A Comedy of Terrors Page 7

“I won’t bother, Ennianus. I have peered in sometimes—it’s a haven of broken promises. Besides, it looks dead as usual. Does anyone ever really trade from there?”

  “I noticed slaves lugging in something this week.”

  “New stock? What was it?”

  “I never ask. Your father always reckoned the Lumber Room was used by thieves. I’m too old to get my head bashed in for asking questions.”

  That again was typical of Fountain Court. I thanked the faithful basket-weaver, then led my donkey back to the respectable haunts of Lesser Laurel Street.

  Not entirely respectable, however. On arrival, I rode Merky around to the builders’ yard where her stable was. The street door still needed to be unlocked, yet someone had been in before me. I went into the yard unsuspectingly, though Barley gave a knowing growl. I saw the stable’s half-door standing open. The stable was empty. When I hurried through to the house, panic already raged. The two boys were wailing. I quickly confirmed the tragedy: somebody had stolen Sheep.

  XI

  Gaius and Lucius were so distraught that Gratus, Paris and I walked around the nearby streets, to demand had anyone seen our beast, then to be laughed at for asking. I left Suza and Dromo, who were tearful themselves, with the boys. Fornix would supervise, though from the safety of his kitchen.

  Searching was pointless. This hill had been famous for cattle-rustling ever since that myth when Geryon stole cattle from Hercules. No one kept chickens on the Aventine; even if they escaped being snatched by a fox, fear of them being stolen was too stressful. Who wants to be tantalised by the scent of their own capon braising in a neighbour’s pot? A sow in a shed would be fine—if supplied with a personal bodyguard. Envious of some other cook, Fornix muttered that Sheep must be roasting by now.

  I sent Paris to the station-house to make a formal burglary report. I had few hopes of a vigiles response but sheep are expensive things to lose. At least they are if you paid for them in the first place. We had not, but our beast had a temple connection, which made her special. Although I supposed my complaint was pointless, Morellus must have been told about it because he and Tiberius came home.

  They took a lot of interest in how the yard door had been opened. Heads together, the two men pored over the lock, which appeared unbroken but must have been picked. I was asked several times whether I had secured it, to which I answered less and less civilly. Morellus then asked annoying questions about who held a key.

  “You’re talking to me as if I were a murder suspect. One for us, a spare we hid and can’t find now, plus the main one for our clerk-of-works. Larcius is reliable—anyway, he’s gone to his mother’s for the holiday so it can’t have been him. Well, he calls her his mother though we think it’s a ladyfriend. I’m sure I did lock up. Face it, fellows, if you can’t find a sign of a break-in and it’s not that old cliché an inside job, this must be professional theft.”

  Morellus glanced at Tiberius, who took note without comment. “You’ve got a watchman, haven’t you?” demanded Morellus.

  “Trypho. He is here at night when needed.”

  “Well, he was needed today!”

  Trypho, who never rented a room, liked being on watch, here or at sites, because it gave him a place to stay. He came from outside Rome. “He’s away with his family, somewhere on the Campagna. Has nobody told you, Titus Morellus? This is Saturnalia! Everyone goes off to suffer with their relatives. Our men are builders. They won’t reappear until January, and even then they will be sluggish.”

  Exasperated, Morellus nodded at the empty chain that trailed across the yard. “Guard dog? Was he stolen too?”

  “Drax. Trypho has taken him home with him, because poor old Drax gets lonely if he’s left on his own.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Flavia!”

  “Morellus, there’s nothing valuable here at the moment. Tell him, Tiberius. You have no work until the New Year, and you are not storing much.” Tiberius nodded, looking glum. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him, “I checked your tool-store. It’s still chained. All your loose materials are buried under our decorative branches, which were left alone too.”

  Tiberius pulled a rueful face. I would have to quiz him about his low mood.

  “What about your donkey?” Morellus persisted. Anyone would think he wanted to imply he was good at his job.

  “The donkey was with me.”

  “Good thing!”

  “No: bad news! When we got her I was told she would provide security. Apparently good donkeys will drive off intruders.”

  “Who invented that story? What about the people who lived here before you? Would they still have keys?”

  “Keys again! The previous owner died. The heir is still on friendly terms with us—he rents a shop from Tiberius. Metellus Nepos would never steal our sheep, he has his own; he’s a cheesemaker. He gave me all the old keys, but we changed the locks anyway.”

  “If you are certain you fastened up…” Tiberius butted in. That niggle again. “I will have to change the yard lock again.”

  I was despatched to the local locksmith. Morellus gave detailed instructions as to what kind of elaborate piece to buy, while Tiberius decided I should bring it home for self-installation. Why pay for a locksmith if you were a building contractor?

  “Three keys, Albia!”

  “Yes, love. I worked that out.” I could also see now that Tiberius was worried that the intruders could easily have come further, into the house, where in daytime the door from the courtyard was generally left open. People indoors were at risk.

  “I suppose,” sneered Morellus, “you just have a latch here and keep the lifter beside it, handy on a nail?”

  “Oh, no!” chorused Tiberius and I, though he then told me to bring a second new lock as well.

  When I hurried back home, we had a new visitor: Agemathus. He had turned up as instructed by me at the Orion’s Dog, now with his tray of sigillaria. He also brought his brother Victor as support. They must only just have arrived; they were looking nervous because Tiberius and Morellus had fastened onto them. It was not to congratulate them on their murder jape.

  Upon sight of Agemathus, Lucius ran into the kitchen, shrieking that he had seen a Saturnalia ghost; he and Gaius kept sneaking out to stare, then running away again, screaming themselves silly. This did not help the efforts of Tiberius and Morellus as they tried to recruit the two Africans to provide information about nut-sellers.

  “While we’ve got you out of public view, tell us: are the old street nutsters being pushed out?”

  “No, Officer, sir. But they have to buy from the new people.”

  “Does that make a difference to them?”

  “Yes, because the new ones charge them more for supplies.”

  “And how have the old sellers reacted?”

  “They do not like it, Legate.”

  “Have they fought back?”

  “Too frightened, sir.” Simply talking about it Agemathus sounded scared.

  Gaius and Lucius had crept from the kitchen corridor; they were walking around behind Agemathus, to see if he still had a knife in his back. Their surreptitious behaviour was making him uncomfortable, but I did not stop them. That would teach him to play dead on me.

  After setting up Agemathus and his brother as possible informants, Tiberius and Morellus released them to me while they went to change the locks. I had fetched serious barrel versions. Naturally the keys were too stiff.

  With one ear on cursing from the yard, I duly bought sigillaria from the tray. Gaius and Lucius, whose presents these figurines were supposed to be, took no interest. The Africans sold me more than I had meant to buy, then slid off elsewhere.

  The new locks were problematical. I could have said they would be.

  Tiberius, who deemed himself a handyman, came back into the courtyard, bringing the locks to make their keys work. Gaius and Lucius reappeared to watch him. They were standing too close, but he tried not to shout at them.

  “What are you plannin
g to do,” Morellus asked us, pinpointing the question everyone else tactfully avoided, “when their father turns up on you, wanting them back?”

  “See him off,” replied Tiberius, not looking up. The chisel he was using slipped suddenly, gouging his hand. Blood welled.

  “Blood!” shrieked the children. “Unkie is going to die!”

  “Unkie is not,” I said. “Don’t call him that. You are sensible boys, not soppy cherubs. Say his name nicely. Go and ask Fornix for a bowl of warm water, please. Don’t worry,” I told Tiberius. “The wound is not as bad as when I fixed you to that table with a skewer.” Morellus looked amused.

  As tension mounted over the lock problem, Morellus decided he was needed back on watch. I stuck it out until Tiberius finally decided to take a lock apart. Time passed, with curses. While he was attempting reassembly, I happened to draw his attention to some grommet he had missed out, mentioning that if he was in trouble we could always ask the proper locksmith to come … Never do that. After Tiberius passionately replied, I fetched my cloak and left.

  I went quietly. Now that children lived with us, I had no energy for huffs. Besides, my theory is that when a man is doing little jobs at home, either you endure the cursing or you take off to see your mother.

  Mine was out. Her staff said Falco had been mending a candelabrum all morning; after a couple of hours of it, Helena had taken off to see her brother. Then Falco had walked out too, in a huff at being left alone.

  It was too soon to return home. I decided to carry on to the Saepta Julia and tell my father how things had gone with Rodan.

  XII

  Once I hit the Campus Martius, I knew my mistake. Originally a soggy field where Rome’s young men played at being soldiers, the open part had shrunk right back to the first bend in the Tiber, up before the Altar of Peace and Mausoleum of Augustus. Between there and the Capitol, the Campus had been infilled with big temples, little temples, porticos filled with art and literature, theatres, baths, circuses and a gigantic sundial with an obelisk gnomon on a calibrated marble pavement. Domitian had recently built an athletics stadium and a beautiful performance odeon. The number and size of public lavatories showed how many people now visited the Campus.

  At Saturnalia, the area was packed with extra stalls selling festival produce, with crowds of fraught people frantically buying things and merrymakers putting off the pain of that; wine was sloshing out of gourds or flagons. The big question is whether to spend big to hide your shabby affection or to spend small as some reverse demonstration of true love. Either way, everything was available: styli, writing tablets and scrolls; dice, dice-boxes and knucklebones; pets, from sparrows to whole squealing pigs; knives for hunting boar or murdering your partner; tweezer and ear-wax kits; balls and weights for the gym; moneyboxes; musical instruments; toys; tools; clothes; perfumes; food. As well as massed rows of sigillaria, there were candles everywhere to symbolise the Undying Sun. While people struggled to decide what to buy as presents, food and drinks trays were paraded around by hawkers. With people distracted by mulled wine, pickpockets worked their sly way through the crowds.

  The stalls blocked any view of the paintings and statues in each elegant porticus; their fretful customers impeded my progress. I needed to struggle halfway across the Campus. Tucked between Agrippa’s Pantheon and Domitian’s newly glamorised sanctuary of Serapis, stood the long form of the Saepta Julia. Once used in a complicated Roman voting system, its original purpose was redundant now that our emperors generously helped us out by choosing “elected” officials for us. Instead, the fine two-storey galleried building, not long restored after a huge city fire, was home to sinister men who sold glittery items to peculiar collectors and guilty adulterers. You could buy jewellery (both real and fake), vases (perfect or heavily restored), Greek art (original or made last week), and at the offices first rented by my grandfather and now by my father, you could acquire any of those, then organise an auction to sell all the stuff you had to clear out from your house to make space for your new goods.

  At the Saepta I was disappointed. Didius Falco, the devious, swaggering proprietor, my adoptive father, was not there. Some woman who intended to surprise her husband with a divorce notice as he quaffed his Saturnalia draught was having their possessions valued. “Falco has gone to look her over,” staff told me.

  “Her belongings, you mean?”

  “Oh, them too.”

  “He’ll be all day. I can’t wait. Tell him Rodan liked the present but will be hard to winkle out. Now I’m off.”

  I had come on foot. Our donkey had remained at home, saddened by losing Sheep. The auction staff let me ride theirs partway back: Patchy, a beast who was almost as antique as their stock. He and his donkey-boy could take me as far as the Forum, provided I went via the Basilica Aemilia to deposit cash with the family banker. It is best to vary your routine and Father would trust me to do it today. We needed transport to carry the money chest, though it was hard forcing a way through the crowds. Patchy got shoved around, but he shoved back gamely, showing his old teeth. When I was ogled, I showed mine.

  We made it to the Basilica without either of us kicking anyone. Upstairs I duly exchanged quips with Father’s banker, whose own father was nicknamed Nothokleptes, or “thieving bastard.” It is possible his mother was respectably married but we had transferred the pseudonym to Notho’s son and heir, who kept the money table now.

  “Can’t you drop that terrible old tease, Flavia Albia?”

  “Stop moaning and give me a receipt, Young Notho.”

  Though second-generation, he made an exaggerated Egyptian gesture, as if he had come straight from a temple in Thebes with a mummified monkey clasped to his pot belly. “You don’t need that nonsense.”

  “My pa has banked here a long time, so he wants proof. How is yours?”

  “Ready to pass on. I don’t bring him out in December in case a breath of wind blows on him and he croaks. Your own dear parent?”

  “Still full of life and daft ideas.”

  “Business good for him?” Nothokleptes demanded narrowly, since that would mean business for him.

  “As you can tell from today’s bonny boodle. You must have thought you’d gone to Elysium when Falco received his inheritance.”

  Notho cackled happily. He questioned me whether I still banked with my Greek woman, Arsinoë; I chortled back that I needed someone ethical. Unfazed by insults, Nothokleptes swore he didn’t want my custom anyway: he had had enough informer’s misery with Falco in the old days. Business in Rome runs on such merry banter.

  Down on the ground floor, I happened upon Naevius. He was a fellow informer, who did a lot of legal work. Since the courts were about to close for five days, most lawyers had wound down. Even so, he sat glumly on his stool by his customary pillar, in case a commission should shimmy along. He used the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius, named for Augustus’s grandsons, nothing to do with our nephews; Rome may rule the civilised world, yet the noble Romans can’t fix themselves up with enough personal names.

  In the hundred-paces-long arcade there was a row of rooms let out for retail, but my colleague could not run to rent. He generally placed himself by one of the huge white marble pillars where at least he could stare out at the Forum while he waited around. I went over to greet him, a professional courtesy. He had affixed an advertisement to the pillar, using a long piece of rope to tie on a rather small plaque, which I cheerily admired; he knew this was irony. Naevius was eating a flatbread but immediately said he couldn’t afford to treat me.

  I would eat at home. I leaned on the pillar, not obstructing the advert. “Any work on?” I asked, though the answer was obvious.

  “Bugger all. You?”

  “Nix.”

  We gazed at the Forum Romanum. Among the mass of monuments, crowds were thinner than usual, though the atmosphere was busier. It was all festival hustling: no use to us. Dusk would soon be falling, and as temples prepared to put out lamps, the air chilled, adding to our me
lancholy.

  I had always liked Naevius. There were informers who worked from the Saepta Julia, though I had no respect for them. One who nested in its annex, the Diribitorium, was such a dud that a client had once stopped suing his enemy and sued his informer instead; the judge awarded him extra costs for having to endure moral turpitude and bad breath. I knew Naevius was far more competent. Luckily, his work rarely put him in competition with me. He hunted down witnesses and delivered subpoenas. My uncles, both lawyers, used him when they needed evidence about shady characters (with Quintus and Aulus that usually meant background on their ropier clients).

  As an informer, Naevius was no colonnade-crawler, no noser in rubbish pails, no eavesdropping spy. He always dressed carefully, today in a very clean slate-grey tunic with meticulously laced shoes. Even when slumped in despondency, he kept his feet and knees together neatly. He looked respectable enough to accompany men to argue disputed tax claims—a role he had been known to take.

  He told me he had been touting for trade in all the usual bars, those being the only places where an informer could find our kind of customer at this time of year. “I tried the lot. Don’t bother, Albia. I covered the whole geography—the Athens, the Verona, the Venetia. I don’t care; I even tried the Corioli.”

  “You’ll catch something! Had a go at the Tiger?” I asked sympathetically. “There’s usually some poor soul in there, sobbing because his master has beaten him raw with a rope’s end, in need of an informer to explain for a fee that he has no protection in law.”

  “Grr! No luck. I pulled a trader out of the Tiger landlord’s clutches in one of his classic disputes over change—he never gets any better at fiddling—but the victim was too upset to offer me even a thank-you, let alone a genteel payoff. The Phoenix—that’s really gone downhill in my opinion—the Centaur, the Porpentine—”

  “The Porpentine, Naevius?”

  “Possible misreading of the sign, dear. I was a bit bleary by that stage. I’d had a drink in most of them, which is why I’m broke. I ought to have known better. No point collecting tax-deductible expenses if you have no taxable income to deduct expenses from.” We smiled together sadly. “It’s all right for you, Flavia Albia; you married money.”