Graveyard of the Hesperides Page 5

  Looking down the smaller street that crossed the Vicus, I could see a couple in a clinch against a grimy wall down one alley while in another a cluster of men had their heads together as if inspecting stolen goods. Going into the alleyways was only to avoid being trampled. They did not care who was watching. Their activities were carried out in full view and even the heavy boots of the Urban Cohort soldiers failed to make them pause. I had better not let my lover take the air on our skinny balcony, or he would be faced with a crisis of conscience. He had enough to do, without wanting to clean up another aedile’s patch.

  Fortunately, when he finally arrived it was dark, though as I let him in I saw him look back over one shoulder rather thoughtfully. He had his slave, Dromo, grumbling under the weight of luggage they had brought for us. I fed them both, then took Dromo to the Hesperides where he would have to sleep in any space he could find. When I returned to the room, Faustus was lying on the bed, spark out.

  I stretched beside him quietly. He woke enough to murmur. A light kiss on my forehead from him served for our goodnight. We were so close now, we had already passed beyond needing to fuss. I spent a few moments thinking how hard the mattress was and then, lying close against his side, I too tried to sleep.

  No use. I spent many more moments listening to the hubbub from outside. Added to the unfettered hum of voices, the Romulus had live music; on hot August nights like this the castanets and tambourines were brought out into the street, where the clientele joined in with stamps and clapping. The Four Limpets competed with a solo lyre, well-played if you like loud, weeping string instruments in the hands of a mad dramatic singer. Meanwhile a persistent pest with panpipes traveled around all the bars, tootling at drinkers until they paid him to move on.

  At least I was getting the measure of this district at night, the low-grade noisy hot spot where poor Rufia was said to have been murdered.

  Eventually Tiberius sensed through his slumber that I was struggling to find rest. He roused himself enough to gather me closer with one arm, then dropped off again immediately. I lay with my head on his shoulder, thinking about this. He had passion, when not poleaxed by weariness. Even tonight, he wanted to grip me tightly, as if I might escape him while he was lost in dreams. So here we were, utterly at ease together. Together for life now, I knew it. I would not need the wedding augur to foretell this by peering at a dead sheep’s liver.

  Not that it would hurt to have him prophesy happiness to our families. They didn’t believe us. Tiberius was right: maybe the relatives would have more faith if a stranger in a dirty head veil told them.

  Smiling to myself at the incongruity of having a husband I agreed with, finally I fell asleep.

  IX

  The Ten Traders street life gave me nightmares.

  As a rule, I tried not to dwell on the unfairness of my childhood, an orphan of the Boudiccan Rebellion, living among unaffectionate people and then fending for myself as a scavenger. Sounds assailing me here threw me back to the cold unpaved streets of Londinium, where I once haunted dingy eating houses for any crust to stave off hunger, among the dross of degenerate tribes, transient merchants, unhappy soldiers and criminal incomers.

  I started awake, with a dry mouth and fast heartbeats. If I tried sleeping again straightaway, the bad dream would return. Slipping from the bed, I went and stood by the balcony.

  The streets below lay in darkness. The noise had dropped, the musicians were silent, yet a low burr of steady voices told me people were still here. No one even tried providing streetlights in such an area, and where there was an occasional oil lamp for bar customers, it gave only a tiny blur of light that barely covered the table or counter it was set on. As my eyes grew accustomed, I could see waiters still moving to and fro with trays on their shoulders. I thought I heard the sharp click-clack of gaming counters, with cries of reaction as dice were thrown. I scanned the darker shadows, imagining I glimpsed some waif cringing in an alley, as I had once done.

  “What’s wrong?” Tiberius thought something outside had disturbed me.

  “A bad dream.”

  I heard the soft approach of bare feet, felt warm arms come around me from behind—comforting, not controlling. “Be easy,” he murmured. I leaned back against him, accepting his affection.

  “What goes on down there on those streets was my world once.”

  He said nothing. That was Tiberius Manlius. Perhaps he sighed a little.

  “Did you know?” I persisted.

  “Always been obvious.” He took one of my forefingers to a scar on his palm where once, before I knew him well, I had stabbed him with a fish skewer. “Nicely brought-up young ladies from regular homes do not do that.”

  “So you want danger and thrills from me?”

  “I just want you. I don’t think you are dangerous, not to people you love.” After a moment he added, “Your mother told me I ought to know you had a very bleak childhood.”

  For a moment I was angry with Helena, before I saw that she was protecting me. She did not want Faustus to find out later about my experiences. No hope and no safety. The physical blows, emotional famine, rape by a brothel-keeper … All Tiberius knew from me was that afterward I had had a happy marriage, though tragically short.

  “She gave no details,” he said. Nor did I now. I was not ready to risk it. Maybe I never would be. Even so, I muttered, “Helena Justina warned you for good reasons. What did you say to her?”

  “I told her I grieve for your suffering, which I had always suspected, but I love you as the woman you are. You can tell me,” he offered in a low voice, still standing behind me. One of the soft things we had said when we first acknowledged our feelings was that we could tell one another anything. Mostly we did so, though people fool themselves. It’s always dangerous. Even the best of men might find my experiences impossible to live with.

  “Not now.” Tiberius thought he could bear anything but I was loath to test his tolerance. “I try to forget.” Of course I never would entirely. You are made by your past.

  Can you be remade by the present? I turned around to embrace him, enjoying the shape and feel of this body I was learning to know, moulding myself to his ribcage and stomach. We were both naked. Until recently I had slept in an old under-tunic; probably he had done the same. Now, except for a few days a month, that seemed unnecessary.

  We kissed gently, then I went back to bed with him. My bad memories were hovering nearby, but the nightmare would not reimpose itself tonight.

  Tiberius held me close. “While I live, Flavia Albia, you will be safe. If I have any influence, you will be happy.”

  “I know.” I was always happy with him, and being happy makes you feel safe.

  26 August

  Seven days before the Kalends of September (a.d. VII Kal. Sept.)

  Five days before the wedding of Tiberius Manlius Faustus and Flavia Albia

  X

  Breakfast was our special time. This had started when we would meet as if by chance and sit together in my aunt’s caupona. At the Stargazer, you had to converse to stop losing your grip on life. Talking together was easy, we had found, even though we were both by nature reticent. So, we became friends over the Stargazer’s granite bread and fatty meats. I would watch Faustus mentally assessing how the waiter, whoever it was that day, had given us the least possible number of olives he could serve without having the pottery saucer thrown at his head. Those bite bowls are small but carry weight, as any scavenger knows. I had had them flung at me, back in Londinium.

  After a few Stargazer breakfasts, I noticed Faustus was not in fact auditing the nibbles but taking an interest in me.

  Now we were living together, he would probably go back to real olive-counting. He was an aedile. Monitoring behavior was his favorite task. I let him get on with it. Supervising waiters was better than imagining he could supervise me.

  In daylight today, we were able to spot remnants of the ancient market that must have originally given the Ten Traders its name. The
re were single-room shops, each with a vaulted roof and a room above, like the one where we were staying. Early in the morning the bars were closed—well, around here you could still get a drink, and I don’t mean water—while shops we had not seen yesterday afternoon now opened and revealed their presence. Dry goods and fresh greens mostly. One of the scroll-sellers for which the Argiletum was supposedly famous. A cutler, so people in the bars could buy bone-handled dinner knives to stick into other people they argued with.

  A sign said an apothecary lived in one of the upstairs rooms, ready to run out with salves for any nonfatal knife wounds. He claimed he also sold love potions. He risked having an aedile raid him, to root out magic. Like plenty of others the seller clung on, purveying herbs that worked and incantations that didn’t, pills that put you on a bucket all night and powders that claimed to make you irresistible to others, but might kill you.

  On the Vicus Longus we found a streetside snackery that was being swept clean by a worn woman, while her thin-faced daughter served a few rolls and cheese wedges to passing workers. Rather than have us clutter up their counter, they put out a bench for us to sit on.

  We each reported on yesterday’s efforts. When I expressed anxiety that Tiberius was wearing himself out, he reassured me. He said nothing about progress on the house, although I gathered he had been there. He had told the aediles’ office he was “going to his villa at the seaside”; apparently no magistrate was ever expected to work in the August heat, although Manlius Faustus must be the only one in history who was too poor to own a holiday home. He was arguing with his uncle over his right to draw cash from their family finances. He would never prise money out of Uncle Tullius for luxuries. Business deals were hard enough to fund.

  Meanwhile he had left Julia and Favonia with a wedding-guest list. When they applied themselves to something they wanted to do, my younger sisters could be meticulous. They had Katutis, Father’s secretary, writing out invitations; between them there was no chance any awful relative would be left out. Any day now, this event would be scribbled on everyone’s calendar. I was stuck.

  I mentioned that I had myself hired victimarii and an augur. My bridegroom looked annoyed. He pointed out, mildly, that since I had refused to take any interest, he and his helpers had fixed all the details; we must avoid duplication, he pompously decreed—practicing for the day he could thunder around as head of the household. Practicing how to ignore that, I said Julia and Favonia would be delighted when they saw the hunks.

  “You’re marrying me, remember. Not some bastard bunch of bare-chested bull-despatchers,” growled Tiberius. I smiled dreamily. “What?” he demanded.

  “Remembering you in bed!” I murmured, so he pretended not to blush, while sweetly proud of himself. Men are so easy to manage.

  Faustus nudged me in the ribs with an elbow, fully aware of my tactics. “And what kind of horrible heartthrob is your augur?”

  “Haven’t seen him. Supposedly he is top quality—all we have to do is send a note beforehand and he will foresee everything we ask for.”

  “Can’t he ‘foresee’ what we want without being fed instructions? I’d like a long life with a darling wife who is never cheeky.”

  “Sorry, sir, I can’t do lack of cheek. That omen has been discontinued. Even the gods have limitations.”

  While Tiberius chewed the rim of his beaker, I recapped what I had learned yesterday from my various interrogations, especially from Costus and his crew. “I discount the possibility that Rufia fell victim to some stalker who grabbed her on her way home to Mucky Mule Mews. I think she must have been killed at the bar. So we have either she was an abused girlie bashed by a degenerate landlord claiming employer’s rights, probably drunk at the time, or she was a stroppy piece who quarreled and, if you believe in the concept, ‘brought it on herself.’ I’m not there yet—I need to ask around more.”

  Tiberius agreed we should persuade someone with anatomical knowledge to examine the bones. We had brought them out with us, like some pet that needed exercising. He was going to the local vigiles, the Third Cohort, to report our find, so he would ask if their doctor or someone else with expertise could pronounce for us.

  We settled our breakfast bill, which meant I paid it, because of Uncle Tullius.

  Gazing at the older woman as she counted the coins, I was sure she had been listening to our conversation. She said nothing but I knew what this wily bird had been up to while she innocently wiped down her counter.

  “I presume you’re not a customer of the Garden of the Hesperides?” I asked, gently letting her know I had spotted her eavesdropping. Now it was the daughter’s turn to listen in. She too said nothing.

  The Hesperides was just out of sight, though very close by. The mother shook her head, pinching her mouth. She was a hardworking scrap who looked affronted at the suggestion that she might lower herself to take a tipple in a wine bar. “A body has been found there. I expect you heard about it?” Again, she pretended to look shocked. I do not listen to common gossip, Flavia Albia! Classic. She could have been my Aventine granny biffing me with a dishcloth for impudence.

  I spotted her having a good squint at our bag of bones.

  *

  Faustus and I went to the Hesperides.

  Immediately we were assailed by Dromo, complaining. He couldn’t be expected to live in a place full of dead bodies, he hadn’t had a wink of sleep, the watchman had been cruel to him, and nobody had given him any breakfast.

  “Come with me,” said Faustus calmly. “I’ll buy you a flatbread on the way.”

  “You tell your kindly master all about it, Dromo!” I had listened carefully to the slave’s moans in case he had seen anything useful. After all, he had spent the night at a newly discovered crime scene. Anything could have happened. I did not spell it out to him, but perpetrators sometimes do return.

  “I don’t find my master kind, Flavia Albia.”

  “Yes, he is. Be good and maybe Manlius Faustus will let you carry the bag of bones.”

  “I’m not going to touch a dead person!”

  “Lucky for you, then, these are in a rubble basket,” his master barked as he handed over the remains; they set off, still bickering in their normal way. I went into the courtyard, which the watchman, Trypho, opened up for me before he curled up to sleep on a pallet in the bar. Alone, I gazed around, considering the place with new eyes.

  The project, which I considered ridiculous, was that the small outdoor area would be given one of those canals people create in fancy outdoor dining rooms, down which lamps and little food dishes are floated, generally to sink with their contents. Opposite the bar end, a daft grotto had been created, with shell decorations and a small mosaic of Oceanus wreathed in sparkly glass seaweed. A so-called specialist had provided that; I knew, because Faustus had had a row with him because he was preoccupied with some designer villa and had sent his apprentice. The apprentice had never been properly taught, though he was a bright lad who learned on the job. His right-hand seaweed ringlets were much better than his left. Customers in the know would be asking for the table by the fig tree, on Oceanus’ good side.

  The fig tree was new. They were fan-training it on one courtyard wall, in theory. The builders must have planted it; nobody had told them to contain the roots. In a few years the monster would be forty feet high, so when hard, unripe fruit fell from the topmost branches, gravity would make it bounce on the drinkers’ heads with knockout force. Or worse, the figs would splash into their beakers, spilling their drinks.

  That would be if the tree lived. The sapling looked sick. There was no water on-site at the moment. The workmen had filled in a well with concrete. They were supposed to be arranging a connection from an aqueduct to supply the water feature, and include the kitchen, but the new landlord had just been told its horrifying cost. He had balked. Faustus, who had inherited all this barmy design, had promised to quote for other options, although now the well was out of action there were none. Like any experienced con
tractor, Faustus was simply waiting for the client to give in and pay, knowing Liberalis was desperate to have his bar back.

  Rufia’s bones had been below the opposite wall to the fig tree. As far as I could tell, the men had only been digging there so that they could bury their lunch wrappings and a smelly sack, the traditional way builders avoid removing rubbish from a site.

  *

  Returning to the corridor that led back indoors, I spotted a narrow staircase. It must lead to the upstairs rooms where customers obtained “extras.” It was steep and dark, with dirty treads and dusty walls. Pulling my skirts in, I climbed up to explore. Three curtained doorways clustered around a top landing that was fit only for mountain goats. With no natural light, it was barely negotiable. I banged my head on a suspended phallic lamp. That would help at night, and gave a clue as to what went on here, although no one but an idiot would blunder up accidentally. Still, idiots do go to bars.

  Poking back the first spidery curtain, I found a bare cubicle with an unmade single bed. No surprise. There was no other furniture. No hospitality tray (I jest), not even a chamber pot. As a bower of delight it was crude, though much as I expected.

  “Five star!” I exclaimed out loud, sarcastically allocating the kind of mansio grade you see on high-class traveling maps. I did not suppose many high-class travelers ever found their way to the Hesperides, but strangers in a city can make mistakes. Well, who hasn’t accidentally wandered into a den of sin when merely looking for a quiet chickpea supper?

  As I turned to investigate the other two rooms, I received a shock that nearly made me tumble downstairs. Somebody was there.

  “Hades!” I was scared, I admit.

  A man in a one-armed unbelted tunic had stuck his head out of a room, looking to see who I was. The occupant of the other room zipped back his door curtain too; he was naked. He had an extremely hairy chest; I tried not to look any lower down. I fancied I heard females in the background, though with these narrow doorways people inside the rooms were hidden. Judging by how the two men looked, anyone they had lured in here could not be picky.