The Grove of the Caesars Read online

  I had a plan. With no nervous escort to stop me, I marched straight to the headquarters of the Seventh. Each vigiles cohort looks after two districts, one with their main barracks, the second with a lesser presence. Siting the Seventh’s main station-house over here must have seemed like throwing a military base across a river into enemy-held territory. Every night coming out on watch, the men must feel apprehensive. Nobody here would like paramilitaries, not even when they came racketing up with their horse-drawn siphon engine to put out a fire. As for knocking burglars about in these dark streets, that must always run a risk of starting a riot. In the Transtiberina, suspicion of authority was so strong you could taste it in the air.

  Inside, they were safe enough. The place was heavily walled and gated. While most of them were sleeping by day, they had probably learned to ignore the smells of the obnoxious trades that were carried on in the Fourteenth and the clamour of its exotic residents.

  No one answered when I knocked at the gate, though I reckoned there were personnel inside. I had the choice of looking for the day team at the nearby baths or a bar. I chose the bar, where at least they might have their clothes on. There I routed out a nest of red-tunics. My starting point is always that these ex-slaves are admirable men doing a vital job, who brave danger and like saving lives. They may be built like money chests on legs, but they have generous hearts. As usual, my approach worked, so they treated me like a favourite daughter as I pleaded for one of them to come to let me in. Those who were busy drinking called out for Arctus, who had gone upstairs with the barmaid so in this round he had no drink he would have to leave behind.

  When he came down, Arctus did not have his tunic on. He was still draped with the barmaid until his mates explained what was needed, so he shook her off and was simply nude. I winced. The rest laughed. Someone threw him a counter towel, in case he met his granny in the street, after which Arctus took me to the station-house readily enough. We did not meet his gran, which was fortunate, since the modesty towel was seriously small.

  The Seventh’s headquarters had the usual courtyard, outdoor fountain basin, equipment room with piles of mats, pickaxes and rope buckets, shrine with imperial busts, lavatory, prisoner cell (empty with its door open), dormitories and a large pantry for ration storage. The pantry would be the key area.

  The officer on duty was sitting with his cronies, who were the water-supply expert and the medic, all telling dirty stories. The office was so near the gate that they must have heard me knocking. The man in charge was unrepentant, but now I had caught him out, he wrote down details I gave him of my missing dancers. I emphasised that Primulus and Galanthus were in origin gifts from Domitian. The vigiles had a role in recapturing runaways, though I pointed out that mine had likely been scared by the murder that took place last night, so should be treated kindly. After I had passed on stories from my senator uncles about the Black Banquet, the officer warmed up slightly. He would soon be telling these tales as if he had privileged access to Palace gossip. If I ever needed future favours it might give me a slight advantage. You have to build up your contacts.

  Mentioning why the young dancers might have fled gave me a reason to ask about the murder. There had been no developments, which was no surprise. Ursus, naturally, was not here. No chance of pressing him for more. Not that he would have told me.

  While we were talking, I mentioned that my workmen had made an odd discovery, so were the vigiles aware of illegal activities in the Transtib that might involve scrolls? Of course not. Even so, to my surprise, another note was made, in case they came across anything like that. It would at least be a change from bath-house pilfering and purse-snatching.

  Looking down my list of questions, the officer commented on my wide portfolio of interests. The Seventh are responsible not only for the Fourteenth Region but the Ninth, which includes the Saepta Julia. I mentioned that I was Falco’s daughter, so he groaned and said that explained everything.

  * * *

  After I left, I made my way around the huge Naumachia. Although I wondered if there was anything to gain by calling at the sailors’ barracks to ask about the killings, common sense set in. The barracks was a no-go area. I gave that complex a wide berth.

  At our site, Larcius and the workmen had been digging. They were so proud of their finds they forgot to reprimand me for coming over unescorted. That morning they had unearthed enough scrolls to fill a barrow with grimy papyrus; Larcius was satisfied they had looked everywhere, so we now had possession of all there could be. The men would bring the new load to the house that evening. It would keep me busy, preparing a catalogue.

  I complimented the team, then questioned them about everything else. No one the workmen had talked to today had been able to shed light on our two missing boys. Local gossip said that nothing more had happened about the murder either. The body must have been taken away yesterday. Serenus had nosily been to the Grove to look. If formal enquiries were still being made officially, there was no sign of it.

  “I wondered if they would put up a notice asking for information from the public?”

  “Oh, yes, they did that,” Larcius replied, sounding caustic. “They stuck it on a tree in the Grove but the wind blew it away. Don’t worry, we found it. We nailed it back up again. With proper nails this time.”

  “Any of the public who know anything are likely to keep away from here, though,” added Trypho. “They won’t see the notice.”

  “They wouldn’t volunteer information in any case,” said Serenus.

  “Too dangerous,” I put in, with a smile. “Tiberius Manlius wrote a request for information once. I answered it. Next thing, we were getting married.”

  “Not going to happen to Ursus!” the toothless Larcius supplied, in his whistly way. “Word is, he already secretly has two wives, one in the Fourteenth and another in the Ninth. Two henpecking mothers-in-law, two sets of birthdays he had better to remember or he’s dead meat … If he ever gets transferred to a different cohort, and acquires two more, he’ll probably hang himself.”

  If this was true, I wondered whether the stress of juggling his different lives made Ursus a candidate to be a killer himself. I did not mention it. Speculating is how rumours start. The more you were only trying to lighten your mood, the madder the nonsense that spreads.

  All the same, you never know. I might try gently to find out when these murders had started and whether they occurred at all before Ursus was assigned to the Seventh Cohort …

  As if he knew he was under discussion, at that moment the investigator Ursus hove into view. He wore the same cloak and red tunic as yesterday, with the same cool expression. Two or three disconsolate vigiles straggled behind on escort duty. They were for show. I could tell from the way they dragged their boots that they knew they had been kept from their daytime sleep but would not be asked to do much.

  Ursus was putting on a brave face, though I realised he had been hobbled by the authorities. He was walking in tandem with another man, apparently discussing evidence as equals. But the person he had brought to inspect the crime scene would see the situation in a different light. I knew him. He thought himself special. In his case, it was horribly true. His presence meant that Ursus’s role as key investigator had been superseded.

  His name was Julius Karus. He had a black history, a creep who fixed secret executions with undue diligence, then was showered with rewards. Supposedly his current role in Rome was to head up a long-term project to tackle criminal gangs. Last I saw, he was assigned loosely to the First Cohort, taking charge of Operation Phoenix. This was intended to counter vicious gang warfare on the Esquiline and Quirinal Hills.

  It ought to keep Karus busy, but the operation had gone quiet. That was not because the rival gangs had had a crisis of conscience and reformed. It was just a lull while they were racking their brains for something even more horrible to do to each other. One of the groups was led by an old man, who was dying slowly. The process had been going on for some years, but until he cr
oaked no member of his own clan dared move and the others were waiting to see what would happen. The vigiles joked that they were sending broth to Old Rabirius to keep him alive so the streets would stay peaceful.

  I could guess what had brought Karus. Cluventius and his loyal friends had already started making demands for justice for Victoria Tertia. They must have taken their complaints to someone high up; I reckoned they had loud voices too. So, while Julius Karus kicked his heels on the quiescent gangster operation, he had looked to be available for a special task. He had been sent to beef up the Seventh. Here he was in Caesar’s Gardens—and he had not come to sniff flowers.

  As the two officials arrived on site, out of the corner of my eye I saw Serenus pick up the barrow handles and innocently wander away out of sight with the scrolls.

  XXIV

  Caius Julius Karus was an equestrian, the rank Domitian now favoured to hold high administration posts. The new breed would reward him with special loyalty and keep him on the throne, however much other people feared him. Carefully placed equestrians were taking over where senators or imperial freedmen had to be reined in or, better still, sacked under a cloud. At that point, if the previous post-holders had any sense, they conveniently died.

  Karus suited the current regime. His methods must have been approved, since he and the men he deployed to help him were laden with honours, though with curious silence about their citations. He now held undercover positions, whose purpose and sinister powers again were never publicly announced.

  He was heavily built, though his gut looked squashy. Blue-chinned, black-hearted. He had the weight of a soldier who had served in Germany, that feast-loving province, with the stare of a man who had once served in Britain, the end of the civilised world. In most ways that didn’t frighten me but my knowledge of what his career-defining mission there had been, a political execution, did make me guarded. Rome had rules but Julius Karus was permitted to ignore them.

  It was possible Ursus was in tune with this political beast, though more likely he had had Karus dumped on him, in the same way Scorpus of the First had been told to give the man houseroom for Operation Phoenix. At any rate, “Hello, you’re here again!” said Ursus to me, sounding unhappy. He seemed to be desperately establishing contacts so he would look like a man who knew his patch. I replied that I was supervising our workmen for my husband, as I had been intending to do yesterday when I heard about the corpse.

  “This is Flavia Albia, wife to the magistrate Faustus.” Ursus introduced me to Karus, who nodded.

  “Karus and I have met.” I tipped the wink to Ursus myself, expecting no gratitude. I have my own courtesy, based on practical considerations. Karus would move on. I might have to deal with the Seventh at any time. “I am aware of his valuable work.”

  I knew better than to say I had recently seen him in action. To my mind, he had no judgement. Ursus himself might have shied away from deep enquiry into the series of deaths, but he had at least carried out a faultless crime-scene inspection yesterday.

  “Julius Karus has been assigned to give us new insights.” Ursus braved it out.

  I gave him a sympathetic smile, showing I understood the situation: “You mean, the latest victim bleated to the Prefect of Vigiles? So Karus has been sent with a big stick? Only joking!” I quipped to Karus, a man who by definition did not joke.

  “Cluventius went right up to the praetor,” Ursus admitted glumly. In the law and order hierarchy, that was as high as anyone could go, bar the Emperor. For self-preservation, a good praetor would always keep Domitian informed.

  “He really has connections! Time for a rethink, then. Rapid response. At least now you have Karus to take the blame!”

  “Always good to lumber the commissariat,” agreed the vigilis, showing his feelings perhaps too openly. Ursus, with his stuck-out ears and tight habits, now had someone to resent even more, so he was making parley with me. Karus watched, excluded. We were pretending he was sharing our black humour, but we had better not antagonise him too much.

  It was an interesting situation anyway, because I stood there as a lone woman, who ought to have felt threatened. But I had at my back a cluster of men holding mattocks. When I joked, my workmen chuckled. When I smiled satirically, they beamed. Serenus, who had sauntered back after concealing the barrow of scrolls, even treated us to his signature mark of appreciation: stuffed with pie from Xero’s, he could fart as punctuation.

  I continued to aim my remarks at Ursus. “Let me guess: has past history been hastily reviewed?”

  He nodded. “We are rechecking all the old case details.” At least I knew that during Ursus’s time here, the clerk I saw yesterday would have made and saved basic notes. With the arrival of Karus, the old case records would have been pulled from the back of cupboards. “We shall assess similarities, looking for matches, checking any missed leads.” Ursus was trying to sound efficient in front of me. Karus glared at this unprofessional level of sharing. He did all his work in secret.

  I warned him easily, “Don’t be tight, Karus. It’s best if the public knows all this. You need to reverse the current lack of confidence. Persuade new witnesses to cooperate. Attract new tips.”

  Karus had listened to enough banter and he hated advice. He took over, announcing that he had come to re-interview my workmen. I knew that no one had asked them anything yet about when Victoria Tertia had died, but I spared Ursus the admission. I said they were disgusted by what had been happening so we were eager to help. I waved Karus over to them. “They will answer truthfully. I have no need to supervise.”

  I moved away slightly, making it plain I would not influence anything they said. I sat down on a pile of rocks, inviting Ursus to join me, though he remained stolidly standing. “Do you want to ask me whether he’s good?” I muttered.

  “Best not.”

  “All right.”

  After a moment he could not help himself. “You’ve met him before. What was your impression?”

  “Deadly. He will turn up a suspect, though it may be the first person he lights upon who looks guilty. Half of Rome fits that. Then if you arrest the wrong man, the real one will brazenly carry on. He may even increase his killing rate, if he hears someone else has been given credit.”

  Ursus nodded warily. He stopped the conversation in case Karus glanced in our direction. We waited. Karus interrogated Larcius and the lads, which he did with more aggression than needed, just because he could. Old hands, they replied patiently. I knew they had seen and heard nothing useful on the party night.

  Karus came back to Ursus, scowling. “No good. But you lost two slave-boys?” he demanded of me.

  “We did. Long-haired youths who like dancing, which is not very useful in a domestic environment. We were unclear how wild the Cluventius event would be, so we took the precaution of guarding our site. The boys wanted to help. They were gifts from the Emperor to my family, after that banquet for the fallen in Dacia.” I decided not to criticise Domitian’s spiteful humour in front of his man. “I had given them permission to sit with the builders in case there was anything exciting to see. Of course, there wasn’t.”

  “They ran away?”

  “Simply that, perhaps. Or they might have witnessed something that terrified them. We won’t know until we find them.”

  “You expect to? Well, that will give you something to do,” Karus ground out triumphantly. “Looking for them should keep you busy and out of our inquiry.”

  “I shall not trouble your inquiry,” I replied gently. “I never interfere.” I sounded like my grandmother. Both of them. Juno.

  If there was one thing that ensured I would invade their case, it was Karus telling me to keep out. As they left, I thought Ursus looked as if he realised what I was thinking. The workmen did. They were snorting behind their hands while they watched the officials depart.

  I announced that, instead, now was the time for me to think more about the excavated scrolls.

  XXV

  I meant that
.

  I did surprise everyone, perhaps even myself. I picked out a sample of the material that Larcius and the men had dug up that day. They watched me park myself, all keeping an eye on where I landed, in case I attracted the predator. I wasn’t worried. These horrible works were not going to absorb me so deeply I would miss him creeping up. One or two retained their wooden scroll batons. My father tells a nasty tale of a publisher who died when he was speared through the nostril into his brain by a scroll rod. A rejected writer did it …

  I found myself a bench in feeble sunlight, where I unfolded what I could easily open of the stiff, earth-encrusted scrolls. Exploring the new material was tricky and dirty, but eventually I knew this batch included further lousy topics by Epitynchanus, though no more “fragments” of Philadespoticus. We might have more of him in the barrow, which would be a good place to leave him. There were all sorts of material, including parts of plays, history, even travelogues. I found names we had not previously come across, one of whom appeared to be a female Greek poet.

  I tipped my head back, absorbing winter light, if not warmth. It felt good to be using the gardens for their intended purpose of leisure, even if this leisure was combined with work. The Emperor Vespasian famously used the Gardens of Sallust as an outdoor office, though he had slaves to run after correspondence that blew away, with tip-top Palace tray-toters to bring him snacks when reading became tedious. I bet he never had to plough through anything by Epitynchanus the damned Dialectician.

  My brain said that nobody ever did. Epi and Philly struck me as doomed to be the great unread.

  I expect they prided themselves on being difficult. Setting challenges for simple folk lets writers disport themselves as mighty intellects. Struggle is presented as commendable. Even intelligent readers may feel proud of suffering over unintelligible bosh …