A Comedy of Terrors Read online

  I passed by the Lumber Room. I thought I heard a door-hinge, but when I looked back it was closed, with the place in darkness as usual. No one was buying Gifts of Charm. No one ever would. On a whim I clucked at Barley and walked back to peer inside. If anyone had suddenly appeared, looking out at me through the shutter, I would have been terrified. No one did.

  At our own building, I had brought my key to the lock on the metal gate, which I found Rodan had properly secured. However, when I walked through the entrance and out into the old laundry yard, I saw at once that people had been in. They had smashed open a gate from the back lane. This was not simple vandalism: they seemed to have been industrious. Bits of old line were strung, criss-crossing the open area; new candles hung in pairs from string loops, their wax drying. Typically for Fountain Court, these wobbly, wind-bobbing artefacts looked meagre: one-dip wonders. They would either flare and splutter out, or shrivel down to nothing much too fast.

  I was oddly furious that people had invaded our building. I had lived here. I married and lost a husband here. Struggled and suffered, then learned to tolerate my situation until I met Tiberius. Now, as my father loved to tease me, the funds from selling up would be my inheritance one day. Well, mine, Mother’s, my sisters’, my brother’s—plus another score of hangers-on that Falco claimed he had to look after. “You can have all the loot but take note: it comes with blood-sucking parasites!”

  We had our own freeloaders, without giving half-baked Fountain Court artisans unlicensed use of our space. Muttering, I pulled down all the candles, wound up the lines, marched through the back gate into the manured gully that passed for a track, then flung the pathetic lights outside. On a whim I kept a pair to show Tiberius and Morellus, in case they matched the candles left by those arsonists who burned the Rosius apartment.

  Whoever owned the rest would need to come before scavengers descended. Given where we were, eyes were probably watching me. In the laundry’s old fuel store, I found lumps of charcoal and wrote on the back wall:

  DANGEROUS SITE

  DO NOT TRESPASS

  YES, THAT MEANS YOU, PUNKS

  NO PAY-OUT FOR ACCIDENTS

  * * *

  That would be a useful health-and-safety guide for intruders who could read.

  Inside the yard again, I piled old props, planks and a holed laundry tub against the back gate. This was my gesture for illiterate ones, or idiots who simply ignored my sign.

  I found Rodan’s purse. I dug it up easily, since the big booby had left the short-handled spade he’d used to bury it leaning on a wall right there.

  Quietly I left the Eagle Building, hoping this time was the last time. It was an enduring feature of Fountain Court that you felt you could never escape.

  * * *

  As I came into the alley, a man slipped out of the Lumber Room. He was tightly cloaked against the winter, wearing a liberty cap pulled right down. From behind, he had the familiar shifty lope used by everyone around here, where even people who were managing to get by looked like losers, while anyone who was slightly successful hated anybody else to know.

  Now when I went past the shop it had a very faint light inside as if someone had stayed behind there. I carried on and picked up Rodan. He was gibbering in case the man who had emerged had been one of the scary crew who tried to bully him. I offered to go after him to ask him nicely not to do it again. Rodan started to create even more; by then the man had vanished.

  I would never have tackled the stranger in any case. We now had the money purse so I wanted to move on quickly. I was still grasping the spade (it was too good to leave), which might have been misinterpreted as a threat—never wise when speaking to a neighbour in Fountain Court. Who are you looking at? Want to try it, then?

  Rodan and I set off homewards in silence. I was feeling dark nostalgia, a result of visiting the old place again. Perhaps that accounted for my sudden fantasy about the furtive man. Even from behind he had seemed familiar from elsewhere, somewhere a thousand miles from here and many years before … He looked like Florius. But I knew it could not be.

  Still, people who worked for Florius were in Rome. I should have thought of it before, but the Lumber Room had once belonged to the father-in-law, Balbinus Pius. That was why Balbina Milvia would know about it, as Spendo had said. She and her husband must now be the owners. How could I have been so slow? Well, one reason was that I hadn’t lived in Rome then. I did not automatically make a link to a gangster like Balbinus Pius who had died before my time.

  “Rodan, has anyone been using that old shop, the one full of junk that’s never bought or sold?”

  “The place Falco says is for stolen goods?”

  “That place.” Rodan looked vague, but I knew he was always nosy and never disturbed by ethics. “I don’t suppose—well, let’s face it, Rodan, I do suppose—when you thought nobody was there, you broke in for a quick look around?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rodan admitted easily. If he’d ever had brains they were pulped long ago. And the clumsy lump was bound to have left behind traces of a nocturnal visit. I bet they realised he had been in—I bet that was why they’d applied frighteners, to stop him going in there.

  “What are they up to inside?”

  “Some horrible skipper and his boys store a lot of sacks.”

  “Nuts?”

  “Could be. They bring them in, they take them out again. Then they bring in new ones.”

  “Who is the big rissole?”

  “What?”

  “The horrible skipper you mentioned?”

  “I don’t know.” Then how can you call him horrible, Rodan? “I’ve never seen him and they don’t like people asking questions. Those boys of his are the ones who muscled in on me.”

  “They probably wanted to keep you out of their shop. Was their skipper with them that night?”

  “No. But another one was, a young man who comes along all the time to open up for deliveries.”

  “You’ve seen him? Can you describe him, Rodan?”

  “Just a man.”

  “Young, you say?”

  “Well, younger than the chief.”

  “I thought you said you had never seen the chief?”

  “Well, maybe. Somebody who made them all jump was in there one day, but I stayed at home in my cubicle.”

  “That’s so helpful! Was it the opener-upper who just walked down the alley today? Had he been there to shutter up?”

  “No, it wasn’t him.”

  “Sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “The place used to be deserted. No one used it for years. Extra activity is interesting.”

  “Right!” said Rodan, not at all interested.

  I was now thinking that if we had not had his purse to keep safe, I might go back and break in myself. Caution took over. I changed tack. “Rodan, someone is making tapers and drying them in our old yard.”

  “Falco won’t like that. I bet it’s them from the shop. It’s for Saturnalia.”

  “Badly made rubbish to sell for the festival?”

  His voice dropped. “When they hustled me the other night, they threatened they would set me on fire. The man who opens up said it, the cocky one. He said burning people alive was his speciality.”

  “Rodan, that’s an appalling threat.”

  “I’m not scared.” He was, extremely. “Afterwards they all made out they were only joking. But I knew they could do it, because when I was in the shop I saw they have a great big container full of sulphur matches.”

  “Really? No wonder there’s a shortage.”

  “They’re not any good.” He must have pinched a few and tried to use them. Rodan then told me something else he saw that was crazier: “They’ve got a big stuffed lion in that shop. I thought it was a real one—I scarpered out of there when it looked at me, I can tell you!”

  Ah! Pardon my pickiness, but I think that lion was a leopard. And not stuffed, Rodan, but preserved by the best priestly Egyptian methods.


  So! Murrius was keeping his mummified cat there; Rodan had seen it. Now I had identified the lock-up, I was stunned to realise that the bully who came to open for deliveries must be Greius.

  XXXIX

  As we neared home, we saw someone trying to escape from a friend: Pinarius and the pal who wanted his money back. “I have to have it, man! The goldsmith has delivered a stinking ultimatum. He must be paid before the holiday.”

  I stopped to listen.

  “Let go of me, old mucker,” Pinarius suggested, sounding polite as he attempted to free his tunic, which the other man had grasped so hard at the neck it was ripping. It was a good garment, sound cloth with long warm sleeves, a decent fit around the body. The owner was almost suspended. Pinarius might look as if he used his gymnasium membership for falling asleep on the massage slab, but his assailant’s muscular shoulders and legs were the results of serious weight-lifting. “Leave off and I’ll fetch your cash…” He was fibbing in my opinion.

  “You said that the last time!”

  “Now I’m serious.” No, he was still lying. But the angry debtor loosened his grip so Pinarius had his feet back on the ground. “I’ve got it safe, you know I have, Quintus. The goldsmith was stupid. He should never have let you take the chain home.” It was common practice to release goods on approval, though it led to a great deal of non-payment.

  “Two chains!” snarled the buyer, Quintus. Still, he released Pinarius at last. “Two, in case both desperate ladies wanted one—which the greedy kittens both did, surprise, surprise! I can’t hold him off any longer. He’s already badgering my uncle for some debt he stupidly ran up, and now he’s really got me by the goolies. He’ll be complaining to my father next.”

  “He may already have done.” Pinarius had stepped well back, brushing down his clothes. He pulled his cloak across, as if to protect his tunic from further ripping.

  “Oh, sod him! My old man told me to stop screwing around. You know I gave you the cash to stop him getting his hands on it. He’s trying to tie up my funds so I can’t hand out girlfriend presents. Has my pater had a go at you?”

  “He may have tried,” Pinarius hedged nervously.

  “Well, sod him too!” roared the other. “He can’t accept that I live and work in another sphere now. You’ll have to choose. Are you more frightened of him—or of me?”

  “Oh, you!” admitted Pinarius, straight away.

  “Get my cash, then! I’ll be in Dolichenus Street.” His friend thrust Pinarius hard against a wall to emphasise the urgency, then went beetling off, as if he assumed it was a done deal.

  As Rodan and I passed Pinarius, he was still straightening his tunic and adjusting his cloak brooch, a roundel with a face on it, pudgy and dim-looking. He himself was finer-featured, someone I had regularly seen around our neighbourhood, so I gave him a friendly smile. He nodded back. We were in sight of home; I pushed Rodan on his way, while I stayed to talk.

  “He meant that!” I sympathised, while Pinarius rubbed a bruised arm. “For Heaven’s sake, why on earth are you not returning his money, sunshine? Have you spent it?”

  “I have not!” Pinarius retorted hotly.

  “Give it to him, then.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “I can’t tell him why.”

  “Never mind him, just tell me! That goldsmith won’t give up, you know—they tend to persist. Share,” I wheedled shamelessly. “You will feel better. What’s the story, Pinarius?”

  Using his name had an effect; he probably thought I might know his mother. Indeed, this was possible, if she used Prisca’s baths. “It’s his venomous father who forbade me to give him back the money.”

  “Has the pater grabbed the cash off you?”

  “No, it’s not his to pinch. My friend earned it working for someone even more aggressive—though that’s another story. We were mates once, but Quintus has gone to the bad since he joined forces with new people. His own damned father is never slow to argue, but even he is leery because he farmed out their boy as a business deal—supposedly to gain experience. Which he certainly has, the cocky sod!”

  “Experience in what?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I close my eyes to the dark arts of commerce.”

  His friend had not struck me as someone with an apprenticeship. Basically, he did not look like anyone who worked. Neither did: they were trust-fund tots—big signet rings and dressed in different tunics every time I saw them. They were about the same age, middle twenties. When they grew up, perhaps by forty, they would merge into the crowd as commodity traders, becoming fathers themselves and creating wealth to spoil their own vacuous children. Clean hands, dirty ethics: normal for Rome.

  I sighed gently. “‘Two chains,’ he said. Lad about town? Splurging in wild, exciting ways? Well, two-timing girlfriends is routine in some circles. I suppose his father has learned what he’s up to, so he wants to put a stop to it? Reputation. Family honour. Junior will never rise in society if he behaves like a low-grade adulterer—well, not if all the world knows about it. It’s time he cleaned up his act, which he has no doubt been ordered to do many times?”

  Pinarius nodded mournfully. “They are making him get married. Supposed to settle him down. Also it’s making another link to those people he’s gone to work with.”

  “Lovely!” My tone must have been drab. “Then he’ll two-time the wife.”

  “He’d better be careful! She has a powerful family. I wouldn’t want her brother coming after me. He won’t cope well with a let-down.” Smiling sadly, Pinarius admitted, “Quintus is asking for it, I’m afraid. He’s fixed up a bachelor love-nest. He’s thinking he can juggle any number of conquests. He and his wife will be living with his parents, so his mistress can be kept in his getaway. Mind you, I hear his women are starting to feel suspicious of him.”

  “And also his father?”

  “As soon as that old bastard can pinpoint exactly how young Quintus carries on, just listen for the war-cries.”

  “You are caught in the middle?”

  Pinarius groaned. “Skewered!” the stressed young man admitted. “His pater knows mine. I could end up in trouble at home for something that was never my fault. I have two fledgling brothers jostling in the nest and I need to look blameless. Besides, I do not want to be anywhere nearby when the Cornelli start disembowelling each other. And the bride’s brother is terrifying.”

  “Who are the Cornelli? And the bride’s brother?”

  “If you don’t know them, Flavia Albia, be glad.”

  He was taking off. As he went, I called after him that this was Saturnalia. At times of joy and reconciliation, in almost every family some war occurs, whether it has been declared or not. Pinarius replied over one shoulder that the Cornelli would not pause for formalities. “During a war, Rome opens the doors of the Temple of Janus to show there’s conflict somewhere. The Cornelli don’t bother. They simply go for people. When tomorrow’s feast is at its height, pop your head out of a window and listen for the screams.”

  I hallooed after him down the street that I hoped it would not be him screaming. Pinarius raised an arm as he went loping off. All around was festival merriment, even though it was still only afternoon.

  XL

  The clamour died behind me as I closed our front doors. Once inside, street noise was muffled. I paused, listening to the quiet of the house. All sounded well.

  I left my cloak on a chest in the entrance, then went in to conduct a fast survey. Suza was talking to Paris, with Paris patiently enduring Suza’s nonsense. Gratus was talking to Fornix, who was busily cooking since tomorrow was the main feast; Fornix, concentrating, would not talk back. Barley, who had scuttled for home when I stopped to chat with Pinarius, lay in her kennel, hoping for scraps. There was no sign of Dromo; he must have gone to see my sisters, asking them to fix him up with a King-for-the-Day costume.

  The yard door stood open; beyond, I could hear Rodan trying not to grow agita
ted with the boys. He obviously wanted to hide his purse in secret. Gaius and Lucius sensed it, so kept hanging around in the yard. Glaphyra was sitting in the courtyard with her big feet on a stool, finishing a liberty cap that one of the children had messed up. When I appeared, she tossed the second piece of work at me. She knew I could knit. She had taught me. I sat down to do it, unravelling some wonky rows first.

  Hearing our voices, Tiberius joined us. He joked that at last he had a house where women worked in wool.

  “Put a stopper in it, Aedile!” Glaphyra looked harmless, but she had worked for my mother so automatically squashed anything daft.

  Smiling openly, I told him my conclusions about the Lumber Room. He sent Paris to advise Morellus that I had identified a lock-up connected to Greius; he passed on the candles I’d brought for matching with those at the arson scene. This would be a long shot, but it was good for a raid, or they could deploy the old had-a-report-of-a-fire-hazard method. The vigiles never bothered with warrants. They had right of entry any time they smelt smoke—or when they said they had. Loath to go out again simply to be a sightseer while the troops stormed the property, Tiberius stayed at home. Morellus would send word of any developments.

  My lead was welcome. Intense enquiries by the vigiles had failed to turn up anything else on Greius: neither an address nor even a suggested neighbourhood to start their winkling. Everyone was now sure he was the active facilitator, the man in the community, though if Greius was not the gang chief, his commandant was even more elusive. “When we started,” Tiberius summed up, “Morellus was hoping to nip this in the bud. He reckons the secretive mobster wants to control the whole Hill. That was why I agreed to help. Now it looks as if the trouble has got away from us. This new outfit has a free hand and is expanding its reach too fast for us.”