Graveyard of the Hesperides Read online

  “Oh no. It needed diplomacy.”

  “Well, thanks, Julia!”

  “Father told Mother all about it, so we know what happened.” This was not because Helena Justina had confided in them but, in the family tradition, the girls had shamelessly listened outside the door.

  “Father said he fully understands why Uncle Tullius feels unhappy; he wanted Tullius to know the marriage is nothing to do with him. Falco has his own misgivings, which he hoped Tullius would not mind him setting out briefly. Flavia Albia is his eldest daughter and Falco had always hoped any new partnership would reflect our family’s status, with him being a confidant of the great emperors Vespasian and Titus; also, we have two uncles in the Senate, which is evidently important.”

  I choked quietly.

  “Uncle Tullius then blamed Falco for putting Tiberius up to trying to get his own money back. But Falco said Tiberius had the idea himself—” Lies, devious Father! Falco had suggested it. “If it comes to court, Falco’s advice would be to back away fast. But of course, Tullius doesn’t need advice from him or from anyone; he’s a famously sharp businessman.”

  “So what,” asked Tiberius wryly, “did my sharp Uncle Tullius respond?”

  “Oh, we don’t know. We only heard the sounds of Mother throwing a cushion because Father is a reprobate. Then Father threw it back, but he missed and broke a vase. I think it was a kantharos. Things were said. About the kantharos, I mean.”

  “As in ‘This is a fine Etruscan drinking cup with two vertical handles?’”

  “No, Albia. As in, ‘Didius Falco, you are a trial to live with.’”

  “Next, Mother invited Uncle Tullius to dinner and, to the surprise of all, he came. She didn’t use our cook—she borrowed a good one.”

  “Father got ours, Tiberius. Hopeless as usual. He just can’t buy slaves.”

  “Helena Justina tucked his napkin around Uncle Tullius with her own hands, complimenting him on the fine job he has made of bringing up his lovely nephew. She murmured to him that it would be best for both families to grit their teeth and show support. Tiberius and Albia both being so headstrong, she thought that was the only way—otherwise there was a danger you would run off to be beach bums on a Greek island.”

  “We never even thought of that,” I marveled.

  “Still could!” suggested Tiberius in a low voice.

  “Falco said our mother was a wise and wonderful woman. So, he was prepared to withdraw his own objections and pay for the ceremony as a gesture, even if it choked him, provided Uncle Tullius found it in his heart to unbend as well.”

  “Which Tullius had to?” I asked.

  “Of course!” Julia scoffed. “Our ridiculous parents have some uses.”

  We had reached the Forum. I gathered the girls closer. Favonia excitedly continued her chatter, oblivious to her noble surroundings and the squalid crowds bustling therein, very keen to feel her up or steal the purse from her girdle. “So Uncle Tullius will come to the wedding. He can look magnanimous announcing that it’s the right moment to give Tiberius more say in their family business. That will make everyone happy. Tiberius will get at the money, so he can go out and buy lots of things, especially for your house.”

  “We can help with choosing things to buy,” Julia told him hopefully. Gently moving a persistent sausage-seller out of our path, Tiberius managed to seem distracted; he had mastered the art of looking noncommittal. As a wife, I might see a lot of that. I was ready for it.

  “Now listen, Albia,” Favonia ordered me. “The other new relatives we are expecting are these.” She ticked them off on her small fingers. “An auntie from Caere who is elderly and infirm, but if she can come we have to be nice to her even though she is a bit grumpy these days. Tiberius has a sister; her name is Fania Faustina. When their parents died, they were split up. Tiberius was taken by Uncle Tullius in Rome while his sister was brought up by Aunt Valeria in Caere. Tiberius was once very close to his sister but she married a husband that Tiberius can’t stand; they have three little boys whom he hasn’t seen for a long time because of the gruesome husband.”

  Julia had a say: “We shall have to decide who they stay with. Aunt Valeria will refuse to be at Uncle Tullius’ house because he is so deplorable. He’s not her brother, so she can’t order him about. Mother says they may all have to stop with us.” I imagined Helena had mixed feelings about that.

  “Your mother has been very kind,” Tiberius told me.

  “And Falco?”

  “He’s just being Falco,” Julia sniffed. “Don’t worry, we have him under control.”

  *

  After further discussion about my own relations, mainly who we wanted to omit from the guest list (though they would come anyway), we rounded the Circus Maximus and arrived at the foot of the Aventine. Katutis and Dromo were deputed to escort my sisters home safely, while Tiberius and I climbed up the hill to the vigiles’ station house.

  First we stopped for a rest and a drink of water at the Stargazer, my aunt’s caupona. There I tried miming to my deaf cousin Junillus, the waiter on duty, that I was having a wedding to which he was invited, but he would have to inform his father, the doleful Gaius Baebius, that I had appointed someone else to conduct the sacrifice and augury.

  Junillus, a bright, good-looking seventeen-year-old, let me struggle for a long while before he suddenly and silently reacted. “Jupiter Tonans! The poor old sod will be mortified! You can bloody well tell him yourself, Albia.”

  The cheeky lad understood more than he usually let on and was a brilliant actor.

  *

  We went on to the Fourth Cohort’s secondary billet. Tiberius shouldered open a crack in the heavy gates, despite the vigiles’ attempts to deter the public from bothering them.

  Various ex-slave troops were lolling in the courtyard among pieces of firefighting equipment. They whistled at me on principle, regardless of my being under a magistrate’s protection. This was no surprise. The first time I came here I was with my father, yet only narrowly avoided being gang-raped on a heap of esparto mats. We were collecting a lost dog. Even she looked slightly ruffled, as if she had fought off unwanted attention.

  A dark closet halfway down a dusty veranda housed Morellus. After a night’s long shift he could have gone home to his family, but as usual he was asleep, carefully wedged on a stool with his back against a wall and his feet up on a table. His booted heels were dropping road dust on the scroll that listed last night’s arrests. For once the miscreants were not shouting protests in the cells. Drunk or sober, they seemed to be landlords who wouldn’t comply with fire regulations and were now resignedly waiting for slaves to come from their bankers with the necessary bribes. Morellus must have stayed late in order to extract his cut.

  I banged a metal spoon on his dented food bowl. Like all ex-soldiers he had the knack of waking instantly, on the alert. Seeing us, he did not bother to lower his boots.

  “Flavia Albia! Word is, you’re now screwing that aedile who was sniffing around you.”

  “I am here,” the aedile pointed out.

  “I see you!” Morellus did not call him “sir.”

  “Good to have you back,” returned Faustus, mildly.

  “I thank you, Aedile. It’s bloody good to be here and not dying in my bed with four upset nippers all bawling their sad little heads off and throwing porridge about.”

  Once overweight, a vicious poisoning attack had left Morellus a shadow of himself. He had the shaved head all the vigiles favored, and wore the standard red tunic, stylishly crumpled, with muted accents of gravy stain. His belt was wide, his boots tough, his feet showing through the battered straps were dramatically blistered, his manner was truculent, his career had stalled for the past ten years. In all of this he was typical. Of Rome’s various military or paramilitary forces, the vigiles were the lowest grade.

  “Come over here and have a big squeeze,” the horrible lout enticed me, still ignoring Faustus.

  “No chance, Morellus.
Haven’t you heard? I’m getting married.” I would never have gone anywhere near him anyway. “Show some respect to my fiancé, will you?”

  Jumping his feet down floorward, Morellus sat up suddenly, letting out the customary cry of amazement. “Fiancé! You don’t say! When is the wedding?” He laughed raucously. Tiberius did not. “I’ll have to get a new smart tunic for that!”

  “Who said you were invited?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll invite us myself. Pullia will be delighted.” His wife, Pullia, was a surprisingly nice woman, though she must have been sozzled the day she agreed to share her life with Morellus. I wondered whether they would bring the four little porridge-flingers. Probably have to. They were children no aunts would willingly look after. Anyway, Pullia liked them to all go out as a family. It would increase morale, she hoped, poor optimistic woman.

  Tiberius placed the rubble basket on the table, a heavy planked affair onto which officers traditionally slammed the heads of witnesses they were interrogating. Having a smashed face was supposed to encourage people to tell the truth.

  “Presents? What’s this, Legate?”

  “We are hoping you can tell us. We think it may be some of the bones of a dead waitress, but as Albia’s bright sister remarked, if that’s right, she had interestingly mismatched legs.”

  “Just my type. I love a woman with a physical quirk. Let’s see your luscious legs, sweetie!” Morellus hauled himself upright so he could peer salaciously into the basket. Pullia was in fact a good-looking woman; there was nothing wrong with her. Well, except for her judgment in men.

  Morellus upended the basket, scattering the bones all over the table where, I knew, he regularly ate and drank. “Ooh, these will look attractive in your cabinet of curiosities, Manlius Faustus. I take it you’ll display them for visitors, when you and the luscious Albia socialize?”

  Faustus went along with it genially. “So how shall we label them?”

  Morellus shifted bones left and right on the tabletop, sorting them. His movements were swift and decisive. “Woman’s thigh, woman’s ribs, male thigh bone, indeterminate spine knuckle, probably toe—could be anybody’s—female pelvis, child-bearing age, looks as if she has carried some to term, poor unhappy cow…” He continued like this through most of our cargo before speeding through the last few items. “Can’t tell, can’t decide, can’t tell, could be a dog, bound to be poultry.”

  “You’re good!” commented Faustus.

  “Practice. Tell you one thing.”

  “What?” I asked since he had clearly paused for emphasis.

  “This one, this male thigh bone, has been sawn.”

  “Deliberate dismemberment?” asked Faustus. Nodding, Morellus showed him the cut. “So we can assume at least one of the bodies, perhaps not the dog or the chicken, died from foul play?”

  “Well,” Morellus drawled, being clever. “Whether you call it foul play will depend if your victim was a bad waitress. If she often fiddled bar bills, I’d call it justice.”

  XVI

  It was now the hottest part of a sultry summer day. We were up on the Aventine, a long way from the crime scene but temptingly near my apartment. We went there. Supposedly we wanted to consider options.

  As we walked the short distance from the station house, I wondered why the street life in your own area always seems safer even if it’s no more salubrious than other places. There must be as many sordid bars here as in the Ten Traders enclave. The food stalls were as dowdy, their fare as unappetizing. But where you live, in general the whores don’t shout invitations at you. You know, so you mainly dodge, the pickpockets. Feral dogs ignore your passing. Somehow you just feel more confident, less anxious, more at home, less oppressed.

  The Eagle Building, Fountain Court, was nearing the end of its long life. Constructed in the Republic as a six-story block of basic tenements, its decayed structure now creaked at every puff of breeze so that mold and dust flittered from the increasing crannies. Fortunately in August breezes rarely blew. As the hot sun baked the minimal apartments, remnants of their meager paint were flaking more every day. The building stayed upright only because it had settled like a plant on its rootstock over many years. But one slight shock and it was done for. If a god laughed in Olympus, it would crash.

  Tenants had thinned out recently as my father, who owned Fountain Court, tried to find them other places to live. He had a conscience. Nobody was grateful, but he carried on, seeking to edge them out elsewhere before he finalized a sale to a senator who would pull down the apartments to build his own private house. He was Spanish. Pa had told him this was a desirable area. According to Falco, the Thirteenth District was crammed with amenities.

  It is true that on the Aventine there are many temples. Sometimes you can’t move in the local bars for disreputable priests engaged in illegal gambling with their awful acolytes. A spotty altar boy loses, goes mad about it, and cuts off a priest’s ear with a fruit knife. If the gossips are lucky, it is subsequently discovered that the priest was using loaded dice … Lots to talk about.

  I concede that a senator could be very private on the noisy, smelly, rumbustious Mons Aventinus. Nobody would ever come to bother him at his house. Maybe Ulpius Trajanus was not so daft.

  While the Eagle Building still remained, I kept my rent-free niche in one of the better apartments (where the comparative “better” is a reckless term to use). I had lived there during my first marriage and ever since; I also used an office on the top floor, which had once been Father’s. There would be nostalgic pangs for both of us when we left Fountain Court for good, but it was time. Nobody wants to be crushed under collapsing rubble.

  Father declared he would reject any compensation suits from hurt tenants because he had given formal notice that the place might fall down any day. Staying on was now at their own risk. My two barrister uncles, the Camilli, chortled as they said they looked forward to fighting that one on behalf of the tenants. In the family we viewed Aulus and Quintus as wild boys, though there was evidence that they knew how to choose winnable cases.

  When Tiberius and I arrived that day, Rodan the porter was nowhere to be seen. That saved me having to ask whether he had found another job yet, but it meant anyone could walk in. With luck, burglars did not operate in the heat of midday. Indeed, some of them lived upstairs so they did their thieving elsewhere to avoid annoying their own neighbors. Otherwise, when property is half-empty it tends to exude a message that there will not be much worth stealing. The Eagle Building teetered on the cusp, visibly dying but not yet sufficiently deserted to attract squatters or moonlit salvage teams.

  *

  Tiberius and I went into my apartment.

  In the bedroom, I quickly sorted earrings to take away to the Viminal. Tiberius followed me quietly. I straightened up from the side table.

  “Hmm. Options!” he remarked, sliding my dress brooch to one side so he could caress my bare shoulder.

  We had not been at ease in our hired room, which we could guess had been the scene of many purely commercial couplings. We had not liked the narrow bed with its sagging, much used, wool-stuffed mattress. Here we were now, standing together beside our own fine antique bed, on an afternoon when it was still too warm to walk about outside for any distance. We also had that secret thrill of nobody knowing where we were …

  I said in a businesslike voice, “It’s obvious what we have to do next. Tiberius Manlius, you must summon your workforce from wherever they are snoozing over midday, make them bring all the spades and picks they have in the yard, then we must dig up every foot of the outside space at the Hesperides to see who else is buried there.”

  “I could do that.” Tiberius nuzzled my neck.

  Enjoying his attention, I softened. “Or collect them later?”

  “Absolutely. Flavia Albia, I would never make the men go outside in stonking heat. I care about their welfare. I don’t want them fainting.”

  “So the poor Hesperides corpses will have to lie a little
longer underground?”

  “Delay is reprehensible but we can make up time later…”

  He did not care about the excavation being delayed. As my dress pins scattered on the floor mat, the most excellent Tiberius Manlius had only one thing on his mind. It did not involve finding buried bodies.

  XVII

  By early evening we were back at the bar, with a packed courtyard. The cooler hours before sunset were genuinely best for heavy digging. Tiberius and I had returned, relaxed, bathed, refreshed by one another, then by cakes and mulsum, ready for whatever grim discovery awaited.

  Nosy, self-nominated experts came to witness our opening of the ground. As a row of workmen set about digging up the entire courtyard from its outer wall to the bar interior, first Morellus turned up. This was not his jurisdiction; the inquisitive swine claimed he was here to help Tiberius and me decipher any evidence. Such goodness of heart!

  Officers from the Third Cohort, those tiresome men who had previously dismissed the request for advice, soon joined us too. It was their patch; crime was suspected; they could not be turned away. Fortunately they took to Morellus. The group settled down as sideline observers, heads together, bringing a somber, militaristic presence. None of them offered to help dig. Tiberius Manlius put them to shame when he stripped to his under-tunic and weighed in alongside his men.

  I had learned why he looked so much at home doing this. That afternoon we had grown closer. For a start, I was seeing how our future life would be, with its pleasurable mix of working and living as a couple.

  At home earlier, I had contrasted the intimacy and fulfillment we shared in bed against the paid, time-limited, one-sided sex that customers bought in bars and brothels like this. I had balanced our ideal pleasure against the trade other people indulged in: mechanical action with faked climax, the risk of assault, joylessness, guilt. And now the sorriest consequence of this particular bar’s commerce was to be revealed.

  As Tiberius put his back into digging, I now knew he was born to the building trade. On our way back here, I had asked how he could settle so readily into it. He explained that his grandfather, on his father’s side, had been a contractor. When the Emperor Augustus boasted that he found Rome made of brick and left it marble, the elder Manlius Faustus was the one who installed that marble. He worked on public monuments, then later built homes in the country for other plebeian families who had made good and were retiring from city life. His own son moved out to the country, becoming an estate farmer and never working in the family business.