A Comedy of Terrors Read online

  “Tonight? Oh, is it?” breezed Tiberius.

  “No doubt you are going.” Murrius ignored his feigning. “I shall expect you and the good Morellus when I see you, Aedile! With sore heads.” The seditious crook then said he was sorry about our sheep, and if he heard anything about who was responsible for the incident, he would let us know.

  With our doors already opened for him to leave, Murrius paused. He stooped down and spoke to the children, like a friendly uncle. Tiberius and I were trapped: they were with us; he was being pleasant; objection would look churlish. After giving them a copper each (again we could not stop him), he straightened and told us they reminded him of his own two when they were this age. “My son and daughter have a parrot,” he gravely informed Gaius and Lucius. “Do come along to our house and see it, if you like.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” I jumped in, using the motherly code that means, not if I can help it! Like any deluded parent, I hoped that overnight they would forget the invitation, though eager glances passed between them. Fortunately, they were still young enough, and shy enough, to hide behind our legs saying nothing. Lucius was attempting to eat his as. Gaius had quickly pocketed his.

  We waved off Murrius. Our two immediately went racing to tell Glaphyra they were going to see a parrot.

  Surprisingly, Glaphyra flared up. “Oh no! I know what this is about. Don’t you suppose I will take those children to that man’s house, Flavia Albia! I had enough of this kind of thing with your ridiculous parents. I put my foot down with them and the same goes for you.”

  “What kind of thing?” asked Tiberius.

  She liked him. She thought he was noble, sensible, and obviously put upon by me, the uncaring flighty one from the untrustworthy province. “Don’t you worry, Aedile. We can sort this out. Flavia Albia knows exactly what I mean.”

  “If there is some kind of problem,” Tiberius cajoled, “I feel I have a right to know. I am responsible for the welfare of you all. Please tell me.”

  Glaphyra was burning with indignation. “I will not be used to go into houses and—” she could barely bring herself to say the words “—find things out for you!”

  I told her I had never even thought of it. That was true although, given my upbringing, the idea immediately appealed.

  “Dear Glaphyra!” exclaimed Tiberius, that grey-eyed confidence trickster. “I would never countenance any such a thing.”

  He wagged a finger at me deviously. I looked apologetic, as if Helena and Falco’s unscrupulous methods could not possibly be mine. The nurse simmered down, reassured.

  When Glaphyra took the boys for their supper, Tiberius and I immediately dived into a salon where we began to plot how we could utilise the suggested visit. The boys were already friends with some vigiles’ children; now we would despatch them to cosy up to a gangster’s son and daughter. “You don’t think he intends to kidnap them and blackmail us?” Tiberius did have nervous second thoughts.

  “No. They are going. Stop wondering about his motives! See it as a friendly offer. Perhaps he simply likes children. A man who remains miserably in love with a runaway wife must be very soft-hearted.”

  “But is it immoral? Unfair use of infants?” My husband had been a magistrate much too long: spelling out rules had got to him.

  “No, darling. Murrius knows our work. Digging into his household can’t count as subterfuge.”

  “You or I ought to go with them.”

  “Much too obvious. We need one of our staff, who can wheedle his staff unobtrusively.” I had in mind one who could do it and who would love to.

  “All right.” Tiberius subsided.

  At once he changed tack and told me, “Incidentally, I had a quiet word with your Uncle, Lucius Petronius.”

  “Is he happy with us about the decoration boughs?”

  “Oh, the thrill of a fight took care of that! He went off for a drink with Morellus and his men, though according to Petro it’s likely he’ll find them dug in with the Murrius bodyguards too. Maybe not the invalid with Rodan’s spearhead stuck in him. Anyway, while Petro was still here, I asked his opinion about Murrius and his brother, since he had made those comments about their father.”

  “Petronius knew everyone in his day—he arrested most of them. What does he say?”

  “Their loans business goes back generations. He remembers the family—so deeply embedded among the Aventine poor, they are like lichen on the native rock. The father used cruel methods, and the brother is hard, but Petronius reckons once the father was exiled, a decision was taken to keep low, out of the authorities’ sight. So he isn’t convinced the brothers will have branched out. Trade warfare’s not their style and much too visible for them.”

  “Has he any ideas who the real nut-scammers are?”

  “No. Well, not yet.”

  I smiled. “Uncle Lucius has forgotten he retired. He will be nosing around, I imagine, asking questions for you?”

  Tiberius smiled back. “Morellus got hardly anywhere trying to set up Agemathus and Victor as informants. So, I rather hope Lucius Petronius will do just that!”

  He paused. I knew what was coming.

  Tomorrow was the first, most important, day of the festival. All decent men must be at home, pretending to enjoy themselves among their families. Everyone would be on holiday, even the vigiles. Tonight, therefore, the Fourth Cohort would hold their Saturnalia drinks party. Good men were free to be bad tonight and the vigiles would do it with traditions they had made their own: riotously, lengthily, absolutely disgustingly.

  Tiberius had been invited, I already knew. He asked again whether I minded, but I gave him the expected answer, “No, of course not, darling, you go out and enjoy yourself. If Aunt Junia does the catering don’t touch her meatballs. Please try to come home sober…” He said Petronius was coming back to pick him up, since he knew the way to the venue (always a secret, to prevent gate-crashers).

  Even Tiberius, a brave man, looked apprehensive. “I ought to be sociable, love. I had better go. I won’t stay long.”

  “Ha! I won’t wait up.”

  “Just one drink with them.”

  And all the others they offer you!

  I told him he would know better next year. Then I hugged him as if he was going away to the wars. I said I had been widowed once so I knew how to cope, but I made him promise to be brought back to me alive.

  XLV

  My mother had given me succinct advice about husband-management: “Feed him and listen to him. Choose what he wears, but not so he notices. Always try to stop him going to the Fourth Cohort’s drinks.”

  Hey-ho. And, indeed, io!

  * * *

  Petronius Longus picked up my man for their night of debauchery. Those two would not be seen dead in gauzy dinner robes. Petro had dressed down as if he still belonged in the cohort but with a better shave, since retirement left him all day to sit at the barber’s complaining about modern life. I had steered Tiberius into a quiet ochre tunic, one he had owned for a while, so if it came home past laundering, never mind.

  On their way out, they passed Dromo returning from my sisters. Julia and Favonia had created a home-made costume in which he would look suitably crazy for his kingly role. He had walked through the streets in it, though managed to escape assault. Were it not for familiar knock-knees, skinny legs and semi-destructed sandals, he was so enclosed he might have been unrecognisable.

  He was a gourd. The body came up to his neck with an extra knobble for his head. His gormless face looked out from a circle of marrow vines, into which the girls had pinned home-made large bright white artificial flowers. My sisters could be a wicked pair.

  “Good grief, young man, we could hang you up as an oscillum and everyone would be impressed.”

  Dromo was less sure. I had thought there might be an old carrot costume at my parents’ home or, if the girls could still find it, the turnip. Those legendary relics of past Saturnalia events had gone missing, it seemed. Nevertheless, the reluctant D
romo had been grabbed by my eager siblings. Even Postumus had taught him a weird rolling walk to use while dressed up.

  Dromo did not want to be a gourd. Heartlessly, we told him that waddling around in a fat-suit as an African calabash was wonderful. “You wouldn’t have wanted to be a cucumber—you’d need to keep bending, and green is not your colour!”

  Petro and Tiberius abandoned that tease because a herdsman who had been on the drink all afternoon drove a string of pigs in garlands up Lesser Laurel Street, heading them off to be temple sacrifices. Thinking little of this, the pigs broke free. The subsequent chaos called for strong men who knew what they were doing, or thought so. My husband and uncle strode in with manly cries of “Hep!” and “Yours!” Time passed agreeably for observers as they herded the porkers around in the road, while the animals ran into houses through any open doors, doubled back squealing hysterically, then charged in a massed phalanx to knock our gourd’s legs from under him. His suit was stuffed with straw and wool so Dromo was unhurt, but encumbered with padding and could not struggle back upright.

  Petronius and Tiberius remembered they had an urgent appointment where they were wasting drinking time; they shrugged at the mayhem and made off. Gratus and I pulled Dromo indoors by his enormous feet. One of his flowers had fallen off, but Barley brought it in. Glaphyra sat him down while she sewed it back on for him. “Hold still, or it’s going wonky.”

  “Do I start giving people orders now?”

  “Tomorrow, Dromo.” By tomorrow, he might have forgotten any bad jokes that my brother had taught him. Postumus had been King-for-the-Day more times than Tantalus reached for the hostess tray and had it snatched away. My brother loved it. He had exactly the right mix of humour, bravado and cruelty.

  “If it’s not until tomorrow, how am I supposed to get out of the costume, when I want to go to sleep tonight?”

  “How did you get into this ball of rind in the first place, Dromo?”

  “They made it on me.”

  “Bad news, then!”

  “Oh, no!” wailed the King, in horrified misery. “What happens if I need—” his voice dropped shyly “—a toilet?”

  “Settle down, boy.” Glaphyra was starting to treat the daft slave as just another child she had to look after. “Those young girls are intelligent. Very thoughtful! They have put a nice placket up your back. We can let you out and lace you back again whenever necessary.”

  During the fracas, one piglet had somehow ended up trotting all on its own through our courtyard, straight into Fornix’s kitchen where it pronged itself onto his meat rod and laid itself ready on his firedogs, pleading for flames. That was my cook’s story, one that must have been repeated across the Aventine. It was said not a single sacrificial swine made it to the altar that evening. Local demand for sage and for crackling salt went sky high.

  “Why didn’t my master want me to go out with him?”

  “You’re too nice, Dromo. This party will be too wild for you.”

  Besides, Tiberius had heard enough in advance to realise what the vigiles, when dangerously sloshed, might decide they could do with a helpless human gourd.

  “Won’t he need someone with a lantern to help him see his way back home?”

  “No, he will be too tiddly to care. You can go out tomorrow morning, looking for him. Take your handcart. When you find which gutter he ends up in, you can load him onto it.”

  Dromo looked appalled. Paris explained I was joking. Gratus gave me a look as if he feared I might not be. This all passed some of the time while I stayed at home worrying.

  * * *

  I was unhappy about Tiberius being in bad company, but I set it aside to wallow in personal gloom. Even though I had sworn I would not give up work, there was no work. Every time a situation arose where I might normally be called in, either it turned out that no problem existed, or else people just gave up. Where was the usual whining for justice? Was this the future? Everyone would be saying, “No thanks, Albia.” They did not need help. They reckoned the authorities were doing a fine job. I was too expensive. They had already hired someone else who worked in the Saepta Julia …

  That called to mind Naevius, even though he worked from the Forum not the Saepta. I was consoled now by his wise words: there would be clients after Saturnalia, clients who would start feeling the pinch of their personal unhappiness as soon as the festival got going.

  Then I remembered an odd remark from Nephele. The first time she called on me, she had looked down her nose at my professional prospectus, but later mentioned having tried out hiring Naevius. With our paterfamilias out taking risks, it was a quiet evening at home. Nobody needed me. Now that I knew her commission was a mirage, I decided to see whether Naevius could shed any light on this odd, deceptive woman.

  That presumed I could find him, of course.

  XLVI

  I took Paris. I am not completely mad. I would have brought along the dog too, but Barley was too wise to venture out. She applied her “But it’s raining!” face and scampered kennel-wards. It was not wet outside but, if I was honest, she had the right idea.

  Though fine weather-wise, it was a wild evening on the Aventine. We scuttled downhill at a fast pace, trying not to notice things that were going on. Down in the valley, there were even worse fights and screams in the arcades around the Circus Maximus, with onlookers who stood munching Xero’s pies as if this was paid entertainment. That was when they weren’t throwing up on the pavement due to drink taken in astronomical quantities.

  We turned right. Not even I would try passing through the meat and vegetable markets. They would be sordid. We tramped around the Circus to haul past the Palatine, though when we approached the Sacred Way the Amphitheatre was closed off, perhaps in preparation for Domitian’s festival banquet. We dodged revellers by the Arch of Titus and the Sweating Fountain. There were a lot of people around the Colossus, which Vespasian had remodelled from Nero’s self-glorified portrait of himself. Now it was Sol Invictus, the Undying Sun, that this festival celebrated. Eventually we squeezed through, to get up and across the Forum. The Basilica Aemilia had officially closed for the holiday but there were still events in what many considered the most beautiful building in Rome. What was happening in its triple naves and up against its semi-Doric columns was filthy. It was no place for me, passing myself off as a respectable matron. Paris muttered it was no place for him either.

  He wanted us to go home, before we were either assaulted or arrested. On the promise of a drink, I managed to drag him around a few back-of-the-Forum bars where Naevius might be. Each time I nipped down an alley, I had to pretend I knew a shortcut home. We found Naevius in the Corinthian, his favourite.

  He was dicing by himself. This was partly because, as an informer, he was assumed to be broke. Also, nobody wanted to play with him in case they said something unwise in their cups and he grassed on them to the authorities. Normally he would do no such thing, but tonight he was in his cups too.

  While Paris tried to get in drinks from the hectic waiters, I explained what I wanted, spelling out in simple words how Nephele had approached me, then fooled me. I held back on what her husband did for a living.

  Naevius claimed client confidentiality. I said she was not his client. She was never even mine. “Therefore no strings, Naevius!”

  Paris came back from the bar, wincing at the noise, bearing goblets that he had filled himself and so far not paid for. Naevius reached eagerly. He was drunk enough to dig in his heels over Nephele, so I grabbed the gambling cup, rattled dice around, like an over-confident amateur, then offered to play him in return for information. He was a patsy, too far gone to object, though I saw that Paris had a knowing smirk. Poor Naevius then discovered that I had learned how to play from my father, then practised throwing with an ex-marine. Dice is a game of chance, Falco and Lentullus had told me. The key thing is, you have to cheat.

  Naevius was a pleasant character. Once I had thrashed him, he coughed up his story with a rueful grin.
“You’ve got me. Look, you know how prospective clients arrive with no real idea of what they want, then try out daft ideas on you? Nephele was one of those. At least, when she finished messing me about, I decided that that was it.”

  “Tell me, Naevius.”

  Paris went on the hunt for olives.

  “I never did any real work for her.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I could have told you, Albia, she’s a time-waster. Her story was, the first time she appeared that is, it was. Let’s get it right: her sister was thinking about getting married, to Nephele’s husband’s nephew—if you follow me.”

  Oh, I did. The two-timing non-payer of goldsmiths.

  “Nephele believed the young man was playing Cupid elsewhere. She wanted to protect her sister from disappointment. That was what she said anyway. My nose was twitching. I thought there might be more to it. Didn’t trust her. But fair enough. I could do that. Standard. I was only supposed to find out if the young fellow was honest.”

  “She didn’t try out a wonky tale she passed off on me, about her own husband playing away from home with Laetilla, the loan-shark harridan?”

  “No.”

  “Laetilla is his sister anyway.”

  “Incest!”

  “Not specified, and not tested—but I don’t think so.”

  “Presumably the wife would know who Laetilla was?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t. Pointing me that way was a dodgy try-on. I wonder if she wanted to distract her husband by having me following him around. Then he would not notice her plotting to elope.”

  “She eloped? You are too good for such people, Albia!” giggled Naevius, taking in more wine, though in my opinion he was silly enough already.

  “Thanks, friend.” I could accept undeserved credit from a man in his condition.

  “Nephele was very organised,” he said. “I told her the usual background I needed, and she sent me details on the nephew same day. Name, age, appearance, haunts, associates and filthy habits.”