A dying light in Corduba mdf-8 Page 36

  Perella considered. 'He could be evil enough to do it – but apparently when he heard what had happened he went green with shock. He's a clerk,' she said cruelly. 'I expect he hates violence!'

  'He did look flustered when he came to me about it.' 'Maybe it finally struck him that he was messing with something more dangerous than scrolls.'

  'That hasn't made him back down from the general Plan,' I commented.

  'No. You said it right, Falco. Everything depends on whether Vespasian has been told all this. Once he knows, he'll love it. We'll be stuck with it.'

  'So what was Anacrites intending to do to thwart Laeta's scheme?'

  'What I'm still doing,' she returned crisply. 'The spies' network will produce a report saying "Look! People were planning to force up olive oil prices; isn't it scandalous?"Then we show that we've stopped the plot. If enough people know, we force the Emperor to agree publicly that it was corrupt and undesirable. We get the praise for discovering the project, and for ending it. Laeta has to back offfrom the cartel, and from us.'

  'For now!'

  'Oh, he'll be back. Unless,' remarked Perella in a tone Laeta would not have cared for, 'somebody wipes him out first!'

  I drew in a long breath then let it out again, whistling to myself.

  I had no opinion on whether Anacrites or Laeta was best for running the intelligence service. I had always despised the whole business, and only took on missions when I needed the money, even then distrusting everyone involved. Taking sides was a fool's game. With my luck, whichever side I ended up on would be the wrong one. Better to extract myself now, then wait to see what developed. Watching the two official heavyweights slogging out their rivalry might even be amusing.

  I was growing stiff, sitting on the ground. I stood up. The woman followed, gathering up her shawl then shaking it to dislodge twigs and leaves. I was once again struck by how short, stout and apparently unlikely as a spy she was. Still, she didn't look like a dancer, yet everyone who had seen her perform said she could do that.

  'Perella, I'm glad we pooled our knowledge. We underlings have to work together!'

  'So we do,' she agreed – with a pinch-lipped expression that told me how she distrusted me just as freely as I did her. 'And are you still working for Laeta, Falco?' 'Oh, I'm working for justice, truth and decency!' 'How noble. Do they pay well?'

  'I'll stick with the network then!' We had walked to our animals. Perella flung the shawl across her horse's back then leaned on the saddle before leaping up. 'So who goes after Quadratus?'

  I sighed deeply. 'I'd like to; I hate that young bastard – but Perella, Pm really stuck now. He's gone in entirely the wrong direction – back west towards Corduba. I've sent my girl to the east coast and I ought to go after her.'

  She looked surprised. My tenacity must be more famous than I thought. 'You don't mean that, Falco!'

  'I don't have much choice! I want to corner Quadratus, but I don't want to face Helena – let alone her enraged family – if I slip up and let anything happen to her. Her family are important. If I upset them, they could fmish me.'

  'So what then, Falco? Aren't you the man to take a chance?'

  Irritated, I picked at a tooth, pausing for anguished reflection. 'No, it's no good. I'm going to have to leave you to take the credit. Anacrites' group needs the kudos, and I just haven't the time to follow in the direction Quadratus has gone. I've found out what you need to know. You saw me at the silver mine? They told me at the supervisor's office that he had been there yesterday. He let them know he was going back to look at the mines near Hispalis.'

  'And you can't do it?'

  'Well, it's impossible for me. That's the wrong way. I'll have to give up on him. I've simply run out of time. My lady is about to pop a baby, and I promised to put her on a ship so she can get to a good Roman midwife. She's gone on ahead and I'm supposed to be following.'

  Perella, who may even have seen Helena looking huge at the Camillus estate in Corduba while I was in Hispalis, snorted that I had better be sharp, then. I gave her the customary scowl of a man who was ruing his past indiscretions. Then I swung up on to my mule again. This time it was I who managed it gracefully, while Perella missed and had to scramble.

  'Need a hand?'

  'Get lost, Falco.'

  So we parted in different directions, Perella going west. I meanwhile took the road to the east at a gentle pace, pretending I was headed for the Tarraconensis coast.

  I was. But first, as I had always intended, I would be visiting the mines at Castulo.

  LXVI

  This time fear had no hold on me. Old anxieties surged around as they always would do, but I was in control.

  I found the quaestor very quickly. Nobody could mistake that handsome, wholesome appearance. He was standing, talking to a contractor; the other man looked grateful for my interruption and positively scampered off. Quinctius Quadratus greeted me with warmth, as if we were old dice- playing friends.

  This was not one of the great underground workings, but virtually open-cast. We had met at the head of an entry to a seam, more of a cleft in the side of a slope than a real shaft. Below us open tunnels had been carved out like long caves with overhanging roofs. The constant chipping of picks reached our ears Slaves were clambering up and down an ungainly wooden ladder, ribs showing, all skinny limbs and outsize bony elbows, knees and feet. They carried the sacklike sagging weight of ore-baskets on their shoulders in a jostling chain while Quadratus Posed like a colossus at the top of their route, quite unaware that he was positioned in their way.

  He had made no attempt to hide from me. In his eyes there could be no reason for him to act the fugitive.

  'Do you want to talk indoors, quaestor?'

  'It's pleasant here. What can I do for you?'

  'A few answers, please.' I would have to pose extremely simple questions. His brain had the consistency of a slab of lead. I folded my arms and talked in a straightforward way like a man he could trust. 'Quinctius Quadratus, I have to put to you some charges which you will see are immensely serious. Stop me if you consider anything is unfair.'

  'Yes, I will.' He looked meek.

  'You are believed to have been the sole mover, or to have assisted, in tampering with an official report on corruption which had been written by your predecessor Cornelius; you altered it significantly while the document was at your father's house after being taken there by Camillus Aelianus.'

  'Oh!' he said.

  'You have also been accused of inveigling Rufius Constans – a minor who was under your influence – into supplying a dancer to the Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica. The girl subsequently attacked and killed an imperial agent, a man called Valentinus, and seriously wounded Anacrites, the Chief Spy. The charge is that you incited Rufius to join you in hiring the dancer to do the killings, that you took him with you when you arranged this, and that with him you hid in the shadows and witnessed the first murder. You then got drunk, and later lied about where you had been that night. Rufius Constans confessed everything to a witness, so there will be full corroborative testimony.'

  'That's a tough one,' he said.

  'There is evidence that you were with Rufius Constans when he was crushed under a grinding-stone, and that you then abandoned him alone with his injuries.'

  'I should not have done that,' he apologised.

  'I possess physical proof that you took my carriage to visit him. I ask you to tell me whether or not you engineered the apparent accident?'

  'Ah!' he responded quietly. 'Of course it was an accident.'

  'The dancing girl Selia has been found strangled at your father's estate near Corduba. Do you know anything about that?'

  Quadratus looked shocked. 'I do not!'

  Well, I believed that.

  'There are those who believe you are unsuitable to be quaestor, though you will be glad to know that in my opinion mere ineptitude is not an indictable offence.'

  'Why would I want to do these things you menti
on?' he asked me in a wondering tone. 'Is there supposed to have been some personal advantage to me?'

  'Financial motives have certainly been suggested. I'm prepared to be persuaded most of it was caused by complete irresponsibility.'

  'That's a hard verdict on my character!'

  'And it's a poor excuse for murder.'

  'I have a good explanation for everything.'

  'Of course you have. There will always be excuses – and I believe you will even convince yourself that the excuses are true.'

  We were still standing at the top of the exit from the seam. Quinctius moved aside abstractedly as a chain of slaves began to climb out via the ladder, each with his head down as he carried a basket of newly hewn rocks. I signalled the quaestor to walk further off with me, if only to give the poor souls room, but he seemed rooted to the spot. They managed to get past him somehow, then another lot descended the ladder, most of them going down like sailors, with their backs to the rungs and facing out.

  'Thank you for your frankness, Falco.' Quadratus ran his hand through that mop of luxuriant, smartly cut hair. He looked troubled, though perhaps only by the necessity to interrupt his self-appointed mission to inspect these mines. 'I shall consider what you have said very carefully, and Provide an explanation for everything.'

  'Not good enough. These are capital charges.'

  He was still standing there, a sturdy, muscular figure with a bland expression but a Pleasing, good-looking face. He had everything that makes a man popular – not merely with women, but with voters, strangers, and many of his peers. He could not understand why he failed to win over his superiors. He would never know why he did not impress me.

  'Can we discuss this later?'

  'Now, Quadratus!'

  Apparently he did not hear me. He was smiling faintly.

  He stepped towards the wooden ladder and began to descend. Ever incompetent, he had followed the method used by the more practised slaves – facing outwards instead of first turning around to give himself a proper hold.

  I had done nothing to alarm or threaten him. I can say that faithfully. Besides, there were plenty of witnesses. When his heel slipped and he fell, it was just as he said of what happened to Rufius Constans – an accident, of course.

  He was still alive when I reached him. He had crashed down on to a ledge, and then fallen another ladder's height. People rushed up and we made him comfortable, though it was clear from the first he would not be recovering. In fact we left him where he was and it was soon over. He never regained consciousness.

  Because a man has to stick to his personal standards, I stayed with him until he died.

  PART FOUR: BARCINO

  AD73: 25 May

  In some parts of the city there are no longer any visible traces of bygone times, any buildings or stones to bear witness to the past… But the certainty always remains that everything has happened here, in this specific space that forms part of a plain between two rivers, the mountains and the sea.

  Albert Garcia Espuche, Barcelona, Veinte Siglos

  LXVII

  From Castulo to the northern coast is a long, slow haul, at least five hundred Roman miles. It depends not just on which milepost you start counting from, but where you want to end up – and whether where you do end up is the place where you wanted to be. I had shed my spare mule then used my official pass for the cursus publicus and took it in fast stages, like a dispatch-rider – one who had been charged to announce an invasion by hordes of barbarians, or an imperial death. After several days I hit the coast at Valentia. I had come pretty well half way; then it was another long trek north with the sea on my right hand, through one harbour town after another, right past the provincial capital at Tarraco at the mouth of its great waterway, until at length I was due to reach Iluro, Barcino and Emporiae.

  I never got as far as Emporiae, and I'll never see it now.

  At every town I had stopped to visit the main temple, where I demanded to know if there was a message. In this way I had traced Helena, Aelia and Claudia from place to place, encouraged by confirmation of their passing through ahead of me – though I noticed that the brief dated messages were all written by Aelia Annaea, not Helena herself. I tried not to worry. I was closing on them fast, so I convinced myself our journeys would coincide at Emporiae as planned. Then I could take Helena safely home.

  But at Barcino, the message was more personal: Claudia Rufina was waiting for me on the temple steps.

  Barcino.

  The one place on that heart-breaking, back-breaking journey that sticks in my mind. All the others, and the previous long cross-country and coastal miles, were obliterated from my memory the instant that I saw the girl and realised she was weeping into her veil.

  Barcino was a small walled town in the coastal strip, a pausing place on the Via Augusta. It was built in a circlet of hills near the sea, in front of a small mountain that was quarried for limestone. An aqueduct brought in water; a canal carried the sewage away. The area was rural; the hinterland was divided into regular packets of land, typical of a Roman settlement that had started life as a military veterans' colony.

  Wine-growing was the local commercial success, every farm possessing its kilns for making amphorae. Laeitana: the wme I had last drunk at the dinner for the Olive Oil Producers of Baetica. Wine export thrived so well the town had an official customs post on a bridge beside one of its rivers. The harbour was notoriously terrible, yet because of its handy location on the main route to Gaul, then onwards to Italy, the port was well used. Low breakers rolled unthreateningly on the beaches beyond the inlet. I could have cheerfully taken ship to Rome from here with Helena, but the Fates had another plan.

  I had ridden in through the southeastern gate, a triple entrance set in the middle of the town wall. I took the straight road to the civic centre, past unpretentious two- storeyed houses, many of which had a section devoted to wine production or handicrafts. I could hear the trundle of corn- and olive-mills, with occasional bleats from animals. I never thought that my journey would be ending here. I was now so close to Emporiae, which I had Planned to use as our staging post; it seemed ridiculous that anything should intervene so late in the journey. I believed we were going to make it.

  I reached the forum, with its modest basilica, tempting foodshops, and an open area dedicated to honorary monuments. It was here I saw Claudia. She was leaning against one of the fine local sandstone Corinthian columns in the temple, anxiously looking out for me.

  My arrival had made her hysterical – which did nothing for my own peace of mind. I calmed her down enough to let her blurt out what had happened: 'We stopped here because Helena was about to have the baby. We were told they had a decent midwife – though it seems she has gone to deliver twins on the other side of the mountain. Aelia Annaea has rented a house and she's there with Helena. I came to find you if you arrived today.'

  I tried in vain to compose myself. 'What are the tears for, Claudia?'

  'Helena has gone into labour. It's taking far too long, and she's exhausted. Aelia thinks the baby may have too big a head -'

  If so, the child would die. And Helena Justina would almost certainly die too.

  Claudia led me as fast as possible to a modest town house. We rushed in through a short passage to reach an atrium with an open roof and a central pool. A reception room, dining room and bedrooms led off it; I could tell at once where Helena was because Nux was lying at full stretch outside the bedroom, with her nose Pressed right against the crack under the door, whining Pitifully.

  Aelia's rental was clean and would have been prepossessing, but it was full of strange women, either clamouring dolefully – which was bad enough – or doing routine needlework as if my girl's suffering merely called for attendance by the civic sewing circle. A new spasm of agonising pain must have come over Helena, for I heard her crying out so dreadfully it shocked me to the core.

  Aelia Annaea, ashen faced, had met us in the atrium. Her greeting was merely a shake of her h
ead; she seemed quite unable to speak.

  I managed to croak, 'I'll go to her.'

  At least this male forwardness silenced a few of the wailing women. I was weary and hot, so as I passed I rinsed my face in the atrium pool – another sacrilege, apparently.

  The needles had stopped stabbing, while the hysteria increased.

  I scooped up Nux, whose only reaction to me was a slight tremble of her tail. All she wanted was to reach Helena. So did I. I dumped the whining dog in Aelia's arms then I grasped the door handle. As I stepped inside, Helena stopped screaming just long enough to yell at me, 'Falco, you bastard! How could you do this to me? – Go away; go away; I never want to see you again!'

  I felt a wild surge of sympathy with our rude forefathers. Men in huts. Men who really were capable of anything. Men who had had to be.

  Behind me Aelia gasped, 'Falco, she can't do it; she's too tired. The baby must be stuck -'

  It was all out of control. Helena looking ghastly as tears mingled with perspiration on her face; Aelia wrestling with the frantic dog; strange women fluttering uselessly. I let out a roar. Hardly the best way to regain calm. Then, infuriated by the noise and fuss, I seized a broom, and with wide sweeps at waist height I cleared the room of women. Helena sobbed. Never mind. We could panic and suffer just as well on our own; we could manage without interruptions from idiots. I strode to the door after them. Aelia Annaea was the only sensible one present so I rapped out my orders to her:

  'Olive oil and plenty of it!' I cried. Adding thoughtfully, 'And warm it slightly, please.'

  EPILOGUE

  To L. Petronius Longus, of the IV Cohort Vigilorum, Rome:

  Lucius Petronius, greetings from the land of the Laeitana vintage, which I can assure you lives up to its reputation, especially when drunk in quantity by a man under stress. I solved the Second Cohort's killing (see coded report, attached: the cross-hatch stands for 'arrogant bastard' but in the prefect's copy it should be translated as 'misguided young man'). For the time being I am delayed at this spot. As you no doubt surmise, it's a girl. She's beautiful; I think I'm in love… Just like the old days, eh?