Oddly, he thought he could feel himself dying from the ground up. His legs that couldn’t support him had now lost all feeling, numb and cold. His stomach seemed to contain a frozen stone and his arms were chilling rapidly. His throat still felt fiery, and his face felt flushed, but he suspected they would chill soon now. As he marvelled at his own death, he saw Rufinus reach the door, open it and slip out into the hallway and to the emporium once more. The noise lasted only for a few moments longer and then ended with a huge cheer. Calatorius wondered idly whether the competition had simply been convenient or whether the prefect had set it all up to mask his murderous activities.
It was the last thing he ever thought.
Rufinus returned to his town house in a sombre mood, where, despite the glares he received from Senova, he drank an entire jar of Chian without water.
The purge was over.
Part Two
Capricious Neptune
”Exitus Acta Probat”
(The result justifies the deed)
- Ovid
Chapter Nine – On mercantilism
Rome, April 188 A.D.
Senova turned from the desk in the tablinum of their townhouse, stacking a small pile of wooden tablet cases that she had spent a laborious quarter of an our scraping clear. Rufinus stood in the doorway, a frown of mixed confusion and suspicion plastered across his face.
‘I don’t understand what you’re doing,’ he said in a disapproving tone.
She gave him a sweet smile. ‘That’s why it’s me doing it and not you, dear. In the same way, I doubt I would be much good at setting the deployment of a fleet on a monthly basis.’
He harrumphed and continued to frown. ‘But you need to go out, yes?’
‘Yes, dear. I need to go out. I shall be perfectly safe. I have my servant…’
‘Slave.’
‘Servant… and four of your rough sailors for protection, and the praefectus lactorum…’
‘Praefectus Lecticariorum…’
‘Yes, him, has made sure I have a litter with four of the burliest Aegyptian carriers you ever did see. I will be fine. You cannot spend all your time worrying about me stepping outside the house. I am aware that Rome is a dangerous place, but I have lived in more dangerous. You have enough things to worry about without me.’
His frown stayed in place, but he nodded reluctantly and wished her a good day before turning and bellowing for the officer of his personal guard. Senova smiled indulgently and let him go, turning her back on the door. She then leaned over the desk once more.
Three piles of documents awaited her attention, though only one was urgent enough to need dealing with before she went out.
She shifted the small wooden marker with the word PARTI – acquisitions – etched into it. She was fluent these days in the Roman tongue, but while she was fast with speech she still had to concentrate to read the words, for her native language had not had such a thing as writing. They had never needed it the way the Romans seemed to.
She moved the marker to one side, lifted the four invoices and ran her eyes over them. Each one took much concentration and translation, for while the language itself was simple enough and logical in its way, and while public inscriptions and high Roman text were neatly chiselled in perfect lines, no matter how good that looked personal writings by individuals always looked to her like a spider had walked through ink and then meandered across the page.
Still, she refused to submit and bent the words to her will. She knew she had people who could read it faster than her, but she was the one in control of all this, and she was determined to be the only person who had the details of it all – in the household, at least.
Replacement rigging for three ships, including a full set of wooden brail rings for each main sail.
She smiled to herself at the ingenuity of her system even as she signed and sealed the document ready to send to the vault for payment. In addition to the four men assigned to protect her, Rufinus had given her an entire contubernium of eight of his most trusted marines to escort any and all payments she made, which she had approved of as an entirely sensible choice.
The rigging was bound for the three damaged ships she had purchased from a merchant in Antium at a ridiculously low price. She had visited with an expert she’d hired and had managed to knock the owner down to a pittance given the amount of work the ships needed to become viable once more. Of course, they never would. They languished in Antium and would get a few bits of the rigging to work on, maintaining the appearance of refurbishment, while the bulk went into a private storehouse in Portus where it would be made available for the other business interests.
A similar thing would happen to the next invoice for three new steering oars, only one of which would make it to Antium, the other two entering the dark world of her private storehouse. Thus she had managed over the past month to stockpile a surprising amount of equipment for ships without it ever being noted in official channels.
The third invoice was for her legitimate shipping operation: a double-masted merchant vessel called Helios, which she had already decided to rename Isurium after her home town back in Britannia. Rufinus would be horrified, since she was supposed to be in disguise and hiding her true origin, but she couldn’t imagine something that small giving the game away, and it would be something of a homage to her homeland. The Helios/Isurium had been impounded in Centum Cellae by the authorities when its owner had been discovered to be illegally importing all sorts of things that had not been marked on his manifest. Senova’s factotum had swept in like a vulture and bought the ship, once again at a massively low price. It was her prime ship now. Of course, she had already bought two others, and had purchased an interest in consortiums that owned four more, but this would be her first large, prime vessel entirely her own that needed no work.
Already, she was surprised at how easy it was to acquire work for her new enterprise. As soon as her ships came available and her man put out word in the appropriate quarters that a new mercantile venture had ships ready for the transport of goods, merchants from all over Rome, and from more distant parts of the empire who happened to be in the capital or its ports, soon descended seeking the best price she would give to transport their wares.
In the first week, she was astonished at how much her collection of ships netted in cold cash for the family coffers. Of course such lucrative ventures were beyond the capabilities of most folk. She had needed to sink a good fund of coin into the business before she could even think of making any money – thank you governor Severus for your generosity – but she had always been shrewd at things like this. It was just a game. If you learned the rules, you could play to win and be confident in the result. Soon, her fledgling little business would become a major enough concern that she would rival that cow Claudia Catilina who had stared down her nose at Senova when she had first registered with the tabularium.
The fourth invoice was the one she needed to confirm: a private warehouse with its own jetty at Portus. There was nothing flash about it, and it was small and unimpressive compared to others she could have bought in the port, but this private dock had one unmatchable advantage. It lay directly beside the existing warehouses that belonged to her other interests, allowing for goods to be subtly moved back and forth between legitimate business and private concern without once meeting the eye of the public, or the port authorities.
When you knew the rules…
She smiled to herself and signed, sealed and closed the fourth invoice. She would get to the rest of the work later on, but for now she had other fish to fry. Standing, she gathered up the four invoices and carried them from the room.
‘Atticus?’
The short, bald man with a face like a pale half-moon and bulging blue eyes appeared from a side door as though he had been waiting there for just this call. She would have been suspicious of the man had it not been for the fact that she had personally selected him. Rufinus had wanted her to have a clerk from the vast pool of ex-mil
itary that hung around in the city seeking just such opportunities, but she had been distrusting of them. Her experiences with the soldiers of Rome had not always been positive, after all. Instead, she had gone to the slave market, found a man who had recently been the tutor to a rich house’s children until those children had outgrown the need for a teacher, and bought him.
She had spoken to Atticus at the market for only moments before she realised just how bright he was, and how good with numbers. She had bought him and, with Rufinus’ disapproval but grudging acceptance, manumitted him the same day, re-hiring him as a freedman. Consequently, of course, Atticus was about as loyal as a man could be in this seething cesspit of a city.
‘Domina?’
‘These four all need paying. The top one has priority. Take my keys and arrange the delivery of appropriate funds. All information is on each invoice. And don’t forget to take the guard with you. The last thing I want is you dying in some alley because you forgot to take an escort.’
And the huge sum of money he was with in the pockets of a Roman thief.
‘Of course, Domina. I shall see to it immediately.’
Without further ado, Atticus took the tablets and turned, stalking off towards the atrium. Senova hurried over to her chamber – she had her own bedroom as well as the one she shared with Rufinus. Partially it was a nice nod to the hidden truth that they were not really yet man and wife, but mainly it was a relief when Rufinus’ snoring became too much.
Her servant – she was damned if she’d call her a slave despite the fact that Rufinus remained stubborn in his refusal to free her – was busy carefully folding her clean clothes and placing them in the cupboard.
‘Pera?’
The girl looked round and bowed her head respectfully. ‘Domina?’
‘We are for the baths. I have business there. Could you gather everything I’ll need. And tell Optio Laevinus that he and his men need to be ready to go presently.’
The slave, a plain but pleasant Thracian girl, nodded her head and placed the rest of the folded clothes down on the side, now dashing around and gathering her mistress’ garments and accoutrements for the bath house.
Senova spent the time as she waited running through everything she needed to do this week, smiling at the list. Back in Lugdunum and then in Cemenellum as the guest of the governor Severus, she had wanted for nothing. She had had books and visits to the theatre and music recitals, she had been brought almost anything she could ask for. But it had been boring, nonetheless. This, though, was something entirely different. Not only was she working for the cause now, doing her part, but in doing so she was playing a mercantile game and learning new things every day. It was entrancing and heady and thoroughly fascinating. She could understand why the matrons of Roman houses ran their husbands’ business interests. It was a lot more interesting than loafing about in the house and complaining about slaves. And while most matrons played only at the highest level, pulling the strings of merchant puppets, Senova was far more involved. She had discarded those strings and was down among the puppets, positioning their limbs herself.
Shortly thereafter she was out of the house in the comfortable litter, with Pera trotting alongside, the four Aegytpians grunting under the weight of the vehicle and four jingling marines trudging along on either side, the front men clearing the populace out of their way. This was what it was like to be a wealthy Roman, and Senova knew with a guilty pang that in principle she utterly disapproved of this sort of extravagance and behaviour. Yet it was rather nice to treat herself at the moment, while she had to play the part anyway. And there was the added fact that it kept her a little further away from the plague-ridden poor in the alleyways of the city.
Her timing was perfect as always, as the litter came to a wobbling halt before her destination and she pulled back the curtain to reveal the grand façade of Trajan’s bath complex. The first time she’d come, it had been in the middle of the afternoon and she had had to feign forgetfulness when a lackey explained to her that it was after noon, so the baths were closed to women. She had come back the next morning and spent an irritating fruitless time among other women in the discovery that during the morning men were not allowed. She’d assumed that men and women bathed together. They did back in Isurium and the baths of Britannia, but then they had considerably fewer amenities out there and probably had to cohabit to make good use.
Here in a city with a thousand bath houses, some of which could hold the population of Isurium twice over without cramping, the old law of Hadrian’s separating out the sexes in the baths still held sway. The men had the baths after noon, when they had got their morning business done and the heat of the day drove them to cooling leisure. The women had the baths before then. It had taken a little investigation only to discover that though this was law, the lines were in truth a lot more blurred than Hadrian might have liked.
Women had the baths in the morning and men in the afternoon, but women were only told their time was up just before noon, rather than being actively ejected, while men would in practice begin to drift into the baths a good hour before their allotted time. This blurring allowed for an hour or two each day of mixed bathing, which permitted the city’s whores to ply a very lucrative trade, and everyone in this decadent pit to enjoy themselves that little bit more while still feeling self-righteous that they supported the morality laws.
And so Senova made it her practice now to reach the baths two hours before noon, so that she could make good use of the facilities and then still have her meeting. Leaving her guards and litter bearers at the door, where they would cross the road to one of the many eating and drinking establishments that catered for those who were left outside to wait, Senova took Pera and strode in through the great entrance.
Initially the grandeur of this, the largest and best-appointed baths in the city, had quite taken her breath away. Now, after months of it, she had become somewhat blasé about the whole thing. As was her wont, the moment she was out of the company of her male escorts, she and Pera become more sisters than mistress and slave. The two women passed into the apodyterium – the changing room – found an unoccupied alcove and there began to undress, the other female bathers still visible through the arch, most in their own alcoves but a few in the open room. Here and there a little Sapphic indulgence occurred, which did not bother Senova in principle though she would prefer that they indulged such lusts in a more private place. She couldn’t imagine men and women copulating in the changing room being permitted, after all. Still, she accepted the wooden clogs and the towel and white tunic from the bath slave, as did Pera, and left her possessions in one of the many alcoves under the staff’s watchful eye, taking her chitty to mark which niche was hers. With a sigh of relaxation the two women moved into the baths. The noise and activity around and in the huge open cold swimming pool was inviting, but it was poor practise to enter the communal pools before cleaning.
Consequently they hurried along the arcade and approached the radiating warmth of the heated area of the baths. At the corner of the structure stood the room for which they were bound. Outside, dozens of hopefuls hung about with the tools of their trade, waiting to be hired for a session of oiling, scraping and massage, for not every visitor to the baths brought their own people, obviously. Senova and Pera ignored the line of hopefuls, since they had their own strigils and oil.
They entered the laconium, gasping for breath in the plume of steam that billowed out into the open air of the bath complex. Inside, it took some time for them to acclimatise enough to find their way. The entire room was thick with hot steam, and half a dozen women stood around or sat at the periphery, sweating out their impurities. At the room’s centre a large labrum sat – a giant marble dish of water, sitting atop a tile column filled with heat billowing up from the furnaces below, turning that water into the vapour that filled the room.
Senova and Pera sat close together and picked up the conversation as of equals that they only shared in the baths where no one kne
w Pera was a slave and all impropriety evaporated in the natural equality of nakedness. She was learning much of Pera’s history and homeland in these small snippets – a region she and Rufinus had come close to but bypassed as they fled Dacia to the sea.
A quarter of an hour there was enough and they emerged from the steam, glistening and breathing deeply, into the warm room beyond where they took careful turns to use the strigils they had brought, scraping away the oil and the dirt with the sweat in every pass of the smooth, curved bronze. Shortly thereafter, they took a dip in the warm baths, then the cold baths, and then made their way back out to the great communal pool where they spent a contented half hour floundering about.
Finally, men began to drift into the complex and consequently Senova and Pera dried off and donned the tunic and clogs to move about in more modesty. They exited the main bathing structures of the great bath complex and wandered west along the arcade, watching other bathers make use of the gardens and lawns for strolls and even impromptu foot races. At the western edge of the great square of Trajan’s baths the perimeter wall was bounded by small tabernae, where the bather could buy everything from jewellery to sweetmeats, to wine, to books and much, much more. Senova and Pera paused at their favourite regular haunt and purchased a cup each of warmed mulsum and a handful of spicy pastries.
Thus equipped, they made their way to the nearby nymphaeum with is booths of comfortable curved seating and small tables. Senova was nothing if not prepared. Since their third visit, when they had not been able to sit in the booth as it had been occupied by a horrible red-faced woman and her cowering daughter, Senova had paid two of the bath staff a monthly stipend to occupy that one booth until they came along. They reached the secluded seating area and the two attendants bowed their heads and left the bathers to slide into the seats and eat and drink their wares.
Lions of Rome Page 13
