Scandal Takes a Holiday Page 32

  I let the old man stagger back and find his seat. I believed the story. The scribe’s working tunics had been covered with mortar splats. Privatus ran the guild. He made a lot of noise about that. If the builders’ guild boot-boys had been fatally incompetent, Privatus would seem responsible.

  Diocles may simply have wanted to expose the guild—but if he talked about his plans, word would have gotten back. If he complained to Lemnus, Lemnus may have snitched. For Privatus, Diocles spelled awkward trouble. In his personal anguish, Diocles may not have realized how much Privatus had to lose. Threatened with the loss of his social standing in Ostia, the builder might have reacted more viciously than some senator Diocles accused of sleeping around. The scribe had misjudged the danger.

  But Privatus had contracts all over the place—both at Ostia and Portus. Unless I could identify where Diocles had been employed when he disappeared, there was little hope of discovering his fate.

  I strode out into the yard. Members of the Fourth were making efforts to clear away abandoned equipment. I left a message for Petronius about Lemnus.

  Collecting Nux from her long snooze at the bathhouse, I went home. Life there was normal—the aftermath of tantrums. Little Julia was now sitting very quiet and sucking her thumb with a tear-stained face. Albia looked flushed. Helena looked harassed. As far as I knew, neither woman ever used the threat of waiting until Father came home to dole out punishment … Well, not yet.

  I asked what Julia had done. She had found the empty note-tablets left by Diocles, and covered the boards with wild scribbles. Because of the risk that they would ruin important case-notes, we had a family rule that the children should only play with writing equipment when they were supervised. There had been incidents with inkwells, for one thing.

  You could not expect a three-year-old to remember and obey a family rule. Mind you, I would probably be saying the same thing when Julia and Favonia were twenty-five and married.

  Helena had rescued the tablets. Julia had only defaced the empty ones; the ship’s logs and the scribe’s notes were safely put away in a chest with the scribe’s sword. The only tablet where my daughter spoiled something significant was the one on which Diocles had sketched what we had thought was a board game.

  “Of course!” Suddenly, when I needed the answer, I saw it. The diagram was not solo chess. This was a map, a rough plan knocked out as a memo, with a couple of landmarks initialed. It was the kind of sketch a man would draw to remind him how to find a site where he must work tomorrow.

  I recognized the location now. Having come straight from the station house, I could see exactly where the sketch depicted: there was a V for the vigiles, a B for the Claudian baths in which I cleaned up this morning, a squiggle for the wine shop in the street—and an important C. That was circled.

  Petronius Longus had once told me that underneath the station house lay a moldy old water cistern.

  LXIV

  I do not like water cisterns. They are always dark and sinister. You can never tell how deep they are—or what may be moving beneath those vague ripples on the surface. This one did not disappoint me. We had scared off the rats when we all tramped in on the walkways, but we could sense trouble.

  The place was separate from the station house, across a small lane that ran parallel with the Decumanus. Unused for years, nobody seemed to know why it was here—though all agreed that the obvious answer, to provide water for firefighting, did not apply. Fusculus was taking charge of the search; he thought the cistern had been built to supply ships with drinking water, in days when they used to moor right up along the river before Portus was built.

  We set up lights. Their eerie flickering showed a cavernous interior, divided into five or six echoing bays. Virtus, the clerk, had looked up site management records. They confirmed that Privatus and his firm had been engaged for structural repairs here at about the time that Diocles disappeared.

  We spent some time listening to drips and scurrying rats, while we were waiting for the diver. The diver, who knew there would be no salvage fees in this search, took his time coming out from Portus. Still, there was no hurry.

  The diver arrived. Full of technical bravado, he assured us that weight was no problem; he was used to retrieving amphorae, so if he found a body he would need no help to bring it to the surface. He boasted that he had no fear of the job. We did not disabuse him. When, after swimming around for a couple of hours and searching several of the bays, the diver burst out of the water with a terrified screech, the vigiles—who had known what to expect—were tolerant. Someone took him off at once for a large drink.

  With the right location identified, the vigiles did the rest. Concrete is a fabulous material; it sets under water. Despite a large lump weighing down the body, they freed it and brought out the remains late that afternoon.

  They laid what was left of Diocles on an old esparto mat in the street. He must have been in the water since the day he disappeared. He was bloated beyond recognition; I would never know now what he had looked like when he was alive. But we were sure it was him.

  The scribe still had his own dagger, in its sheath. Holconius would be asked to identify that later. We could not tell how Diocles had been killed, but Fusculus was sure that Lemnus from Paphos could be persuaded by the vigiles that he wanted to reveal details. Whether any retribution would strike the contractor, Privatus, I doubted. He would have been stupid to kill Diocles with his own hands; guild presidents use other people to do their dirty work—and to take the rap. Even so, Rubella could make life difficult for him in the short term, and the records would stay on file—one of the files that cohorts passed on each time a new detachment arrived to take over.

  There was the usual fuss, the usual standing around endlessly while men disputed theories of what might have happened. At last the corpse was carted into the station house, the vigiles went off to wash, the diver left. I sat alone outside the adjacent wine shop, raising a sad beaker to the scribe’s memory.

  Petronius Longus came down the side road when I was getting into my second drink. He held little Zeno by one hand. Petronius nodded, but they passed me without speaking. At the entrance to the station house, Petronius paused; I heard him say words of reassurance. Then he led the boy inside. Zeno went with him sullenly, but with an air of resignation. He was used to being told what to do; someone here would entice him to cooperate. Treated right, Zeno would give the vigiles names and events. Perhaps later, if he was sufficiently helpful, someone would have the kindness to release his mother.

  I was expecting Petronius when he returned to the street soon afterward. I knew he would not process Zeno himself. He had no taste for interrogating children.

  He sat down beside me. I had already obtained a second cup and poured wine for him from my jug. We talked about the situation briefly. He asked me about Fulvius. I said honestly that the story of Fulvius working as an agent for the navy seemed convincing—but that I would not be surprised if his connections with the Illyrians from Dyrrhachium were murky. Given his history, I reckoned he had fled abroad again. This visit to Ostia would be one more confused sighting over which my family would mutter and argue all through Saturnalia.

  Petronius then told me that the vigiles had been given a lead on Caninus’ whereabouts. Gaius Baebius, of all people, had reported seeing him. When Gaius was taking his breakfast at the Dolphin in Portus that morning, Caninus had slunk into the brothel opposite, the Damson Flower. Rubella and Brunnus had taken a posse and would arrest the attaché if he was still on the premises.

  “Brunnus is still lusting for glory for the Sixth.”

  “While Rubella is of course above such ambitions! Do we want to go and join the fun?”

  “Let them jostle. We two have more sense.”

  We did not have to wait long. While we sat there, Rubella, Brunnus, and an armed group brought the captured attaché for his reckoning. We remained at our post, merely pulling in our feet to avoid the dust they kicked up. The prisoner was almost inv
isible, at the center of the escort. But I noticed that, perhaps to disguise himself at the brothel, Caninus was heavily painted. Of his fabled beaded slippers there was no sign: his feet were bare. His long tunic hung off him in rags. He slumped limply, as the vigiles held him by the arms. They must have started working him over at the brothel.

  Petronius and I watched grimly as they dragged the prisoner backwards down the side street to the station-house gate. He was a corrupt official; the ex-slaves in the vigiles would be merciless. Vespasian had already had enough bad legions to clean up; he would not want a naval scandal too. The Caninus affair would be buried. No trial or conviction would feature in the Daily Gazette court reports. Caninus was due for silent elimination. We saw him being hauled inside the station house. No one would know when, or if ever, he came out.

  The prisoner and escort vanished into the shadowed interior. Then for once someone hauled the mighty doors across behind them. The vigiles were seeking their own dreadful privacy for what would happen next. The thud of the heavy bar which clenched the tall doors shut echoed up the empty street.

  Petronius and I then sat on in the afternoon sunlight, two old friends with very long memories, sharing a quiet drink.