Saturnalia Read online

  ‘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.’

  Last time I came here, they had managed to give the impression all was openness. That story had been compacted like a mud brick. They all told the same tale. Today the careful edifice was crumbling away. Almost everyone we spoke to was patently unreliable. Perhaps the difference was that today nobody had been expecting me. No one was braced. They had lost their polish.

  The steward allowed us to inspect all the relevant scenes again, so I could show Helena. He shed us, as if he was relieved to get away. A teenaged girl was deputed to escort us to the salon where the death occurred and then on to Veleda’s quarters, passing the atrium as we walked to and fro. We might have picked the escort’s brains—but she was apparently a new acquisition to this wonderful home, straight off the boat from Scythia and spoke no Latin.

  As we took a look around the grounds outside, we commented coolly on whether it was likely such a household would buy slaves who could not communicate. Midges around the stately ornamental canals were bothering Helena, so we walked back through the topiary, towards the carriage I had hired. A man was standing beside it hopefully. ‘Any chance of a lift back to Rome?’ Before I could tell him to get lost, he introduced himself as Aedemon, the doctor who attended Quadrumatus Labeo. I winked at Helena, but she was already assuring him demurely that we had plenty of room for a little one to squeeze in.

  Was she joking! Aedemon weighed about three hundred and sixty Roman pounds. Like many overweight men, he gave no sign of recognising that he was enormous. He hopped aboard, squeezing his bell-bottomed body through the flimsy door with a couple of sideways twists. We had to let him take one seat of the carriage, which dropped unevenly under him; we two squashed together opposite, bouncing about. But I never objected to nestling dose to Helena and this was a wonderful unsought chance to interview the man.

  XXXI

  Aedemon was an Egyptian; he had left Alexandria twenty years before to bring his skills to bear on the putrefaction that, according to him, ran in Roman veins. I tried to look grateful as, almost uninvited, he described his history and methods. He was an empiricist; he believed all disease started in the bowels. Putrefying food created gases which invaded and poisoned the rest of the body. The only cure was purging and fasting. If purging and fasting was supposed to be the answer, it had not done much for him. He must have his tunics specially woven on a wide loom, or with several lengths joined across the body.

  As this great lump made the carriage sag on its axle until the coachwork scraped the road surface, he cheerily proclaimed the Egyptian notion of bodily vessels being blocked by corrupting substances, while I tried not to imagine what would happen if his personal blockages were suddenly flushed out. Apparently you needed to use the right amulets and chants as well as medicine—so I gave fervent thanks to Mercury, god of travel, that these amenities were not in our coach.

  Aedemon looked neither Eastern nor African. He had a square, dark-skinned face with lightly crinkled hair, but almost European features. His attitude had its own exotic cast. He seemed honest, and perhaps he was, yet he gave the impression he was alien and devious.

  ‘So what brought you to the house when your patient was out?’ Helena hiccuped as the carriage bounced. She was being thrown all over th
e place. I managed to park an arm across her and grasped the window-frame, wedging her in position.

  ‘I had to deliver a new tincture of hellebore.’ ‘Quadrumatus Labeo is unhealthy?’

  ‘He’s merely rich, Helena,’ I interrupted. Aedemon seemed sufficiently worldly to permit my cynical joke. ‘He needs his system and his coffers flushed out on a regular basis.. Rich men can’t open their bowels themselves, love. They need help.’

  Aedemon did give me a sophisticated smile. ‘Where you would use a plate of boiled green leaves for loosening purposes, randomly selected, I give him a measured dose of an aperient, yes.’

  ‘More scientific?’ asked Helena.

  ‘More precise.’

  ‘More expensive,’ I muttered.

  ‘But Quadrumatus is a fit man. He has a doctor merely because he can afford one?’ Helena ventured; Aedemon accepted it from her, and nodded.

  Since he seemed amenable, I asked, ‘Did you ever have anything to do with Scaeva?’ To Aedemon’s knowing lift of an eyebrow, I grinned and said frankly, ‘Yes, I’m hoping that he was not strictly your patient, so you will not be bound by the Hippocratic Oath!’

  ‘I never attended him formally, Falco. But I was once asked to examine him when Mastarna could not be contacted.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘He had inflamed Eustachian tubes and chronic sinus blockage, which in my opinion called for detailed analysis. In my work, I search for causes.’

  ‘Whereas Mastarna prescribes… ?’

  ‘Aminean wine.’ Aedemon paused, as if he was about to amplify the statement, but did not add to it.

  ‘You disapproved?’ asked Helena.

  ‘Not at all. There is nothing wrong with Aminean wine in moderate doses. It can cause diarrhoea, in my opinion, though its reputation is for curing that.’

  ‘And it has no effect!’ Helena scoffed. ‘Our elder daughter has sore throats all the time,’ she explained. ‘We have tried everything.’

  ‘Try a catmint cordial. My wife used it on all of ours. No harmful effects and a great comforter.’

  ‘How many do you have?’ Helena despised family conversations, but any minute now the shameless girl would be asking if he carried cameo portraits with him.

  ‘Fifteen.’ Either his wife, or more likely a succession of wives, really enjoyed being pregnant, or his pharmacopoeia didn’t mention the benefits of alum wax when making love.

  ‘I have heard that we could have Julia’s tonsils removed,’ Helena said, frowning at the thought.

  ‘Madam, don’t touch them!’ Aedemon exclaimed at once. He sounded highly alarmed.

  He did not expand on the warning. Helena recoiled from his outburst and we were all silent for a while. The carriage was dawdling, stuck behind a heavy wagon that lumbered through the countryside about as fast as a snail who had spied his lunch ten yards ahead. The snail may have spotted the lettuce, but he wasn’t very hungry yet and was gawping at the scenery.

  When the chill in conversation passed, I asked whether Aedemon had been at the Quadrumatus house when Scaeva died. He said not but I sought his opinion on the manner of death.

  ‘I welcome expert comment, Aedemon. We don’t get many severed heads in domestic murders. The only one I’ve seen personally was the victim of a serial killer, and she had been dismembered after death, specifically for disposal. Generally in violent death, if a quarrel flares unexpectedly women are battered by husbands and boyfriends, probably with bare fists or kitchen implements; men are attacked by fuends and workmates with fists, hammers and other tools, or personal knives. If loathing has brewed over a long period in the home, the method of choice tends to be poison. The wildly insane do run amok with specially obtained knives or swords, but they stab with them. And their victims are usually strangers in the street.’ Aedemon was nodding. ‘Is decapitation an easy way to kill someone?’

  ‘No. A fit young man would hardly just stand there and let you hack off his head.’

  ‘He would resist. Of course he would.’

  ‘Violently—and there would be signs of his resistance on his body, Falco.’

  ‘Were there any such signs with Scaeva, do you know?’

  ‘No.’ As Helena and I looked surprised, Aedemon explained that although he had not been in the house when Scaeva died, the family’s doctors were sent for soon afterwards to give calming draughts—or whatever palliative they favoured—to the hysterical relatives. Poppy worked quickest, Aedemon said, though Drusilla Gratiana had been soothed with hemp by Cleander, who always had to be different. I said I preferred a stiff drink after a bad shock; Aedemon let his guard down and confessed that Drusilla consumed so much wine on a daily basis, it had little effect on her medicinally. ‘Then all of us took a look at the corpse—curiosity, I’m afraid.’ He was not really apologetic; in fact he looked gleeful. Doctors have their own arrogance. ‘The death was, as you say, so unusual.’

  ‘Quite.’ I was still intrigued by how it happened. ‘And puzzling. If you’re the killer, you can’t just walk up to Gratianus Scaeva while he’s lounging on a couch and calmly saw through his neck. You’d have to find him asleep or unconscious—and even then you’d need to be damned quick.’

  ‘Surely you would need to know what you were doing, too?’

  Helena added, wincing.

  I reinforced it. ‘And bring a very sharp blade for the task?’ ‘Extremely sharp…’ Aedemon confirmed.

  ‘Surgically sharp, perhaps?’ Helena asked.

  Professional caution set in fast: Aedemon pulled a face and shrugged. His mighty shoulders rose, the back of the carriage bowed outwards as he moved, then he slumped down into his rolls of fat again, to the relief of the carriage frame. The shrug was eloquent—but gurning and shrugging won’t stand up in court.

  ‘Luckily for Mastarna, he never saw his patient that day.’ Watching Aedemon adopt his noncommittal face, I said, ‘Or that’s what he told me.’ The lack of comment from Mastarna’s rotund colleague continued. ‘Was he summoned with the rest of you?’

  Aedemon looked vague. ‘I believe he must have been. I certainly saw him there when we all gathered…’

  ‘Even though his patient was dead?’ I demanded scornfully.

  ‘Somebody had a high opinion of his regenerative powers!’

  ‘Well, none of us thought he could sew the head back on to Scaeva. I dare say, the slaves were just told to fetch all the doctors quickly. But Mastarna would have to be told what had happened.’

  ‘And that he had lost his income?’ Helena dug me in the ribs. ‘So what do you think of Mastarna, Aedemon?’

  ‘A sound physician.’

  ‘You doctors all say that about each other. Even when you’re diametrical opposites in your treatments.’

  ‘The truth. Mastarna does good work. Different patients need different cures; different people suit different specialists.’

  ‘And what’s his practice? He’s Etruscan. So is that magic and herbs?’

  Apparently there is a clause in the Hippocratic Oath that says no doctor shall ever criticise another. Aedemon fired up immediately: ‘Oh I think Mastarna is more modern than that! Etruscan medicine of course has a long history. It may have begun with religious healing, and that in turn may have meant herb-and root-gathering, perhaps by moonlight in order to find the plants. One should never decry folk medicine; there is a lot of sense to it.’

  ‘It certainly helps Mastarna gather in the denarii—have you seen his house?’ I jibed.

  A sub-clause in the Oath says that any doctor who thinks a competitor is making more money than he does, can insult him after all: ‘Patients can be very gullible!’ After this flash of jealousy, Aedemon recovered smoothly: ‘I would classifyour friend Mastarna as fascinated by theory. His school tends to diagnose using the general history of disease—’

  ‘He’s a dogmatist?’ Helena asked.

  Aedemon put his index fingers together and surveyed her over them as if he felt it was unhealthy for a woman to
use words of more than two syllables. ‘I believe so.’ Since Helena was familiar with the medical schisms, he then acknowledged: ‘And I am an empiricist. Our philosophical rule is, if I may say so, taking over public confidence nowadays. For very good reasons.’ That was good news for laxative sellers. I wondered if the laxative market was sponsoring the empiricist school, paying salaries for empiricist teachers and handing out free samples… ‘I prefer to study the patient’s particular symptoms, then to base my recommendations on his history, my experience and, where appropriate, analogy with similar cases.’

  To me, this did not sound too different from Mastarna’s approach. But Helena saw distinctions: ‘You concentrate on anatomical congestion and look to recent advances in pharmacology for treatment; he would be more likely to suggest surgery?’ Aedemon looked startled. She carried on as if unaware he was impressed, ‘I’m afraid I did upset him very much by suggesting that dogmatists approve of dissection of dead bodies. In fact Marcus and I had hoped, for selfish reasons, that as the young man’s doctor Mastarna had examined Scaeva’s corpse in detail. We hoped he could tell us about wounds or other significant factors that would assist us in investigating who killed the young man. Mastarna angrily informed me that post-mortem research is illegal, although he mentioned it had been carried out for a time in Alexandria.’

  ‘Rarely.’ Aedemon, the Alexandrian, was instantly dismissive. ‘An anarchic, irreligious practice. I cure the living. I don’t desecrate the dead.’

  I saw Helena decide not to press him on whether surreptitious autopsy still took place nowadays. He wasn’t going to tell us, even if he knew of it. She changed her approach: ‘He had another patient too, I believe, at one point. V eleda? We know Mastarna discussed trepanation with Veleda. She was desperate to find somebody who would relieve the pressure in her skull. Did you have any views on that?’