A Capitol Death Page 18

  Feliculus was by the poultry pen. In one cage, a goose lay curled up limply. He was stroking its head, receiving little response. Another goose had been sitting on the roof; it flopped down and came towards me, but was half-hearted. I shooed it off.

  The bird Feliculus was tending looked extremely sick. I had a feeling it might be the one I fell upon, though he did not accuse me.

  “This is Florentina. Under the weather, aren’t you, darling? She seems to be developing a cold today.”

  “Is that common?”

  “We suffer terribly with our sinuses, don’t we?” Feliculus asked both geese rhetorically. They disdained to comment. “Any diseases are a worry in young birds, but Florentina is old enough. She ought to get over it, but I’m trying to avoid her being stressed.”

  The goose guardian was anxious; Florentina had depression too. They made a moody pair.

  I asked politely what her symptoms were. Problems had come on suddenly: thirst, watery droppings, ruffled appearance, no appetite, stomach-ache—how did Feliculus know that, I wondered, since the goose could hardly have spelled it out for him? “She kept leaning forwards to ease the pain, but that was last night. Now she doesn’t want to move at all.”

  I remembered my father complaining that geese were as tender to look after as a flock of two-year-old children. Any disease spread rapidly among them and could be transmitted to the humans who looked after them. I advised Feliculus to wash the cage out frequently, then wash his own hands well. He nodded but was visibly dispirited.

  I managed to persuade him to answer a few questions. Had he heard or seen anything last night when Lemni died? No, he had gone down the hill for a drink with a friend. When he came back he realised he had forgotten to put the geese to bed before he left, but they were patiently waiting up for him, without mishap. But poor Florentina was so out of sorts he had stayed up with her all the rest of the night.

  “I am glad to hear you are getting out to enjoy yourself sometimes,” I interrupted. “I am sure Falco would say it will help you overcome your troubles. Isolation is no good for somebody as sensitive as you.” With little real interest I asked, “So who was your company last night, Feliculus?”

  “Him I told you about. The gatekeeper who used to be on the Pandana. He came over to tell me he’s been given his old job back, now Gabinus isn’t there to keep complaining. We had a jar or two to celebrate.”

  I experienced a slight qualm: a man who suffered from black pits of despair should not go out downing quantities of wine. Since he was so miserable, wiping the eyes and beak of his snuffly goose, I held back from issuing this warning. It is never popular. He was an adult. You cannot save everyone.

  I left Feliculus with his patient, while I took myself to the Porta Pandana. The newly returned gatekeeper was a wheezing old slave; he must have been pensioned off here, where he held what passed for a useful position but was rarely called upon to do much.

  He remembered the fishy visitors. Unlocking the gate for them was his only excitement for the past three years; since it had lost him his job temporarily, it would stay in his mind. After breathlessly cursing Gabinus for a vindictive, ungrateful, power-hungry swine, he then usefully confirmed a fact. As Nestor had said, the visitors had come up to Rome from the coast. They lived and worked south of the port at Ostia. The gatekeeper knew they had come to see Gabinus about something connected with their trade.

  “What trade is that?”

  “They do dyeing. From the seashells.”

  * * *

  My family owns a much-loved maritime villa on that part of the seashore. It nestles among pirates’ retirement palaces and senatorial off-duty spreads; my grandfather bought it so he could go fishing. “Fishing” was his euphemism for landing valuable statues on his beach, instead of at a port, so he could dodge the import tax. Falco discontinued this illegal practice once he took over the auction house. Of course he did.

  After Father inherited the place, we often spent holidays there, taking excursions to places of interest nearby. One educational visit had given me a clue to the smelly people’s whereabouts. We went to a remote spot, deliberately stuck away from habitation, where they were allowed to work. However, we left quickly with no lecture and no free samples. That industry stank so much my young sisters held their delicate noses, squealing. My little brother actually threw up—although, being Postumus, vomiting at will was a talent he had taught himself. My siblings were ordered to stop making an exhibition of themselves, and the Didius family fled to the villa of a rich friend who served iced fruit sorbets.

  What we had missed was a demonstration of people manufacturing imperial purple dye.

  XXXV

  It says much for my husband that a day out, even to a stinking dye-works, struck him as romantic.

  The first time Tiberius and I surrendered to our pent-up feelings and slept together happened when we were travelling in pursuit of information. We were newly in love, so had been full of nervous inhibitions. Being outside Rome freed us. The mansio at Fidenae, known privately ever since as the Cow with No Tail, made a drab setting for a tryst; it was a bad travellers’ rest with flea-ridden beds, while the journey we were taking at the time ended poorly for several people, some of them friends of his. But for us, our trip through Fidenae was imbued for ever with intimate nostalgia.

  “We are married now,” I scoffed. “Sex is no longer thrilling. Don’t get ideas.”

  “Too late!” quipped Tiberius, cheerfully.

  After a moment he asked, with a more uncertain air, “You are teasing. Tell me it is still exciting.”

  “Of course it’s lovely, darling,” I replied. Roman wives know how to keep them guessing. “I don’t expect I shall even think of taking a lover for, ooh … months yet.”

  “Good to know!”

  Tiberius went off to organise transport. Roman husbands on the hop like to bury themselves in manly tasks.

  For my head of household, arranging transport meant he snaffled the two-mule carriage that belonged to his uncle, without telling Tullius. The alternative was for me to borrow my father’s auction delivery cart; that was all right if you were a cupboard. In either case, the vehicle came with a po-faced driver, who plainly disapproved of us. Father’s cart sometimes contained three chickens and a cement-coated plank. The uncle left behind the cushions he had lolled on, which held a curious whiff of patchouli and dubious practices.

  Uncle Tullius, being a top-of-the-pile businessman, owned a comfortable conveyance so we preferred that. He only travelled within Rome so the mules were up for stretching their legs with us. Even their driver perked up.

  Rome to the coast can be done in a day. Lawyers even hare down to their airy villas after the courts close. Since we started out early, we hit the Didius homestead in the hours of daylight, giving us time to roust out slaves and announce we were overnighting. After they had bounced with outrage at me turning up without warning, along with a stranger I claimed I was married to and a dog they had never seen before, they grumpily began to prepare a bedroom and a meal for later. In theory staff left in charge of country homes are supposed to have houses in readiness all the time. This is in case a consul who knows their master arrives unexpectedly with letters of introduction and a hundred hangers-on. Being prepared never happens. Home slaves are so busy enjoying themselves and lording it over the harder-working farm-labourers, they are easily caught out.

  We left the mules to rest. Their driver walked about, sneering at my family’s seaside hideaway. It had a shabby air; he could not tell that it was discreetly stuffed with choice antiques. He just thought it was a dump.

  Instead of the carriage, we saddled two elderly donkeys, who were as affronted as the slaves when their lazy routine was interrupted. Tiberius had partly grown up in the country so he believed himself expert at animal management. He had not met ours before: Castor and Pollux had established a myth that they responded only to my grandfather; since he had been dead for twelve years, they wanted total idlene
ss. In my experience rural parts are stuffed with such intransigent beasts. I cling to being a city girl; I try to have nothing to do with them.

  Tiberius and the two donkeys had an altercation in a field. It was their field, which they had no intention of leaving. He was acting magisterial, which only works in situations where you can impose huge fines. I suggested that to exercise authority he should have brought his curule stool; he answered with something I did not quite catch.

  Slaves came out to watch. One skivvy sat placidly shelling peas; this oddly enraged Tiberius. They had all known me since I was a girl, but were behaving as if they had never met me: me, their master’s eldest daughter, the sensible one in that generally crazed family.

  I reminded them that I was a British import, saying I had friends among those hairy, head-hunting horse-lovers far away. Unless they made Castor and Pollux move, spirits from my homeland would put a spell on them. The slaves just stared, then drifted back into the house. The deadbeat donks refused to budge.

  Barley had had enough of this. My dog crept up behind Castor in her silent way, then nipped his ankle. He took an involuntary step; Tiberius threw himself into the saddle. Barley let out a short bark at Pollux, who turned, wild-eyed, but at least also became mobile. I put up Barley into a big pannier, one of a pair I had set on Pollux for that purpose, then somehow managed to wriggle aboard.

  “Walk on!” instructed Tiberius. One donkey brayed derisively.

  “Get going, you dopey pair of long-eared idiots!” I yelled. That was the kind of language they were used to, from my young brother Postumus. After a few pointless circles, we finally set off. Tiberius muttered that Barley had probably given Castor windpuffs above the fetlock. I said, “Serve him right.”

  We took sandy paths along the coast. By now it was mid-afternoon so the November sun was waning, its light less intense; we had little time to spare. We dug in our heels to persuade Castor and Pollux to travel as fast as possible. Donkeys are in fact extremely intelligent, so they must have grasped that the sooner they took us where we wanted to go, the sooner they would be returned to their field.

  On our approach to the murex works, we soon knew we were in the right location. First we passed rows of transport amphora and smelly mounds of spiny whelk-like shells. The smashed remains ponged of old seawater, though that was nothing like the vats we soon came to, where woollen cloth was being double-dipped in liquor. It was the same odour I remembered from the palace, when Hylus had shown me Domitian’s triumphal robes, but here the horror was stupendously intensified.

  Tiberius was wincing. “Jupiter! Let’s make this quick,” he appealed to me. I would have replied that interviews have to be as long as it takes, but at that moment I was suffering from the smell too much to speak.

  Compared to production at Tarentum in the heel of Italy, what happened south of Ostia could only have been a cottage industry. All Italian dye production paled into insignificance beside the ancient trade of Tyre, Sidon, Crete, Troy, Cyprus or North Africa. I had heard that the most abundant murex crop was hauled out of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Those fishing grounds were fought over. Taxation on sales was so lucrative that territorial treaties over harvesting molluscs were made internationally.

  Here on our own western coast, a struggling industry was established. Banished to an empty stretch of shore, the dyers made their ghastly product and, because the colour was too unstable to transport it in liquid form, they soaked cloth in situ. The state of the track that led to the works told us they must receive regular deliveries of molluscs, bales of wool, and presumably provisions for themselves. Finished cloth would be collected. But passing trade must be rare.

  I knew Tyrian purple material was sometimes available in Rome, from freedmen’s stalls in the Vicus Jugarius and Vicus Tuscus close to the Forum, or from the fancier indoor markets. It was ferociously expensive, hardly ever bought—leave aside moments when emperors like Nero banned the public from wearing it (having first bought up the stock for imperial use). Even so, holidaymakers at the coast must rarely drop in here, whether from curiosity or specifically bargain-hunting: the smell was too bad. I saw no stalls set up for outlet sales as would happen at a pottery or a cameo studio. Apparently, visitors from the outside world were so infrequent that when Pollux brayed a greeting the entire complement of workers came out of their low-roofed huts to stare.

  XXXVI

  At first, we played it like casual tourists. A man who must have been in charge came forwards, so as Tiberius dismounted he called a greeting: “Hello, there. Mind if we look around? I am Manlius Faustus. The wife and I are staying locally.” That left it vague until we were sure what we were dealing with.

  The dyers’ spokesman was called Ostorius. He was a thickset coastal character with an accent that demanded concentration. If he was aware that everybody stank, he made no reference to it. They were probably so accustomed to it, they gave it little thought. Ostorius offered his hand to Tiberius, who was not a man to refuse a test. After I slipped down from Pollux, I joined them and bravely shook hands as well. Now I had to remember not to touch anything I valued.

  Everyone there had blue or purple palms and fingers. Every palm and every finger stank. When we shook hands, the high odour clung to us. Once I fully realised how bad it was, I didn’t bother wiping my hand on my skirt. There was no escape.

  I left Barley in her pannier on the donkey’s back, where she sat, intermittently barking at the air. Young children went close to stare at her, not speaking. As far as I knew the dog would not be aggressive; the children seemed fascinated but harmless too. I could tell they were youngsters who worked with their elders. The rest of the group, who were of all ages, comprised women with their sleeves rolled up and men carrying dye-vat dollies. The atmosphere was friendly, though with an undertow of suspicion.

  Tiberius waded straight in to ask about the process. He was soon being shown how the shells were opened to extract their purple. These molluscs, varying in size but not a large species, were seriously spiny, with pointed tails. Ostorius said they were predatory creatures, devourers of other sea life. I could not tell at what point in the extraction process they died. Clearly they did.

  When the workers lost interest in us and went back to their tasks, we watched them opening shells with special small stone hammers, then nipping out glands. Even the children wandered back to join in. At the point of extraction, the glands emitted a secretion that was colourless and odourless, but we were told exposure to sunlight would quickly transform the secretion so its ability to colour rapidly perished. For this reason, the people worked inside dark hutments. Retrieving the glands seemed an easy task, which even the youngest children managed at speed, turning out hundreds every hour. But the glands were tiny. To obtain a useable quantity of colour required hundreds of thousands.

  Salt and potash were added; the mixture was heated for three days, though must never reach boiling point. The dye remained very unstable in the vat, easily affected by light or air, which would make results blue rather than the coveted deep purple. Therefore a good source of wool had to be available close by; other fabrics such as linen, cotton or silk shrugged off the colour, but wool absorbed it best. It was steeped in dye baths for seven to ten days, with repeated immersion to give the best colour. A woman, Ostorius’ wife Cincia, was testing small samples in a vat that had been in use for some days; she showed me how the square of cloth now looked blue, which meant the dye was exhausted and should no longer be used.

  The deepest regal purple required prolonged soaking in the strongest liquor. Since it took thousands of shells to make an ounce of dye, we understood the extraordinary cost and how purple robes became a symbol of divinity. Even a basic bluish or reddish hue cost a fortune but the blackish shade likened to clotted blood, as magnificently worn by emperors, was worth ten times that.

  When the vats’ contents reduced by evaporation, their smell significantly increased.

  We were walked along a row of dye tanks to ex
perience this feature.

  Holy hypobranchials!

  I needed to come up with a precise set of questions for my case. Nothing would drag me back to this gastropodic putrefaction to ask supplementaries.

  I held off the interrogation as long as I could, while Ostorius regaled us with interesting seashell stories. Gesturing to Barley, still queening it in her pannier, he told us how Hercules supposedly discovered the secret of murex. His dog had been gambolling on the shore eating seashells, then had come back to him with a purple muzzle; Hercules had fallen in love with a nymph called Tyre, for whom he made a wondrous dress that was dyed with his discovery.

  Other dyes, said Ostorius, were made from other materials: blue from a different kind of murex shell, pale blue from grape hyacinths, crimson from crushed insects, a cheap fake purple from various plants. Expensive colours were often faked: indigo with pigeon dung, reds with madder, red ochre substituted for true vermilion. The noble fan-shaped pinna shell produced long strands of anchoring fibre that could be woven into a precious, delicate amber-coloured fabric; this sea-silk was only available in such small quantities that nothing larger than a hat or scarf was ever made from it.

  Used shells could be incorporated in building lime, although Tiberius said that his men hated it unless the shells had been long exposed to air to reduce their oceanic smell.

  As our tour ended, we were taken to a warehouse to be shown bolts of finished cloth in different qualities and hues. Clearly we were expected to buy some. No pressure, said Ostorius. He gave his tour of the works for no charge, only grateful when people showed an interest …

  We knew what to do. Tiberius agreed to purchase a length of deep blue fabric to make an outfit for me. “We don’t see ourselves as wearers of imperial purple, I’m afraid! Anyway, blue is my wife’s favourite colour.”

  “That’s very observant,” I said, in surprise, as he fetched out his purse and paid up. He had no clues: I was in rust that day, a safe dark tone to disguise travel stains. “I do love blue, my darling, though I am not aware I ever told you.”