Saturnalia mdf-18 Read online

  He surrendered the purse Justinus had dropped when he was arrested. It contained very little money. Possibly Victor himself had raided it; I did not ask. More likely, Pa's price for Claudia's present that morning had cleaned the young man out. The present was still there: a pair of ear-rings, silver, winged figures with hairy goat legs. I would never have bought them for Helena.

  Almost as soon as I sent Victor packing, Pa turned up. 'Greetings, double-dealing parent! These the baubles you sold to Quintus?'

  He looked proud. 'Nice?'

  'Horrible. '

  'I've got a better pair-bezel-set garnets with pendant gold tassels. Want first refusal?' I liked the sound of those but even though I needed to give Helena something at Saturnalia, I declined. 'First refusal' probably meant several prospective buyers had already said no for some very good reason.

  'I won't ask what exorbitant payment you screwed out of Just in us.' 'Ancient figures are at a premium. Very fashionable.'

  'Who wants a leering satyr nuzzling his lover's neck? This one has no hook. How is Claudia supposed to wear it?'

  'Must have slipped my attention… Justinus can get that fixed, no trouble. '

  I wanted my father to co-operate, so I bit back my scorn. Instead I told him about Veleda's jewellery, gave him descriptive notes based on what Ganna said, and asked him to organise his colleagues at the Saepta to keep a lookout. 'If a blonde woman with a nasty attitude offers any of this stuff around, just keep her there and fetch me quick.' 'Will I fancy her?'

  'She won't fancy you. Bring this off and there's money in it.' 'I like that!' grinned Pa.

  He dawdled, gawping, when Clemens brought Zosime in, but as soon as Pa heard she nursed sick slaves on Tiber Island he lost interest. Anyway, the medico was not the kind of bawdy, blowzy barmaid he liked to grapple. She was sixty, serious, and scrutinised my departing parent sadly, as if rascals were a well-known breed to her. But when Pa shamelessly asked about his haemorrhoids, she offered to recommend a doctor. 'You can have them squidged.'

  'Sounds good!'

  'Inspect the surgical instrument before you decide, Didius Favonius!' Over-confident as ever, Pa looked nonchalant.

  'Painful?' I asked hopefully-while noticing that Zosime had a blunt sense of humour and had remembered Pa's name after I briefly introduced him. I had another good witness here-if she was willing to give.

  'It's the same tool that vets use to castrate horses, in my opinion.'

  Pa blenched. When he left in a hurry, Zosime sat down, but kept her cloak folded in her arms as if she did not anticipate a long stay either. Skinny and underweight, she had small hands with elderly fingers. Her face was sharp, inquisitive, patient. Thick and healthy grey hair was centrally parted on top of her head and then pulled into a clump on the back of her neck. She wore a plain gown, cord belt, openwork shoes of a workaday fashion. No jewellery. Like many ex-slaves, particularly women, who subsequently make a life for themselves, she had a contained yet competent manner. She did not push herself forward, but nor did she give way to anyone.

  I reminded her of her previous interview with Helena Justina.

  Then I ran through what she had told Helena about visiting Veleda, diagnosing a need for rest, and being dissuaded from further visits to the house. 'I assume you treated her further when she came to the temple?'

  It was a try-on. Zosime gazed at me. 'Who told you that?' 'Well, you didn't, that's for sure. But I'm right?'

  With a hint of anger-aimed at me-Zosime sniffed. She looked like my mother poking through a basket of bad cabbages. 'She came. I did what I could for her. She left shortly afterwards.'

  'Cured?'

  The woman considered her answer. 'Her fever had abated. I cannot say whether it was remission or a permanent recovery.'

  'If it's just a remission, how long before the trouble returns?'

  'Impossible to predict.'

  'Would it be serious-or fatal?'

  'Again, who knows?'

  'So what's wrong with her?'

  'Some kind of contracted disease. Very like summer fever in which case, you know it does kill.'

  'Why would she have summer fever in December?'

  'Perhaps because she is a stranger to Rome and more vulnerable to our diseases.'

  'What about the headaches?'

  Just one of her symptoms. It was the underlying disease that needed curing.'

  'Should I worry?'

  'Veleda should worry,' Zosime reproved me.

  She was helpful-yet she was not helping in real terms. None of this took me forwards. 'Did you like her?'

  'Like…?' Zosime looked startled. 'She was a patient.'

  'She was a woman, and in trouble.'

  Zosime brushed aside my suggestion that Veleda had special status. 'I thought her clever and capable.'

  'Capable of killing?' I asked, looking at her narrowly.

  Zosime paused. 'Yes, I heard about the Murder.'

  'From Veleda?'

  'No, she never mentioned it. Quadrumatus Labeo sent people to ask me if I had seen her, after she fled his house. They told me about it.'

  'Do you believe Veleda killed Scaeva?'

  'I think she could have done, if she wanted to… But why would she want to?'

  'So, when they told you about it, why didn't you ask for her version?'

  'She had already moved on.'

  'Where to?'

  'I cannot say.'

  Could not say, or would not? I didn't push it; I had other things to ask first. I noted that 'moved on' suggested choice rather than panicked flight. 'So how long was she at your temple? And did anybody visit her?'

  'Just a few days. And no one visited, not to my knowledge. But she was never treated as a prisoner while she was with us.'

  So anybody could have called on her… Ganna, for instance. Probably not Justinus, but you never know with men who are in love with their romantic past. His parents and wife had been watching him, but any man who reaches twenty-five unscathed has learned how to dodge domestic scrutiny. 'Did she ever mention Scaeva at all?'

  'No.'

  This was as much hard work as moving a very large dung heap with a rather short shovel. I tried a new tack. 'Tell me about what you do at night among the vagrants. I heard you took Veleda around with you?'

  'She came with me once. She wanted to see Rome. I thought it was an opportunity to test how well she had recovered.'

  'See Rome? Any particular part of the city? An address?'

  'Just in general, Falco. She sat on the donkey, and rode behind me while I toured the streets. I look for huddles in doorways. If there are slaves or other vagrants in difficulties I tend them there, if I can, or else take them back to the temple where we can care for them properly.'

  "Bringer of death".'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  I was referring to Zoilus, the ghost-man who swooped about on the Via Appia. 'Why would someone call Veleda-or you-a bringer of death?'

  'For no reason-' Zosime was indignant. 'Unless he was drunk or demented. '

  'The runaway slaves have seen Veleda with you-'

  'Didius Falco, I am known for my charitable work. Respected and trusted. The slaves may not always accept help, but they understand the reason it is offered. I am shocked by your suggestion!'

  'The other night,' I recalled, ignoring the rhetoric, 'I saw someone with a donkey approaching a man near the Capena Gate. A vagrant lying in a doorway. A dead man.'

  'I go to that area,' Zosime admitted stiffly. She would not acknowledge the incident with the corpse. She had the same build as the hooded person I had seen, however. I wished now that I had waited to see what that person did when they found the body. 'If he was definitely dead, he had passed beyond our temple's help. We do arrange funerals for patients who die while they are with us on the Island, but I am discouraged from bringing home corpses.' The way she said 'discouraged' implied rows with the temple management. I could envisage Zosime as a troublesome employee. I sensed a history of confl
ict at the temple about her night-time good works. People there, especially her superiors who were trying to balance budgets, might disapprove of actively seeking extra patients-patients who, by definition, had no money themselves and no affectionate family or masters to weigh in with funds for treatment. 'Are you absolutely sure, Falco? Was the man you saw merely motionless, asleep-'

  'Oh I know death, Zosime.'

  She gave me a level stare. 'I imagine you do.' It was not a compliment.

  XXX

  Distant noises intruded. Screams of delight announced that Helena's father, the senator, must have arrived and was being mobbed by my daughters. Camillus Verus understood how to be a grandfather: with uncritical love and many presents. He never knew quite what to make of Favonia, a gruff, private child who lived in her own world, but Julia, who had a more open character, had been his delight since birth. Every time he came he taught her a new letter of the alphabet. That was handy. In ten years, when she became besotted with love-poets and silly novels, I could blame him.

  I let Zosime go, still feeling that she knew much more than she was telling.

  It was good to see my father-in-law but we kept lunch short. He had come straight from his captive son and had yet to report on the visit to Julia Justa and Claudia.

  'There's not much to say. My boys never find a problem with leisure, enforced or otherwise. The prisoner is lolling around on cushions, reading. He wants me to send Greek plays.' Justinus had had a passion for an actress once. We had all been perturbed, though compared with the mess he was in now, that seemed a normal vice. I did wonder if the current devotion to literature was a bluff, to lull the Spy into a false sense of security, but in fact all the Camilli were well-read. 'His host doesn't have much of a library. Must get bribed with other commodities… I didn't see Anacrites, fortunately.'

  'For you?'

  'For him!' growled Decimus.

  'Maybe we should try bribing him?' Helena suggested, taking up her father's unexpectedly cynical attitude.

  'No; we'll stick with the Roman virtues: patience, fortitude and waiting for a good chance to beat him up on some dark night.'

  That was supposed to be my line. It was interesting how Anacrites could so easily reduce even a decent, liberal man to a cruder morality.

  Helena and I had plans too, and as soon as we could politely leave her father (who was enjoying his grandchildren to the extent of getting down on all fours to play elephants), we set off for the Quadrumatus villa.

  'Did your father play elephants with you and your brothers, Helena?'

  'Only if Mama was safelyout of the house at a long meeting with the devotees of the Good Goddess.' Julia Justa supported the great female cult where men were ritually banned, and at home she kept the senator in his place. Or so he made out. Certainly his wife was a matron of the immaculate, stately kind. 'When Papa was at the Senate,' Helena then confounded me, 'Mama sometimes joined us in a romp.'

  I blinked. This was hard to imagine. It showed the difference between a senator's household and the low-class home I grew up in. My mother had never had time or energy for play; she worked too hard keeping the family alive and together. My father had been one for a rough-and-tumble-but that ended abruptly when he left us.

  I wondered how things worked at the Quadrumatus house. They were so rich, they probably assembled fifteen slaves just to supervise two four-year-olds throwing a beanbag around.

  This sounds like daydreaming, but it could be relevant to Scaeva's death. In such a household, a young man would never be alone. Cleaners, secretaries, valets, major-domos would dog him at every step. Supposing Scaeva sought a meeting with Veleda, he would have had it among slaves bringing him snacks and drinks, water-bowls and towels, letters and invitations. Any tryst would have been watched by flower-arrangers stuffing vases with perfect winter blooms-and of course by the flute-player. If Gratianus Scaeva ever wanted a really intimate assignation, he would have had to draw attention to it by a demand for privacy.

  No wonder his brother-in-law, Quadrumatus, had assured me Scaeva was so well behaved. Nobody could carry off a flirtation in such conditions. It would have driven me mad.

  Perhaps Scaeva had been frustrated himself. Maybe when he called in his doctor, Mastarna, allegedly with recurrent catarrh, his sickness was really an expression of unhappiness with his love life.

  'He was twenty-five!' Helena scoffed when I voiced this subtle theory. 'If he was desperate, he could have met massage girls at the baths. Or got married! Besides,' she said, 'a man like that sleeps openly with a slave girl, or several- and he doesn't think it affects his reputation one way or another.'

  I gave her a look. 'Surely that depends on how good the slave girl says he is afterwards?'

  'She'll just say how generous his love token was, or wasn't,' Helena disagreed. She thought of something. 'Perhaps the flute boy was his lover?'

  'That would give him a reputation some would disapprove of!' But it was a good point. 'Suppose the flute boy had been Scaeva's lover; he turned up for an afternoon tootle, saw the gorgeous Veleda in his master's arms-and sliced his head off in a fit of jealous rage.'

  'Is she gorgeous?' I pretended to be deaf 'Sliced his head off with what?' Helena then asked. 'You said no weapon was found at the scene?'

  'A sharp knife he used for flute-whittling?'

  'Musicians in wealthy households do not have to make their own instruments, Marcus. A tiptop tibia would be purchased for him. All he would ever have to do is tune it.'

  'Which is done how?' I demanded.

  'By blowing a few measures to warm it with your breath. Or if it's really sharp or flat, you shorten or lengthen the pipes. Some unscrew. You adjust them to the right length, then the break can be wound with waxed thread to make the pipe airtight.'

  If Helena Justina had been a plebeian, this would have told me she had once been the girlfriend of some funeral-parlour bandsman. As it was, I spared myself any jealousy and assumed she had been reading an encyclopaedia. That was also better than thinking she herself was a nymph with musical talents. I knew a girl once who played the panpipes. Horrendous. I dumped that one very quickly.

  So I heard the arcane flute information calmly. Helena smiled at me. Deliberately, she failed to explain how she knew it.

  When we arrived at the villa, Helena gazed around, first noting the lavish gardens then the endless indoor rooms. I could see her imagining how this luxury would have appeared to Veleda.

  Her presence had got us past the door porter without trouble. I picked up with the steward and asked him bluntly which girl in the house had been Scaeva's playfellow? He said straight away it was a seamstress. He fetched her; she glanced at him for permission, but admitted she and Gratianus Scaeva had had a regular arrangement, except when she was indisposed for female reasons, when she had generally passed him on to her friend from the pot-store, but if her friend was indisposed too, the young master usually went to see the stable-hands, one of whom had a 'niece' who put herself about happily, or if she was busy, she had a willing sister who lived with the pigman-

  'Thanks.' Helena was watching, so I tried to sound dour. Helena was on the verge of giggling. 'I get the picture.' A better perspective than I needed. 'Are you all upset by Scaeva's death?' They certainly were, though that seemed to be because he used to reward them decently for their services. Many a young aristocrat would not have bothered, so this showed him in a good light, and the girl rather sweetly shed a tear in his memory.

  Scaeva could have dallied with Veleda because she posed a challenge, but he was far from desperate for sexual favours. Unless Veleda's golden looks had drawn him into danger, his tastes were basic. The first-choice slave girl was pretty, but inane and as common as dog dirt. She showed far too much cleavage, she had a big backside to go with it, and her conversation was tortuous. I won't say I never played around with girls like that, but I was grown up now. I became very grown up when Helena Justina was on observation. One thing I had learned about aristocratic girls:
they were risque-so risque it was shocking-but only in private company. I saw it as an honour to be included, frankly.

  Risking another torrent of piffle, I asked the girl if she knew anything about the afternoon when Scaeva died. 'No.' Too quick. She knew something, but had been warned to keep quiet.

  Whatever she knew, the steward knew as well, but he too was lying. They both valiantly maintained that nothing odd had happened until the corpse was discovered. I then asked for another interview with the young flautist; I thought Helena, who always won the hearts of adolescent boys, might worm something out of him. Again, we were disappointed. The steward told us the flautist had upped and run off.

  'Was that unexpected? He had always been well treated here?'

  'Of course. This is a wonderful home. We never have people running away. Our master, a most affectionate owner, is horrified; he has had a big search organised, for the boy's own sake. He has devoted a great deal of personal time to it. The poor lad had remained in shock, terribly distressed. Quadrumatus and all the household are deeply concerned for his welfare.' I saw Helena narrowing her eyes as if she thought the degree of concern might be significant.

  'No luck with the search?' I knew the answer. 'None, Falco.'

  We did not meet Quadrumatus Labeo or Drusilla Gratiana. Both were in town that afternoon. But Helena, who put duty above any risk of unpleasantness, faced up to meeting the old black-clad maid, Phryne. I let her go alone.

  When Helena came back, she murmured, 'Phryne was perfectly pleasant with me, Marcus. You must have lost the knack.'

  'You mean she's a mean-spirited old bitch.'

  Helena smiled. 'Failed to fall for your charm? All right, she is rather vinegary… I am sure she knows a lot more than she's told us-'

  '- But she'll never reveal it on principle.'