Scandal Takes a Holiday Page 6

  I was ready to leave. “You’re right. It’s tame. I don’t know why he came here, but I don’t believe Diocles was looking into the vigiles themselves.” He had gone after other jobs, for one thing. “So; is there anything else you can tell me about my missing man?”

  “He was fine when he left here. I said we had no vacancies but I’d keep his name listed. He took it quietly enough.”

  I had reached the door before an impulse made me turn back. “Did he give you a contact address? A room by the Marine Gate?”

  Rusticus looked surprised. “He said he’d come in that day from out of town; I had the impression he stayed somewhere on the coast. Afraid I didn’t bother to take down the details. I wasn’t interested in him, after all.”

  I did find the officer of the day. As I left, he was entering through the main gate, in company and laughing with Privatus, that builder with the stranded hair who was giving Petro houseroom. Maybe he was seeking a contract to rebuild the squadron house. The builder acknowledged me pleasantly, looking vague about where we had met. He seemed at home here. It was too much to hope that it was because he was regularly arrested.

  I managed a private interview with the officer and asked whether any “Damagoras” featured in their special lists. He said the lists were confidential. He refused to look them up.

  Sick of unhelpful blockheads, I went home for lunch. There, my very intelligent and normally helpful girlfriend was awaiting my return. But even Helena Justina looked as if she might turn nasty.

  XI

  Albia was playing with the children, head down, not meeting anybody’s eye. For once, the two little girls were keeping very quiet. My brother-in-law Aulus was acting unconcerned, as if whatever had happened was none of his fault; he greeted me with a silent grimace, then stuck his head in a note-tablet. I could not even see Nux. They all seemed grateful that I had come home, to fend off the ballistics and rescue them.

  Helena Justina continued for a moment to slice leeks on an unpleasant wooden board we had inherited with the apartment. Leeks are an Ostia speciality. I had been promised my favorite recipe. It looked as if grit would be left in among the fronds. On purpose.

  “Helena, dear heart! Shall I go out and come in again, more contrite?”

  “Are you suggesting there is something wrong, Falco?”

  “Of course not, fruit. I would just like to make it plain I never touched that barmaid, whatever the girl may be saying, and if somebody has left a dead rat in the gutter overflow, it wasn’t me; that is absolutely not my idea of something funny.”

  Helena took a long, deep breath, and looked up from her knifework with a stare that said she was considering the barmaid suggestion very, very thoroughly. Maybe that joke had been too big a risk.

  She was still holding the knife. I really could not think of any reason to feel guilty, so I stayed quiet and looked meek. Not too meek. Helena was easily irritated.

  She was still holding her breath too; now she let it all out, extremely slowly. “Nobody should be blamed for their family,” she announced.

  “Ah!” It was one of my relatives. No surprise. I could have run through the possibilities mentally, but there were far too many.

  “Your sister came,” said Helena, as if it had nothing to do with the atmosphere.

  “Maia?” I did not even bother to mention Allia or Galla. They were useless lumps who tried to borrow things, but they were safe in Rome.

  “Junia.”

  Right. Junia came back. How typical. “Whatever she did or said, I apologize for her, dearest.”

  “It wasn’t what she did,” snarled Helena, my mild, tolerant, diplomatic partner. “It never is what Junia does. It’s what she damn well is. It’s how she sits there in her neat outfit, with her careful jewels, and her struggling son in his very clean tunic, and her slobbering dog, who gets himself everywhere, and I can’t actually say what leads it to happen, but maybe her trite conversation and self-satisfied behavior just—make—me—want to scream!”

  Now she felt better.

  I sat down, nodding sympathetically. Helena went back to chopping. For a girl who had been brought up to consider kitchens as places into which she was only expected to wander to give orders about recipes for patrician banquets, she could now wield sharp knives adeptly. I identified a handy cloth that would stanch blood, then I watched with caution. I had taught her to try and avoid chopping off her fingers, but it seemed best not to distract her until she finished. Helena had long, beautiful hands.

  After a time she threw the leeks in a bowl of water, rattled them about to clean them, wiped the knife, banged down a pan on the cooking bench I had improvised, looked for the olive oil distractedly, and allowed me to find it for her. I took hold of the pan handle. She snatched it away from me. I stood aside politely. She elbowed me back into position and allowed me to take over cooking. Aulus, with unheard-of domestic sense, unwound himself and poured a beaker of red wine, which he placed formally in his sister’s hand.

  Helena leaned against the table, sipping. Her frown relaxed. Soon she told me glumly that Petronius had called that morning; he had looked up the lists of undesirables kept by the vigiles and found no mention of any Damagoras. Then we got to the nub: Helena added that the reason Junia had called was to gloat that Gaius Baebius did have some information on the name. Being Junia, she would not tell Helena what. Well, that was why Helena was annoyed.

  I would have to see Gaius Baebius. Now I was annoyed too.

  Still, the leeks were good. I crumbled in some goat’s cheese and de-stoned black olives, frisked it all around with a little salty fish-pickle, served it into bowls, and topped off with a dribble of extra oil. We ate this with yesterday’s bread. Helena had been too angry to go out to the baker for fresh.

  XII

  I took the ferry to Portus, where Gaius Baebius worked in his capacity as a customs clerk—or, as he would pedantically add, a supervisor. The vital labor of harassing importers for their tax took place at the main harbor, the big new one planned out by the Emperor Claudius and finished by Nero. Meant to replace the clogged facilities at Ostia, Portus had been inadequate for the task since the day it was inaugurated. I knew Gaius would explain that to me all over again, whether or not it affected my inquiry and despite me reminding him that he had moaned on about it before.

  I had promised Helena I would use the ferry trip to calm down. Instead, as I sat in the boat being rowed slowly over, stress gripped me.

  Portus Augusti had been constructed about two miles to the north of Ostia itself. I tried to concentrate on geography.

  Ostia was the only real harbor on Italy’s western coast for many miles in both directions, or nobody would ever have made land here. You probably had to go up as far as Cosa to find a decent berth to the north, while to the south, grain ships that came from Africa and Sicily still often unloaded at Puteoli on the Bay of Neapolis, after which the corn was transported overland to avoid the difficulties here. Nero had even wanted to build a canal all the way from Puteoli, as a “simpler” solution than trying to improve the Ostia maritime gateway.

  Rome had been founded upstream on high ground at the earliest bridgeable point on the Tiber—but that presupposed ours was a useful river. Romulus was a shepherd. How would he know? Compared with the grandiose waterways in most major provincial capitals, old Father Tiber was a widdle of rat’s piss. Even at Ostia, the muddy river mouth was not much more than a hundred strides across; Helena and I had been given much amusement the other morning, watching large ships trying to maneuver past one another amid shouts of alarm and clashing oars. And the river was unfriendly. Swimmers were regularly plucked out of their depth and swirled to their death by drowning. Children did not paddle on the Tiber’s brim.

  The small, meandering Tiber was too full of silt, its current was unpredictable, and it wound all over the countryside. That said, although it flooded often and suffered droughts, it was rarely impassable. Vessels could make their way inland to moor right up alon
gside the Emporium in Rome, and some still did. However, rowing upstream meant the fast flow was against them. Sailing was ruled out because of the bends; square-rigged ships lost the wind at every turn. So they were towed. Some were hauled by draft animals, but most were dragged up or down the twenty-mile distance by teams of despondent slaves.

  That imposed a weight limit. And it was why Ostia, together now with Portus, was so important. Many ships had to moor and unload when they arrived at the coast; then they had to lay up, while they awaited their outgoing loads and passengers. So Ostia had always served as a docking anteroom to Rome. Unhappily, it had been chosen and founded by saltpan workers, not sailors. The Tiber mouth was perfect for an industry that required shallows, but there had never been deep moorings. Worse, it was an unsafe landing point. The largest trade vessels—including the huge imperial corn transporters—had to disembark at least part of their cargoes into tenders out in the open sea. That was dangerous, and only feasible in summer. Two currents met, where the river dashed out into the oncoming tide. There were treacherous west winds to contend with. Add in the coastal shoals and the sandbar at the mouth of the river, and merchantmen arriving from foreign lands had a good chance of foundering.

  Meanwhile, for more manageable shipping that ventured straight to land there were still problems. As it finally reached the coast, the Tiber divided into two channels, both nowadays too choked with silt for ships of any size. Portus had been designed to relieve the problem, and to some extent it did. Many trading vessels now docked in the Portus basin. The muddy Tiber channels were still busy with traffic, especially the four different ferry services, all run by dour, toothless men whose families predated Romulus, who charged separate fares for locals and for visitors, and who could diddle your change in all known foreign currencies.

  I braved the ferry, then hitched a lift in a vegetable cart across the Island, a flat area of market gardens with rich soil through which a busy road now ran. I had been here several times over the years, usually making Portus my starting point for overseas missions. Each time I had found more and more building work, as the warehouses expanded and people chose to build new homes out here where they worked.

  The new harbor was heavy-duty imperial magnificence. Encircling walls surrounded the great basin, forming two moles that thrust out to sea. On their far ends stood temples and statues, and between them lay a man-made island. This was famously formed by the sunken ship that had once brought from Egypt that enormous obelisk that now graced the central divide of Nero’s Circus in Rome. The delivery ship had been scuppered in deep water, while laden with ballast, and onto this base was planted a four-story lighthouse, topped by a colossal statue of a monumental nude; to me it looked like an emperor, only lightly draped for modesty. Below him, shipping sailed in through the north passage and out through the south, with sailors and passengers staring up at the imperial never-you-minds and thinking ooh, what a dramatic sight.

  The giant Julio-Claudian goolies were even more dramatic when underlit by the pharos at night.

  The harbor itself was crammed with every kind of vessel, right down to summer visitors from the Misenum Fleet. On a famous occasion, the flagship had called in, the gaudy hexeris called the Ops. Today I saw a line of three deserted triremes, which were clearly military, in among the oceangoing traders. Tugs, each with sets of chubby oars and a sturdy towing mast, slowly shunted around large vessels as moorings needed to be rearranged. Bumboats skidded over the water like fleas, amid shouts of abuse or greeting. Skiffs pottered aimlessly in the hands of those inevitable old harbor bores who hang about wearing seafaring caps and trying to cadge drinks off people like me. From time to time large vessels silently entered or left the harbor beneath the shadow of the lighthouse, then there would be flurries of interest among the cranes and offices on the moles. I could not count the forest of masts and towering beaked prows, but there must be sixty or seventy sizable ships tied up inside the harbor, plus a few strays anchored offshore and various vessels plying up and down at sea.

  I had traveled the world, but seen nowhere like this. Ostia was the hub of the widest trade market ever known. The Republic had been an era of modest prosperity that ended in civil war and hardship; the emperors, who were backed by legendary financiers and flush with spoils, soon taught us sumptuous spending. Rome now gorged itself on produce. Marbles and fine timbers were bought in endless quantities from every corner of the Empire. Artwork and glassware, ivory, minerals, jewels, and oriental pearls poured into our city. Fabulous spices, roots, and balsams were brought in by the shipload. Brave men imported oysters from the northern waters, carried alive in barrels of murky salt water. Amphorae laden with salt fish, pickles, and olives jostled for notice among thousands upon thousands of other amphorae brimming with olive oil. Dusky traders coaxed elephants down gangplanks, among cages of furious lions and panthers. Whole libraries of scrolls were delivered for great men who were too busy to read them, along with refined librarians and papyrus menders. Cloths and exorbitant dyes arrived. Slave dealers brought their human traffic.

  Some of these commodities were reexported to enlighten distant provinces. Goods created in Rome were sent abroad by smart entrepreneurs. Italian wines and sauces were dispatched to the army, to overseas administrators, to provincials in need of educating in what Romans valued. Tools, household goods, turnips, meats, potted plants, cats, and rabbits went out in mixed cargoes of lawyers and legionaries to places that had once lacked all of them, places that would one day be exporting their local versions back to us.

  When they did, a treat awaited. Gaius Baebius would be here. They would find him lying in wait on the quay at Portus, seated behind his customs table with his soft smile and his maddening attitude, ready to give them their first long, slow, unbearable experience of a Roman clerk.

  Only if they were very, very lucky would I turn up to drag him away.

  “Come and have a drink, Gaius.”

  “Steady on, Marcus; I have to be at my post—”

  “You’re the supervisor. Give your staff an opportunity to make mistakes. How can you put them right otherwise? This is for their own good—” The underlings gazed at me with mixed feelings. A small queue of traders let out an ironic cheer.

  Oh Hades. Junia had made Gaius have Ajax for the afternoon. When I pulled him from his seat behind the tablets and money caskets, the dreadful dog came too. An uncontrollable tail knocked over two inkwells, as Gaius lifted off his wide-beamed backside and stood up reluctantly from his stool. That enormous wet tongue caught the back of my knees as the loopy creature bumbled after us. Every time we passed a porter with a handcart, Ajax had to bark.

  “Leaving the desk is bad practice, Marcus—”

  “Have a breather. Enjoy bumming off for once, like everyone else.”

  “Ajax! Drop it! Good boy …”

  Portus was Elysium for an excitable dog. The harbor walkways were stuffed with bollards to pee against, sacks to jump on, amphorae to lick, cranes to wind a leash around. Short men who looked suspicious lurked everywhere, begging to be harassed with growls and bared teeth. There were wild smells, sudden loud noises, and unseen vermin scuttling in dark corners. Eventually the dog found a bit of ragged rope to carry, then he calmed down.

  “He needs discipline, Gaius. My Nux would be walking sedately at my side now.”

  Gaius Baebius was annoying, but not daft. “If that’s true, you must have gotten a new dog since I saw you last, Falco.”

  He sidetracked himself, wondering when our last meeting had been: Saturnalia, apparently. Julia had broken one of her deaf cousin’s toys, and Favonia gave the dear little boy a nasty cold. Well, that was children, I said callously, dragging the brother-in-law to the counter of a streetside foodshop. I ordered. I didn’t bother upsetting myself by waiting for Gaius Baebius to play the host; we would have ended up being asked to leave the counter to make way for paying customers.

  I asked for a small dish of nuts and a spiced wine.

  Gai
us Baebius held a lengthy debate about whether he wanted the lentil mash or something they called the pulse of the day, which looked like pork chunks to me. Gaius, unconvinced, expressed his uncertainty at great length, failing to interest anybody else in his dilemma. I had tried solving problems for him in the past. I had no wish to end up dribbling with delirium again, so I just ate my nuts. Meat stews were banned in fast-food outlets, in case enjoying a decent meal incited people to relax their guard and express disapproval of the government. No food-seller was going to admit to Gaius Baebius that he was flouting the edict; every word Gaius uttered gave the impression of an inspector sent by some unpleasant aedile to check on infringements of the Emperor’s hotpot regulations.

  Eventually he decided on a bowl of nuts too. The proprietor gave us both a filthy glare and banged it down, only half full, at which Gaius caviled stubbornly for a while. Dark plans for murdering him seeped into my brain.

  One customer edged away from us, declined a refill, and fled. The other walked aside in a huff, and lapped up his potage while leaning on a bollard and shouting insults at seagulls. Ajax joined in, barking so loudly that heads popped out of the nearby grain and spice negotiators’ offices, while the bouncer at the Damson Flower Boarding-House (which looked like a brothel) came outside to glare. Ajax had been imbued with my sister’s stiff morals. He hated the brothel bouncer; hurling into attack mode, he dragged at his leash until it pulled so tight he was frothing and half choked.

  Oblivious, Gaius Baebius fixed me, wagging his finger. “Now come on, Marcus, stop holding up the issue. You want to ask me about that fellow called Damagoras. So why can’t you get on with it?”

  It took me some time to stop choking on my wine, then a few more moments of reflection on why it would be unwise to throttle Gaius Baebius. (Junia would turn me in.) Then I solemnly asked the crucial question, so Gaius Baebius gravely told me what he knew.

  I thought he told me everything. Later, I knew better.