Enemies at Home: Falco: The New Generation - Flavia Albia 2 Read online

  ‘Oho! Then your devoted aedile will be even more keen on you.’

  ‘I told you before; he’s not mine!’

  I mimed a lute-plucking gesture. It did no good. Uncle Quintus would keep harping.

  I munched a bite but did not dally. Still leading a tired Dromo, I skirted around the southern side of the Palatine, capped with its summit-top burden of marble palaces. We trudged past the apsidal end of the Circus Maximus, then kept going on the flat along the long western side, until we were below the part of the Aventine that held the Temple of Ceres. We climbed slowly up the hill, a short ascent but steep, then we crossed to the aediles’ office beside the squat old-style temple with its wide-set thick pillars and its air of Greek disdain.

  As we completed that last part of our journey, I felt a twinge of homecoming. Why should this be? There were the same dusty tenements and introverted private mansions as on the Esquiline, the same teeming stalls and bars, the same colourful crowds in the street. Yet even the taste and smell of the air seemed different. I found myself coughing mildly, before my lungs became acclimatised. It was still June, so the roses that grew in enclosed gardens and the lilies in sun-baked doorstep pots were zapping out pollen at their top rate. The bakers, fishmongers and greengrocers arranged their loaves, sardines and vegetables in special Aventine patterns. Street cries had a new ring. When Aventine dogs chose rats and litter to bark at, they woofed from shallower lungs. Working on the largest, highest hill in Rome, Aventine mules developed a special wheeze. Some of the people had it too. You could hear it when they cursed, every time they made a bad judgement while crossing a road where the dung was deep.

  Home. I was home. I realised that although this case had intrigued me, I had not enjoyed working in what had been somebody else’s house, far from my base, a stranger in the neighbourhood. I yearned for my own apartment, containing my own things. However much I derided my own folk, I was longing to be back among them. I wanted the laundry where they still had a tunic and sheet of mine, the bakery and bath house where I had built up customer goodwill, the caupona run by my relatives. Once the rest of them returned from the coast, I wanted to be among my own family in our riverbank town house.

  I did not regret working for Manlius Faustus. I would do it again, if ever he asked me. I knew, as a woman, that was a distinct possibility. He had a germ of interest in me that would drag him back. Even so, it would be better if I could somehow turn in this commission with a satisfactory final report.

  I was feeling low, as if I had lost my confidence.

  I felt truly grim, though I presumed I had the hangover from Hades after that Caecuban wine. Had it gone bad in the ageing process? Was the gorgeous flavour an illusion? Even my stomach seemed to be growling, which could not be from what I had eaten with my uncle just now. Claudia kept a well-run house. She never served slimy salad or covered up the smell of bad meat with strong sauces. You don’t risk six small children performing synchronised diarrhoea.

  I preferred not even to think about that.

  Well, biliousness could be useful when I had stubborn suspects to interrogate. I would like to believe kindness works, but I knew from experience that shouting at people and tetchily suggesting you are going to throw them to the beasts often has a quicker effect and produces more details.

  So in that spirit, for the last time I went in to see the slaves.

  55

  Faustus was not there. He had left me an extremely peevish note (‘should your condition ever allow you to appear’).

  I guessed he was upset that I had not come to carry out interviews this morning according to my promise. But now here I was, bringing the answers he hired me to find: I had identified the killer of the bridal couple. Even better, I had found their missing property, which always carries more weight than mere life. His agent had succeeded. The killer had been identified and would be caught. Meanwhile I, the uncomplaining hireling, would also sort out what to do with these pesky slaves.

  The nine culprits – and they were all culprits, I believed – were loafing about in dappled shade in the garden as if they had no cares. I would put a stop to that.

  I hauled out Olympe, the fifteen-year-old, a soft target.

  I led the little sweetie-cake into the office, taking some comfort from its association with Manlius Faustus. I fussed about, as if preparing myself, adjusting furniture, laying out note tablets.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ I began conversationally, while I pretended to get ready.

  Olympe presumed the real interview had not yet started. She had never had any kind of regular employment; she was unfamiliar with being routinely messed about by some supervisor …

  As she had hinted previously, she grew up a member of a travelling group of Lusitanian musicians, all one big family; like most Iberian entertainers, they used tambourines and castanets, but also other traditional instruments, which they plied with frenzy while they danced and sang, and occasionally sliced one another up with traditional Lusitanian boning knives. Mucia Lucilia had seen them perform once; on one of her whims, she asked for Olympe and was sold her.

  Olympe had convinced herself her family were shocked by the money; she innocently believed that they intended to return it.

  ‘You ran away back to them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but my people explained to me we are obligated by a work contract.’

  ‘I have to disappoint you, sweetheart. That was not a contract, but a sale into slavery. Your people knew it too. Trust me, they understood perfectly what they were doing. When you ran away from Mucia Lucilia and came back to them, your relatives must have been terrified they would be accused of harbouring a fugitive slave, which is theft. For foreigners in Rome, that would be serious. No wonder they hauled you back to Mucia. In fact,’ I kept my voice grim, ‘in running away, you were a thief yourself, Olympe. The law says, you deprived your mistress of her property – I mean, you. Of all the people being held here, yours is the worst position. I may be able to extricate the rest, but a slave who is a known thief is almost impossible to save.’

  ‘I just want to go home!’

  ‘Poppet, you never will. Concentrate on ways to stay alive.’

  Olympe quivered nervously, a petite, pretty lyre-player who had been betrayed by her family and could not accept that the world was so horrid. Now she was all puppy fat and panic. I knew men who would want to wrap their arms around this poor palpitating bundle, kiss her better and set her scurrying free into the world (well, after they had their way with her). Sadly for her, her fate lay in my hands instead.

  I set aside my notes. I looked friendly – as friendly as a weasel, though not many of those can ever have strayed into the campfire light of the Lusitanian band. ‘Let’s have a talk, shall we, Olympe? See what I can do.’

  ‘What do you want to know, Albia?’ she replied, full of gratitude. I might have felt bad about cheating her, had I not been feeling seedy.

  I shrugged. I was easy. She cheered up. She couldn’t see danger. ‘Not a lot left,’ I told her. ‘I do know it was Cosmus who did those awful things that night at the apartment.’

  Olympe nodded. If I had realised before how naïve she was, I might have saved a lot of time. You don’t allow for anybody else being so completely daft. And this child played the flute and lyre, which demanded a degree of confidence …

  ‘So what did you all think,’ I asked, ‘when Cosmus started shouting?’

  ‘We were having our dinner—’

  ‘That was in the handsome room, the oecus?’

  ‘Yes. Cosmus must have come downstairs, like he often did, and he’d gone to see Myla. She was in the kitchen.’

  ‘Did Nicostratus let him in?’

  ‘Yes, Nicostratus was always getting into trouble with Polycarpus over it. Cosmus was supposed to stay in their apartment, except when he was collecting water, which he did in the mornings.’

  ‘But he kept coming back?’

  ‘He kept coming to see Myla. And of cour
se she let him.’

  ‘That was because …’ I answered it myself: ‘Myla was his mother.’

  ‘Yes,’ breathed Olympe in her sweet way. ‘I didn’t want to say that, Flavia Albia. I wasn’t sure if you knew.’

  I leaned back in my seat and gazed up at the ceiling. As a magistrate’s room, this was decently done. When Manlius Faustus grew bleary-eyed from counting street-cleaning fines, he could look up at a complicated coffered roof, picked out in several rich tints by a master decorator. Judging by her summer dining room, Mucia Lucilia would have liked to see the designer’s pattern book, though she might not have been able to afford him.

  Cosmus was one of Myla’s children.

  ‘So Cosmus is Myla’s boy, the only one of her family she was ever able to keep near her. This was achieved through Polycarpus taking pity, when Cosmus was put up for sale. The kind act didn’t work too well though, did it? Cosmus kept coming downstairs and hanging about, near his mother. He failed to settle down with Polycarpus and Graecina. Whenever he was unhappy, he came moping to mother. Later, when he heard Myla was to be sold, I suppose Cosmus thought he would lose her altogether … Did that make him very upset?’

  ‘Yes, Albia, he was,’ said Olympe, solemnly. ‘Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘Indeed. Myla was in anguish too, of course, trying to blank what was happening to her after all those years living in the same family, everything made worse by her pregnancy, everything made desperate because her master had now married. Cosmus was upset, an angry boy, about to lose the only person with whom he had any close relationship, any relationship at all, perhaps.’

  ‘Nobody would have much to do with him,’ Olympe confided, twisting her small child-like hands. ‘Nobody liked him or Myla, really.’

  ‘Let me work it out – so it’s the last night at the apartment. The last time anyone can appeal to Aviola and Mucia not to sell their slaves, including Myla.’

  ‘She was absolutely top of the list to go,’ said Olympe, not vindictively but full of simple excitement at seeing me set all this out.

  ‘Cosmus is down in the apartment, with his mother, both of them tormented and hysterical. He rushes into the main bedroom and starts shouting. Your master and mistress wake up, to find him pleading with them not to sell his mother. Perhaps, because he doesn’t have much idea of life, he is even ordering them, not to make her go. I guess at first – because they know Cosmus – they simply try to reason with him. That is why nobody heard them call for help. They never did. They were not expecting what happened next. Cosmus may have already said to Myla he intended to do something drastic if they would not change their minds. Myla is hiding in terror of what he will in fact do, dreading it no doubt, because she needs Aviola alive to protect her interests. Cosmus is overcome by his frustration. In his terrible anger, he strangles your master and mistress … then what, Olympe?’

  ‘We had heard him shouting, so we went out and saw Cosmus run into the kitchen, crying. Myla was there, sobbing wildly too. They were both in a tremendous state. Amaranta rushed into the bedroom, as soon as she saw the doors open. So she found the bodies.’

  Well, it was good to know I had been told one sorry fact correctly.

  ‘Amaranta finds them. So now Cosmus and Myla are both in the kitchen − weeping and clinging to each other? Or did his mother denounce what he had done?’

  ‘Weeping and clinging,’ confirmed Olympe, sadly. ‘Myla never told him off; she was the only person who never yelled or beat him … Then they just went very quiet together.’

  ‘Polycarpus came down from his own house. Why did he? Was it really just a feeling of unease, or had he missed Cosmus at home, so was worried about the troubled boy?’

  ‘He was worried. Scared what Cosmus meant to do.’

  ‘So! Polycarpus sees what has happened; he knows it looks bad for the rest of you. He takes charge. He gathers you in the oecus, to decide what can be done … Was that everyone, including Nicostratus?’

  ‘Yes.’ Olympe had withdrawn into herself now.

  ‘Myla and Cosmus?’

  ‘No. Myla had run out of the kitchen and into one of our rooms in the back corridor; she was hiding her head under a pillow. Cosmus was made to stay by himself in the kitchen. Polycarpus locked him in. Polycarpus said it was to keep him out of the way while we decided his future.’

  ‘When was he let out?’

  ‘After.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After we heard the burglars. Daphnus was on guard by the oecus door, in case Cosmus broke out or anything. He saw the burglars, so he hushed us. I was frightened; I thought those men would come in where we were … but they went away. Not long after that, Polycarpus let Cosmus out. When we had a plan.’

  ‘You had a plan, part of which was to inform the vigiles,’ I said. ‘You had to tell them, of course. Aviola and Mucia were too important and well known for you to hide what had happened to them. Too many people would have missed them and asked questions.’

  ‘It’s wonderful how you can work everything out!’ exclaimed Olympe; it was genuine praise.

  ‘Long practice. So, Cosmus was sent to the vigiles, to inform them of the crimes he had committed. That puzzles me. Why him?’

  ‘To get him out of the way. Polycarpus didn’t trust him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust a double strangler myself! But he didn’t trust him over what?’

  ‘Over us making arrangements. Also, Cosmus was bound to dawdle like always, so we had time to get ready.’

  ‘Ready with the plan you devised? Hiding the silver wine set, so it looked as though it had been stolen? … And what else, Olympe?’

  Olympe finally played dumb. Even this too-simple, ridiculously innocent young girl had reached the point where she realised she must clam up.

  I asked the direct question then: ‘Olympe, what happened to the door porter, Nicostratus?’

  She would not tell me.

  56

  Some people might think Nicostratus did not matter. He was a slave. I had never met him. But that man’s death had always niggled me.

  Cosmus did not kill him. Ironically, in his case Cosmus had been given an alibi. He was sent to report his own crimes to the vigiles, while Nicostratus was still alive. Nicostratus must then have been attacked as part of the ‘arrangements’. I wondered whether going so far as to kill him was an accident.

  I led Olympe to the door, letting the others see me smiling and looking pleased with her.

  ‘I just want to be happy and play my music!’ she burbled as we parted company.

  I had her led off separately. I went back into the office, trying to decide which of this shameless crew to interview next. Obviously as part of their plan, the slaves had taken a vow of silence for mutual protection. Olympe had only talked because she thought I already knew all about Cosmus. As soon as I strayed into other subjects, even she grew mute. I had been unable to budge her, whatever promises I floated. Being ‘happy’ was never a reward I could offer anyone.

  I called for Chrysodorus, the sardonic philosopher. He brought the dog in with him, a bunch of scrawny bones on a wretched string. The creature immediately looked for a rug to pee on. Fortunately the floor was mosaic.

  Our talk was brief. I told Chrysodorus what I already knew, then asked directly for help. ‘Chrysodorus, Fortune favours the commercial. How about you sell me the facts I need, in exchange for your freedom? Manlius Faustus might even throw in a small cash incentive to set you up in a new life. Isn’t it a kind of syllogism? – I need your information; you need your life saved; therefore your information is going to save your life.’

  ‘Invalid,’ retorted Chrysodorus. ‘I cannot rely on you giving the reward. All humans are dishonest. Some informers are human. Therefore some informers are dishonest.’

  ‘Not all. Not me.’

  ‘That’s simply an advertising ploy. Paint it on a bar-room wall: “Flavia Albia, the honest informer”. Then wait for the public to scrawl scathing graffiti.’

/>   ‘So no dice?’

  ‘All bets are off.’

  ‘What do you have to gain, Chrysodorus, by remaining silent? Is it not a contradiction of your life spent in philosophy, which is supposed to be the search for happiness through living well?’

  ‘Whoever taught you that?’ laughed Chrysodorus in his bitter way.

  ‘Many people. Manlius Faustus mentioned it once, when talking to me about his attitude to duty. The duty that will force him to arrest all of you very shortly.’

  ‘Oh, fabulous aedile!’ scoffed Chrysodorus. ‘A holder no doubt of the Socratic view: “virtues such as self-control, courage, justice, piety, wisdom and related qualities of mind and soul are crucial if a person is to lead a good and happy life” …’ Actually, I thought he was exactly right about Faustus. ‘This makes no mention of being cursed with slavery, badly fed, beaten and denied freedom to engage in an intellectual life. It certainly does not envisage ending up in charge of a stinking, snuffling spoiled bundle of mange that passes itself off as a dog.’

  I agreed that Socrates had not faced looking after Puff.

  ‘I understand your hardship, Chrysodorus. You told me Puff was even sent to you here at the Temple of Ceres, after you all fled for refuge. I suppose Polycarpus despatched the dog to you?’ Chrysodorus nodded. As an intelligent man, I could see him wondering what had made me ask. He worked it out. For emphasis, I indicated the piece of unfortunate-looking cord by which Chrysodorus led around the skinny rat-like creature. ‘Did Mucia Lucilia’s lapdog always go on a lead, philosopher? Or are you hiding in plain sight the rope that the boy Cosmus used to strangle his victims?’

  Then Chrysodorus made that classic gesture, beloved of both Greek orators and Roman gangsters: the open palmed shrug that wordlessly says, ‘You got me!’

  57

  As Chrysodorus left the room, two other people solved my dilemma of who to see next. Amaranta and Daphnus sidled in together. They said they wanted to speak to Faustus, but as he was not here could I act for him? I said being an honorary aedile, plebeian or otherwise, was an interesting concept for a female freelance. If they wanted to try me, I would certainly give them advice. Possibly I could intercede.