised. 'I have a particular interest,' she continued. 'I just had a terrible time with some bath builders in Rome.'

  'Gloccus and Cotta,' I put in, sounding bitter. 'Notorious!' Magnus showed no reaction.

  'Togi is lucky to have your advice,' Helena flattered him.

  'I may have made one or two technical suggestions,' reported the surveyor in a neutral tone. 'If anyone accuses me of drawing up his specification on my off day, I'll deny everything! So will the King,' he added firmly. 'He's a game, determined sod.'

  'I presume he's paying. What contractors is he using?' I ventured.

  'Oh don't ask me, Falco. I don't get involved with bloody labour, not even for a nice old king.'

  'The wild garden is coming along, if you like greenery,' Magnus called after us, guessing well. Needing to clear our heads of nonsense, we both leapt at the invitation.

  It was a peaceful haven. Well, it had a sea view as we had been promised, though the shore was taken up with a jetty where a ship was unloading stone very noisily.

  A sea inlet ran through the area. Water features must be popular. The wild garden also had a significant pond site; mucking out of a disgusting kind was in hand. Herons from the landward and gulls from the seaward sides stood around, hoping for excavated fish among the muddy silt. Apart from the deep channel that was being created out in the harbour, the beaches were low along this coastal reach, and riddled with water courses and creeks. It made everywhere brackish and damp.

  Once again, we were on an artificial terrace, three hundred feet of it, providing eventual occupants of the south wing with an informal vista, against which lapped the waves now controlled by a mole and gates lest Oceanus should behave too naturally. Behind the westward range of the palace a new domestic-services complex was already going up, including an obvious bake house and a monster grinding stone. Once the palace itself rose to its full height, those buildings would be hidden; the observer would only see artificial parkland sloping away to the sea and well-tamed woods beyond the inlet. The concept was strongly reminiscent of the 'urban countryside' devised by Nero when he filled the whole Forum with trees, lakes and wild animal parks, for his extravagant Golden House. The effect here, in rural Britain, was somewhat more acceptable.

  Gardeners were toiling away. Since this was to be a 'natural' landscape, it required elaborate planning and constant hard work to keep it looking wild. It also had to remain accessible to those who wished to stroll here while lost in contemplation. Random specimen shrubs struggled listlessly against the salt and surf. Ground-cover plants rampaged healthily across the paths; sea-holly scratched our ankles. Grottos were being cemented; they would be delightful once shrouded in violets and ferns. But their fight against sea, and marsh, and enduring bad weather, had given the workers an air of desperate fatality. They walked in the slow way of men who did a great deal of leaning against the wind.

  To demand of these poor locals a 'natural' plot was a grim trick. They must now have gardened for Togidubnus for several decades. They knew too well that nature would forge its own way past fenced boundaries, slithering over walls, sprouting with giant weed fronds against their tender Mediterranean specimens, gobbling up precious slips and undermining exotic roots. It was all too wet and cold, and made us long for Italy.

  We met the landscape specialist I had glimpsed at the project meeting. He confirmed the craziness.

  'It won't be too bad in the formal courtyards. I'll plant them out three times a year with colour; prune the permanent in spring and autumn; then just turn over the lot to be mowed, hoed and trimmed. No need to touch it otherwise.'

  He shouted instructions to men who were hoisting a heavy rope about, using its sluggish bends to devise an attractive layout for a winding path.

  'But this is hard work.' Helena waved an arm, then chilled, she pulled her stole closer around her, tucking back loose strands of hair that had been freed by the wind.

  'Misery, frankly.' He was a bowed, brown, shaven-headed man, whose apparent gloom hid real enthusiasm. 'We don't get to stand at ease with the sun on our faces, like in Corinth or New Carthage – we're battering back nature wherever it raises its head. Scything it down, slashing it through, scratching it with hooks and flattening it with spades as it scuttles across the soil. The soil is horrible, of course,' he added with a grin.

  I was intrigued by his geographical references. 'What's your name, and where are you from?'

  'I'm Timagenes. Learned my stuff on an imperial estate near Baiae.'

  'You're not just a trowel-wielder,' I commented.

  'Certainly not! I am in charge of the people who supervise the trowel-wielders' gang leaders.' He was half mocking his status yet it mattered. 'I can spot a slug – but basically, I'm the man who devises the glamorous effects.'

  'And they will be glorious,' Helena complimented him. 'Pomponius has been describing your scheme for us.'

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p; 'Poniponius is a deluded snot,' replied Timagenes helpfully. 'He's all set on ruining my creative vision – but I'll get him!'

  There seemed to be no hard malice in his words, yet for him to be so open was instructive.

  'Another feud?' I enquired mildly.

  'Not at all.' Timagenes sounded quite comfortable. 'I hate him. I hate his liver, lungs and lights.'

  'And hope he has no luck with girls?' I was remembering Lupus, the overseer, describing angry curses laid at shrines by his labourers.

  'That would be too cruel.' Timagenes smiled. 'Actually, there's no girl around here who would look at him. Girls are not stupid,' he opined with a polite salute to Helena. 'We all suspect he prefers boys but the boys in Noviomagus have better taste too.'

  'What has Pomponius done to upset you?' Helena asked.

  'Far too obscene to mention!' Timagenes bent down and gripped a small blue flower. 'A periwinkle. These do well in Britain. They peg their dark mats into dank spidery places, with strong glossy leaves that you hardly notice, until suddenly at the end of April they push up their sturdy blue stars. Now that's gardening out here. The startling discovery of some bright, defiant thing -'

  The poetic foliage-forager pulled at the blossom, yanking so violently he presented Helena with a stringy rope two feet or more in length. There were very few flowers, and white roots dangled in unpleasant clumps. She took the offering gingerly.

  'So what did Pomponius do to you?' I insisted laconically.

  Ignoring the question, Timagenes only turned up his face to sniff the air, then answered, 'Summer is here. Smell it on the wind! Now we're in real trouble…'

  Whether he meant horticulturally or in some wider sense, we could not tell.

  XVI

  As Helena and I later made our way back to the Noviomagus road and our transport, we came across a slow wagon trailing up to the site.

  'Stop laughing, Marcus!' Luckily, there was nobody around to spy on our meeting. It would have been rude of me to guffaw at strangers the way I did now. But one of this mournful party was only disguised as a stranger. His grumpy scowl was all too familiar.