A dying light in Corduba mdf-8 Page 16

  I raised my eyebrows. Naturally I disapproved of unions that broke barriers. 'Unless I've misunderstood the rules of Baetican etiquette I reckon Optatus is risking it!'

  'He's a free man,' Helena reminded me snootily. 'Anyway, when did the fact that a girl was unsuitable ever stop a man taking a chance?'

  I grinned at her.

  At that point we shelved the discussion because Optatus himself came out into the garden. He was splitting his sides over the decrepit horse I had brought home, and said he hoped I had not paid out money for it; I assured him it was a virtual gift from the gracious Annaei. Marius Optatus gravely replied that the Annaei had always been renowned for their generosity.

  I noticed a whiff of smoke and burnt rosemary hanging around his work clothes. It would not surprise me if he was the serious sort who quietly cleansed his stables each Parilia with a private lustration made in genuine reverence. The sober tenant seemed like a dedicated farmer with no space in his life for frivolity. But once I had started to see him as a ladies' man, eyeing up the handsome dowry of a neighbour's rather big-nosed granddaughter, anything could be possible.

  XXVIII

  Helena had invited Claudia Rufina to return her call, but the social rules dictated there should be a short lapse of time first. Our young neighbour was probably dying to inspect Helena's paramour, but the poor thing would have to wait to see my friendly face. Meanwhile I decided to see her grandfather; now I had met Annaeus I needed to compare the rivals soon before I ended prejudiced either for or against the one just because I met him first. Since the Rufius family had had one visit from us today, Helena told me I should wait until tomorrow. It gave me an afternoon loafing about. That suited me.

  'You'll like their house,' Helena giggled, for reasons she refused to divulge.

  I rode over the next 'mirning on my borrowed horse. His name was allegedly Prancer. It must have been given to him a long time ago. I think he wanted to be a botanist. His notion of a canter was a decorous sidle, slow enough to inspect every dockleaf on the way.

  The Licinius Rufius estate lay comparatively close, though (given my mount) not as near as I would have liked. This was mainly because of a large number of intervening – olive groves which belonged to someone else. Marius Optatus had warned who it was: his ex-landlord, Quinctius Attractus. I surveyed the senator's holding with great interest. He was happily ostentatious. After the olive groves I had to pass his fields of flax, his market gardens, his vineyards, his pig farm and his wheat.

  When I did reach the Rufius villa, I saw what Helena Justina had meant: the family had embarked on a truly brave improvement programme. It was easy to see where the money for it came from: once I had entered a gateway with their name on a column I had ridden through at least a couple of miles of well-aged olive trees, grand monsters with several trunks growing from stocks with huge circumferences; these were clearly only a fraction of the whole estate. I had passed a working area where they had not one but two oil-presses. Even more significant was the fact that they actually owned their own kilns for making amphorae. This estate, which ran on until it bordered the river, was obviously near enough to water transport at Corduba not to need to use mules for carrying the oil down for shipment. (The estate roads were in fact immaculate.) The kilns were five in number; alongside them were rows of bricks drying in the sun awaiting their turn to be home-fired too.

  Iu an area the builders were using as their yard, I spotted the youth I had last seen being ill at the Annaeus house. He must be the grandson, as we had guessed. He was wearing a brilliant tunic in broad stripes of red and murex purple, a garment that shouted loudly that his family could afford the best. He was helping a bailiff decide something with a carpenter who had a new window-frame on a trestle. Young Rufius looked barely into his twenties, awake though perhaps not yet fully alert. Still, he was the one holding the building plan, his relations with the workmen sounded pleasant, and he did appear quite confident discussing the chart. I went past without making myself known and left Prancer under an oak tree; it did not seem worthwhile tethering him.

  The house made me gulp.

  It had once been a modest Baetican country villa, like the one on the Camillus estate – a short axial design based on a single corridor, with a very basic suite of reception rooms and small cubicles for private use on either side. But this was no longer enough for people who clearly thought themselves the rising stars in Corduba.

  The whole building was scaffolded. The roof was off. A second storey was being raised on top. Some of the walls were being torn down so their traditional construction could be replaced with Roman concrete faced with the type of bricks I had seen being made in the yard. A massive entrance portico had been stuck on the front, complete with marble steps and columns the full height of the new roof. The Corinthian order had arrived in Baetica in a big way. These capitals were fabulously carved riots of acanthus leaves – though one had unfortunately been dropped. It lay where it had fallen, split in two. Work on the entrance had come to a standstill, presumably while the masons went into a corner to think up a good story to explain the accident. Meanwhile the entire ground plan of the house was being expanded to twice or three times its original area. To my astonishment, the family were still living in the old core of the house while the work went on.

  When I asked for Licinius Rufius, the first person who came to greet me was his wife. She found me in the new vestibule, gawping at some gigantic paintings of Alexander the treat's campaigns. I was wondering whether I dared explore the huge internal peristyle garden which had been expanded from an original courtyard into a wonder of imported marble colonnades and topiary lions, beyond which I could just see a- monumental dining room still under construction.

  An elderly, upright woman, Claudia Adorata's centrally parted grey hair was held in a low bun in the nape of her neck with a circle of crystal pins. She was swathed in saffron linen and wore a fine necklace of twisted gold wires, with agate, emerald and rock crystal stones in a complex setting that resembled a butterfly. 'Excuse the mess!' she apologised, reminding me of Ma. Maids had decorously followed her into the echoing atrium, but when she saw I looked fairly tame she clapped her hands and sent them scurrying back to their looms. Their work must have been well impregnated with building dust.

  'Madam, I salute your courage and initiative!' I grinned candidly.

  It appeared the old lady had no notion of why I had come. We mentioned Helena, and the Camillus family, which seemed enough to gain me admittance. She said her husband was out on the estate but had been summoned to meet me. While we waited, she offered a tour of the renovations. Since I try to be polite to ancient dames, I said obligingly that I was always glad of a chance to pick up ideas. The crude apartment that Helena and I were renting in Rome would have been beyond this lady's comprehension. I was not even sure she realised that I was the father of the noble Helena's child.

  By the time Licinius Rufius appeared his wife and I were sitting beside the new fishpond (the length of the house), exchanging gardening notes on the new Campanian roses and Bithynian snowflake bulbs, and taking warmed wine from bronze goblets like a pair of old friends. I had admired the five-room bath-house with its complicated heating system, special dry heat box, and exercise area; praised the half-finished but pleasing black and white mosaics; envied the new kitchen suite; taken the name of the fresco painter who ornamented the summer and winter dining rooms; cooed over the space where the library was to be; and expressed suitable disappointment that I could not view the suite of upstairs bedrooms because the stairs had not been built.

  Now we were seated on an expensive set of folding chairs, placing our drinks on a matching collapsible table, covered with a fine Spanish linen tablecloth. These had been set out for us on a small paved patio which had an astounding vista of a fashionable apsidal grotto at the end of the pool, where a twinkling glass mosaic of Neptune enthroned amidst a lot of writhing sea creatures was surrounded by a heavy border of sea-shells. No doubt the Bae
tican murex industry had helped provide the shells.

  Delicate probing had ascertained that Claudia Adorata described her family's financial position as 'comfortable'.

  There was a reason for the sudden renovation campaign. She and her husband were creating a glorious backdrop for the anticipated achievements of their much-loved grandchildren, the youth in particular. His handle was Gaius Licinius Claudius Rufius Constans, which would make a long and ornamental honorific inscription when his fabudous deeds came to be celebrated in his native town one day. Clearly the Senate in Rome must be keeping a chair warm for him, and it was hoped he would eventually rate a consulship. I tried to look impressed.

  Claudia told me she and her husband had brought up the two grandchildren since they were orphaned at an early age. Their mother had died a few weeks after producing the young male prodigy; their father, himself the only son and heir, had lasted another three years then caught a fever. The two tots had become their grandparents' consolation and hope for the future – as dangerous a situation as young people could ever find themselves in. At least they had money in indecent quantities to help them through it. On the other hand, having so much money so young could make their situation even more dangerous.

  Licinius Rufius strode out through the fug of dust, washing his hands in a silver bowl held by a slave who had to scamper after him. He was but not overweight, with a heavy face and a shock of crinkled hair that shot off to one side. Of an older generation than Annaeus Maximus, he remained firm on his feet and dynamic. He greeted me with a knuckle-crushing handshake, then took one of the chairs, flattening its cushion and causing the delicate legs to bow. He helped himself to black olives from a fancies dish, but I noticed he did not take wine. Perhaps he felt more cautious than his wife about my motives. Claudia Adorata herself smiled, as if she felt reassured now he was in charge, then she slipped away.

  I too picked up some of the olives. (They were superb quality, almost as lush as the finest from Greece.) Eating allowed us both a short pause to do some sizing up. Licinius would have been viewing a thoughtful character in a plain green tunic and a graded Roman haircut, clearly displaying the traditional virtues of honesty, uprightness, and personal modesty. I saw an elderly man with an inscrutable expression, whom I decided I would not trust one jot.

  XXIX

  From the beginning I felt that, unlike his wife, Licinius Rufius knew exactly why I had come to Baetica. He let me pass some idle remarks about the mad scale of his home improvements, but soon the conversation shifted to agricultural matters, which would lead to the real subject of my interview. We never mentioned the magic word 'cartel', though it was always our point of reference. I began frankly: 'I could say I'm checking over the family estate for Decimus Camillus – but actually my trip out here has an official purpose -'

  'There was a rumour of an inspector from Rome,' Rufius answered readily. Oh yes. Well, why pretend? News that Anacrites had planned to send an agent, and that I for one was actually here, would have been leaked from the proconsul's office – and possibly confirmed to all his Baetican friends by the proconsul himself.

  'I am hoping to talk to you about oil production, sir.'

  'Obviously Baetica is the place for that!' Licinius made it sound as though I was just on a mild fact-finding survey, instead of investigating a vicious conspiracy where agents had had their heads smashed m. I could feel the old man taking over. He was used to sounding off with his opinions. Thinking they know it all is a habit of rich men who build up large outfits of any kind.

  'I've been discussing some figures with Marius Optatus at the Camillus estate,' I interrupted as quickly as I could. 'He reckons there may be as many as five million olive trees and a thousand oil presses in the River Baetis hinterland. An owner of standing like yourself could possess maybe three thousand acts. quadrati – say eight or ten centuries of land?'

  He nodded but made no comment, which almost certainly meant he owned more. That was a massive area. There used to be an old system of measurement which we all learned at school, where two acts equalled a 'yoke', and two yokes were a 'hereditary area' – that's the amount of land that was supposed to suffice for one person in the frugal republican days. By that reckoning the average oil magnate in Baetica could support seven hundred and fifty people – except that the old method of measurement would have been when farming merely consisted of barley, beans and cabbages for domestic consumption, not a luxury export crop like olive oil.

  'What's an average yield per century?'

  Licinius Rufius was offhand. 'Depending on the soil, and the weather that year, between five and six hundred amphorae.' So the typical plot we had been talking about would produce between four and five thousand amphorae per year. That would buy a whole forest of Corinthian columns, plus a fine public forum for their owner to endow.

  'And how is my young friend Optatus?' Rufius smoothly changed the subject.

  'Bearing up. He told me a little about his misfortunes.'

  'I was delighted when he took his new tenancy,' the old man said in a tone of voice I found irritating, as if Marius Optatus were his pet marmoset. From what I had seen of Optatus, he would not accept being patronised.

  'The way he lost the old one sounds hard. Do you think he had bad luck, or was he sabotaged?'

  'Oh, it must have been an accident,' Licinius Rufius exclaimed – as if he knew damn well it had not been. He was not going to support accusations against a fellow landowner. Quarrelling with colleagues is a bad business move. Encouraging victims never brings in cash.

  Licinius had sounded fairly sympathetic, but I remembered Optatus' bitterness when he told me the locals had refused to become involved in his quarrel with his ex- landlord. I took a chance. 'I gather Quinctius Attractus conducts business in a pretty ruthless manner?'

  'He likes to be firm. I cannot argue with that.'

  'It's a long way from the benevolent paternal style that we Romans like to consider traditional. What's your opinion of him personally, sir?'

  'I hardly know the man.'

  'I don't expect you to criticise a fellow producer. But I would suppose someone as shrewd as you would have firmed up some conclusions after being the man's guest in Rome and staying at his house!' Licinius was still refusing to be drawn so I added coldly, 'Do you mind if I ask who paid your fare?' He pursed his lips. He was a tough old bastard. 'Many people in Baetica have been invited to Rome by Attractus, Falco. It's a courtesy he extends regularly.'

  'And does he regularly invite his guests to help him corner the oil market and drive up prices?'

  'That is a serious accusation.'

  Rufius was sounding as prim as Annaeus when I interviewed him. Unlike Annaeus he did not have the excuse of guests to drag him away so I was able to press him harder: 'I make no accusations. I'm speculating – from my own, maybe rather cynical standpoint.'

  'Do you have no faith in human ethics, Didius Falco?' For once, the old man seemed genuinely interested in my reply. He was now staring at me so closely he might have been a sculptor trying to decide if my left ear was a fraction higher than my right.

  'Oh, all business has to be based on trust. All contracts depend on good faith.'

  'That is correct,' he declared autocratically.

  I grinned. 'Licinius Rufius, I believe all men in business want to be richer than their colleagues. All would happily cheat a foreigner. All would like the running of their own sphere of commerce to be sewn up as tight as a handball, with no uncontrollable forces.'

  'There will always be risk!' he protested, perhaps rather drily.

  The weather,' I conceded. The health of the businessman, the loyalty of his workers. War. Volcanoes. Litigation. And unforeseen policies imposed by the government.'

  'I was thinking more of the fickleness of consumers' taste,' he smiled.

  I shook my head, tutting gently. 'I forgot that one! I don't know why you stay in the business.'

  'Community spirit,' he laughed.

  Talking t
o Licinius Rufius resembled the overblown jollity of a military dining club the night the pay-chest came – when everyone knew the sesterces were safely in camp, but the distribution would happen tomorrow so nobody was drunk yet. Maybe we two soon would be, for Rufius seemed to feel he had led me astray from my purpose so successfully he could now afford to clap his hands for a slave to pour him wine. I was offered more, but declined, making it plain I was only waiting for the nervous waiter to remove himself before I continued the interview. Rufius drank slowly, surveying me over the rim of his cup with a confidence that was meant to beat me down.

  I dropped my voice abruptly. 'So I met you in Rome, sir. We both dined on the Palatine. I then called on you at the Quinctius house, but you had gone. Tell me, why did you leave our splendid city so suddenly?'

  'Family ties,' he replied, without pausing.

  'Indeed? I gather your colleague Annaeus Maximus suddenly developed pressing family ties too! And the bargeman, I suppose – and the negotiator from Hispalis! Forgive me, but for men of affairs you all seem to have made that long journey without enough forward planning.'

  I thought I saw him check, but the reaction was slight. 'We had travelled to Rome together. We travelled home in one group too. Safety, you know.' For the first time I detected a slight impatience with my questions. He was trying to make me feel like a lout who had abused his hospitality.

  'I'm sorry, but your departure looks suspiciously hurried, sir.'

  'None of us ever intended a long stay in Rome. We all wanted to return home for the Parilia.' Very rustic! And he had dodged a direct answer with the glibness of a politician.

  'And of course this had nothing to do with Quinctius Attractus trying to promote a cartel?'

  Licinius Rufius stopped answering me so smoothly.

  We stared at each other for a few beats of time.