Saturnalia (7 page)

XII

My house seemed suspiciously quiet. It spoke of recent ructions. I didn't ask.

Helena and I sat in the kitchen and organised ourselves a quiet supper. We had the last of today's bread, some cold fish, olives and soft cheese. I scrutinised her carefully, but she seemed at ease. Being landed with the soldiers, in the run up to Saturnalia, failed to faze her. The truth was, Helena Justina liked a challenge.

From a corner of the room, our new cook Jacinthus watched. If he had seemed upset by us invading his territory, we would have let him choose the food and serve us, but he was indifferent. So we took over the scrubbed table where he was supposed to prepare things, I fetched a jug of white wine which we two kept to ourselves, and we carried on discussing the day as we always had done, cook or no cook. I had worked on occasions with various partners, including both of Helena's brothers. The person I most enjoyed working with was Helena Justina herself Non-judgmental, aware and intelligent, she had understood my approach and my routines pretty well PSTom the first time I met her. Ever since, she had been my confidante. She would help me chew over ideas, where possible she would accompany me to interviews, she researched backgrounds, worked out timescales, often came up with solutions. Importantly, she took charge of my finances. The best informer in the world is useless if he becomes insolvent.

'Everything all right, sweetheart?'

'We organised ourselves.' Helena managed to combine reproof about the soldiers' sudden arrival with acknowledgement of my good manners in asking. She knew what most husbands were like; she had been married before me, for one thing. So gratitude just took precedence over complaint. 'The legionaries have taken over the ground floor rooms. They made a few complaints at first, but you will have noticed they are all in their quarters now, rather chastened.' I raised my eyebrows but Helena did not bother to elaborate. 'Clemens has complained about the damp; I told him the Tiber floods us every spring and suggested they might like to leave before then...At least we don't have the sewers backing up in our home. I've heard there's a terrible stink three doors down and everyone there has fallen ill.'

'We don't have backing-up shit,' I explained, 'because in all the time he lived here--' which must have been twenty years--'my skinflint father never paid for a connection to the Cloaca. It
looks
as though our privy empties into the city sewer system, but I suspect our waste just runs into a big cesspit out back.'

'Well at least there is a cesspit,' Helena replied brightly. 'More cheese, Marcus?'

We ate in silence, thoughtfully. Any minute now we would start talking about my mission. I could see Jacinthus out of the corner of my eye, still staring at us. As he was a slave it was easy to ignore him, but perhaps I'd better not. He was lean and dark, about twenty-five. I had been told by the dealer when I bought him that his previous owner simply wanted a change of face around the house. I did not trust the story. I wondered where Jacinthus originated. Like the majority of slaves, he looked Eastern and not at all German. I supposed I should dig into his background a bit more, if we were to speak freely in front of him.

'You had a visitor this evening, Marcus. A woman called Zosime.'

'From the Temple of AEsculapius? I didn't expect her to seek me out, or I would have briefed you, sweetheart.'

'Naturally!' Helena was wry. Once again, her right of complaint went unspoken: I was a thoughtless swine and she was supremely tolerant. In some homes, reaching this happy solution would require a large purchase of jewellery. I wiped away olive oil with my napkin then kissed her hand in a relaxed admission that I didn't deserve her. I kept hold of the hand temporarily, holding her long fingers against my cheek and considering just how lucky I was. A quiet moment passed between us.

'So tell me about it. What did Zosime want?'

Helena pulled back her hand so she could pick at the dish of olives.

They were small chewy black ones, marinated in garlic and chervil. 'She's a woman in her fifties, I'd say--once a nursing assistant, now calls herself a doctor, presumably experienced. She looks after female patients at the temple, ones who have gynaecological problems.'

'So was she called to see Veleda because the priestess had a complaint of that sort?'

'Well, Zosime says in her opinion Veleda had nothing like that at all and the Quadrumati sent for her because she was recommended by one of their other doctors. Veleda was suffering from some general illness, with bouts of fever and terrible headaches. In fact the pain was so bad, Veleda was begging for that terrifying surgery where people have a hole drilled in their skull--'

'Trepanation. '

'Someone had told her a Roman surgeon could carry it out. Veleda had convinced herself it would relieve the pressure in her head.' Helena shuddered. 'It seems drastic. She must have felt desperate even though by then she knew she was doomed to die anyway.'

'There may be no escape from the public executioner, but patients have been known to survive trepanation,' I said. 'Many don't naturally, surgeons keep that quiet. What was Zosime's suggestion to help her?'

'Zosime works on gentle principles, what she calls "softly, safely, sweetly". It goes back to ancient Greek theories, the Hippocratic tradition, and involves treatments based on a combination of diet, exercise and rest. Zosime was not really given a chance to try this out, though. She prescribed a sensible regime, but was discouraged from visiting again.'

I was startled. 'The Quadrumati locked her out?'

'Nothing so crude. But she took the hint and stopped attending.' 'Was Veleda happy with her?'

'Zosime thought so. But it was obvious to her that Veleda was not a tree agent.'

'Had Zosime been told that her patient was a prisoner?'

'Not directly.'

'You think she knew?'

'I think she's very shrewd,' Helena said.

'And could she have seen Veleda again, after Veleda escaped from the house?'

'Possibly. I didn't ask. How could
I,
without revealing things that are supposed to be kept secret?' This time, Helena's tone did contain a slight suggestion that the awkwardness of the mission was my fault.

'All right, go back a bit: why did Zosime think she had become unwelcome at the senator's house?'

'I had the impression there might have been conflict with one of the other doctors you told me are employed by the family. She muttered something about Mastarna, and used the phrase "damn fool dogmatist". I pressed her on that--' Helena could be stubborn in interrogations. She saw me smiling and threw an olive at me. I opened my mouth and it went straight in, for which I gloatingly took the credit. 'Well, your mouth's big enough, Falco!... It seems to have been Mastarna who was encouraging Veleda towards trepanation. Zosime was circumspect in talking to me--perhaps because she is a woman, venturing into what male doctors believe is their special territory--but it's clear she felt Mastarna had not bothered to carryout a proper diagnosis, but was dead set on radical surgery.'

I pondered this theory. 'Do you think that after Zosime left, this crazy knife-man persuaded Veleda to have the trepanation after all, that he drilled out a circle of her skull and managed to kill her with the procedure--so somebody has hidden her body to avoid political embarrassment?'

'Zosime did not suggest it.'

'If she stopped visiting the house, she wouldn't know. She may never have dealt with the kind of devious people we meet.' I was now thinking back to my interviews that morning with Quadrumatus Labeo and his wife, trying to decide whether they could have been hiding such a cover-up.

'Was Mastarna one of the doctors you met today?' Helena asked.

'No, I just saw the senator's dream therapist--Pylaemenes, a crackpot Chaldean--then I had a surly encounter with Cleander, who came to tickle up the wife with his cold Greek fingers.'

'You're being lewd, Marcus.'

'Who, me? Cleander once taught Greek theory to Zosime, but that doesn't make him enlightened; he's an arrogant swine who looks down on mere mortals. Presumably he's in medicine for the money, not from charitable feelings. I can't imagine he was connected to the Temple of AEsculapius for long. Now what else did the witchy freedwoman say--dark, forbidding Phryne--the senator has a tame Egyptian, who I suppose feeds him ground crocodile bones, and yes: then there's Mastarna--Mastarna, she told me, used to look after the dead man. So Gratianus Scaeva was in the hands of the keen surgeon Zosime quarrelled with.'

Helena slowly munched a slightly stale bread roll. I said she liked a challenge. I had seen her test her teeth on hard crusts before, in the same way that my mother always made out it was her maternal lot to endure leftovers and inedible scraps. 'So,' Helena asked me eventually, when her jaw tired of this punishment, 'what is the significance of Scaeva's doctor in this household of hypochondriacs?'

'The answer will probably depend,' I said, 'on whatever link we find between Veleda and Scaeva. Who really killed him: whether it was, or was not, Veleda. And why? Was there any connection between the death of Scaeva and the timing of Veleda's escape--other than her taking advantage of panic and commotion in the house?'

'His head was cut off,' Helena commented, in surprise. 'Are you suggesting that somebody other than Veleda carried out that particularly Celtic act?'

'Could be. I never saw the body; of course it's cremated. I'd like to ask Mastarna if he carried out a professional examination when his patient's corpse was found. There could have been other wounds, wounds that were inflicted first. Who would bother to check? There's a man with his head cut off, so you assume that is the cause of death... But I shall keep an open mind. He could have died some other way, then Veleda's presence in the house gave someone the idea to blame his death on her.'

'Somebody with a very cool nerve!' Helena commented. 'Even if Scaeva was already dead, I imagine it takes courage to decapitate a corpse. '

'You're right. The tribes do it in the heat of battle, and they do it to their enemies which must be an encouragement... Maybe, when I find an opportunity,' I said, 'I should find out what enemies Gratianus Scaeva had.'

Helena pulled a face. 'He was a young man. Was he the type to have enemies?'

I laughed bitterly. 'Well born, well off, well thought of... I was told he was a perfect character--so trust me, fruit; he's bound to have been a right bastard!'

XIII

Next day began with a visit to my father at the Saepta Julia. My runner, Gaius, had failed to report back, but I found him with Pa at the family antiques warehouse. Gaius had completely forgotten about my questions, and was absorbed in negotiations to sell Pa various statuettes he had stolen from temples when I took him on our tour of Greece. Pa was in his usual battered old folding campaign chair; Gaius was lounging like a prince in a stationary litter that had a five-foot-high gilded armchair. Most of the carrying poles looked sound, but the chair was very worn.

'He's got a good eye,' beamed my father approvingly.

'Oh he knows when to commit sacrilege. Gaius is a little tyke; he could have got us all arrested if anyone had noticed him looting ritual offerings.' Luckily, in the family tradition, Gaius could bluff his wayout of trouble. He was around sixteen, with a curly rug of black hair just like my father's (and mine), and currently had the air of one born to sprawl under a regal canopy as if being carried to his banker's by a team of eight Mauretanian bearers. 'Now look here, Father, I sent this chancer to you with some important questions--'

'No, just look at this--' Pa held up a tiny model of a womb. Some patient cured of a tumour or infertility had donated it gratefully to the gods at Olympia, Corinth or Athens, only to have Gaius swan along and swipe it. 'This is quite a rarity.' Pa noticed Gaius taking too much interest, so dropped the praise before my nephew tried to negotiate an improved purchase price. 'Difficult to sell because of the religious connection...' Gaius raised his eyes to the ceiling; he recognised devious backtracking.

'Uncle Marcus will vouch for the provenance.'

'No, I'll vouch for you being a bad boy who has no respect for ancient sites, Gaius!'

'Don't be so stiff-necked,' ordered Pa. 'Give the lad a bit of encouragement. He's shaping up really nicely; I need Gaius, since
you
refuse to take an interest in the family business.'

Groaning, I managed to extract from my father a description of the silver ear-rings Justinus had bought to mollify Claudia. I told Pa to look out for Justinus, the ear-rings, or a lost-looking woman of German extraction whose name I was not allowed to mention.

'Oh you mean Veleda? Everyone is talking about her being free,' said Pa.

'Is there a finder's fee?' Gaius demanded, voicing what my father would have put to me had he got in first. Instead, Pa, ever the hypocrite, pretended to tut at the greed of modem youth.

'The reward is a clear conscience.'

'Not enough!' snorted Pa, and Gaius nodded.

'Doing your duty to preserve the Empire--'

'Bugger that for a game of soldiers,' sneered Gaius. This time Pa did the seconding.

Not long afterwards I was in the Emporium, trying to track down German traders. The Emporium was the long stone building on the banks of the Tiber, which ran from near my present house southwards along the shipping lane, almost to the city boundary. There were unloaded all the best commodities, brought in from worldwide sources, to be sold in Rome. It was a wondrous hubbub of sights, sounds and smells, where tight knots of dealers and double-dealers fixed the rates and the outlets for artwork and marble, precious woods and metals, spices, gemstones, wines, oils, dyes, ivory, fish products, leather, wools and silks. You could buy a barrel of fresh British oysters in saline for your dinner party, peacock fans to decorate the dining room while you ate them, a handsome slave to serve the meal, and a sarcophagus to hold your corpse after you discovered the oysters had not survived the journey safely. The item prices were tempting--until you added in the dealers' premiums, luxury tax and the costs of transport to your house. This was if you managed to get in and out of the building without having your purse stolen.

My father, in whom snobbery flared high, had declared there would be no
importers
bringing local wares from either Roman or Free Germany, though I would find plenty of
exporters
sending fine Roman products to deprived provincials. He was only slightly wrong. Following his directions, I did track down a few sad purveyors of

Rhenish hides, woollen coats, and even decorated terracotta bowls, but most of the negotiators who were here from the north were sending luxuries back home. Where they were selling, their dinnerware was good (Helena and I already owned a similar set from Gaul), but as they were passing off the stuff as coming from the well-known factory sites at Arretium, the prices here were Italian and there was no cost benefit.

The men I interviewed wore heavy trousers and tunics, with cloaks fastened on one or both shoulders. Some had brooches in intricately twined Celtic patterns; others fixed their garments with fibulae whose gold filigree was much more Mediterranean, and occasionally ancient. They had been trading with Rome for generations--and probably trading with Greece long before that--whereas they had been trading
in
the city here for maybe only thirty years, since the Emperor Claudius introduced German allies into the Senate and, while fighting the prejudice of his peers, tried to welcome tribal leaders to Rome and Roman society. This group were mean-eyed capitalists from the west bank of the Rhenus who did not want peace on the east bank because it posed a direct threat to them financially. Theirs was the usual self-serving of commerce. They wanted to remain sole suppliers of Roman goods to their own area. Sharing the trade with Easterners did not appeal. They were very quick to label the east-bank tribes as barbarians.

I probed delicately how they had felt about Veleda. I was chancing it here. Rebellion was a sensitive subject in Europe. Even on the western bank, which had been in Roman control for a long time, there were those who had sought independence not so long ago when they thought Rome was vulnerable. But if these men had felt any sympathy with Veleda back then, they knew better than to show it now.

Laeta's injunction to secrecy made it impossible to ask whether they would help Veleda if she came to them as a supplicant. I could see a risk that her well-known hostility to Rome might arouse anti-German feeling generally, if the public heard she was in our city. If that happened, maybe the traders would turn against her for causing them problems. Insofar as they would talk about her, they claimed that Veleda had always denounced them as collaborators and they denied that there had ever been any possibility of an alliance across the river.

This was bosh. I knew that before Vespasian stabilised the region recently, there had been contact, of which some was very violent but much was friendly. I did not trust the traders, therefore; and since they obviously wondered why I was questioning them, it was fair to say they did not trust me.

I got nowhere. Since I had to disguise my purpose, I had expected nothing better. I did obtain one useful piece of information: how to find a particular group of Germans who had lived in Rome for decades. The traders sent me to them with sardonic expressions--and I knew why. They were hoping their notorious fellow-countrymen would do me physical damage. In fact, they probably thought I was about to be bent into a mystical Celtic knot with all my protruding bits neatly tucked in.

The group I went visiting had shrunk to a grim little enclave: I had tracked down the neglected remnants of Nero's legendary German bodyguard.

I was among elderly men giving off a strong odour of the dangerous past. Those were sour times, and these were sprawling old bullies, nostalgic for a culture that no longer existed. Why had they remained in Rome? Probably to avoid disappointment if they returned to their own land and discovered that it was now populated by neat Roman towns where citizens carried out Romanised occupations in a Roman ethos. Even the fanners and country manufacturers brought in their produce to sell at our kind of market in our style of urban forum. Across Europe, fewer and fewer people lived in roundhouses. Tribal culture was dying. Upper and Lower Gennany were filled with industries making equipment for the legions. Beer was losing out; vineyards were spreading ever northward.

Originally the bodyguard must have numbered around five hundred. Some had died, some had drifted elsewhere, yet a hard core stayed on, dreaming of the good old days as fighting men do. Now they were pushing pension age--had they been given pensions. From their shabby dress and faded energy I deduced that public handouts for these one-time palace servants were few. In Roman politics during the mad days of the Julio-Claudians, loyalties had tended either towards Nero or Claudius; political advancement had depended on alliances made with one or the other; and Vespasian was a Claudian supporter. When Nero died and he came to power, fortune finally stopped smiling on these men.

It was thirty years since their heyday. They had not so much run to seed as decayed into compost. I found a mildewed huddle of about fifteen, teasing out a flagon or two at their regular lunch club. A withered Ubian waiter, who must have served their bread and blood-sausage for forty years, tottered away to fetch extra wine that I paid for, muttering what sounded like bitter Ubian curses under his onion-flavoured breath. The old warriors regarded me with greater toleration, aware that few people nowadays would stand them a warm toddy on a cold morning, but even they failed to reach my classification of 'friendly' .

I seemed to remember that in the old days the German bodyguard had been selected for size. Now the big men were stooped in the shoulder but their once-giant frames supported heavy bellies. They looked truculent. I had had a fight with another group of these bullies a few years ago and it had been vicious. These were older now and might not be able to catch anyone who ran away very fast, but if you stumbled as you tried to escape, they could kill you just by rolling on you--and I was pretty sure they would do it. When the drinkers banged down their metal cups with their fat fists, the reverberation shook sheets off the washing lines three streets away. It was deliberate. Nero's bodyguard had always been violent and uncontrollable. Nowadays they were lazy old slobs and their blond plaits had thinned out to sad wisps, but they were still off-putting.

They did not like me either.

Once again I was hamstrung by my order to keep Veleda's name out of my enquiries. And once again, I thought I saw expressions in the watery blue eyes of some here which said they knew exactly why I had come to question them.

As a lead-in, I asked whether they had had a visit recently from the Praetorian Guard. This elicited a loud burst of laughter and boasting about how they bettered the Praetorians. I joked chummily that the Guards were having a bad week, and we settled down pretending to be allies. It was temporary.

The Praetorians, never famous for subtlety, had come right out and admitted they were looking for someone, a woman from the old guards' home country. I asked if they had had any visits from anyone like that, and they responded rudely that they wouldn't tell me if they had. They must have spurned the Praetorians with the same derision. While this meant that the Praetorians, and Anacrites, had failed to get ahead of me, it also meant that all of us were getting nowhere.

The Germans continued drinking the wine I had paid for, pretty well ignoring me. I considered them. Enough had been said for me to suspect that in general they would show no sympathy to a woman. Veleda's fall into captivity would be an excuse to ignore her. Since they spent their time bemoaning the loss of the old days, they were also antagonistic to the younger generation that Veleda represented. I asked if they had sons; a few did, but they were serving in the legions and I guessed that if those soldiers ever came home, there would be distrust and family arguments.

I wondered which side of the River Rhenus these warriors originally came from. They could even be a mixture of tribes. Although Nero was best known for using this Rhineland protection force, it had been instigated earlier, by Augustus; other emperors and generals had employed them too. Vespasian had stopped that; now the Emperor was meant to be the Father of his Country, utterly loved by his people. Rule by threat had given way to rule by coercion. While bad emperors would continue to be set upon and stabbed, we all pretended the public were devoted. It had become embarrassing to employ foreigners for imperial protection, because that implied that the Father of his Country could not trust his own.

Suddenly one of the bleached braggarts produced a coin from his bosom. As if he sensed that I was mentally condemning his brothers and him as outdated, he flattened it on the boards in front of me. Typical of imperial propaganda, it showed Nero on a box, addressing three figures in military dress, whom I deduced must be members of his German guard. 'We are history, Falco!'

'You must be very proud,' I said, pretending to be overawed. I would have felt uncomfortable surrounded by this number of manicure boys at a public bath house. These overweight monsters made me nervous. I had been aware of men coming and going in the low-roofed hall where we were squashed. They could be taking messages, summoning reinforcements. I could no longer see the Ubian waiter. Perhaps someone had recognised me from that fight I had had with the others from their group five years ago. Perhaps somebody had remembered how on that occasion, I had laid out several men who were selling themselves as hired muscle at the house of a certain Atius Pertinax; they fought viciously, but I had left them dying in the road... It was time to leave.

I thanked them for their co-operation and made good my escape. I walked away from the area purposefully, though not so fast as to let anybody watching know I felt nervous. I thought I had managed it safely. I knew the bastards had loathed me but I thought they had let me go.

Only as I slowed down and started to relax did I sense that I had been followed.