The Ides of April fam-1 Read online

  Many people would settle for an easy time. I continued to work because finding solutions to problems had a logical appeal. I could, sometimes, direct other people towards peace of mind. You need goals, when you have already had all your joy and expect destiny to grant nothing further.

  I must be more tired than I had realised. It was making me maudlin.

  Time to move. I knew how to melt into shadows, and there were plenty of those. Luckily nobody here put out street lanterns, so any prowlers would have to look very hard to see me.

  I crossed the road. From experience, I moved cautiously. In Fountain Court at night, I generally found my way by smell. Even with practice, I could end up stepping into something in my gold sandals. Perhaps putting bare toes against something that was still moving, even though it was half dead…

  The building had a crumbling fire porch, attached to a portico that ran along the street. Inside the porch an iron grille had been added a few years back. I was not surprised to find Rodan had stupidly left it unlocked.

  Either side of the vestibule were a couple of rooms that guarded old stone stairs which pretty well held up the block. Little more than cubbyholes, in one room we stored brooms and buckets and in the other my father had installed a porter-cum-bouncer who was supposed to scrutinise visitors while using the brooms and buckets. As usual, someone he felt sorry for had pleaded for work. Rodan. Not one of Father's best appointments-but he was hopeless at selecting staff and it was by no means his worst.

  One dim lamp stood on the floor outside the nook where Rodan was allowed to live. I think it had once been where the laundress hid from angry women whose saffron yellow tunics had been accidentally dyed streaky green; there she swigged from her flagon to keep back the grim reality of life. Even now, occasionally some vague customer turned up and asked Rodan about a sheet they had left for washing five years ago.

  "Not so fast!"

  "Oh bloody hell, Rodan!" I had been stopped by my own concierge. He popped out of his cubicle and shoved me backwards out of the porch. Pointless to hope he was as efficient as this when strangers came. He was large, but looked sleepy and stupefied. "What are you doing up in the middle of the night, you idiot?"

  Rodan was an ex-gladiator. He couldn't frighten a housefly. He must be the oldest ex-gladiator in the world. Normally even those who gain their freedom are so worn out by the arena they don't survive long in retirement, but if he kept eating his lentils Rodan was going to reach ninety. He did have a hideously broken nose, but he'd got that from a tenant who hit him in the face with a mallet. The truth was he had lasted precisely because he had never sustained any injuries professionally. As a gladiator he was so useless, the trainer he worked for would not put him into fights. For most of his life, Rodan had just ambled about the Aventine, acting as a bodyguard and rent collector. Now he was dwindling into natural senility, too bleary-eyed to see when he was barring the woman who handed over his wages. Father should do it, but he loathed having to deal directly with Rodan.

  "Oh it's you," he muttered. The furious way I kicked his ankle when he tried to shoulder me out of the porch should have told him that. "It's been a right night of it. Some fellow came to see you."

  "One visitor? You call that a night?"

  "I was having my dinner," Rodan complained pathetically. "I had to take him all the way up to the office, and then bring him down again. My chitterlings got properly cold but after all that, he wouldn't even tip me for my trouble."

  "Who was he, a client? Works late and can't come in office hours? I can wait in tomorrow for him; I hope you said so. What is he called?"

  Rodan sniffed. Not hard enough. He wiped his nose on his arm. "He never told me."

  Dear gods. This was why in family tradition Rodan was a creature to despise. How simple is it to enquire, "who shall I say visited?" Especially after several years of me kindly explaining how to do it? He didn't even have to write down names. Rodan could not write.

  A thought struck. Could this be the archivist from the aediles' office? If so, he was really keen. Almost too keen, a cynic might say. I described Andronicus. "Friendly fellow. Bright-eyed and gingery." Rodan gave me his vague look. "Wore a white tunic with blue braid?"

  Sometimes I wondered if he was irritating on purpose. "He might have done."

  I said if the man came back, Rodan was to bring him straight up to the office and be nice to him. "If I am not there, make a proper appointment." I would be there. I would hang around on purpose, in case this was the archivist.

  The idiot doorman finally owned up that the visitor had promised to return tomorrow. This made me so cheerful I made no attempt to kick him again as I said goodnight.

  Rodan may never have had his brain pulped in the arena, but he was born addled. I was pretty sure he had never noticed my living arrangements. If so, that was good, because he could not reveal them to anybody else.

  I lived on the second floor. I had a front door. It was blocked by dusty flower troughs, with the plants dying as though the last tenant had done a moonlit flit. It was feasible to climb over the troughs, but I rarely went in or out that way.

  Instead, I walked up only one flight, turning out of the sight of Rodan or anybody else in the entrance. They would hear me go into an apartment that was occupied by a North African family, immigrants from Mauretania. Well, most of the family. The mother lived there, with increasing numbers of little ragged children, who came in a variety of skin colours. None of them could speak a word of our language, which saved me ever having to ask after their father.

  They had four rooms, arranged along a corridor, but they only lived in three; using my prerogative as the landlord's daughter, I myself used the last room. I even kept a couch and other things there. But its main purpose was to give me access out onto a decrepit wooden walkway that had been built as a fire escape. Back when this place was a laundry, the lowest steps descended to a cluttered drying area at ground level; now that was a derelict courtyard with access to both the street and a back lane. Anyone who ever followed me into the Africans' apartment would find my room empty and assume I had gone out and escaped downstairs.

  It may sound as if I was obsessed with fears of being followed home. That was the legacy of the intruder I stabbed. Home invasion leaves permanent damage. You never really recover from it.

  Like most Roman tenements, the Eagle Building had minimal safety provisions. Apart from the first level which had been constructed more robustly, the fire-escape stairs to upper floors had rotted and not been replaced. In a fire, everyone upstairs would be trapped. But the old walkway gave me more than my personal flight route. If I popped along it a short distance, an old screen leaned against the wall. Secreted behind it were steep, narrow steps. They led inside, up to my real home.

  This haven of mine had always been the best apartment in the block. It was small, just three good rooms, one with a firebox which I used for heating drinks, though I rarely cooked properly because for one thing I had never learned, and anyway I did not want the place to end up full of smoke. I had equipped it over the years with quite fine and comfortable furnishings thanks to my family's trade in antiques. When I came home after any trying day, it gave me peace, refreshment for the soul and solace. It was my place of happy memories.

  I went in, fastened the door behind me, threw off my clothes and fell on the bed to sleep. Very few people would know where I was. Only nightmares would ever trouble me, and that night thankfully there were none.

  VII

  Next morning I was upstairs in my office bright and early. My heart felt a small patter of excitement. I did the silly things that fill in time, like emptying the rubbish bucket, tidying the letters you cannot be bothered to answer, and playing dice solitaire.

  I heard Rodan and the visitor coming. From several floors down, Rodan was grumbling breathlessly and giving the impression he was likely to pass out. If ever he brought up some undesirable who turned out to need manhandling, I would have to do the heavy work. I would have to
expel the troublemaker myself then climb back up and tow the wheezing Rodan down.

  Luckily this visitor was friendly. Like everyone, he had failed to pace his climb upstairs so I heard him exclaim with relief as he reached the top level. There he would have passed an ancient collection of empty amphorae, before arriving at the battered door. I whipped it open. My heart bumped at the slim figure and eager expression of the charmer I met yesterday.

  Andronicus was still looking at the indicator tile, with its mystic crescent moon. People around here thought I was a Druid. They were stupid, but I let them. Clients admire an exotic background.

  "Andronicus! What a surprise-thanks, Rodan-you can go now …" I shoved Rodan out as fast as possible, while the archivist stood in the doorway and stared around my outer room.

  I had made it a very different boudoir from the crude masculine den I inherited. You can do so much with soft furnishings. An informer should not interview people in a bare hole like some bar's back room where the pimps and gamblers congregate. Well, not unless all your clients are gamblers and pimps. That can happen. Ours is a low trade.

  The tiny space was now arranged for cosy discussions. I had my own high-backed chair, a basketwork throne which showed clearly who would be in charge. A couch where agitated clients could slump and pour their hearts out had a colourful spread, with loose cushions they could hug nervously as they told their tales. There was a small round wooden table with an inlaid top, on which refreshments could be served, once we had agreed those important little details about my payment. On a shelf stood carefully chosen pieces of Greek art. Loans from the auction house, these were regularly rotated. Art always implies taste and trust. Art suggests you may have received these lovely things as gifts from previous clients, who had cause to be very grateful. It is much more subtle than nailing up written commendations, which people always imagine are fakes you wrote yourself.

  Art, if sufficiently solid, can also be used to thump the heads of any crass men who molest you.

  "How good to see you." I took my seat and indicated the couch for him. "Somebody called last night when I was unavailable…"

  "Not me." I thought Andronicus wanted to hide how keen he was. "Where were you then?"

  He had a slight frown between those wide-set, almost over-intense eyes. I felt too cheerful to worry. It was just conversation anyway. "With family."

  "No lover?" This man took the direct approach. He gave me a twinkle to show he knew it was an impudent thing to ask.

  Long practised, I parried with humour. "Oh, the one with the yacht is out of town, detained for customs infringements last I heard, and they reckon he won't get away with it this time. The actor let me down as well; he was getting all frothed up with a group of rich old widows. He's given himself a hernia, lifting the contents of their jewel caskets…"

  "You read a lot of satirical poetry?"

  "No, I write my own lines."

  I had no lover at the moment. I had had no one for a long time, but a girl should never sound too available. Not on a first tryst. I had my self-respect.

  Andronicus abandoned the grilling. Opposite me, he settled in a relaxed pose, one arm along the couch's backrest. I liked the way he had made himself at home. We assessed one another, both pretending not to. I still found him delightful.

  "Sorry," he said, reading my mind. "Of course you ask the questions here!"

  I kept it light. "Indeed I do. I would not want to waste my carefully learned interrogation skills… What brings you?"

  "She goes straight to the point!" He leaned forward earnestly. "There has been a development. I wanted to be first to tell you."

  "You care! I'm thrilled … So what's the news?"

  "Salvidia is dead. Someone from her family-a nephew-came to inform Faustus yesterday evening."

  I chose not to enlighten my new friend that I knew of the woman's death already, nor did I correct him on the real status of Metellus Nepos. I liked Andronicus, but did not know him well enough-yet- to break my rules. Say nothing that you need not say.

  "That's shocking, Andronicus. She was hardly old. What happened?"

  "Just reached the end of her thread, apparently. Must be annoying for you to lose a client. That's why I thought you would like to know- no point wasting any more of your time on her."

  "Yes, thank you." I thought he could not have been present when Nepos and Manlius Faustus were talking. The Nepos I met would undoubtedly have mentioned to a magistrate his nagging doubts about how his stepmother died. I wondered how Faustus had reacted. Tried to put him off?

  "This 'nephew' came to the aedile's house? How did you come to be there?"

  "I live there." He had been a slave there, presumably. You can deduce a lot from what family freedmen prefer not to tell you. Some are brazen about their origins; well, slavery is not their fault. Yet I could tell Andronicus was quite sensitive. He was never going to say the words "slave" or "freedman" in connection with himself. "It is his uncle's house; on and off, Faustus has lived with his uncle since boyhood."

  "He is not married?"

  "Divorced."

  "A parting for mutual convenience, or was he caught out with a kitchen maid?"

  "There were rumours… He left his wife rather quickly, and had to surrender the dowry. I've never been able to squeeze out of him anything to explain what happened; there's a conspiracy of silence in the family."

  "Read his diary?"

  "Bastard doesn't write one."

  "The man's a disgrace-tell him he has responsibilities to clarify matters for his caring household!"

  "Well, if he strayed from the marriage, he behaves like a sanctimonious prig now," Andronicus grumbled.

  "No mistress then?"

  "Never even fingers the girl who makes his bed."

  "So she thinks he has lovely manners-but she'd rather he tried it, so she would get a big Saturnalia present! And the uncle?"

  "Oh a different mullet entirely. Tullius is a bit too randy in his habits to be tied down to marriage. You know the type-jumps any slave of any age, male or female; has even been known to stand up after the appetisers, leave the room with a serving boy, hump the lad in the anteroom and saunter back for the main course as if nothing has happened, taking up the conversation where he left off. . Flavia Albia, you do rack the questions up. I am impressed!"

  "Just habit. I apologise."

  "Oh I don't care if you want the scandal on Faustus…"

  "You haven't told me any scandal about Faustus," I corrected him.

  "No, he's a cold fish."

  "If I ever have to meet him, I would like to be primed with some salacious background!" I had now confirmed that Andronicus really disliked Manlius Faustus. His manner with me generally was so open that I could tell he was being reticent about his poor relationship with the aedile. Of course, that aroused my interest, though I let it pass, temporarily. Andronicus thought me direct, but I could be very patient. "So, Andronicus-last night?"

  "Faustus had this visitor-people sometimes bother him on business after dinner."

  "He is good about it? Doesn't mind being cornered at home, when he's relaxing?"

  "I've never known him to relax! He takes a pious attitude to 'duty.' He loves to suffer. And I expect he was curious."

  "Whereas you didn't care at all what Salvidia's nephew wanted?" I teased.

  Andronicus raised his eyebrows so his forehead wrinkled, looking fake-innocent. "When Faustus gets up and abandons a nutmeg custard for a mystery caller, I do tend to follow and put my ear to the door."

  "You need to know what he's up to?"

  "I like to keep a kindly eye on him."

  In some homes, freedmen take that much interest for dubious reasons, hopeful of causing friction between family members, planning blackmail even. Luckily the good-natured way Andronicus joked about it would have reassured even Faustus.

  He suddenly became more serious. "I did have an interest, Albia. The fact is, I myself had had a grisly run-in with that awful woman
. I can hardly bear to remember it. Salvidia came to see Faustus, but he was out of the office. I had to deal with her. She was furious about the wall poster, the one asking for witnesses to the child's death. She laid into me something terrible. Left me shaking."

  "Oh poor you!"

  "As if it was my fault!" Andronicus still seemed upset. Having met Salvidia, I could imagine why. "She was a pest. Her arrogance was simply unacceptable. I thought she was going to attack me physically."

  "I expect she was afraid there would be consequences after the accident." Manlius Faustus could come down heavily on her building firm, to punish them for negligence. Overloading carts and having drunken drivers were areas of interest for aediles. "Had you told Faustus about how she confronted you? Was he sympathetic?"

  "According to him, my job is always to be helpful to members of the public."

  "He doesn't know much about the public."

  "Albia, how true! When her nephew arrived to speak to him, Faustus ordered me to sit tight. I wasn't having that. He went to speak to the visitor; I sneakily followed him."

  "You thought there was some trouble arising from your altercation? Why would a relative feel he ought to inform a magistrate Salvidia had died, Andronicus?"

  "No idea." The archivist shrugged.

  "Maybe," I suggested disingenuously, "he is prepared to pay the compensation that has been demanded for little Lucius Bassus. So he thinks the poster calling for witnesses should be taken down now? Hush things up? If he means to carry on the construction business, being named as an organisation that has killed a child besmirches its reputation. And if he wants to sell up, he has even more need to hide what happened so he can ask a good price for a going concern."

  "I can think of another motive for him paying the compensation. He wants to prevent the company being fined for negligence," retorted Andronicus.