The Grove of the Caesars Read online

  I ordered Galanthus to fetch me a stool from indoors. He looked surprised at having tasks, on top of being route-marched around Rome. I ignored him. Then I sat down to chat with Gornia, who nowadays seemed older than some of the antiques we sold. Gornia asked about the boy, who was hanging over the balcony rail as far as he dared, wondering at which point he might fall. I told the tale, then Gornia said Galanthus could be auctioned if I wanted. We disliked handling human lots. “But if he can stand still long enough, we can pretend he is a statue.”

  “I’m sure Galanthus would prefer a new home,” I answered, “but I cannot risk Domitian finding out that the family don’t cherish his gift.”

  “Want to learn about antiques, son?” Gornia demanded. He was always on the lookout for staff. If he didn’t find his own vase-lifters, he got stuck with spotty young Didii—truculent punk nephews who were going through a difficult phase. Which is to say, nephews who were just being members of our family.

  Galanthus looked happy that someone was taking an interest in him, but I threw cold water over any fancy ideas. “Better warn him, Gornia. You won’t just let him dress himself up in jewellery that clients want to liquidate. You need all-day heavy lifting. Have you ever moved a huge cedarwood armoire, Galanthus—or transported a deadweight, twice-life-size marble Hercules?”

  “Down a narrow flight of stairs!” Gornia chimed in. “What about that time we had to shift the huge chest with the horrible smell, young Albia—and we found the lads were hauling along a half-decayed corpse inside it?”

  “I certainly remember. He was a burly man, he’d been in it for days—and it was hot weather. He was very ripe. Your lads knew he was in there, but they still lifted up the lid and made me come close for a look.”

  “She wasn’t sick,” Gornia told the slave. “We were proud of her.”

  This gossip appealed to Galanthus, who beneath his training in sexual enticement was a normal boy. He might not view me with greater respect as a result, but he stopped hanging over the rail. Gornia, who had had a lot of youths through his hands over the decades, gestured him to sit down out of harm’s way. Probably to his own surprise, Galanthus obeyed. He even stayed quiet while I asked the ancient porter about the scrolls.

  Gornia took on board that I was not entirely at ease with Tuccia.

  “You have to be fair. The thing is, Albia, she must make up her mind first that your scrolls are genuine.”

  “Genuine? How come? Most scrolls are copies made by scribes, Gornia, so what’s this?”

  “Well, first, are they bad copies—not properly transcribed, all gaps and wrong words or altered phrases?”

  I did know that many very poor versions existed for all types of writing. I had once been taken on a trip to Greece and Egypt. Falco and Helena had conducted an investigation at the Great Library of Alexandria; I remembered much discussion of ideal scholarship, and the hunt for accuracy instead of mangled texts.

  Was that what Gornia meant? Impure copies? Rather, he had picked up from me that the philosophers in question purportedly existed in remote times, with much of their work supposedly lost. So, he reckoned Tuccia’s next question would be, were these scrolls genuine missing texts from centuries ago—or were they deliberate fakes?

  “Fakes?” I was amazed. “Do people invent philosophical scribbles?”

  “People fake anything. There is a lively market for rare works,” Gornia assured me. “Scrolls that are said to be ‘missing’ command a premium. You know what collectors are like about the chance to own something nobody else has. News of a lost scroll drives them into a frenzy. They drool, they need to gloat over it alone at home, they want to be the first to have it on a shelf.”

  “So…” This was a new thought. “Falco might be very keen to advertise a sale that includes sought-after scripts by Epitynchanus, the hilarious Controversialist—not to mention a completely new fragment from the crackpot Philadespoticus of Skopelos?”

  “Oh, he’d make a few jokes, but he would be.”

  “Then, Gornia, might Tuccia try to play down their significance, so she can wheedle them off us for less than top value and sell them on herself?”

  “She certainly would try, young Albia.”

  “Right. I’m on to her! But let’s set up an auction. I suppose Father knows some collectors, but the late Mysticus and his shop’s new owner will have better contacts? We need Tuccia, and she knows this, to bring in the right maniacal collector. Better still, at least two rivals to force up the price.”

  “Correct.”

  “It’s happened before? So, Father and Tuccia will play a delicate game, dancing around one another to grab the profit?”

  “An accommodation will be reached,” Gornia assured me.

  “How lucky that I clung onto the goods, then! Tuccia wanted to borrow them to show to people.”

  “Your father has taught you well,” said the trusty auction porter, revelling in our family’s guile.

  He drifted off into a world of his own. I waved to Galanthus and was about to tiptoe away, leaving Gornia to sleep out the afternoon, when the old man rasped, “And if these scrolls are fakes, you can bet there will be others. Fooling collectors into paying through the nose for ‘new discoveries’ is big business. Albia, have a poke around that site with a spade!”

  Hard luck, Galanthus! The pretty boy and I were off on another route-march. Now I wanted to go back to the Grove of the Caesars, to tell Larcius and the team to dig for more buried treasure at the nymphaeum.

  “Fake scrolls at the fake cave!” Wonderful.

  XIII

  A big meatball called Cluventius was about to hold his birthday party in Caesar’s Gardens. Contractors were swarming everywhere, preparing fancy bowers and draping awnings from existing structures. Despite the vehicle curfew that applies throughout Rome in daytime, carts trundled in from all directions, laden with seats, serving tables, garlands, comports and goblets. The wagon bringing platforms for entertainers nearly broke an axle under its load, while there was enough portable cooking equipment to feed cavalry after all-day manoeuvres. Even statues were supplied, though plenty of ivy-twined figures already stood proud among the box hedges or posed in arches.

  I wondered if you had to obtain permission for a private function in a public space. If so, that did not stop Cluventius. He was intent on holding his pop-up orgy that evening, regardless of protocol. By the time the park-keepers could round up a magistrate to expel him and his paraphernalia from their walks, Cluventius would have disappeared, leaving behind only unwanted pavilions, folding up on themselves, and festering mounds of food rubbish, attracting crows. In the meantime, he had taken over half the gardens.

  I found out who he was, and his view of his own importance, when I finally forced a passage through his teeming contractors to reach our site. Hired caterers were diverting the aqueduct to service their cookery and washing-up—assuming hygiene was part of their remit, which is not always the case at functions. A few of them were fixing a temporary pipe to the Alsietina, illegal, of course, but they seemed to have done it before, judging by the tools they had brought with them. Others just stood and watched Larcius and our team dismantling the cave.

  I asked sharp questions. Cluventius wasn’t a senator, he was much more impressive. Politics lay beneath his notice. He was a very big force in transportation. He moved mass consignments of heavy goods to and fro across the Empire. If anyone wanted something shifted, he could do it. This was on a scale that enabled him to celebrate his fiftieth year with a night that his friends and family would long remember.

  “Though tasteful,” the preparation team assured me. “Everything high class.” This option was apparently the most superior level of event their company offered.

  “No nudity?” I guessed.

  “Nor groping, nor nipping behind a marquee. If anyone wants a leg-over, they have to go home for it. The party is expected to go on so long, they can always come back afterwards. The client has chosen a recital of lyric poetry
by actual poets—” I openly groaned. “Then a display of proper Greek dancing, the kind they have at festivals—” Dear heavens, the utterly boring kind. “— and respectable music.”

  “Respectable?”

  “Again, clothes on, everyone stops nattering and listens to it, lots of really lovely lyre tunes.”

  That sounded familiar. “So, don’t tell me—your client has hired the Fabulous Stertinius?”

  “You have heard of him?” Stertinius was a much sought-after celebrity player. Judging me as a builder’s wife, the contract party-planners looked surprised.

  “He played at my wedding.” He and his backing musicians had taken to us; now they even came to our house to practise sometimes. I did not boast, though getting Stertinius at home was a coup. Tiberius and I are modest.

  The party-planners found it hard to believe me, but now I had shaken their ideas they did wander away, leaving my workmen space to do their jobs. Once he could speak freely about them, Larcius started going spare. “We can’t move for their bloody transports. They keep loafing here, asking daft questions. Anything to avoid doing their own work—if you call handing out appetisers work.”

  “Squid parcels call for special skills,” I said, smiling. “Look, it sounds like just one night and they will disappear. Do you want to call a halt today?”

  “What do you think the master would say?”

  “I think he’d be realistic, don’t you?”

  “So long as the final decision is yours, then!”

  Being Tiberius’s stand-in had its complexities, but I felt safe to say our men could leave the grotto temporarily. I told them to go and start on the marble at Fullo’s Nook. Our next work here required discretion. I did not want a bunch of party-primpers watching us unearthing rare scrolls.

  I told the clerk of works in an undertone what Gornia had said. Larcius agreed to have the boys start an exploration dig tomorrow, when the Cluventius event was over. “Let the cooks scram. If there are spare drunks lying on garden paths in the morning, they won’t be thinking about us. Forgive me, though, there is a catch and it’s bad news for Trypho. We do need to keep a watchman on site this evening while this big carry-on happens. I’m worried about the state of the works—what’s left of the grotto is unsafe. Putting barricades around it will never be enough. Those caterers telling me their party will be ‘respectable’ only suggests one thing—it won’t be. Once guests get bored with Greek dancing and poets, they will come swarming all around the gardens, with wine inside them, looking for mischief. We don’t want merrymakers clambering over the rocks until they fall off and break their necks.”

  Trypho looked amenable to guarding the works. He would like to watch the party as his evening treat. Maybe the caterers would even give him a drink. Serenus thought that was such an attractive idea, he would stay as well. Since the grotto spooked Trypho, young Sparsus offered to overnight with them: he, too, wanted to gawp at the event. We said he could, provided he kept Trypho sober.

  I muttered to Larcius that I did know having a sober night-watchman was as impossible as sending your apprentice to buy rainbow paint. Larcius said not to worry: Trypho was used to drinking.

  “What about young Sparsus, though?”

  “We’re giving him the right education.”

  “How does that square with his mother? Isn’t she formidable?”

  “She believes Sparsus is safe with us. I told her Faustus only allows goat’s milk on site.”

  We left Sparsus behind to keep an eye on things now, while the others went to Fullo’s. Galanthus was complaining about another walk, so I told him to stop with Sparsus.

  * * *

  Of course, by evening all the men had built up the Cluventius birthday party in their heads until it was potentially an epic carnival. Larcius was too sensible to bother, but when they finished at Fullo’s Nook, Serenus and Trypho came back to the yard to clean up. Then, after assembling vast provisions for supper, they eagerly started back to the Grove. Once Primulus heard that his brother had been allowed this exotic sleepover, he was so jealous that I let him go with them.

  My steward could not decide whether to purse his lips at my granting the boys favours or to accept the temporary peace. “Trust me, Gratus, this is not going to be the treat they think. It will be dark, in a garden in December. Cluventius is having a private party, so I doubt there will really be much chance for outsiders to ogle. Besides, if the dancers disappear in the Transtiberina, that solves our problem.”

  Gratus had had such a day with Primulus, he admitted he would be happy to lose them.

  In fact, we did lose them. The relief was temporary, worse luck. But it would change their young lives unexpectedly. What happened to the dancing boys was too exciting even for them.

  The party that night was memorable in ways I had never expected. During it, someone disappeared. When he realised her absence, Cluventius created a major fuss. Nobody could blame him. The woman who went missing was his wife.

  XIV

  At our house the alarm was raised by Sparsus. Builders start work early. With all of Caesar’s Gardens now further disrupted because of the vanished partygoer, Serenus sent the apprentice to ask Larcius what they ought to do. Since they had no Tiberius, Larcius came to ask me. Muttering, I got out of bed to see to it.

  I was soon curious. Birthdays can be good occasions for misery. If there was already trouble in the Cluventius household, holding a big party was quite likely to stir up a hysterical climax. Many wives who finally snapped would make a theatrical performance of it, but this one had apparently caught everyone by surprise. Maybe she was a nice woman (they do exist) or else she simply thought a quiet exit was best. Maybe she could not face telling her husband she intended to leave him. Perhaps he would not want her to go, because he cared, or else he was a tyrant who would not allow himself to lose face. Perhaps she wanted time to escape with her lover before her husband noticed. One way or another, this had the makings of intrigue and scandal.

  I had been edgy about Tiberius and his sister, so this would be a distraction. I hoped Paris would return today with news, but the runabout could not be expected until after midday. While I waited, I could trot over the Sublician Bridge to find out what was happening. Larcius seemed strangely reluctant for me to go, but once I had made up my mind he gave in and came with me.

  By the time we reached the Grove of the Caesars, search teams had found a body.

  XV

  To the family concerned this must have been a highly unusual situation, though I had seen similar too many times. To me the woman’s disappearance now had horrid inevitability. I knew it would not have been an accident: she had met a bad end.

  In the gardens and on the edge of the Grove, unhappy groups of men were standing in silence. The find had only just been made, where the plane trees started. No one was sure who should break the news to Cluventius. No one wanted to volunteer. Most of those who had been brought to search were slaves, perhaps afraid of his reaction.

  Even at that early point, I felt the draw for me to offer help. I picked out a possible overseer. “What have you found?”

  “She’s there, lying in the undergrowth.”

  “Alive or dead?”

  “Dead. Naked. Obviously murdered. And…” He could not say it. My heart sank. The woman must have been violated.

  “Yes, I see. You are certain it’s the wife?”

  “I work for them. It’s definitely her.”

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then that must be dealt with, and it’s urgent. Would you like me to tell him?”

  “Who are you?” asked the man, rather late in the day.

  I had only offered out of sympathy, wanting the husband to be told as kindly as possible, but I dressed it up with official status. “Flavia Albia, wife to the aedile Faustus. He had to travel out of Rome but has given me his seal.” If anyone challenged that, I could pretend I had left his hippocampus ring behind at home. I spoke wit
h the quiet gravity he would have used. “Let me do it. The bad news may seem gentler coming from a woman. Bring me to your master—he’s called Cluventius, isn’t he? Come with me, then once he knows, you can confirm the details.”

  Simply to sound as if you know what to do often works. From then on, I was accepted as a person of authority. It seemed easiest for me to take over. And it saved anyone else having to assume a role that made them nervous.

  I gave instructions not to touch the body. No one had been sent for the vigiles; I still had the reliable Larcius with me, so I despatched him. “From here, go right around the Naumachia, then if you come to the Via Aurelia, you’ve gone too far. You need the duty officer. Mention Faustus. Say the victim is the wife of a man of consequence. They need to send their top investigator immediately—if he has gone off duty, they must call him in again—and my advice is to let their tribune know, because he will want to inform the Prefect before anything leaks out.” Once he had done that, I told Larcius to come back to our site and look after our men.

  Then I did not hang around. My investigative mode was automatically kicking in. I could not help mentally asking the usual questions. I wanted to announce the news to Cluventius myself, so I could observe his first reaction. In a case with a dead wife the first rule is: assume the husband did it.

  On the other hand, I would not have expected a spouse to leave his wife stripped naked in the middle of a wood. Men who kill their womenfolk use other methods, in different locations. Quite often they do it at home. They may make it look like a burglary gone wrong, rarely a sex crime. Most like to finish off their victims when no one else is there.

  * * *

  Cluventius’s overseer walked with me as I had suggested. In shock, he was still carrying the big hoe he had been using to bash down undergrowth; he gripped it without knowing he did so. I ascertained that his name was Engeles. He was a steady, capable type, about forty, looking like a house slave, though some of the others were from the transportation business. Teams of their own men had been summoned early this morning to look for the woman.