A Capitol Death Read online

  I had been watching him closely, yet probably had not seen all he suffered. He sometimes hid his trials. Oh, he was fine, we told everyone. He could still do everything. He was a good husband, helping me put together our new house, and he even ran a construction business. But he was not the man he had been. Tactfully I suggested the procession would be too much. Then, after dodging a flare-up, I made him accept this.

  I wrote my boy a sick-note. His mother was dead; he was an orphan. I had to do it.

  I did ask him first. I have more sense than some wives, which was why he married me. I felt like Calpurnia begging Julius Caesar not to go to the Senate that day, though without the excuse of a bad dream. The feeling did not stop me: I had already had one husband killed in a street accident and I wasn’t going to see Tiberius brought home to me dead on a pallet too.

  Since my family knew the Prefect of the City, who was in charge of Rome until Domitian came back, I addressed a pathetic plea to him. In the chaos of trying to organise the Triumph, the noble Rutilius Gallicus was heading for a nervous breakdown. The old duffer had no energy to argue with a woman who knew how to write a good letter; besides, I was suggesting I might ask the Vestal Virgins to intercede. I never would, as they are ghastly women, but Rutilius could not be sure. The poor sap stood no chance.

  Rutilius Gallicus suggested that my husband might join the leading men when they went to salute the Emperor before dawn. Then, as the procession began, Faustus could slip away in a closed litter through the back-streets and spend the day quietly at our house. Later, he was supposed to make his way to the Capitol for the ceremonies at the Temple of Jupiter.

  I viewed this as a forgettable promise. Stuff Jupiter. It was Jupiter who threw thunderbolts about. Jupiter had caused the lightning that struck down Tiberius. Even though the god had graciously deigned to spare his life, I would never forgive that. All-seeing Jupiter didn’t notice my wedding procession? Never spotted my bridegroom in the way? Even divine beings should be taught by their mothers to take care when playing with their toys. In fact my mother always ensured any dangerous toys silently went missing.

  I might have managed to keep Tiberius Manlius off the Capitol, but he had not escaped other burdens of his office. Aediles are famously in charge of checking market weights and so forth, but they also run big public events like the Games. Domitian’s Triumph came into the same category. Tiberius had to help.

  Four men in their thirties with logistical talents and public ambitions should be enough to knock together a carnival, I thought. Mine claimed it was more complicated. As Tiberius said in private to me, Rome may be a great power, capable of magnificent civic and military feats, but if a situation can be a pig’s arse (some committee term, apparently) it will be.

  “And this is a pig with dysentery. We have a Praetorian prefect who thinks he is organising, because of the army connection, a committee of palace freedmen who know they are in charge, and a clerk with a bunch of ragged public slaves who is doing all the work. Heaven knows where my colleagues and I are supposed to fit in. We get stuck with the rubbish jobs as usual. If something involves buckets and mops, the other beggars all think they can pass it to us.”

  “Buckets, darling?”

  “For horse dung.”

  “Lots of that?”

  “Shitloads.”

  “I expect you have done calculations…” Tiberius was that kind of man. He would have counted the horses, obtained an ostler’s estimate of how much solid waste per horse should be expected over a twelve-hour period, measured by both weight and volume, and he would prepare an adequate rota of slaves to collect it. Luckily I saw him as a treasure—otherwise he would drive me nuts. “Any chance you can siphon off some for compost on roses?”

  My treasure glared. I subsided, knowing when not to irritate such a top-notch co-ordinator.

  Still, common sense was needed. “It’s just a straight line,” I muttered. “Surely a man with a noteboard can run this? You only have to muster the various groups:

  one, captives

  two, plunder

  three, floats with tableaux

  four, senators and magistrates

  five, general’s guard of lictors

  six, the four-horse chariot

  seven, unarmed troops in clean uniforms, all shouting, ‘Io triumphe!’ and singing ribald songs.

  “Give each group a start time, then make sure they keep moving along. One woman with a list could do it easily.”

  As a woman, I was used to making sensible suggestions. Nobody listens.

  “Musicians, dancers, masses of incense and strewing flowers,” added Tiberius, gloomily. “Each of those is full of potential for chaos. Two white oxen to be sacrificed. Spare white oxen for when the originals get tired. Medics to stretcher off people who collapse. Law-and-order located at suitable points for unavoidable arrests…”

  “The slave who has to hold the general’s crown and remind him he is only a man.”

  “Never mind that—the important slave is the one who has the jar for when the general feels desperate for a pee,” said Tiberius.

  “That slave never gets a mention from historians! But I suppose Domitian can’t jump down and go dashing into a public latrine if he is caught short.” I laughed, then paused. “I reckon the pee-jar is some novelty introduced by the sanitation-conscious aedile, Tiberius Manlius Faustus.”

  My husband did not dispute it. Normally he would have enjoyed himself pretending it was an antique tradition that he had uncovered, written up in a hallowed scroll he had found deposited in the Temple of Ceres. This evening he had no heart for that. He was worn out. He hunched on a couch, where he had subsided, groaning, when he came home for supper. His slave, the useless Dromo, had followed his master out at dawn and back again at dusk, falling over his feet. Dromo had dropped straight onto a sleeping-mat in the courtyard. I myself removed my loved one’s shoes before I sat and talked to him.

  I gazed at him with open concern. Aware he was being assessed, he straightened slightly. He had a strong physique, which fitted his new occupation as owner of a building firm. He could carry the crazy folds of a Roman toga lightly enough, while still looking as if he would be a match for any old republican, ready to stomp back to his plough. He was tough, grey-eyed and sure of himself. My kind of man: at leisure, he liked reading but when he wanted an activity, he could paint a kennel.

  “What is the conquering hero supposed to do?” I continued, hoping to distract Tiberius from his weariness. “Stand with his feet apart, looking innocent, while he discharges a hot torrent through the base of the chariot? I know he traditionally has a big breakfast beforehand. What if—”

  “Military training.” Tiberius let himself be drawn into a conversation that was not entirely fantasy on my part. I have attended enough family picnics to know what needs to be planned for a day out. “The manual must include a drill for crossing your legs. When you’re going into battle, you can’t have lads putting their hands up and whining, please, sir, can they be excused? Generals have to lead by example,” he said. “Iron bladders.”

  This was guesswork. Tiberius had never been in the army. I refrained from pointing out that Domitian had never gone through basic training either. Becoming a prince at eighteen had spared him an early stint in the legions, so as commander-in-chief, he was winging it. He had won the soldiers’ respect by awarding them a massive pay raise. He was not unintelligent. “I think you should give one of your dung-buckets a very good wash and put a gold ribbon on the handle.”

  “Good idea!” Tiberius roused himself. “I have married an invaluable wife. Planning cannot be skimped. I shall need to sort out a particularly handsome boy to carry the imperial bucket. A signal must be agreed in advance for when he’s wanted, and we have to train him to hand up the equipment into the chariot discreetly, not to mention supply a hand-washing bowl and a nice towel. So while I am absorbed in this critical stuff, dear girl, maybe you can help me with the other thing.”

  “W
hat thing?”

  “The Tarpeian Rock.”

  I spoke more frank words, but half-heartedly.

  “Good lass! There is a big budget for the Triumph: I can get you a fee. Watch out for Nestor, when you run into him.”

  “Who is Nestor?”

  “You will find out.”

  Tiberius ran a hand thoughtfully over his jaw. He needed a shave. If he shouted for Dromo to razor off his manly stubble, I knew what that meant. Our ancient forefathers, that stocky breed who wore their togas so lightly and could plough so well, had established the fine tradition that a Roman wife should support her husband—after which she was entitled to her matrimonial reward.

  III

  The first person I contacted was the witness. Best get it over with. She might be annoying. From what I had heard about her failing to keep quiet, she would be.

  Tiberius had brought home a few garbled notes, in various wonky hands. Someone had scribbled a kind of address, which I tracked down next morning. At her home there was no answer, so I braced myself to poke about nearby, searching for the old woman—my work demands persistence.

  False leads from nosy neighbours became unnecessary when the dame in question turned up of her own accord, just as I was writing a note to leave on her door. Someone must have told her a fancy messenger was there. Eager to be the centre of attention, she rushed home.

  I explained I was working for an aedile. The eminent Manlius Faustus, I said, thought she might prefer to talk to a woman.

  I made the claim without bitterness, even though I had been an independent operator for years. I tolerate Roman prejudice. Any businesswoman has to roll with it, whether she is selling fish or running twenty commercial premises. I had been in the same position all my working life, and I started when I was only seventeen. First I was Falco’s daughter; now I had to grit my teeth and be the magistrate’s wife. To begin with it had driven me wild, but I had learned that once I established my presence on a case, clients would accept me as the lead professional. “It’s your quiet air of competence!” said members of my family—before they guffawed.

  “My name is Albia, Flavia Albia,” I announced to the witness.

  “Am I supposed to have heard of you?”

  “No. I like to be discreet.”

  My contact was a typical old woman. They are everywhere in Rome. Small, skinny, intensely suspicious, worn to a shred by Life, holding off Death with vicious tenacity. She fought Death as if he was a neighbour she had been feuding with for years, determined to outlive the upstart and pinch his Gallic hens before his family arrived for the funeral.

  Thin wisps of grey hair wandered about as she moved, while cat fur and particles of old breakfast clung to her black dress. She could have been any age between forty and eighty. Most likely eighty. She was slightly deaf, wobbly on her feet and a little smelly.

  “Ooh, I’d love to meet an aedile!” she croaked. I could have put her lunacy down to extreme age, but I guessed she had always been that way. I pretended the great man Faustus wished he was able to give her his time, but unfortunately the Emperor had him tied up from dawn to dusk, planning the Triumph. (I had left him at home, de-fleaing the dog.) “I suppose I shall have to manage with you, then,” she conceded.

  “Anything you tell me, I shall report direct to him,” I promised. “Manlius Faustus is deeply disappointed that he cannot meet you personally. But, trust me, I am fully in his confidence.”

  She inspected me with great suspicion, even so. I was twenty-nine, so just about mature enough to satisfy her. The air of competence my relations deride probably means I come across as pushy. My dark hair was pinned up, my gown and embroidered stole were of good material, I had jewellery. My necklace and earrings were more tasteful than people wore around there: the old woman lived in one tiny room in a dark apartment block where the fashion was for rings that turn your finger green and, of course, snake bracelets. Still, she had picked up the hint. If she wanted the glory of sounding off to the authorities, there I was to take her story.

  It was hardly the first time I had been viewed as unreliable. In fact, I was reliable enough to have formed the same opinion of her. I won’t say she was doo-lally, but this was going to be a long morning.

  * * *

  I produced my usual waxed tablets and stylus, which I carried in a satchel, though I did not bother taking notes of our entire rambly conversation. It was punctuated by crashes, arguments and screaming babies in the tenement outside. We were in one of those multi-storey buildings carved into the Capitol on the river side, full of tiny lets and narrow corridors, not much better than slave accommodation, despite the apparently refined location. She had allowed me into her room, where she swept mouse-droppings off a stool for me. I sat tidily, keeping one eye out for the mouse, which I guessed would not be shy. I didn’t want it running up my skirt.

  I listened patiently. This old bird had caused the problem by constantly harping on what she claimed she saw. The whole point of an inquiry was to prove her wrong or right. I was easy about which way it went. All I wanted was to make a true report on what had happened.

  “Your name is Valeria Dillia, I believe?”

  It was. Someone along the way had got that right. Dillia had lived in the same room all her life, even when she was married to a day labourer. He died fifteen years ago. She would never want to move: she knew everyone and everything that went on in the neighbourhood. Yes, I bet she did.

  The information I extracted over the next two hours contained nothing new. Nothing useful anyway, though I endured endless details. It was first thing in the morning. She had been shopping at a vegetable stall. She had bought artichokes, out of season but she had managed to bag them because she had got there so early, plus a turnip and a bunch of mixed herbs, rather bruised so money-off. This set it in context. Some investigators might have imagined the turnip lent authenticity. I am not so fanciful.

  “You don’t favour the Forum Holitorium?” That is the big vegetable market near the river, next to the Theatre of Marcellus.

  “I’m not going to trudge all the way around there for my bits and bobs. Besides, they cheat you.”

  Tottering back the short distance from the stalls she did like, old Dillia had carried on around the hill for some reason. She saw something like a shadow fall suddenly from high on the Arx. She was quite sure that a moment beforehand a second figure had been on the Tarpeian Rock too.

  “It was barely light?”

  “Enough to see by.”

  “What made you look up?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you hear anything? A cry?”

  “No. Well, I may have. That man at the vigiles told me I must have done. Hearing the shout drew my attention, he told me.”

  “Just say what you remember. Ignore the man at the vigiles.”

  I knew how they worked, inventing evidence and blaming easy suspects. If your house is on fire they will put out the flames and rescue your baby in his cradle, provided you can get them to turn up. If you are burgled, stabbed or run over by a cart with a blind driver, either solve it yourself or hire an informer. My rates are reasonable. Please do not ask me whether Falco is still working and, if so, can you go over my head to him? Not unless you want your eye poked out. If I am too busy, Nervius at the Porticus Aemilius will do a decent job. There is an idiot who talks big by the Diribitorium; whatever you do, avoid him.

  “Do you really think you heard a noise, Dillia?”

  “No. A movement caught my eye. It was like a dream. Almost a premonition. I glimpsed two people, but my gaze followed the poor man who flew down.”

  “That’s natural,” I assured her sympathetically.

  Dillia was far from squeamish: “So then it was, hello, what’s that? Splat, ooh, nasty! Next time I looked, there was no one on the top.”

  “You could tell the victim was a man?”

  “I think I could. Well, people said so afterwards.”

  “Let’s not mind what other pe
ople said, though of course now we do know he was male. What about the other person?” The one who mattered if they had pushed him. The one I had to find, if this truly was murder.

  “I don’t know.”

  Thank you. What a surprise.

  “But you did feel you glimpsed a tussle going on?”

  “It was my impression. But it was all over in a moment.”

  “Gone in a flash? Yet you had a clear idea the second person gave the first a shove?”

  “I thought so. I saw it, but I wouldn’t like to swear an oath. I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. I don’t want to get into trouble myself.”

  “You are not.” I smiled my reassuring informer’s smile, which fools nobody. “Valeria Dillia, would you mind if I asked you to come with me to the place it happened? I would very much like to know just where you were standing so I can visualise the scene.”

  “Has the aedile asked for me to do that?”

  “Yes, he has!” I exclaimed warmly.

  The aedile might have done. But we had established before we were even married that I work unsupervised. One thing I like about the eminent Faustus is that after he delegates some lousy job to me he backs off. Ever since I met him I had let him know he should have faith in my skills and judgement.

  “I’ll come along there, then,” agreed Dillia, complaisantly. “If it’s for him!”

  IV

  Time for culture and heritage.

  Whichever list you follow for the Seven Hills of Rome, the Capitoline will always be on it. Other peaks may come and go. The Janiculan and Pincian are usually excluded, though both have their advocates as high-class places to live. That pimple called the Oppian once vied for listed status. I live on the Aventine, which is the outsiders’ hill, yet long ago shouldered its way in there among the main seven. Always the Capitoline reigns supreme, smallest but most prestigious. Standing close to the river and at one end of the Forum, it has two peaks called the Capitol and Arx. There, dominating the city, stand the great Temples of Jupiter and Juno. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Best and Greatest, is on the Capitol; Juno Moneta, the One Who Warns, stands on the Arx. He the betraying husband, she the nagging wife. He has the kudos but she has the money. So like real life.