The Grove of the Caesars Page 3

  Importers tended to band together in one area, according to the material in which they specialised. This might be camaraderie but was probably so each firm could spy on the others’ methods of sharp practice.

  There were so many marble importers it took time to find the right ones. I introduced myself politely. Impatient men paused, inquisitive because I was a woman. I had dressed carefully for them. My new maid Suza deplored the way I presented myself on business occasions, but I liked to strike a balance: a glint of gold in my earrings to hint at status, yet a battered leather satchel where I had stowed the marble order, plus shoes that were sturdy enough to kick pigeons out of my way. I was in blue, with a moderate flutter of light ultramarine stole. I must have looked easily dismissable, especially if the men were aggressive—as they tried to be. “No sign of yours yet.”

  Not so fast, laggards! I looked unfazed. With a sweet smile, I hid my stern intentions. The marble dealers lapped it up. I spoke. The men recoiled, as I encouraged them to remove whatever digit they had stuck somewhere so intractably that our order for Fullo’s Nook was paralysed. They became stroppy. I was unmoved.

  Finally impressed, they admitted the marble had been there all along. They pointed out the corner where they had stacked our goods. I went and looked. I dragged the order out of my satchel to consult. I admired thickness, colour and patterning. The men were flattered and came to talk about quality. We all calmed down.

  The problem was delivery. Our requirement for Fullo’s was too modest compared with the massive slabs they usually shifted; they had simply never bothered to stick our stuff on a cart.

  Would it be all right if I sent Larcius and our team with their sack-truck to pick up the goods? I asked. Nobody had thought of that; it would be more than acceptable. As a courtesy of their trade, the men apologised for any inconvenience. Even though they did not mean it, I replied it had been very pleasant dealing with them; like any informer, I could be wildly insincere. No matter. This was Rome, city of a thousand daily adjustments; we had successfully made one. They winked, telling me to ask Tiberius to send me along any time.

  All sorted. Easy. The worst part was having to dodge predictable offers to take me for lunch at a place they knew. I made my excuses, saying I had to rush off to tell our workmen to pick up Fullo’s marble.

  Then, since I was down by the river, I walked the long way back to the Sublician Bridge and went over to do just that.

  If I had known that a curious adventure was about to begin, would I have gone? No question, legate!

  * * *

  The fragile old bridge is the first Tiber crossing point, coming up from the coast. I had to walk right back past my parents’ house almost as far as the Trigeminal Gate. Beyond, between the Pons Sublicius and the Pons Aemilius below Tiber Island, were open-air riverside porticos, a couple of small ancient temples, the meat and vegetable markets and a building with a fancy entrance where subsidised corn was handed out to the poor. Given the importance of this area, it was amazing that the Sublician Bridge had never been improved, yet it still stood as a part-wooden structure on rickety piles. I think it was the bridge that Horatius defended single-handed, so it was always kept narrow and easy to dismantle, just in case Lars Porsena of Clusium and his army came back. It formed a vital route to the Transtiberina, but emperors lavished all their attention upstream. This corner of the Aventine was typically neglected.

  Over the river had once been an escape for the aristocracy. Much is always made of the fact that when Julius Caesar was murdered he bequeathed his extensive gardens to the people of Rome. A cynic might say, if the Pons Sublicius had been upgraded afterwards, more people of Rome might have gone to enjoy Caesar’s Gardens. Its rickety nature discouraged visitors.

  When Cleopatra came to Rome to visit Caesar, she was put there beside the Tiber. In those days, the right bank was outside the city. Julius Caesar cannot have wanted his mistress, a maverick young queen of extraordinary character and beauty, coming close. Not when he had a wife in Rome. Ooh, never mind her, perhaps, but Calpurnia’s father was a stern traditionalist. “Let justice be done, even if the heavens fall,” was said to be a motto in their family. Breakfast must have been gloomy. Time to ask for a tray in your room.

  It was the father-in-law who stipulated that Caesar’s will should be carried out to the last detail, thereby giving all Roman citizens the perpetual right to totter across the Sublician Bridge for a stroll in their handsome inheritance. Thanks, mighty Julius. Even though you wanted to be king over us, we yammering republicans will always adore you.

  Augustus took over the gardens, as he interfered in everything. He brought the whole Transtiberina into his new district system as the Fourteenth Region. It became a different kind of bolthole. Runaway slaves, displaced foreigners, workers in antisocial industries and straightforward criminals burrowed in the northernmost ghettos. But in the southern part, for more than a hundred years the extensive gardens remained. Augustus and his descendants never improved the bridge though they added new amenities. There was space; they used it. Caligula started a racetrack, completed by Nero. Augustus built an aqueduct to supply a new arena that could be flooded for mock-naval battles. That had been used again recently by Titus.

  The aqueduct also watered Caesar’s Gardens. There, Augustus created a special area he called the Grove of the Caesars. This sacred arboretum was dedicated not to the people’s benefactor Julius, hungry for reputation even in death, but to the imperial grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, whom Augustus had nominated as his own heirs. You can see them as toddlers on the Altar of Peace; one has pulled up his tunic hem, so he can scratch his chubby buttock.

  Carrying the hopes of the Princeps proved too much for his noble young relatives. They both died in their twenties, which at least stopped them turning into power-crazed tyrants. Some said the Empress Livia killed them. Never trust a step-grandmama with a son of her own to promote, especially not if her best friend is the Palace poisoner.

  In the Caesars’ Grove stood a rocky grotto. Puddled by seepage from the aqueduct, it had turned into an unpleasant haunt of slimy green crags filled with litter. If anyone tried its echo, it was bound to reply obscenely. The smell was bad. The atmosphere was clammy. Its time was up.

  My husband had won himself a minor works contract to dismantle this old grot. His men thought green slime was not much fun, but he was convinced the job would position him well to tender for the next renovation stage. This, he had heard, would be a lucrative project to build a monumental nymphaeum. The full deal: splashing fountains, marble basins, mosaics, shells, statuary and, best of all, treasury funding.

  Tiberius was an optimist. Also, for some reason, he enjoyed dealing with water features.

  This, therefore, was our current building site. Although I did have a memory of being advised not to go, I made my way to the Grove. There, I wandered about for ages, trying to find our workmen.

  VI

  The Transtiberina was a curious mix. Not only was it colonised by incomers and undesirables, but after Julius Caesar a large swathe had been commandeered as the private domain of imperial in-laws, starting with Agrippa, Augustus’ henchman, then his daughter Agrippina, Nero’s mother. In those days this must have been a Julio-Claudian family compound, with one swaggering owner crushed up against another. Even now the right bank made a bolthole for the Emperor’s family: upstream, Domitian’s wife had a large garden, which must help her avoid him, and vice versa.

  As I wandered about, lost, I found changes afoot. Down where Julius Caesar once stomped around his arbours, dreaming of world domination, a verge of warehouses was creeping into existence beside the water; many of these had been built as secure cellars for receiving wine imports. Away from the river lay the Naumachia, which I tried to avoid. This enormous man-made lake, with spectator seats, had a large barracks adjacent, to house sailors from the Ravenna fleet. They had always worked at the lake when a sham sea-battle was staged, though nowadays they regularly came across to the Flavia
n Amphitheatre to operate shading veils that were unfurled from the top.

  Large numbers of bored sailors are a disaster. My younger siblings were barred from coming over here because our parents viewed the barnacles as worse than any horrors on the Aventine. A vigiles station-house existed, but not in my direction today; besides, the Seventh Cohort was notorious for lack of diligence.

  Fortunately, in the public spaces I met few people. I walked briskly, circling the Naumachia on the opposite side from the barracks. Beyond, the Grove of the Caesars spread towards the district’s boundary. I wondered how many drunken sailors had been sick in its sacred shade. There was no mistaking this large dark arboretum, quite different from the formal terraces and airy walks of the main gardens. The gardens were open tapestries of different greens, punctuated with slim cypresses and burdened with statuary because the people who had founded such places had access to stupendous foreign plunder. The Grove was different. Even before I went among its enclosing trees, I was struck by its sombre atmosphere.

  In their eighty years since planting, the plane trees had grown tall, with wide horizontal boughs, which provided their characteristic shade. Greek intellectuals had founded schools of learning under trees like these. Augustus would not have settled for mere slips or half-standards to honour his grandsons, so a dense overhead canopy must have formed from early on. Now they were impressive. Even in December, even after leaf fall, they kept out light. Their huge trunks, mottled with peeling bark, made an impressive stand, almost a small forest. They must always have been tended by imperial tree surgeons, but with a tangle of brushwood underneath, they kept an overgrown, wild air.

  This grove was certainly big enough for an untrained dog to lose her owner. Happy at our long walk, Barley kept running off in crazy loops, a pale beige streak that I glimpsed sometimes as I tried to find our site. She was a stray who had adopted me. I had not been hers for long, though long enough to want to keep her. At home, she slept in a fine kennel that Tiberius had made. He knew I loved dogs, though for an informer any pet is a tie. Still, so is a husband: since I had acquired him I had decided come one, come all.

  “Barley!” I stood, listening.

  The Grove was supposed to be sacred. I wondered how Augustus organised that when he planted up. Did he advertise? New workplace for discerning operatives: dryads apply with full curriculum vitae and refs, must love trees … Nymphs are not always reliable. They cavort. They mate with demigods, or their own brothers. Their offspring are monsters, or the more unreliable heroes. The Emperor would not have wanted supernatural squatters of the wrong sort to take up residence: that stickler for morality (other people’s) would have checked them out.

  “Oh, Barley, come back to me, you daft creature!”

  I had accepted this dog when she followed me home, partly because she was persistent but mainly because she was shy. She liked to sit quietly beside me, which would work as good cover on surveillance. In the streets, nobody looks twice at a dog-walker. I could gaze around as if I was in a neighbourhood solely to exercise Barley, not in pursuit of suspects.

  She needed a home. She had known trouble. She flinched from noises, unexpected movements, even sometimes from men. With my past life, I related to her insecurity.

  I heard a noise close by, something alive, a discreet, restless schmooving among the dense undergrowth. Something quite large, surely. When I listened, all movement stopped.

  Without thinking, I began to go in deeper, supposing this was my dog, busy with a discovery. If it was smelly, I would need to part her from it … Then a yap from afar told me Barley was elsewhere, looking for me. I turned to emerge from the trees. She ran up to me eagerly. Then she stood for a moment, staring past. I heard a faint growl, more curious than aggressive. Perhaps she was aware of shy dryads, spirits of the Grove, watching us from their hiding places.

  There was nothing to see. I bent to stroke her head. Barley forgot her interest in the Grove, licked me, tensed to dash away again. I hauled her leash from my satchel, to keep her with me. We walked on together. I felt tired and she was docile. Off guard, we would have been prey for muggers, though these were empty paths, with only us in evidence.

  Still unable to find the grotto, eventually I had to double back. Luckily, I came upon a man with a broom, sweeping a path. He had appeared there since we walked past before. He worked at the usual tentative pace, because the beaten earth of garden walks is easily destroyed. He was by no means subservient but told me quite politely how to find what I wanted. The site was quite close. I had simply missed it.

  * * *

  Larcius and our workmen were pottering in an excuse for a cave. Grottos are best dug out of a hillside. This fake “natural” feature was too far from the end of the Janiculan to be craggy; the reason for its siting was that the Alsietina aqueduct ended there, built to supply water for the Naumachia. Once you connect an aqueduct, it keeps going. Since the arena was hardly ever used, there was plenty of water to spare. The plentiful run-off was used for gardens, and to dampen this sorry pile of mock hillside.

  The man-made cavern was a high pile of jumbled rock that had to be entered under a worrying overhang. I only peered in. Scattered around were flat ledges, once bases for statues, no doubt intended to show a contrast between their smooth marble and the jagged limestone of the main feature.

  “Your pa came down to look them over,” Larcius told me.

  “I see they have gone. Does that mean Falco made a good offer?” I was sceptical.

  “Well, he decided how much your husband could pay him to carry them away.”

  “And?”

  “Faustus replied, ‘That must be a leg-pull.’ They were fifty each as salvage, buyer collects, as seen, with no comeback if they fell to pieces. The statues were rubbish, but Falco still took them.”

  “At fifty?”

  “No, they shook on thirty-five.”

  I was surprised Pa had given in, but I liked this glimpse of my father and my husband each doing his work, while getting to grips as in-laws.

  Water splished unconvincingly. Puddles festered where no puddlery was designed to be. I breathed, then regretted it. “As a feature, this is dismal!”

  “Oh, we rather admire its free-form charm,” Larcius joked. He stuck out a leg to stop a large chunk of pick-axed rubble, suddenly freed, that came bounding towards my weary feet. Nasty water oozed in the hole it had left behind. A tuft of slimy foliage, with long tubular fronds, was anchored to the rock, looking as if it would turn to green goo if you touched it. I stepped back.

  “Sorry!” Serenus called to me. He had been concentrating on the effort needed to hack out the boulder; he had not properly taken in my arrival until he straightened up.

  I turned over a bucket to sit on. Barley went around the men, sniffing and hoping they had crumbs to share. Once the softies started feeding her, they decided to feed themselves too, so they stopped work and lolled against handcarts. With practised ease, picnic snacks appeared. They had probably taken several breaks already today, but I made no comment after they handed me cheese and broke off a spare segment from their loaf.

  In addition to Larcius, in our team were Serenus and Sparsus—the heavy-duty muscle man and the boy who did all the jobs no one else wanted—plus Trypho, who carried out general tasks and acted as night watchman. I said I was sorry they had to work out of doors in winter, but they claimed they liked it.

  I explained about the marble for Fullo’s Nook. They seemed impressed by my wheeze of picking it up ourselves. For one thing, it was a good excuse to knock off early from here and go to the Emporium right now. Young Sparsus was told to take all the rock they had dismantled today to the gardeners’ compound; apparently our men were dumping grotto rubble in a big cart whose official purpose was removing weeds.

  “Have you cleared it with the gardeners?” I asked, as Tiberius’s representative. Pious in his role as an aedile, he was hot on any unregulated usage of public amenities. Even I knew enough to mention that site c
learance was normally a contractor’s responsibility. That’s why so much abandoned building material turns up in the street. “Isn’t removal of rubbish listed as standard in your spec?” I also knew this is always a contentious item.

  “Well, the carter has seen us doing it.” Larcius grinned. “Seius has never complained.”

  Sparsus whined about having to manhandle all the barrows himself, but the others explained how young arms fitted barrow handles better. He accepted this, as if he believed it was also the role of an apprentice to be very dim. They watched him set off with the first load, all gently smiling. Larcius said they couldn’t even bring themselves to send him to the store for a post-hole, in case he had a nervous breakdown when he couldn’t find any.

  “Rainbow paint,” murmured Serenus, thoughtfully. “Next time we do a bar renovation. We’ll get him easily.”

  “Took him all morning when we asked him to go for a left-handed spade,” Trypho told me.

  We continued snacking.

  “Did you come by yourself to the Transtib, Flavia Albia?” asked Serenus, as if in surprise.

  “I had the dog. No one bothered us.”

  They accepted this, though I felt they were exchanging glances.

  Eventually I revived enough to feel ready to go home. A sudden scramble among the workmen took place. Serenus and Trypho jumped up to complete the barrowing task with Sparsus, while Larcius quickly gathered up tools as he tidied the site for departure. “We won’t leave anything, then Trypho doesn’t have to stay on guard. It’s just rock—nobody’s going to come and steal a grotto. Actually, we wish they would … Trypho hates it; this grove spooks him.”

  I still wanted to start for home before them, but they nagged me to wait, saying they would see me safe through the Transtiberina. To me, this was a very old-fashioned attitude. I supposed they were conscious of Tiberius being away; they seemed to feel they had a duty to stop me romping around unchaperoned. But I had been a lone informer for a decade and was used to it.