The Grove of the Caesars Read online

  Tiberius believed I could handle all this. Fortunately, he was intelligent enough to see it might be a challenge, then affectionate enough to keep asking whether I was happy. I said yes. Even I could not decide whether it was true. That’s marriage. I had known what I was taking on. In return I got him. Well, I had him when he wasn’t being dragged away by his family.

  As soon as he left for Fidenae, I tackled my task list because once I began to miss him, I might end up moping uselessly. Besides, it was possible clients of my own would come along to commission me. The imperial triumph might work in my favour: festivals always lead to upsets because too much drink is consumed and, traditionally, mothers-in-law are at their worst while feasting. Then nightmares happen: unwise confessions, running away from home, or even suspicious deaths. No one had turned up for help yet, but perhaps they were checking my references.

  While I waited for hypothetical clients, I nipped out to the Triton. This was a bar where the owner foolishly believed that after you have building works you can demand that the contractor comes back to fix any cracks, missing tesserae, bent hinges or bumpy grout. How do these myths start?

  “Will your husband be away for long?”

  “We are a working partnership. He sent me.”

  “Oh, bugger.”

  The place was a backstreet soup counter, newly spruced up with perfectly smart results. The owner had broth stains down his apron, a permanent odour of chopped onion and no judgement. I pretended to sympathise over the standard of work we had done for him, after which I pointed out that Tiberius had sent a man yesterday for remedial touch-ups. Next I set him straight. I placed a neat bill on his new counter, saying someone would collect the money tomorrow.

  I wasn’t an auctioneer’s daughter for nothing. I knew how to gather in payments. I mentioned that our terms were cash on the nail, or we would have him chained to a trireme oar. “No, no, I’m joking. Really, if you don’t cough up, Tiberius Manlius will send the boys. The reason you haven’t heard about them is that once they make a payment call any debtor is too shocked to speak…” I breezed off home while the bar owner was still blinking nervously.

  Tiberius had no enforcement team. He used to saunter along himself and charm people.

  I never bother with charm.

  * * *

  Back at the house, I found a woman who looked like a potential client for me. She came on her own, a middle-aged, middle-income type, with a tentative air. That fitted my customer base. She might want me to find her long-abandoned baby or the lover who had skipped off after helping himself to her jewel box. I mentally placed her as able to afford a records search, though unlikely to fund a full-scale surveillance. I was all set to explain my terms when I learned she had a problem of a different kind. She wanted to know if Tiberius Manlius would come and look at her drainpipe.

  I sized her up with new eyes. My husband was a virile, handsome man in his prime; she must have seen him out and about on the Aventine. As aediles do, he was still extracting fines from dodgily run bath-houses and telling householders to sweep donkey droppings off their pavements, but his term was due to end next month. He would then revert to being an amiable neighbour who had renovation knowledge and supposedly spare time. He would be very attractive to any woman who wanted a free maintenance job—or whose drainpipe did not leak at all, but she had other ideas.

  I was going to see a lot of this.

  I smiled and said I was his wife. Would she like me to inspect her drainpipe? I could assess leaks and price up renovations . . Then I set her straight too.

  IV

  Next morning, before Larcius led the workmen out with their barrows of tools, I went through to the yard. I was hunting our order for the marble at Fullo’s Nook, so I could chase up the late delivery for Tiberius.

  “Good luck!” chortled Larcius, through whistly gums, when I invaded the office. The clerk of works was forty-five and must have lost his teeth ten years ago. From the challenge in his tone, I deduced that the marble importers were being their unhelpful selves.

  Fullo was the usual kind of proprietor, who was sure he knew how to organise catering. His Nook was a hot-scoff popina in the portico outside the Circus. Smartening it up would hardly impress its customers, who ignored everything but their obsession with racing form. Still, Fullo was impatient. He had been thinking about exotic improvements for thirty years, so now he wanted it done by next week.

  I told Larcius I would chivvy the suppliers but could make no promises. “Tiberius Manlius gets annoyed because his grandfather was in marble. He says it can be done perfectly well, without messing clients about.”

  “He’s right. They’re crap. We only want a few off-cuts,” agreed Larcius. “We’re not surfacing an imperial bath-house, it’s a patchwork counter … Problem with his sister, is it?”

  Without going into details, I said enough to let Larcius feel I had confided family secrets. To change the subject, I mentioned the woman with the alleged leaky drainpipe. “I think it’s her story that has holes in it.”

  Larcius grinned. “One of those! We know the type. When they plead for Faustus to look at their bedroom cove, he sends along our lopsided dwarf to do an estimate—that’s usually the last we hear.”

  “Which high-class specialist is this?”

  “Spendo. Face like melting rock. That scares them before he’s got a foot in the door—and his feet are a bit gnarled too. He’s three foot high on his good side, and his pricing-up makes punters wince. We use him to survey all the jobs we don’t want.”

  I said I was glad Tiberius Manlius was so savvy. Larcius promised that if there was ever one of these women I really ought to know about he would tell me.

  Probably he would. The workmen knew they had been rescued from a dying concern, so they welcomed having more secure employment now that we owned the firm. I was seeing how family businesses work. The wife matters. They would ensure the master had peace at home.

  Larcius assured me that nothing else on the stocks needed my attention. He and the lads would be at the nymphaeum job. It was right over in the Transtiberina, so they were off there now. He would check in with me here tomorrow.

  He didn’t specifically tell me not to come to the Grove. In retrospect, his distraction technique had a very light touch.

  * * *

  I was called away, back into the house. A new crisis had arisen. Everyone at home had turned out to stare: Dromo, Suza, Fornix the cook, Paris the runabout, both quarrelsome painters, even Barley the dog. Barley was too curious to growl. My steward, Gratus, was stalling, for once unwilling to second-guess my opinion.

  I wasn’t happy. “Eurgh. Gratus, what foul eruption from Hades is this?”

  A facer. Two aunts on my mother’s side had given me a “present.” Unlike Tiberius, who only possessed one, I had aunts the way some people have warts. All over.

  Claudia and Meline’s present was certainly not a cornucopia overflowing with sweet grapes. The aunts knew better than to come themselves: they sent their delivery slave. He intoned a sorry tale.

  Last night my two uncles, Aulus and Quintus Camillus, who were senators, had been invited to an imperial banquet—the same one Tiberius had ducked out of. Domitian, our maverick ruler, had a low regard for the senate, so most were prepared for an unhappy occasion and this particular banquet was to become notorious. The feast was supposed to be in honour of fallen soldiers. After terrifying everyone with fears that he might be intending executions, Domitian had his guests solemnly led into a pitch-black room that was arranged with funeral couches, where the place-markers were tombstones inscribed with their names. He served up funeral meats and talked all night about death. This, and the sinister decor, made them certain he was going to kill them.

  During the awkward dinner, black-painted naked boys had pranced in, acting as servers. When the bilious guests escaped and were back at home, shuddering in their beds, they were woken by thunderous knocking; the clamour was to make them believe their executioners had ar
rived, after all. But Domitian, that macabre joker, had merely sent them gifts: their “tombstones,” which turned out to be slabs of silver—very nice, thank you, godlike Augustus—and their cleaned-up serving boys. No thanks for that. Even with their paint scrubbed off and tunics on, the sly-eyed entertainers looked like brothel bunnies.

  It would be mad to refuse a gift from the Emperor. Nor could the family quietly sell these creatures in a slave market. Domitian was bound to find out.

  My aunts, both prudish, cringed from taking ex-imperial floor-show floozies into their nice homes. For one thing, Claudia had six young children whom the dancing boys might corrupt. Instead, since I was setting up a household, the aunts sweetly sent word that I could have this pair “to carry snack trays.”

  The messenger grinned. He was an old family slave with bushy eyebrows who took delight in telling me that the freebies’ language was lavatorial and their habits matched. But Claudia and Meline thought I was so scary they would run away.

  I huffed. I thought if Domitian heard that his gifts had scrammed, he would just annoyingly send replacements. Somehow we had to live with this.

  “Oh, really?” asked the urbane Gratus, my steward, for once sounding strained. “I can train them to serve dinner, madam, but moral guidance is not in my remit.”

  I gazed at the boys. They brazenly stared back with limpid eyes, below brows that had been more exquisitely plucked than mine. They were about twelve. They looked like brothers, possibly even twins. Their beautiful features were sullied with foul thoughts. Puberty was looming. It would be dire.

  “What are your skills, lads?” I snapped out.

  “Erotic dancing,” one boasted. Claudia’s slave had told me that their behaviour at the dinner last night was blatant enticement; Uncle Quintus said they even served platters suggestively.

  “No call for it. But can you hand around appetisers nicely?”

  “With a bum-wriggle!”

  “Wrong answer. Your clothes will stay on at all times, am I understood? Do not shimmy your horrible rear ends in my house—not ever.”

  “That’s what we do.” The second boy was daring me to react badly. He sneered. “Is it true you’re a druid?”

  “You want to be strung up among the mistletoe while your head sits on an altar three feet away? I am not a druid, but it can be done … You may live here temporarily.” I made it cool. “On trial. See it as an opportunity. My husband is a magistrate, a stern man and extremely pious. You can choose to behave yourselves and be accepted in our home. But one dirty move, one complaint from my people here, or the neighbours, and you will find yourselves cleaning temple steps with toothpicks.”

  While I went to find a tip for the old slave who had delivered them, the boys hung their heads and muttered. They sounded rebellious. I could already sense a swell of dispute between these incomers and my existing staff.

  Behind me, Gratus stepped forward. Tall and elegant, my steward looked as if he had only ever spent his life twirling honey on swizzle sticks to flavour drinks for masters who had pure good taste. He was such a refined factotum, people in the Aventine alleys sometimes apologised to him for the state of their streets—and meant it.

  “What’s up, Your Majesty?” one of the boys jeered.

  Big mistake.

  Gratus addressed them in his clean accent. “Listen to me.” He looked as if he might be Greek-speaking, though his Latin was classy. He then reiterated what I had already said, but with vivid detail: “I don’t like punks. This is what will happen: I make the rules, you follow them. No wanking, no thieving, no bad-mouthing the family. Don’t curse, don’t flirt, don’t bugger the dog, and never answer back to me. One jiggle, and I shall pull your lungs out through your miserable throats.”

  They were stunned. I was rather surprised myself.

  I saw Dromo stick his head around a colonnade pillar, gurning triumphantly. At last somebody in our household was in more trouble than him.

  They hadn’t even done anything yet.

  They would. I might not be a druid, but I could prophesy.

  V

  I fled the house, taking only the dog. I hoped to teach the dancers that the owners went out a lot but would return unexpectedly; if anyone was up to something, we would catch them at it.

  Gratus remained in charge. Today I had discovered he must have spent useful time slumming. Now I felt even more confidence in him. I had hired him specifically to cope, so I told him to enjoy his day. He gave me a wry nod.

  I was headed to the marble Emporium. I dropped down to the river via the Steps of Cassius, calling first at my parents’ house. Only my sisters were in, two richly clad teenagers, slathered in necklaces and startling perfume. “Where’s little brother?”

  “Oratory lessons.”

  “Does he like it?” Did my strangely self-assured brother need lessons in public speaking?

  “He likes bossing the other boys.”

  “And the teacher, I suppose? Listen, girls…” I explained how and why Tiberius had gone so suddenly to Fidenae. “Tell the parents. Don’t forget.”

  “We won’t.” They would.

  “Just do it, scatterbrains. Where are the oldies, incidentally?”

  Julia looked up from smothering my dog with cuddles. Barley took her chance to wriggle free. “Mama came home late from the Capena Gate relatives. She’s full of horrible details about that banquet. It sounds absolutely brilliant. Why wasn’t your triumph party like that, Albia?”

  “Tiberius and I are too clever. When we decide to murder people, no one will see us coming.”

  “Ooh!” For daughters of an informer, my sisters were oddly innocent.

  “What’s up with Helena and Falco?”

  “The dinner. They were all stirred up by hearing about Aulus and Quintus going—and not being murdered, which would have been so distinguished. They started stressing about some secret old plot, then stormed off in two directions today.”

  “Well, if they never come home, bring Postumus and pop up to mine. With Tiberius away, I can look after you.” I was never maternal but I had looked after my siblings many times and had even grown fond of them.

  “Oh, they’ll be here again once they’ve thought up more wit to snarl at each other. We’ll wait until after Tiberius is home. We like him. When’s he coming back?”

  “He can’t say.”

  “When do you think?”

  “It’s medical. If he can’t say, how can I know?”

  They considered that.

  My sisters exclaimed that Fania Faustina having pregnancy problems was terrible; they believed this, yet I knew they could not imagine it. For Julia and Favonia, babies were sweet bundles to play with, then to hand back as soon as they pooed or began crying.

  “Are you and Tiberius going to have any?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  This giddy pair might soon start their own families. They were beautiful and had wealthy parents; chancers would snap them up. Then they would learn fast: the fears and misery of pregnancy, the danger of birth, the lifelong trials that followed … They swiftly lost interest in Fania and wanted to come out with me, shopping. They dropped it once they knew where I had to go. Building materials held no appeal.

  * * *

  I liked the Embankment for its busy interest, but I braced myself because it was thronged with hazards. Our family house stood in a part where the space between the Aventine cliff and the Tiber was so narrow that little happened nowadays. I turned left. As I moved downriver, the jetties widened into a mile of commercial activity that was ever changing and expanding. Barges from Ostia and light ships that could manoeuvre the sludgy currents drew up at long wharves where big stone bosses, some formed as lions’ heads, allowed mooring by low-in-the-water transports. Making hurried stops while a procession of others queued for the unloading bays, the boats disgorged every kind of raw material. To receive the incoming goods there were ramps or block-faced revetments, with storage bins carved into the hillside
and open areas.

  The riverbank was no place to stroll. Winches and cranes posed a constant danger. Pedestrians were cursed and buffeted. Some dock labourers viewed knocking over other people as a hereditary right, passed on by their bale-toting ancestors. They probably had a points system and could claim a free drink for each casualty.

  Pride of place in the Emporium area went to the enormous building called the Porticus Aemilius, where I was going. It had to be over fifteen hundred feet long, divided into bays that were themselves the size of meeting halls. It stood in front of the massive Granary of Galba, which fed the city and had military guards who, if not much else, liked to chuck stones at rats. Only very bold rats invaded the Emporium, which was a deafening hive of entrepreneurs. These days, especially with a huge imperial building programme, it mainly received marble. Most other commodities had been diverted elsewhere, though there were plenty of exotic smells: spices, leather, rich woods, incense. You could buy glass, carpets or ivory. Endless barrels of wine, oil and seafood arrived there daily, along with straw-layered towers of glossy red pottery so Rome could eat and drink the imported produce.

  Only a banquet like the Emperor’s would have tableware bought wholesale at the Emporium. Normally, goods came in, then were swiftly moved out to retailers. The Emporium was crammed with negotiators who would earn fees by facilitating this. No city in the world had such slick supply-lines as Rome. Nowhere had such a grasp of economic truth too: if it’s cheap, people feel suspicious. Beef up your price. End users are such idiots they expect multiple layers of on-cost to accrue, before the one-man pedlar brings his tray to their gate or the rude stall-holder fiddles their change.