A Body in the Bathhouse Page 14

  Activity in a far corner caught my interest. I made the diagonal route march over there. Pomponius (the project manager) was in heavy debate with Magnus, Cyprianus (the clerk of works), and another man, whom I soon deduced was the drainage engineer. In this part of the site, where the level was natural, laborers had gone ahead with the stylobate platforms that would front each wing. They were laying the first courses of supporting blocks on which colonnades would stand.

  The planned extra height of the dramatic west wing with its audience chamber posed a problem the designers must always have known about—how to link it aesthetically to the colonnades of adjoining wings; where they abutted at the corners, they would be much lower. Now Pomponius and Magnus were having one of the long site discussions where such matters are thrashed out, feeding each other with suggestions—then each finding insurmountable difficulties in any idea that was put forward by the other man.

  “We know we have to step the colonnades,” Magnus was saying.

  “I don’t want any variation in the visuals—”

  “But you’re losing five foot, off twelve foot, max. Unless you raise the ceilings, only dwarfs will be able to walk in the ends of these wings! You need graded headspace, man.”

  “We lift the colonnades, in gradual stages—”

  “Bitty. Much better to employ single flights of steps. Vary your roofline if you want. Let me tell you how—”

  “I have made my decision,” Pomponius asserted.

  “Your decision’s crap,” said Magnus. He was frank, yet given that surveyors tend to be hotheaded know-it-alls, he spoke amiably enough. He was only concerned to explain the good solution he had devised. “Listen—at each end, put in steps to move the people up to the west wing. Then don’t just run the lower colonnades along level until they bump into the big stylobate. Put in one taller column on each wing. Raise the colonnades at top height.”

  “No. I’m not doing that.”

  “These columns will need thicker diameters,” Magnus pressed on, deaf to the objection. “It gives better proportions—and if you tidy off with roof features, they’ll be carrying more weight.”

  “You’re not listening to me.” complained the architect.

  “You’re not listening to me,” the surveyor answered logically.

  “The point is,” piped up Cyprianus, who had been listening to both patiently, “if we go with Magnus, I need to put in our order for the over-height columns now. Those in your main run are twelve foot. You’ll be going up to fourteen, fourteen and a half, for the larger ones. Specials always take longer—” Not even Magnus was listening to him.

  It was clear they would be wrangling over the corner design for hours yet. Days, possibly. Weeks, even. Well, be realistic; call it months. Only when the builders reached the point of no return would this design feature be settled. My money was on the Magnus plan. But Pomponius was, of course, in charge.

  Seated on a great limestone slab, from time to time the engineer put in, “What about my tank?” No one so much as acknowledged him.

  From its placing, the slab under his backside seemed to be part of a preliminary mock-up of one of the colonnaded walks that would line the interior garden. I deduced it was part of a gutter that would lie at the foot of the stylobate and catch the runoff from the roof. Its deep hollowing at least provided a shaped perch while the engineer waited to be heard.

  Pomponius and Magnus moved off slightly, still going endlessly over the same points. This probably often happened. Delaying the decision might allow time for new ideas to form; it could prevent expensive mistakes. They were not exactly quarreling. Each thought the other was an idiot; each made that plain. But this seemed to be a perfectly routine confab.

  “Finials!” cried Magnus loudly, like an exotic obscenity. Pomponius only shrugged.

  I parked on another slab of limestone and introduced myself to the engineer. His name was Rectus. He must suffer from cold feet, for he wore knitted gray ankle socks in his battered site ankle boots. But his wide body must be tougher; he had only a dingle tunic, with short sleeves. Bushy eyebrows flourished above a big Italian nose. He was the type who always saw disaster coming—but who then without despair attacked the problem practically. Gloomy in aspect, he was a doer and solver. But he never gained the self-confidence to cheer up.

  “So you have a problem with a tank?” I sympathized.

  “Nice of you to notice, Falco.”

  “I’m here to apply bandages to this project’s wounds.”

  “You’ll need a few rags.”

  “So I’m learning. Tell me about your tank.”

  “My tank!” said Rectus. “Well, I just need to remind those fart-arses to build it before they get any further with their farting stylobate. It sits on a stone base, protruding into the garden, for one thing. I want a cavity dug out and the base laid. The sooner they put the tank in, the happier I shall be. Never mind the farting levels of their fancy colonnades.”

  I glanced at the sky—a typical British gray all over. “So what is this pet tank?”

  “Settling tank for the aqueduct.”

  “Aqueduct?”

  “Oh, we have all the amenities here, Falco. Well, we will have.”

  “Right!”

  “I got approval for the aqueduct from the governor himself, during his state visit.”

  “State visit?”

  “Came to introduce himself to the Great King.”

  “Fun?”

  “Believe it!” he marveled. “We had to build a new latrine, in case the governor wanted a shit.”

  “He must have been delighted! Is this my pal Frontinus?”

  “He spoke to me!” exclaimed Rectus excitedly. Frontinus was extremely down-to-earth.

  “Frontinus enjoys the company of experts. And,” I said, grinning, “he was commissioner of waterworks in Rome. He does like aqueducts.”

  “It will only be a small one.” Rectus subsided into embarrassed diffidence.

  “Still, you got your aqueduct. … I know it has to have a settling tank. Otherwise your pipes would clog—so what’s the problem, Rectus?”

  “Not included in the budget. Should have been a provisional sum.”

  “A what?”

  “Notional costing. The aqueduct itself is to be funded as a provincial amenity.” I had wandered into the picturesque byways of Treasury bureaucracy. “But the collection tank is on our site, so it’s our baby. Cyprianus can’t arrange the work for me without a pig’s puzzle docket.” Bureaucracy had summoned its own range of swear words. “Since it was never allowed for, Pomponius has to issue me a variation order first. He piddling well knows he has to do it, but the bastard keeps putting it off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the kind of fart-arse bastard Pomponius is.”

  We fell silent. Rectus was still waiting for his talk with the architect. I had no firm plans.

  I was looking at the place where the workmen had begun building up the great base for the spectacular west wing. “That platform base will be five feet high, am I right? With its colonnade sitting on top of it?”

  “Revetted,” said Rectus. “Towering like a bloody great bulwark on a frontier fort.”

  “With a massive blank wall facing the garden, won’t the overall look be extremely bleak?”

  “No, no. Same thought struck me. I’ve been talking to Blandus about that.”

  “Blandus?”

  “Chief fresco artist.” Possibly the mysterious visitor who missed me when I was bathing. “They want to paint it—naturalistic greenery.”

  “A mock garden? Can’t they have real flowers?”

  “Plenty. When you look back towards the east wing, they are going to install flowering trees on trellises, and beds full of color will camouflage all the lower stylobate. But all the internal walls behind the colonnades are to be painted, mostly picked out discreetly. This big wall has its own design. It will be a spread of bold dark green creepers, through which,” said Rectus
, pretending to mock although he seemed to like the concept, “you can peep at what seems to be another part of the garden.”

  “That’s some thought!”

  I was intrigued by Rectus. Some of the workers here seemed to inhabit closed compartments. They only knew about their own craft, had no clue about the overall scheme. He took notice of everything. I could imagine him spending his lunch break wandering into the architects’ offices in the old military complex, to gaze at site plans just out of curiosity.

  “So … you know Frontinus!” He seemed fascinated by my famous contact.

  “We worked together once,” I said gently. “He was the consular, enthroned; I was the runabout at gutter level.” It was not quite true, but passed off the connection graciously.

  “Even so—working with Frontinus!”

  “Maybe people will be saying to you one day, ‘Working with Falco, Rectus!’ ”

  Rectus considered that, saw it was ludicrous, and stopped being in awe of my prestigious friends. He then told me sensibly about his discipline.

  Scale was his main challenge. He had to cope with enormously long pipe runs, both to bring fresh water in along the various wings, and take away the rain outfall, which would be of huge volume in bad weather. Where his water pipes and drainpipes had to pass under buildings, it was essential to ensure they were completely free of leaks, their joints stopped tightly, and the whole length surrounded by clay before they became inaccessible under the finished rooms. Domestic needs were only part of his brief. Half the paths in the garden area would be laid over pipes to supply fountains. Even the wild garden by the sea, so richly supplied with streams and ponds, still needed a delivery pipe at one point for watering plants.

  He was a real expert. When we were talking about how he planned to drain the garden, he told me that on one run the drop would be barely one in one eighty-three. That’s a virtually invisible slope. Measuring it accurately would take patience—and brilliance. The way he talked convinced me Rectus possessed that skill. I could envisage that when everything was up, water would be gushing away down this near-horizontal conduit quite satisfactorily.

  Pomponius had finished wrangling with Magnus. We saw Magnus stumping off with Cyprianus, both shaking their heads. Now the architect came wafting over to us, clearly intending to have a go at Rectus. The high-flown bully was transparent. He had failed to impose his will on the experienced surveyor and clerk of works, so he was now planning to shower scorn on the drainage scheme.

  Rectus had dealt with Pomponius before. He rose from his block of limestone looking nervous, but he had his speech ready: “I don’t want a fight, but what about my farting tank? Look, I’m telling you now, in front of Falco as my witness, the tank needs to be programmed in this week.”

  I was remaining neutral. I stayed seated. But I was there. Maybe that was why Pomponius suddenly backed off. “Cyprianus can write out a docket and I’ll sign it. Fix it up with him!” he ordered curtly. As clerk of works, Cyprianus was in charge of allocating labor to the task; he also had the authority to call up the right materials. Apparently that was all Rectus needed. He was a happy man.

  Pointless tension evaporated.

  Elsewhere things were not so calm. In the daytime, the site was always noisy, even when little seemed to be happening. Now shouts that sounded far more urgent than normal rang across the open area. I jumped up and stared over, towards the south wing. It looked as if a fight had started.

  I set off there, running.

  XXII

  MEN HAD flocked to the scrimmage. More laborers than I had been aware of that day on-site popped out of trenches and rushed to watch, all yelling in various languages. I was soon in a crowd, jostled on all sides.

  I pushed to the front. Jupiter! One of the protagonists was the elder Philocles, the white-haired mosaicist. He was going at it like a professional boxer. As I burst through the crowd, he knocked the other to the ground. Judging by his paint-spattered tunic, the man who fell had to be a fresco artist. Philocles wasted no time in exploiting his advantage. Astonishingly, he leaped up in the air, drew his knees up, then crashed down on his opponent, full in the stomach, landing with both boots and all his weight. I sucked in air, imagining the pain. Then I fell on Philocles from behind.

  I thought others would help drag him off. No luck. My intervention was just a new phase in the excitement. I found myself tussling with this red-faced, white-haired, violent old-timer who seemed to have no sense of danger and no discernment over whom he attacked—but only a furious temper and wild fists. I could hardly believe it was the tight-mouthed man I had met that morning.

  As I tried to prevent Philocles from causing more damage, to me especially, Cyprianus turned up. When the stricken painter struggled to his feet somehow, and for no reason threatened to join in fighting me, Cyprianus gripped his arms and pulled him backwards.

  We held the mosaicist and painter apart. They were both madly struggling. “Stop it! Cut it out, both of you!”

  Philocles had gone crazy. No longer the taciturn drone who held himself aloof, he was still thrashing like a beached shark. He swung madly. Caught out by mud underfoot yet again, I skidded. This time I managed to stop falling, at the expense of another jarring of my back. Philocles lurched the other way, hanging like a deadweight so he pulled me over. We rolled on the ground, with me grinding my teeth but clinging on to him. Being younger and tougher, eventually I hauled him back upright.

  He broke free. He swung around and took a swipe at me. I ducked once; then I clipped him hard around the head. That stopped him.

  By now, the other man had realized just how painful being jumped on felt. He doubled up, collapsing to the ground again. Cyprianus bent over, holding him. “Get a plank!” he yelled. The painter was barely conscious. Philocles stood back, clearly reconsidering. Suddenly he was worried. His breath came fast.

  “Is that Blandus?” I asked Cyprianus. The man was being stretchered onto a board so people could carry him. Alexas, the medical orderly, squeezed through the press to examine him.

  “It’s Blandus,” Cyprianus confirmed grimly. He must be used to settling disputes, but he was angry. “Philocles, I’ve had just about enough of you two and your stupid feuds! You’re going in my lockup this time.”

  “He started it.”

  “He’s out of it now!”

  Pomponius arrived. All we needed. “Oh, this is ridiculous.” He rounded on Philocles, shaking his finger furiously. “For the gods’ sake! I have to have that man. There’s nobody to touch him within a thousand miles. Will he live?” he demanded of Alexas as peremptory as could be.

  Alexas looked worried, but said he thought Blandus would live. “Put him in your sick bay,” ordered Cyprianus roughly. “Keep him there until I say otherwise.”

  “Tie him to the bed if you have to! I look to you, Cyprianus,” declared Pomponius in a mincingly superior tone, “to keep your workforce under some control!”

  He stormed off. Cyprianus glowered as he watched him leave, but somehow refrained from all the optional rude sounds and gestures. He was a standard clerk of works: first class.

  The crowd melted away fast. Managers tend to have that effect. Blandus was carted off, with Alexas running alongside. Philocles was manhandled away too. Among the mutters as the melee dispersed, I heard one provocative jeer in particular. It was aimed at Lupus, the foreign-labor supervisor, by a sinister, bare-armed tough nut who was covered in woad patterns.

  “Don’t tell me,” I muttered to Cyprianus. “That’s the other gang leader—the local workers’ chief—I see he has a feud with Lupus?” They had gone off in opposite directions, or it looked as though another fight would have occurred. “What’s he called—Mandumerus?” Cyprianus said nothing. I took it I was correct. “All right—so what’s with Philocles and Blandus?”

  “They hate each other.”

  “Well, so I see. I’m not reduced to reading with a concave spyglass yet. Tell me why?”

  “Who knows?” rep
lied the clerk of works, quite exasperated. “Jealousy, say. They are both leaders in their field. They both think the palace scheme will collapse without them.”

  “So will it?”

  “You heard Pomponius. If we lost either of them, we would be pushed. Try persuading any craftsman with serious talent to come this far north.” We were now standing alone together in the middle of the bare site. Cyprianus relieved himself of a rare bitter harangue: “I can manage to find carpenters and roofers without too much trouble—but we’re still waiting for my chosen stonemason to decide if he will unclench his bum from his comfy bench in Latium. Philocles brings his son with him everywhere, but Blandus only has some daft new lad working on his team. He praises him, but …” He had gone off into a secondary path, then returned to the main tirade in a final flush: “All the fine finishers are a nightmare. Why should they travel to this hole? They don’t need it, Falco! Rome and the millionaires’ villas in Neapolis offer much better conditions, better pay, and a better chance of fame. So who wants Britain?”

  My recently changed tunic was now filthier than the previous one. Once more, I went back to my quarters to swap garments.

  “Oh, Marcus—no!” Helena had heard me. She could tell my step at half a stadium’s length. Nux had wuffed too. “I seem to have three small children—”

  “Wonder if I can claim voting privileges?”

  “Put laundry bills on your expenses sheet anyway!”

  I had worked through my white and my buff-colored outfits. Now I was down to the blueberry thing that had been redyed twice, with streaked results. I changed my boots as well this time. You can’t win. In the city, hobnails sent you on your back when they skidded on stone pavements. On-site, studs were useless and plain leather had no grip at all. I might be forced into wooden pattens, like those the workmen wore, or even to tie on nasty sacks.