The Grove of the Caesars Read online

  Bastards.

  If we could sell the previous scrolls, we could sell these. The task set by my father still applied; I would have to collect them into sets and list them. That would be best done at home, where they could all be laid out, sorted and grouped before I prepared the inventory. I carried the samples back to Larcius so his men could wheel them up the Aventine for me.

  I pretended this scroll puzzle was my sole interest. For the time being, that was almost true. I felt honestly wary of the killings in the Grove.

  I admit it: I was also perturbed that Julius Karus was taking an interest. I wanted to avoid him.

  Ultimately, I guessed Karus had his eye on the position of Chief Spy. There already was one—there must be. In Vespasian’s time the loathsome Anacrites had been inflicted upon us, after which Titus had always been close to the Praetorian Guards, who ran the secret service, so he would have had his personal appointee. Domitian was so suspicious he must have had eyes looking out for him from the moment of his accession. Whoever he was, that man managed to stay hidden. But someone was certainly drinking fine wines and collecting niche artworks in a grace-and-favour house close to the Palace, whence he could run if his master called. And that someone would have a discreet Palatine suite, where he arranged treachery and death. Did he know the envious Karus was eyeing up his post and title—not to mention his marble office?

  I had been in rooms where spies ran secret agents, opened and read travellers’ correspondence, pored over tip-offs from the public or just plotted against one another mercilessly, as spies do. They never named their chief. They probably plotted against him too.

  So far, Karus inhabited the Castra Peregrina on the Caelian, where “scouts” from all the legions were placed to observe the Roman population. Perhaps, I postulated wryly, somewhere in the world Julius Karus had left a civilised wife and merry children … No chance. He came to us direct from the legions. He arrived in Rome with no personal baggage. I thought he despised attachments. There was no room in his life for ties of affection, cultural pursuits, or flopping on a bench idly at the end of a day. For him, a bench was something to tie a suspect to, face down, while he threatened to spear them with a hot poker—and then had a soldier do it.

  Once the Caesar’s Gardens killer was arrested, turning him over to Karus would only be justice. Finding that person required skills Karus might not have—or maybe he did, but I had never seen them yet. Should I give him more credit? Allow him time to show his talents?

  All right. Be fair to him, Albia. Let him, if he was up to the job, tackle what no one had bothered to do so far: let him catalogue all the corpses that had been found in Caesar’s Gardens and the Grove, listed in date order with notes of key features. Let him create sub-groups according to the location of bodies, methods of causing death, appearance of victims and anything known of their background. Let him have that young clerk draw up an inventory of all the trophies known to have been taken. Let Julius Karus ponder how and when each of those bodies was discovered, how and where the victims might have been snatched, whether it was known they had been raped while alive, or believed they had been used sexually after death, or if any were obviously revisited during decomposition. Let him check every case for witnesses, then summon back any informants who could still be found for a new interview, which would be conducted by himself and Ursus. Or, more likely, by Karus solo.

  Once he had done all that work, if I wanted to involve myself, then would be the time. I would attempt to access the documentation. (Oh, really? How, Albia darling?) Subvert Ursus so he would talk to me. Bribe the clerk to lend me the note-tablets …

  It would take time for Karus to complete his reassessment. Meanwhile, I walked back over the river with a very different aim. I cut through the meat market, around the west end of the Palatine into the Forum, then crossed right over to the ancient street between the Curia and the Basilica Aemilia. Domitian had adapted the first stretch of this old road into the Forum Transitorium. He had built a Temple of Minerva, with an apsidal porticus at the far end that gave onto the highway: the historic Argiletum.

  This street rising towards the Esquiline had a long history. It continued to teem with mixed habitation and even more mixed commerce. It had a terrible reputation for brothels, barely improved by its supposedly hosting scroll shops. In fact, there were fewer of those than people said: literature was much less in evidence than the barbers, potters, pimps and trinket-trundlers, who assailed passers-by with invitations of all kinds. This was, however, where a man in a small booth, one Donatus, had reserved for me a complete encyclopaedia that I was buying for my husband.

  On our wedding day, I told Tiberius he would receive one scroll at every anniversary. There were thirty-seven in the set. This was a sure way to stop him divorcing me for years, if he wanted the whole work. Now I told the seller that, since life was short, I might start giving Tiberius a scroll at Saturnalia too, even if it brought forward the moment when he casked up the last one in his private library and could send me back to Mother.

  I handed over a large sum for the next scroll. My dear husband already had the first: Pliny’s Letter to Vespasian and the index. This new part covered the world, the elements and the stars. That should keep Tiberius busy.

  “When is his birthday?” the scroll-seller mused, while quickly preparing my parcel, since Saturnalia was but two weeks away. He had enough fingers to figure out that piling in birthday presents as well would not only double but treble his annual sales and cash flow.

  “No idea—but just for you, I will find out.”

  “Still good is it? The marriage?” Donatus probed.

  “Yes, though still new enough for all our friends and relatives to mutter that they don’t expect us to last.”

  “But you are in love!” he smarmed cynically.

  “I am in love—and in a quandary. Donatus, my friend, I want to talk to you about philosophers.”

  “I need to sit down then … Hit me with it, Flavia Albia.”

  Donatus was thin, pasty, short-sighted and lacking in character, despite a life spent in the mind-enhancing world of books. He could not afford a comb for his long grey straggles of hair or a shave more than once in two weeks. He only ever had a small stock, which, like many sellers, he seemed to prefer to keep in his shop, rather than letting buyers take them. It could be why he failed to eat. My father’s secretary had found him for me, though, as far as I could gather, Katutis came here on his own, not sent by Pa in the course of business. This made Donatus a neutral adviser, one with no prior obligations to the auction house.

  I lobbed at him the names of Epitynchanus the Dialectician and Philadespoticus of Skopelos. He looked at me askance. “Never heard of them. Skopelos is famous for wine, not fine thinking.”

  I had half expected this. The only surprise was that when I had mentioned them to Tuccia in the other scroll shop she apparently knew them. “I suppose,” I admitted shyly, “we are hoping that obscurity adds value?”

  “Nuts!” retorted Donatus.

  I tried him with another name I had come across today in the newest batch. “Didymus Dodomos?”

  Donatus burst out laughing. “You are having me on!”

  “You don’t know this man?”

  “He doesn’t exist.”

  “He must. I have work he has written … Thallusa, then? A Greek lady poet?”

  “Lives on an island, with her special girlfriends?”

  “Lived in Arcadia, I don’t know who with.”

  “Writes girlie sex?”

  “Writes womanly stress. Do not bring me your anxieties, take your repression from my door; I am contemplating my own troubled mind, I cannot hear your complaints any more … I admit lesbian love must sell better.”

  “Unreachable apples and crushed hyacinths. Top topics! Where have you come across this stuff, Albia?”

  “Dug it up.”

  “Oh, joy! Someone knew it was so bloody awful they buried it in a deep hole! Their logic is thrilling,
” Donatus jibed. “Such a refreshing attitude.”

  “Forget I asked, Donatus.”

  “I certainly will not do that. Flavia Albia, this is the best laugh I have had all year—and I say that in December, with Saturnalia just around the corner.”

  “One last question, then. If I wheeled in a pile of works of that nature, would you buy them?”

  “No.”

  “These are rare purchases, one-offs and sought-after. No avid collectors you could tempt?”

  “I don’t sell to idiots.” Donatus was struggling professionally, but it seemed he had his pride. If true, I respected him for it. In the end he muttered, “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

  “That’s what people generally say just to get rid of me.”

  He growled. “I will mention these authors of yours to my regular collectors. If anyone says anything, I can pass it on to you.”

  Now he had tried to get rid of me twice. I took the hint and went home.

  XXVI

  I spent the rest of that day at home, preparing scrolls for auction, later adding those the workmen brought. I did not enjoy this job. I overheard staff members calling me tetchy. They were wrong, though. I could be much tetchier than that.

  My spirits sank lower when a slave came from Uncle Tullius. Aunt Valeria had written to him about the funeral; he was leaving for Fidenae the next morning. I confined myself to saying that Gratus would be in charge in my absence and Suza had to stay at home, since I could not face her moaning about mourners with dishevelled hair. I went to bed but slept little.

  Tullius, in his mule cart, came when it was barely light, since we hoped to rattle through Rome to our northern exit while the streets were empty. Tullius always ignored the daytime wheeled-vehicle ban. Even so, he left before eager officials on the day roster started work, while the night watch would not want to delay going off duty. We escaped the city unchallenged.

  We spoke little during the journey. At one point I remembered my commission for Donatus, so I asked if Tullius could tell me his nephew’s birthday.

  “Two days before the October Ides,” he answered straight away. “You missed this year; I didn’t tell you—he was still suffering after the bolt hit him. Fania’s was fifteen days earlier. Their mother had believed her second child was going to be born on the same day as her first, but she came sooner.” He was able to tell me without checking a calendar, a surprise. Tullius then said, after a pause, “He will grieve on her anniversary, but at least then he can lighten up for his own. If he will. He can be dark.”

  As he sank back into gloom, I wondered if his niece’s death reminded Tullius of losing his own sister. Talk of family matters seemed out of character, yet he kept dates in his mind and thought about implications. Even so, his attending the funeral still appeared to be more stubbornness than sorrow.

  Left with silence again, I pondered the odd tolerance that seemed to exist between uncle and nephew. Tiberius, I knew, had been sixteen when Tullius offered him a home. Tiberius was such a different character, serious and traditional, traits that might even have been exaggerated when he first lost his parents. By contrast, his uncle was a secretive but sociable businessman who slept with slaves, if not worse. Yet I had never heard Tiberius say a bad word about him. I guessed Tullius had never tried to change him—or vice versa. Generous acceptance on both sides. I wondered if their dissimilarity might explain why Tiberius had spent so much time on his own, reading.

  Strange how sometimes you can alter your perspective, with barely a word spoken. Unusual, too, to come across someone who made no attempt to force conversation even when later we had the picnic basket out. I was happy with that.

  * * *

  Eventually, stiff and tired, we reached Fidenae. I had been nearby once before, with Tiberius, though we had been working on a case so could not linger. Now I was to stay at his aunt’s home. When we arrived, he strode out to meet us, nodded to his uncle, then hugged me in a tight embrace.

  “You needn’t have come.”

  “I wanted to be with you.”

  I took him away to be private. With me, he wept, letting out his grief over Fania for the first time. Until I came, he had been keeping himself together while he consoled other people and busied himself with arrangements. I held him, saying nothing, until he stopped, left only with emptiness.

  Later he wanted me to talk. It gave him new topics to think about, so I started with the story of Primulus and Galanthus. When I explained their disappearance, I had to go into the Cluventius birthday party, with its tragic outcome. Tiberius made me promise I was not investigating the deaths. I said truthfully that Julius Karus had taken over. Tiberius scratched his chin somewhat, but we avoided arguing. He knew me. He knew when he could influence me, and when not. I would not worry him with admitting my intentions, while he had too much on his mind to want a tussle he could not win.

  There was plenty of other strife around us. Valeria and Tullius engaged in open hostilities. Simply related by marriage, they had nothing else in common, except their claims on Tiberius and strong distastes for one another. She was a countrywoman, he a city-dweller. She was elderly and so anxious she seemed feeble, he creaky but still a goer. They might have shared concerns for Fania’s children, but Tullius openly thought that even now they were motherless, those whiny little boys were to be shunned. He had no conscience, as Valeria loved pointing out.

  The funeral was next day. We all processed to a tomb that had been built adjacent to the old estate where the grandparents and parents had lived, now sold. This tomb stood beside the road, in an awkward corner of land on the boundary of the property. The usual notice gave dimensions of the plot, ground that was now sacred to those buried there, home for ever to their spirits, unencumberable by mortgage, inviolable, unsaleable. A brick wall provided protection, with a single entrance and a garden. Four or five large trees were planted in a row on the roadside, with an orchard of fruit trees and vines behind, then rows of kitchen vegetables. It was a peaceful spot. Birds flew around and sang. Roses, with one or two pale flowers braving the winter, made a sweet surround to the tomb. It was marble, the material the grandfather had imported. Inside, neat plaques commemorated family members, while a place had been marked for a new stone to be erected: Fania’s.

  Mourners had come from farms in the district. Tiberius announced briefly that it had been Fania Faustina’s wish to lie here, near their happy childhood home, with their grandparents and parents. Nobody commented that this was odd. No one (not even Tullius) said Fania’s ashes would normally have been placed in her husband’s family mausoleum and only put here if they had been divorced. Naturally, we all thought it.

  I met the tenant who worked the tiny market-garden. His role was to grow produce to be given to the gods in memory of the dead. When relatives came, he supplied fresh fruit and vegetables for their feast. He sold some for the tomb’s upkeep. Then, if he managed to achieve a surplus, he was allowed it for his own table, or could sell it. He lived in a small building alongside. Today he helped with the funeral fire.

  It was clear to me that Tiberius had arranged almost everything. Antistius spoke the formal words of farewell, but Tiberius gave his sister’s eulogy. Valeria and I looked after the three boys during the ceremony. She pointed out to me a widow, whom she whispered sarcastically was a very close, long-term friend of Antistius, though not of Fania.

  Tiberius confirmed this to me afterwards. He said Antistius was always over at the widow’s house since, apparently, she needed continual advice on her estate. For some reason, it was beyond her to employ a farm manager. Antistius claimed he was being neighbourly.

  This hardly seemed a grand romance. She was an average-looking woman, just as he was an insignificant man. She was not rich, nor were her people well thought of locally. She seemed oblivious to people’s stares or had become hardened to their antipathy. She must know what Antistius was like, if only because she knew he had offended his wife with his attentions to her. Like so many
relationships, it was hard to see how it had ever come about, or why they were so firmly attached to one another.

  Tiberius thought Antistius would openly move in with the widow soon. I decided not to wonder what that might mean for his young sons. Someone had dressed them in mourning white for the funeral, all their new clothes slightly too large for them. Fania had always kept them in different-coloured little tunics: red, blue and green assigned to each. She said it helped with laundry. I could see that today they felt uncomfortable and strange. At one point in the funeral, the widow made a show of approaching to hug them; they were unresponsive, especially the two youngest. Aunt Valeria took them all home early.

  The rest of us duly stayed until the cremation finished. This long period of waiting always has the potential to be awkward. Tiberius was strung so tight I kept him away from his brother-in-law, lest he ended up punching Antistius. Uncle Tullius did stay at the tomb to the end. He had brought a flask of expensive oil to pour upon his niece’s bier; then, for all the hours necessary, he engaged with local mourners, acting for the family, even though I knew he thought of those people as clods.

  Eventually, while Antistius was standing with his very close friend the widow, Tiberius and Tullius collected Fania’s ashes. Together they placed her remains in an urn that Tiberius provided, then set it inside the tomb. I had never been religious, but I spent a moment thanking the spirits of his parents for Tiberius, while I made a silent promise that I would take care of him. He spent a long time inside the tomb on his own, while I waited outside for him in the quiet garden where his sister’s spirit could now safely wander among those of her ancestors.

  Darkness was falling as we left.

  XXVII

  I went home with Tullius Icilius the next day. Tiberius insisted I go. He was worried about our house and business; he put together an anxiety list for me.