Saturnalia

by Lindsey Davis

  Meanwhile some of the green boughs in the roof had been set on fire by the strings of lights. Little Marcus Baebius, who could hear none of the tumult so he was less frightened than he might have been, sat gazing around at the magical scene, and was the first to raise the alarm, delightedly pointing out to his father the flames in the dry pine boughs.

  ‘I say!’ exclaimed Gaius loudly. The vigiles’ response was sillier than their fire-fighting manual orders. Of those who noticed, most took the traditional public service view that any action was the responsibility of somebody else. Some raised wine cups and cheered.

  ‘A little child is in danger!’ Junia screamed, wobbling on her feet. This only elicited guffaws of ‘How many vigiles does it take to put out a fire?’ To which the standard answer is: four hundred and ninety nine to give the orders and one to piss on the blaze. Then a spark landed on Rubella, so he finally weighed in. He rounded up a group to drag out the burning branches to the street where they would only bum down houses, not the warehouse that had been so expensively hired with cash from the entertainment kitty.

  When people rushed outside to watch the bonfire, a space cleared and Anacrites stumbled upon Petronius and me. He squeezed his expensive tunic through a tightly knotted group that included the man dressed as a turnip, whose friends were holding him down and pouring cups of wine into him (through his topknot of leaves) as if it was some kind of dangerous dare. Barely aware of what they were up to, the furious Spy elbowed them aside. ‘I’m looking for you two!’ He got no sense out of us. We were far too drunk, sitting on a platform, with our arms around each other’s necks, singing meaningless hymns, while Apollonius the waiter hopelessly begged us to go home.

  Anacrites was then nearly knocked face down by the man dressed as a turnip. This crackpot was bumping the Spy from behind while his companions feebly tried to restrain him. His costume was sewn on a frame of heavy wooden hoops. The Spy was picking up bruises every time he got belted. We saw that Anacrites was about to remonstrate. ‘We in the Fourth Cohort know how to give a turnip a good time!’ burbled Petro, with an infectious burp; he collapsed into giggles.

  Safely distracted, the Spy turned back, furious with us now. I raised my arm as if to make a declaration, forgot what I had intended, then lay down and pretended I’d passed out cold.

  Anacrites let out a hiss of disgust. Fortunately the fighting turnip had been dragged away by friends. Doing his best to assemble the Praetorians he came with, Anacrites made a censorious exit. Reviving, we watched his departure with cold eyes. We now knew that where most people spend their evenings with a bowl of nuts while warming their feet on the dog, or at least warming their feet on the wife, he went into a secret room alone and gloated over a statue of a naked hermaphrodite displaying its wares as if fascinated by its own array of mixed organs. The disconcerting bisexual in his private cabinet was surrounded by shelves of vases; they were painted with scenes of group sex—thrusting lovers in action, piled up in triples and quadruples like limpets, while sinister bystanders watched these antics salaciously through half-open doors.

  Anacrites also owned the biggest statue group of the ripe god Pan copulating with a goat on heat that I had ever seen. And I am the son of an antique-dealer.

  We transferred Camillus Justinus to a safe house as soon as it was safe. Petronius had let him come to the party first because there wasn’t time to secure him while we were dodging Anacrites; it let us read him a stem lecture on playing dead before we installed him in our secret apartment. Justinus hated Anacrites; he promised to behave. Good behaviour had become a fluid concept. It was no joke getting the silly beggar up six flights of stairs to his hideaway, and there were difficult scenes when we reached the top. Only those who have tried putting to bed a man-sized, extremely drunken turnip will appreciate what Petro and I went through.

  Afterwards, we two sat out on the balcony together for a while, calming down and contemplating Rome. The night was still and very cold but we had been heated by manipulating Quintus upstairs. A few faint stars appeared and disappeared through fast-moving clouds. The breeze was chilly on our faces as we breathed hard and let our hearts slow after our exertions. We shared an old stone bench and absorbed the night sounds.

  From streets below came the last bursts of Saturnalia revelry, but most homes were dark and silent now. A few carts were making late night deliveries, though all commerce had slacked off for the festival period, when schools and the courts were in recess and most trades closed down. When wheels did trundle along a street, the sounds carried the more clearly because the normal background racket was absent tonight. Closer to hand, dry leaves scratched on pantiles as they bowled across surrounding roofs. Other noises came to us from far across the city. Mule hooves and dog barks. The lazy tonkle-tonk of rigging equipment on ships moored beside the Emporium. A gust of cheering from a fight under the arches. The occasional scream of a raucous woman pretending to resist sexual advances, amidst cackles of encouragement from her ribald friends.

  Petro and I were without wine for once. There had been plenty of times when we carried on carousing on this balcony all night, but we were grown up now. Or so we said, and so Maia and Helena hoped. I thought there was a still a chance we might end up picking the locks at Petro’s apartment as we used to do back in the old days, when his wife, Arria Silvia, had locked him out and I had to help him gain admittance in search of a bed. That was on nights when we didn’t just fall over and lie in the street…

  Somewhere in the city below must be Veleda. Did she sleep, tossing and moaning in fever? Or in the city of her enemies was she plagued by wakefulness, dreading the moment when her gods or ours would reveal her destiny? She had come from the endless forests, where a self-sufficient loner could ride for days without human contact, to this teeming place where nobody was ever more than ten feet away from other people, even if a wall stood in between. Here in Rome, whether a hovel or a palace was sheltering her, both luxury and poverty would be her close neighbours. Even outside the mad period of Saturnalia, noise and contention dominated. Some people had everything; many had not enough to live as they wanted; a few simply had nothing. Their struggles to live created what we who were born here called our city’s character. We were all either grappling for improvement or striving to hold on, lest what we had—and with it any chance of happiness—should slip away. It was hard work and involved failure and despair for far too many, but to us, this was civilisation.

  Veleda had once tried to destroy it. Maybe if the old German guards had managed to find her and control her as a figurehead, she could have tried again. Maybe she did not need them, but would try to defeat us by herself.

  ‘What would we do, Lucius, if the barbarians really were at the gates?’

  ‘They will be.’ Lucius Petronius Longus had a morose streak. ‘Not in our day, not in our children’s day, but they will come.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Either run away or fight. Alternatively,’ suggested Petro, sounding like a lad again, and interested in any dangerous concept: ‘you become one of the barbarians!’

  I thought about that. ‘You wouldn’t like it. You’re too staid.’ ‘Speak for yourself, Falco.’

  We remained there a while longer, with our arms crossed against the cold, listening and watching. Around us our city slumbered, except where desperate souls slunk through its shadows on unspeakable errands, or the last few fearless party-goers were making their way home shrieking—if they could only remember where home was. Petronius, who had lost two of his children to fatal disease, seemed despondent; I knew he never forgot them but Saturnalia, the damned family festival, was when he remembered Silvana and Tadia most keenly. December is never my favourite month either, but I was riding it out. It comes; if you manage to endure it without killing yourself, January follows.

  Petronius and I knew how to pace ourselves, and not only with wine. Endeavour and action also have moments of high energy and recovery. We took some rest, here on the balcony of a decrepit
apartment which held so many memories. This was a lonely place, a sordid place, a noisy, half-derelict, heartbreaking location—several blocks of filthy tenements around a clutch of cheating neighbourhood shops, a place where free men learned that freedom only counts if you have money, and where people who saw that they would never become citizens totally lost hope. But in this backstreet byway a man who lay low could be ignored by the world. That was our hope for Justinus. We had stashed our treasure as discreetly as we could.

  I stood up, working my spine stiffiy. It was time to go. Petronius stretched his long legs, kicking against the baluster with the great hard toes of his heavy boots. Since I paid the rent on this bolthole, I stood aside with a host’s polite gesture to let him leave first through the wonky folding doors that led to the dreary interior. On his feet, Petronius had a last awkward stretch of his shoulders, then persuaded his tired limbs to move.

  I stopped him. A sound had caught my attention, somewhere in the tangle of filthy alleys that twisted together like drab wool skeins in an old basket, six storeys beneath us.

  Petronius thought I was a time-waster. Then he heard it too. Someone down there in the darkness played a few lonesome notes on a flute.

  XXXVI

  We never stood a chance of finding him. Whoever it was, moved off of his own accord. By the time we had careered down six flights of stairs in the dark and burst out at street level, all sounds had ceased.

  ‘Sounded professional.’

  ‘Bar musician going home after a night of touting around the tables for coppers.’

  ‘Too good for that.’

  ‘Bar musicians are bloody good. They have to be, to beat the competition. ‘

  ‘I want it to be the Quadrumatus flute boy.’

  ‘You want it too much, Falco.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘That’s fatal.’

  ‘I said all right—All right?’

  ‘No need to get nasty.’

  ‘Well don’t make so much of things.’

  ‘You sound like a woman.’

  ‘We’re drunk.’

  ‘No, we’re tired.’

  ‘A woman would say that’s what men say as an excuse.’

  ‘She’d be right.’

  ‘Right. ‘

  So we said good-night. Petronius maintained he had to stay up on duty; he would go back to the party, I reckoned. I set off for home. I was looking out for the flute boy, but I never saw him. Nobody much was about. Even the bad people were at home these nights. Burglars celebrate with their families like anyone else. Criminals honour festivals enthusiastically. There had been a rash of thefts a week ago while the old lags worked hard to obtain cash for food, lamps and gifts. If you want a good December feast, spend Saturnalia with a thief

  Now the dark entries and alleys were still. I convinced myself! was more sober than a third party would think, and on the alert for anyone who slipped through the shadows.

  It was a good theory. It worked so well that when I came upon Zosime from the Temple of AEsculapius, tending a patient by a flight of steps, I nearly fell over them.

  Zosime was working alone. She must have left her donkey nearby; she had a medical bag with her and when I arrived she had been bent over a motionless figure huddled on the steps. I scared her. She jumped up and almost tripped, hurriedly putting distance between us. I was shocked by her anxiety.

  ‘Steady! It’s me—Falco. The investigator.’

  The woman recovered fast. She seemed annoyed by my interruption, though perhaps she was annoyed with herself for jumping. She was competent and knew how to survive the streets at night so I would have gone on my way, but as she turned back to her patient she exclaimed under her breath.

  ‘What’s up?’

  She straightened abruptly. ‘We get too many of these… The man is dead, Falco. Nothing I can do for him. I am disappointed; I had been tending him and thought he was recovering.’

  I moved closer and inspected the vagrant. It was no one I recognised. I doubted anyone in Rome would claim him as friend or family. ‘What killed him?’

  ‘The usual.’ Zosime was repacking her medicines. ‘Cold. Hunger. Neglect. Despair. Brutality. This is a terrible time of year for the homeless. Everywhere is closed up; they can find neither shelter nor charity. A week-long festival will see many starve.’

  I let the rant slide to its end. ‘But you think he should have got better.’ I had gone down on one knee, peering closer. ‘His face is discoloured. Has he been attacked?’

  When Zosime did not answer, I rose to my feet again. Then she said, ‘Of course it is possible. The sick are vulnerable. Lying here, he could be kicked by casual passers-by.’

  ‘Or deliberately beaten up,’ I suggested. ‘There are no signs of serious violence.’ I gave her a stare. ‘So you looked?’

  She gazed back, openly acknowledging that she had half expected to discover an unnatural death. ‘Yes, I looked, Falco.’

  ‘You said “too many”. Is there a pattern?’

  ‘The pattern is of death by maltreatment. It is the norm for social outcasts… What do you want me to say?’ she demanded suddenly and loudly. It was my turn to be taken aback. Then her irritation with me diminished into something sadder. ‘Who would kill vagrants and runaways? What would be the point?’

  ‘You know your business, Zosime.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she replied, still angry, but also despondent. It was that time of year.

  I told her about the missing flautist and asked her to look out for the boy. He might trust her. It seemed unlikely he would be out and about now. The streets were cold, lonely, and pretty well deserted. I left her and walked home.

  If I was lucky, I would find a warm bed with a welcoming woman in my house. My house; even the fact that it had once been my father’s gave that concept extra solidity. I was now a man of substance. I had house, wife, children, dog, slaves, heirs, work, prospects, past history, public honours, roof terrace with fig tree, obligations, friends, enemies, membership of a private gymnasium all the paraphernalia of civilisation. But I had known poverty and hardship. So I understood the other world of Rome. I knew how that man lying dead on the steps could have sunk so low he found mere breathing too much to cope with. Or, even if he had managed to continue, how other ragged men could have turned on him because his illness made him just weaker and more hopeless than they were; the perpetual victims for once finding themselves able to exercise power. The best and worst kind of power being, the power of life and death.

  These were grand thoughts. Suitable for a man alone, descending an empty stone stairway among the elegant, lofty old temples on one of Rome’s Seven Hills, thinking himself at that moment lord of the whole Aventine. But I had noticed that Zosime reacted to the runaway’s death not with grand thoughts but tired resignation. She had believed he was recovering but she dreaded to find him dead, and it depressed her. I had seen her kind of feeling before too. She had the world-weariness of those who know that effort is futile. The city is sordid. Many people know nothing but misery. Many others cause such misery, most of them knowingly.

  Whatever her personal background—which probably involved slavery and certainly poverty—Zosime was a realist. She had lived long enough to understand the harsh life on the streets. Her work with the runaways was grounded in experience. She never idealised it. She was well aware that the runaways’ malnourishment and sheer despair would probably thwart her; tonight, though, she had believed worse forces were at work. I had seen that. Zosime had let me glimpse her fears.

  SATURNALIA, DAY ONE

  Sixteen days before the Kalends of January (17 December)

  XXXVII

  Dawn was approaching when I reached home. My key refused to work. I had been locked out.

  I did what Petronius and I used to do at his house: turned around on the step and gazed up the deserted street as if that would make the door open behind my back by magic. As a trick, it had failed then and it still failed. But I noticed something.
Not a full shape, just a hint of greater darkness in some shadows. A man was watching my house. Anacrites had wasted no time.

  I sharpened up. I had my hand on the curly tail of the mighty dolphin arouser Pa had left us; before I could disturb the neighbourhood I let go again as the grille rattled, then the door slid open. One of the legionaries had been waiting up. It was Scaurus. As he stepped aside to let me enter, he nodded surreptitiously towards the place where I had detected an observer. ‘We have company.’

  ‘Spotted him. I didn’t want to use the back entrance; no need to tell them it exists. Has anyone had a good look at him?’

  ‘No, but Clemens has put a man up on the roof terrace on obbo.’

  Ludicrous. Anacrites watched me and my men; we watched his. So several personnel who could be out looking for Veleda were tied up in useless pursuits.

  ‘Some Praetorians came and searched your house,’ Scaurus warned me. ‘Helena Justina wants to discuss it with you.’

  ‘Damage?’

  ‘Minimal.’

  ‘What did they make of you lot?’

  ‘We were all out having a drink at the Three Clams,’ the legionary confessed. ‘Unfortunately, the eyes outside will have seen us rolling home later.’

  ‘Anacrites knows you’re seconded to me. And I dare say he can guess you are all reprobates and drunks. The Three Clams is a dump, by the way. If you don’t want to walk all the way up the Hill to Flora’s, try the Crocus or the Galatean. Did the Guards tell Helena why they came?’