Enemies at Home: Falco: The New Generation - Flavia Albia 2 Page 5

  ‘Well, that raises a question, Polycarpus: did any of the guests at the feast stay overnight?’

  ‘None. They all live locally and were taken home as soon as the meal ended.’

  ‘So, let’s go back to the attack. I need details of who was where at that point. What do you know about where the fugitive slaves were sleeping – if that is what they were doing − when the thieves broke in?’

  All Polycarpus could say was that Nicostratus, the porter on duty, was by the front door. We went to look. Off the entrance corridor was a tiny cubbyhole, but Polycarpus said neither of the porters liked it, finding it too stuffy and enclosed; they tended to sleep on a mat in the corridor. That was where the wounded Nicostratus had been found.

  Otherwise, Polycarpus reckoned that the gardener, Diomedes, generally curled up in the garden or one of the cloisters around it. Then the steward remembered giving permission for the two females, Mucia’s personal attendant and her young musician, to sleep in one of the decent rooms at the front of the apartment. He suspected that Chrysodorus, the philosopher, would have taken it upon himself to sleep in another, probably the one I was now using.

  ‘Your master had a tame philosopher?’ I kept my expression neutral.

  ‘My new mistress liked refinements,’ answered the steward stiffly. This was the first hint that there might have been friction between him and the householders, but it was only a hint.

  ‘Stoic, Cynic or Epicurean? What variety is he?’

  ‘A bone idle one.’

  ‘I see. Perhaps he would say he has successfully cultivated an untroubled inner life.’

  ‘Possibly, Flavia Albia. My feeling is that somebody should give him a kick up his untroubled arse.’

  I noticed Polycarpus letting himself express something less bland than normal. It made me think I might enjoy meeting Chrysodorus. It was also a clue to explore relations between the master’s established staff and new people brought by Mucia Lucilia. When I asked, Polycarpus assured me they all got on perfectly together, but he was bound to say that.

  We were coming to the end of my meeting with the steward, except that I did mention my unhappiness with the eating arrangements. I instructed him to buy in food for me and Dromo, which I would prepare. If he provided salad and meats, little work would be necessary. He agreed, so we went back to the kitchen where he showed me equipment, crockery and cutlery.

  A fire was kept in for hot water. Myla had that job. We found her there, adding firewood in a desultory way. She was the first of the household slaves I met, and I did not take to her. She was a slow drudge with a dreamy manner who accepted my presence in her domain, received instructions to look after me, but said nothing.

  The newborn babe lay quiet in a basket. I was curious to ask who its father was, but kept that for another time. Polycarpus was still with us and from what I knew of freedmen with power in a house, he might be a candidate.

  The steward treated Myla offhandedly. I had the impression he had given up trying to impose discipline. Myla seemed to be one of those slaves who lived in her own world, and somehow persuaded everyone else to go along with that. Clearly she did the minimum necessary to avoid notice or criticism.

  I did not blame her. If I was a slave, I would have behaved the same way.

  7

  I took advantage of the steward believing our talk had gone well. Soon I would finish my initial enquiries, where I maintained a neutral attitude on purpose while I assessed the scene and familiarised myself with the witnesses. Once I began applying pressure, Polycarpus would realise he had failed to ingratiate himself, but for the moment I played grateful.

  I fetched a stole and asked him to show me where to find Aviola’s executors; on the way there we could see what the local shops and stalls had to offer and I would point out the kind of provisions I liked.

  Out in the streets it was immediately clear that around here Polycarpus had made himself a man of account. Everybody knew who he was. People bustled up to greet him. Whenever we paused at a greengrocer, salami seller or fruiterer, the proprietor dropped what he was doing to attend to us personally. If we failed to stop, traders left their stalls and shops and actually followed us for some distance, offering Polycarpus deals, treats, pleas and samples of their goods. I lost count of the times I was told what a wonderful fellow my companion was. Had he not been a freedman he could have stood as a local tribune and beaten all comers.

  It was based on favours, naturally. He must have steadily built relationships along the Clivus Suburanus and nearby, using his importance as controller of Aviola’s domestic budget; in return he could depend on these suppliers, making himself look good at home by miraculously providing whatever his master wanted, even at short notice. He probably had equally smooth dealings with building contractors and so forth.

  I saw no coins changing hands; it would all be done on account, with creditors no doubt having to beg for payment weeks in arrears in the classic Roman way. Nor did they yet seem too afraid that with the master dead the account might be closed, though one or two did enquire what would happen now. Polycarpus claimed not to know, implying that if it was left to him transactions would continue as usual.

  I was convinced little bonuses passed to him regularly. I don’t criticise. He was a really good steward. Whether I would want someone exercising that kind of influence in my household is another matter.

  ‘What household is that supposed to be, Albia?’ my family would roar. They thought I lived like a vagrant.

  The main executor was called Sextus Simplicius and had an apartment in a block three streets from Aviola’s. A door porter let us in; then we saw a polite functionary much like Polycarpus. He told us his master was out on business and made an appointment for me the next day. Polycarpus took the lead in our conversation, of course, though at the end I intervened and mentioned that when I came back I would like to see the will. Eyebrows were raised. I remained calm, simply letting the two stewards know I expected my request to be taken seriously and passed on to the executor.

  I could always call on Manlius Faustus to help me obtain sight of the document, though I preferred not to. Who wants to look incompetent?

  If Aviola and Mucia really had been murdered by strangers, knowing the contents of the will ought to be routine, simply covering all angles. On the other hand, if the slaves were implicated as the vigiles argued, anything Aviola had had to say about their disposal might be helpful. Which did he trust and value?

  I would have liked to know this before my next move but decisions were urgent for Faustus. I was now ready to go over to the Aventine and visit the group in sanctuary.

  Polycarpus seemed to think it one of his duties to attend these interviews. You guessed: I refused. I marched him back to the apartment, where instead I picked up Dromo.

  ‘Why’ve I got to haul myself all that way with you? You can report to Faustus yourself.’

  ‘Any more backchat. Dromo, and I’ll say he dumped a useless dropout on me, who needs to be reassigned as a dung-shoveller.’

  ‘Can’t I ask a simple question?’

  ‘Questions are my job. And if you don’t get a move on, I won’t have time to ask any at the Temple.’

  I told him to bring his cudgel in case it was late when we came back. That went down badly. Dromo was afraid of being out in the dark.

  I took it to mean my client Faustus rarely went to late-night parties. Intriguing!

  My parents owned a few slaves, most of them pitiful purchases with two left feet and ten grades of insolence, so I knew what to expect. Walking with Dromo was tedious. He dragged along, he moaned about how far it was, and I had to keep stopping to make sure he was still there behind me.

  Eventually we made it. Back in my home district I cheered up, and when I had a bowl of chickpea broth at a bar counter by the Circus Maximus, I fed Dromo too, which at least made him temporarily stop whingeing.

  The Temple of Ceres is on a corner of the Aventine, not far above the corn-dole station
. (Pay attention. Ceres is the grain goddess.) Hers is a mighty great shrine with ancient Greek styling, its interior containing three magnificent cult statues funded by fines raised by the aediles. As a centre of plebeian power, this big temple sends a message of defiance over to the aristocratic gods who live on the Capitol. It is presided over by an important Roman priest, the Flamen Cerialis, but it also has a group of female devotees.

  Head of the cult was a very old priestess who had been brought to Rome specially from Neapolis because of Campania’s Greek connections. (The rites of Ceres are said to be Greek, though unlike most Romans I have been to Greece and I say that’s pigswill.) Cosying up to the priestess was a dreary bunch of stuck-up local matrons who carried out good works. One of these shrine-nuisances was a bugbear of mine. Just my luck: I ran into her.

  An attendant had already told me that the slaves were now at the aediles’ office. To move them out of the religious areas, some dispensation had been arranged, no doubt by the sensible Manlius Faustus. I was heading off to his office when, too late, I ran into the bossiest of Ceres’ cult women. She was a skinny blonde madame who always looked at me as if I was something smelly she had picked up on her expensive sandal. This woman and her brother had inherited a fortune, and if she could have walked around with a placard saying how superior that made her, she would have done it.

  ‘Laia Gratiana!’ In a previous case of mine, this Laia had made herself thoroughly obnoxious. Neither of us had forgotten. One day I would be compelled to knock her down and jump on her. I could tell you it would be for her own good, but the truth is it would be for my personal pleasure.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  I explained my business quietly.

  ‘You had better get on with it then.’

  ‘Well, thanks for your permission, Laia. I shall do that!’

  I left the temple, seething inwardly but trying not to look riled.

  ‘Cor,’ muttered Dromo, admiringly. ‘You really got up that one’s nose! What have you done to her?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ I knew perfectly.

  ‘I bet she’s jealous of you, being so sweet with my master.’ Dromo became excited, thinking he knew a secret. ‘I bet you don’t know who she is, Albia?’

  ‘I know who she was.’

  She was Faustus’ ex-wife. Laia Gratiana left him because he had an affair (I had not been surreptitiously delving; Faustus told me himself). It happened ten years ago, but the embittered divorcee still harboured a grudge. I supposed it was subconscious, but she looked highly annoyed to find me assisting Faustus. It would suit her best to see him fail in his task.

  Well, that made up my mind. If I had anything to do with this, Manlius Faustus would not fail.

  8

  The aediles’ office was close to the temple. I had been there before. It held unhappy memories, about a man I should never have tangled with. (Let’s face it, all my bad memories concern men in that category.) Luckily, the offender no longer worked there. I could revisit the scene with indifference.

  I learned Manlius Faustus was out but expected back, once he finished working the streets to monitor the public. Pity the public; he was a stickler.

  The slaves were loafing in the courtyard, looking relaxed; that was typical of slaves. There was nothing they could do about their predicament; other people owned their lives and would decide their fate. The threat of death had stopped worrying them, at least for the time being.

  Although the aediles were given no personal guards, their building contained strongboxes full of fines from the many who broke regulations (well, those who were spotted) so the place had protection. Its guards were temporarily keeping an eye on the Aviola slaves.

  ‘We lost one this morning.’

  ‘Careless! Someone run away?’

  ‘Died on us. The porter who was beaten up. He’s still on the premises if you want to have a look at him.’

  ‘I may as well.’

  Nicostratus lay dead on a pallet, covered with a cloth, which did little to allay the stink of his rotted wounds. I could learn little about him from his corpse, except that he had been short, dark and hairy – and cruelly treated. The battery was pointless; why would thieves stop and beat up a porter so badly, when a couple of well-aimed blows is usually enough to have such a man whimpering in a corner? Or couldn’t they just have slipped him a few coins to lose himself for half an hour?

  Were these robbers in love with violence? And had the porter’s beating fired them up, so they went on to attack Aviola and his bride too? But that would mean the murders were unplanned.

  ‘Someone knocked all hell out of this one! Did anyone try to look after him when he arrived here?’ The guard pulled a face. Fairly neat bandaging had been carried out on the dead man and one of his legs had a splint. ‘Manlius Faustus let him be seen by a doctor?’

  ‘But of course! Faustus insists we treat them all tenderly. We want them in good condition for the arena beasts, don’t we? There’s no fun if convicts are submissive and limp.’

  I did not suppose having the man fit for the lions was Faustus’ motive.

  ‘Will someone ask the doctor to come and have a word with me? Dromo can take a message, if you give him directions. The patient may have said something, while he was being treated.’

  Dromo did go, only to return bitterly complaining that the doctor was a bad-tempered Greek who had been horrible to him. That did not surprise me. I sympathised with the doc.

  The man sent me a verbal message that he had better things to do than attend the dead. However, to satisfy Manlius Faustus, there was also a written report. The doctor described Nicostratus’ injuries, including a broken leg, a hole in his skull, and various traumatic wounds that appeared to have been inflicted by a blunt flat-faced weapon, such as a plank. Splinters of wood were in the wounds.

  In the doctor’s expert opinion (his phrase), the savagery used on Nicostratus differed significantly from the controlled force required to strangle the other two victims.

  In answer to my query, the patient gave up the struggle after a week of drifting in and out of consciousness, during which he never said anything about the attack.

  Thank you, Hippocrates.

  By the time Dromo brought me this, I was interviewing the slaves one by one, in the room Faustus used as his office. Afterwards, those I had seen were kept separate from those I had yet to see, so they could not confer.

  Some owners acquire slaves who are all of a type. Not these. The nine survivors were a mixed bunch, all heights, colouring and weights. I reckoned they varied too in their levels of intelligence, skill and willingness. The young men had hair to their shoulders, normal practice, and all wore simple patched tunics in neutral colours. They looked fit and tidy, products of a decent home. In conversation none of them really told me much about Aviola or Mucia, though they spoke well of both.

  Before we started, I reminded the group that the law said slaves had to give evidence under torture. I would not be doing that. ‘– Not at this stage.’ They knew what I meant.

  I saw Phaedrus first, the other door porter. He was a sturdy, fair-haired young man with north European origins, a Gaul or German. He had an open face and honest manner – which generally signals a lying witness. According to him, although I had been told Nicostratus was the night porter, it was the other way around. Phaedrus was to have been on late duty but had stayed in the kitchen, having his supper first; it was when he went to relieve his colleague that he found Nicostratus and raised the alarm.

  ‘So were you in the kitchen throughout the robbery and murders?’

  ‘Yes, but I heard nothing.’

  ‘Phaedrus, I have been in that kitchen. I know the layout. Are you sure you never heard the intruders breaking in and attacking Nicostratus?’

  ‘No. They must have put him out cold with the first blow.’

  ‘Then they continued knocking him about? Unlikely! You heard no one come across the courtyard?’

  ‘They must ha
ve tiptoed through the columns on the opposite side.’

  I agreed that fitted with them going over to the dining room to take the silver. ‘Would you have run to help if you heard a commotion?’

  ‘Of course I would have! Sorting trouble is my job.’

  ‘You don’t shy from a rumpus?’

  ‘I would have been straight in.’

  ‘So what made you deaf? Was anybody else with you?’ The blond belligerent looked shifty but said no. ‘Oh, come on, Phaedrus. You can do better than this. What was taking up so much of your attention that you missed all the racket? Were you playing around with somebody?’

  Phaedrus had no answer, or none he would give me.

  I asked about working with Nicostratus. Apparently they hardly knew each other, but got on well. It was routine for a house to have two porters, since one could not stay alert both day and night. (‘Alert’? In my family, we reckon door porters are dopey at all times.) Phaedrus let slip that he himself was an incomer from Mucia’s household.

  ‘Really? It’s common on marriage for staffs to merge,’ I mused. ‘Sometimes they don’t gel, and that causes upsets.’

  ‘Oh, not us!’ maintained Phaedrus, looking innocent. Maybe the young men bonded. They were both in their twenties, Nicostratus slightly older. They could have palled up, talked about gladiators, discussed women (shared one?). A woman could well explain why Phaedrus was oblivious to noise that night.