A Body in the Bathhouse Page 9

  “Yours is free labor?”

  “Mixture. But I hate slaves,” he said. “A big site’s too open. Too many transports leaving. I don’t have time to stop the merry hordes running off.”

  “So your men get adequate rations, washing facilities, and a roof.”

  “If the weather holds, our fellows are out of doors all day. We want them fit and full of energy.”

  “Like the army.”

  “The same, Falco.”

  “So how is discipline?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “But the high value of materials on-site leads to diddling?”

  “We keep the risky stuff locked away in decent stores.”

  “I’ve seen the depot with the new fence.”

  “Yes, well. You wouldn’t think there was anywhere around here to sell the stuff, or any means of moving it away—but some bugger will always manage. I arrange the best watchmen I can, and we’ve brought in dogs to help them. Then we just hope.”

  “Hmm.” That was an area I had to pursue later. “And how is life out here? The men have leisure time?”

  He groaned. “They do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “That’s where my troubles really start. They are bored. They are thinking they will get large bonuses—and half of them spend the money before we even dole it out. They have access to beer—there’s too much, and some are not used to it. They rape the native women—or so the women’s fathers claim when they come haranguing me—and they beat up the native men.”

  “That’s the fathers, husbands, lovers, and brothers of their attractive lady friends?”

  “For starters. Or on the right night, my lads will take on anyone else who has a long haircut, a strong accent, or funny trousers and a red mustache.” Lupus almost sounded proud of their spirit. “If they can’t find a Briton to abuse, they just beat up each other instead. The Italians gang up on the Gauls. When that palls, for variety the Italians tear into each other and the Gauls do the same. That’s less tricky to deal with in some ways than distraught civilian Britons hoping for a compensation payout, though it leaves me shorthanded. Pomponius gives me all Hades if too many on the complement are laid up with cracked heads. But, Falco”—Lupus stretched towards me earnestly—“this is just life on a building site abroad. It is happening all over the Empire.”

  “And you are saying it means nothing?”

  “It means I have my work cut out—but that’s what I’m here for. These are simple lads, mostly. When they start a feud, I can find out what’s up by reading the curse tablets they lay lovingly at shrines. ‘May Vertigius the snotty tiler lose his willy for stealing my red tunic, and may his chilblains hurt him very much indeed. Vertigius is a swine and I don’t like him. Also, may the foreman, that cruel and unfair person Lupus, rot and have no luck with girls.’ ”

  I laughed quietly. Then I threw in. “Are you unfair, Lupus?”

  “Oh I look after my favorites scrupulously, Falco.”

  I thought not. He seemed like a man who was as much in control of a slippery situation as he could be. He seemed to understand his men, to love their craziness, to tolerate their stupidity. I reckoned he would defend them against outsiders. I thought only the truly mad among them—and a few real lunatics would be on the payroll—would seriously curse Lupus.

  “And how are you with girls?” I asked mischievously.

  “Mind your own business! Well, I do all right.” Lupus could not resist boasting.

  He was an ugly trout. But that meant nothing. Toothless whippers-in can be popular. He held a position of authority and his manner was confident. Some women will sidle up to anyone in charge.

  I stretched. “Thanks for all that. Now tell me, have you a couple of recent acquisitions from Rome called Gloccus and Cotta?”

  “Um—not that I can think of. Do you want to scan my rolls of honor?”

  “You keep lists?”

  “Of course. Pay,” he explained sarcastically.

  “Yes, I’ll look through them, please.” They could be using false names. Any pair of tradesmen who had turned up just before me would be worth checking out. “Just one more question—you control the immigrant labor, but I gather there are British workers too?”

  Perhaps Lupus closed in slightly. “That’s right, Falco.” He stood up and was already leaving. “Mandumerus runs the local team. You’ll have to ask him.”

  There was nothing in his tone to imply a feud directly, yet I felt he and Mandumerus were not friends.

  “By the way, Falco,” he informed me as we parted. “Pomponius asked me to pass on his apologies; he mistook you for a traveling salesman—we get a lot coming around to bother us.”

  “Mistook me, eh?” I sucked my teeth.

  “He sent a message—he’s found the scroll explaining you. He wants to give you a presentation about the full scheme. Tomorrow In the plan room.”

  “Sounds like that’s all of tomorrow taken care of, then!”

  He grinned.

  XIII

  HELENA CAME with me from Noviomagus for the project presentation. On arrival at the palace, we wandered around the scaffolded part and looked at the roof where poor Valla must have fallen to his death.

  It was a straightforward case of sending a man aloft, on his own, too high up, with inadequate protection. Apparently.

  We had time in hand. Turning back, we surveyed what they called the old house. Togidubnus’ palace, his reward for allowing the Romans into Britain, must have stood out in the land of hill forts and forest hovels. Even this early version was a gem. His fellow kings and their tribesmen were still living in those large round huts with smoke holes in their pointed roofs, where several families would cram in festively together along with their chickens, ticks, and favorite goats. Togi, though, was fabulously set up. The main range of the royal home compromised a fine and substantial Romanized stone building. It would be a desirable property if it stood on the shores of the lake at Nemi; in this wilderness, it was an absolute cracker.

  A double veranda gave protection from the weather, opening onto a large colonnaded garden. It was well tended; someone enjoyed this amenity. Set slightly apart from the living suite for safety, the unmistakable domed roofs of what might well be the only private bathhouse in this province lay on the seaward side. Gentle smoke from the furnace told us Vespasian did not need to send the King a civilization trainer to teach him what the baths were for.

  Helena dragged me to explore. I made her take care, for some architectural features were in the process of being stripped by the builders. This included the colonnaded pillars around the garden; they had highly unusual, rather elegant capitals, with extravagant rams’ horn volutes, from between which worrying tribal faces wreathed in oak leaves peered out at us.

  “Too wild and woody for me!” Helena cried. “Give me simple bead and dart tops.”

  I agreed with her. “The mystical eyes seem to be an outdated fad.” I gestured at the columns being dismantled. “Pomponius starts a client’s refit by tearing down everything in sight.” I noticed that these columns were coated with stucco, which in some places was peeling as the stone beneath flaked. Weathering had forced hideous cracks in their render. “Poor Togi! Let down by tacky Claudian tat. See, this apparently noble Corinthian pillar is just a composite—thrown together on the cheap, with a life span of less than twenty years!”

  “You are shocked, Marcus Didius.” Helena’s eyes danced.

  “This is no way for the Golden City to reward a valued ally—nasty chunks of old tile and packing material, thrown together and surfaced over.”

  “Yet I can see why the King likes it,” said Helena. “It has been a fine home; I expect he’s very fond of it.”

  “He’s fonder still of expensive fiddling.”

  A window flew open. No tat this; it was a tightly carpentered hardwood effort with opaque panes, set in a beautifully molded marble frame. The marble looked conspicuously Carraran. Not many of my neighbors could afford the
genuine white stuff. I felt myself growing envious.

  Wild ginger dreadlocks flailed; around a fleshy bull neck I recognized the heavy electrum torque that must be nearly choking its excited owner.

  “You are the man!” shrieked the King’s representative in stilted Latin.

  “The man from Rome,” I corrected him firmly. I like to pass on colloquial phrases when I travel among the barbarians. “Gives a better tone of menace.”

  “Menace?”

  “More frightening.” Helena smiled. The tribesman let himself be charmed by this refined vision in white; she was wearing earrings with rows of golden acorns and he was a connoisseur of jewelry. There were not many women on-site. None would match mine for style, taste, and mischief-making. “His name is Falco.”

  “Falco is the man.” We gazed at him. “From Rome,” he added lamely. Education claimed another demoralized victim. “You have to come, man from Rome—and your woman.” Leering, he waved an arm, resplendent in checked wool, towards an entrance. We were amenable to the hospitality of strangers. We agreed to go.

  It took us some time to find him indoors. There were quite a few rooms, furnished with imported goods and all ornamented strikingly. Blue-black dados had dashing floral designs, painted with a sure hand and dramatic brushwork; friezes were divided into elegant rectangles, set off either with white borderlines or with flux fluted pilasters; a perspective painter had created mock cornices so well they looked like real moldings bathed in an evening glow. Floors were restrained black and white, or had those cutwork stones in multicolors—a calm geometry of pale wine-juice red, aqua blue, dull white, shades of gray, and corn. In Italy and Gaul, these are considered old-fashioned. If his interior designer was alert to trends, the King would undoubtedly change them.

  “I am Verovolcus!” The client’s representative had at least mastered that language lesson where he learned to say his name. “You are Falco.” Yes, we had done that. I introduced Helena Justina by her full name, and with her most excellent father’s details. She managed not to look surprised by this ludicrous formality.

  I could see Verovolcus liked Helena. That’s the trouble with foreign travel. You spend half your time trying to find edible food, and the rest fighting off men who profess extravagant love to your female companions. I’m amazed how many women believe outright lies from foreigners.

  This could become embarrassing. I was primed to be a perfect diplomat in Britain—but if anybody laid a hand on Helena, I would sock him in the finer parts of his woad pattern.

  I wondered what Maia was up to. She had elected to remain in town, along with Hyspale. Hyspale had just discovered there was nowhere in Noviomagus where she could go shopping. I was saving up the news that there were no decent emporia anywhere in Britain. Next time she really annoyed me, I would lightly drop word that she was now completely out of range of ribbons, perfumes, and Egyptian glass beads. I was looking forward to seeing her reaction.

  “You like our house?” Verovolcus had mastered some playboy’s pickup lines. They always do.

  “Yes, but you are having a new one built,” Helena responded with a regal smirk. “The architect is to tell Falco all about it.”

  “I will come with you!” Oh Jupiter, Best and Greatest, we were lumbered.

  There was worse. Verovolcus led us to a room where a man whose wild hair had paled to gray some years earlier now sat in an upright magistrate’s chair waiting for people with complaints to rush in and plead for his benevolent counsel. Since the Atrebates had not yet learned that among civilized people complaining was a social art, he looked bored. Easily sixty, the fellow had been playacting a Roman of rank for generations. He had the proper way of lounging, all boredom and a nasty attitude: arms apart on the supports, knees apart too, but booted feet together on his footstool. This tribal chief had studied Roman authority at close quarters. He was wearing white, with purple borders, and probably had a swagger stick stashed away under his throne.

  Now we were seriously lumbered. It was the Great King.

  Verovolcus launched into rapid chatter in the local language. I wished I had brought Justinus; he might have made something of it, even though his knowledge of Celtic linguistics derived from German sources. I myself had been in the army, mostly in Britain, for about seven years, but legionnaires representing Rome despised native argots and expected all the conquered world to learn Latin. Since most ethnic people were trying to sell us something, this was a fair attitude. Traders and prostitutes soon mastered the necessary verbals to cheat us in our own language. I had been a scout. I should have acquired a smattering of their tongue for safety reasons, but as a lad, I had thought that lying under a furze bush in the pouring rain was enough punishment for my system.

  I caught the name of Pomponius. Verovolcus turned to us triumphantly. “The Great King Togidubnus, friend of your Emperor, will come to hear about his house with you!”

  “Jolly nice!” I had kept any ruefulness or satire out of my tone, which was just as well. Helena looked at me sharply, but it passed unnoticed. Verovolcus seemed thrilled, but had no time to answer my platitude.

  “It would be rather fun to hear a progress report,” replied the Great King on his own account. In perfect Latin.

  I thought this man must have something seriously expensive that he wants to sell to Rome. Then I remembered he had sold it already: a safe harbor and a warm welcome to Vespasian’s men, thirty years ago.

  “Verovolcus is assigned the task of monitoring events for me,” he then told us, smiling. “Pomponius will not be expecting me.” That, we gathered, would enhance the fun. “But please don’t let me be a nuisance, Falco.”

  Helena turned to me. “King Togidubnus knows who you are, Marcus Didius—though I did not hear Verovolcus telling him.”

  “And you are the perceptive, sharp-witted Helena Justina,” the King interrupted. “Your father is a man of distinction, friend of my old friend Vespasian and brother to the wife of the procurator Hilaris. My old friend Vespasian holds traditional views. Does he not yearn to see you married to some noble senator?”

  “I don’t believe he expects that to happen,” she replied calmly. She had flushed slightly. Helena had a true Roman matron’s respect for her own privacy. To be the subject of imperial correspondence made her teeth set dangerously. The daughter of Camillus Verus was considering whether to give the Great King of the Britons a black eye.

  Togidubnus surveyed her for a moment. He must have grasped the point. “No,” he said. “And having met you, with Marcus Didius, neither do I!”

  “Thank you,” Helena answered lightly. The whole conversation had turned. I kept well out of it. The Great King responded by inclining his head, as if her implied rebuke was in fact some tremendous compliment.

  Verovolcus shot me a complicitous glance, seeing that his own flirtation had been sidestepped. But I was used to Helena Justina making unexpected friends.

  “To my new house!” cried the King happily, wrapping himself in a huge, gleaming toga as casually as if it were a bathhouse robe. I had seen imperial legates with pedigrees back to Romulus struggle and need four toga-valets to help them with the folds.

  Needless to say, I had not even unpacked my own formal woolen wear. It was quite possible that when I left Rome, I forgot to include it. I had to hope Togidubnus would overlook the slight. Did Romanization courses for provincial kings include lectures on gracious manners? Putting your guests at ease. Ignoring crass behavior from brutes inferior to yourself. That stuff my respectable mother dinned into me once—only I never listened.

  When he skipped down from his dais to join us, the King clasped my hand with a good Roman handshake. He did the same with Helena. Verovolcus, who must be more observant than he seemed, quickly followed suit—crushing my paw like a blood brother who had been drinking with me for the past twelve hours, then clinging on to Helena’s long fingers with slightly less violence but an admiration that was equally embarrassing.

  As we all made our way to
see Pomponius, I was starting to see just why Togidubnus had made and stayed friends with Vespasian. They both came up from inferior social situations, but made the best of it by using talent and staying power. I had the glum feeling I would end up with a real sense of obligation to the King. I still believed his new palace was an overscale extravagance. But, since the taxes of ordinary Romans had been allocated to pay for it—and since the money was certainly going into someone’s coffers—I may as well ensure the stylish home was built.

  The King had taken over Helena. It reduced me to a cipher husband, trailing with Verovolcus. I could live with it. Helena was no cipher wife. When she wanted me, she would drop the pride of British nobility like an overhot sardine.

  Any woman was bound to be impressed by a fellow who was equipping his house with brand-new floor mosaics throughout. It beats being fobbed off with a new rag rug and the promise that you, her layabout head of household, will replaster the bedroom alcove yourself “when you can get round to it. …”

  XIV

  “YOU’RE LATE, Falco—I can’t do you now. …” In the midst of glaring at Helena, whom he had not expected, Pomponius trailed off. He had seen the King.

  “I am so looking forward to hearing your current perspective on our project,” declared the royal client. The architect could only seethe. “Just pretend I am not here,” offered Togidubnus graciously.

  This would be difficult, since his portable throne, his entourage, and his hairy servants plying him with trays of imported snacks in little shale dishes were now filling most of the plan room. Olives, in rich oil spiced with flecks of herb, had already been spilled on some elevation drawings.

  Pomponius sent for a couple of architectural assistants. They were supposed to help with the presentation. That way at least, he ensured himself an admiring audience. Both were ten years younger than him, but were learning all their bad habits from his fine example. One was copying the project manager’s hair slick; the other had bought his outsize scarab from a similar fake Alexandrian jeweler. They had less personality between them than a flyblown carrot.