by Peter Tonkin
Artemidorus looked around the walls of the place apparently idly as he ordered his thoughts and planned his questions. Walls which were decorated with pictures, mosaics and graffiti. The mosaics, augmented by some of the paintings and almost all of the graffiti, illustrated a variety of sexual positions. The pictured activity was by no means as adventurous as that to be found in the public baths, but it was still colourful and lively. All around the room, men and women were pictured taking vigorous carnal enjoyment of each other. The flickering shadows strangely seeming to give them life. He on top. She on top. They, side by side – front to front. Back to front. Legs up. Legs down. Standing. Lying. Kneeling. Partially clothed. Utterly naked. Several couples in positions that would have been familiar to the dead doorkeeper’s dog…
The spy dragged his mind back to the task in hand. He was taking Puella to see his most immediate associates, who were for the moment living on the top floor of the insula nearby, pretending to be a married couple. For the last few days they had been working in the kitchens of another of Enobarbus’ list of supposed conspirators. Whose own kitchen staff had suddenly succumbed to a serious bout of food poisoning which fortunately was not passed to the rest of the house. A ruse Artemidorus had suggested – though he had no idea how Enobarbus had managed to pull off such a precise poisoning. Or get his own people into the suddenly vacated kitchen. The husband-and-wife team were called Telos and Cyanea. What they discovered in their undercover assignment would add yet more weight, he hoped, to what he suspected and what Puella remembered. Thus bolstering her confidence to reveal every detail of the facts she knew. But there were those few nagging points he wanted cleared up before they left the latrine.
They were by no means alone, but Artemidorus thought them safe enough from eavesdroppers. ‘Are you running away from your master’s attentions, like the doorkeeper said?’ He asked. It was the one major element of her motivation they had not yet examined. And he had lived in the shadowy world of espionage for long enough to know that motivation was sometimes the most important element of all. Usually it was sex, money, fear, spite, revenge, pain or desperation. Occasionally – rarely – love, honour, patriotism. But which one of the great motivators moved Puella?
‘No. Not entirely…’ Her voice was steady, her tone thoughtful. As though she was preparing to reveal something she had dared not discuss in the Junian family villa itself.
‘What, then?’
‘Every time he has taken one of the girls to his bed, she has sickened and died soon after.’ He had to strain to hear her answer.
‘Is he diseased? He looks to me to be exhausted, not infected. Not like the Lady Porcia with her poisoned leg…’ He probed further. Quietly. Gently. If she ever got to know him better she would learn that he was at his most dangerous when he was quiet. Gentle.
‘It’s not him.’ She looked down. ‘He seems as shocked and upset by the deaths as anyone else. It is… I’m sure it must be either…’
‘What? Who?’ he recast his question shrewdly. ‘Not the Lady Porcia, even if she has been his wife for less than a year. Like her father she is a believer in the Stoic philosophy, I believe, more likely to accept the fact and bear the pain – as she has done with her leg.’
‘No. I believe it is his mother. The Lady Servilia. She has not yet forgiven him for divorcing the Lady Claudia Pulchra and taking his cousin the Lady Porcia as his wife last June. She visits regularly and is civil to both of them. But there is still rage there… And moreover… She has a reputation…’
‘… that she cultivates wolfsbane…’ he suggested tactfully, nodding as he understood precisely what she feared. Rumours abounded about Servilia Caepionis, embittered ex-mistress of the Divine Julius. A mistress whose son, the Lord Brutus, Julius may even have sired in his distant youth. So went some of the gossip, at least. But the gossip about the Divine Julius, perpetual Dictator and Co-Consul of Rome, was endless. Sexually. Militarily. Historically. Speculatively. Politically. Dangerously.
Puella glanced at him, her eyes huge. There was the tiniest affirmative nod.
‘… and Lady Servilia distils the juices…’ he continued. ‘How apt that it should be called The Mother-In-Law’s Poison. Were the dying women incontinent? Did they complain of burning? Mouth? Face? Belly?’
Puella’s eyes opened even wider in wordless confirmation. And he nodded wisely. Aconite, he thought. An even deadlier poison than the hemlock drunk by Socrates. Such knowledge was mother’s milk to the men and women living in the secret shadows he inhabited. The girl would be shocked, horrified, if she knew a tenth of the things he knew. A hundredth of the things he had done.
‘Another thing,’ added Artemidorus suddenly. ‘Why was there a knife in the family shrine?’
Puella gave a bark of humourless laughter. Much more confident now. ‘The Lady Servilia again. It was the second of a pair of knives she gave Lord Brutus and Lady Porcia. The first seems to have been cursed. No matter who used it, the thing cut them. To the bone. The cook, the kitchen slaves. The blade was almost magical, though in truth it was fitter for the battlefield than the kitchen. They say she had it sent from the East. From the furthest reaches of Alexander’s empire. It may even have been that knife which wounded the Lady Porcia’s thigh. I don’t know what happened to it in the end. That is… No, I don’t remember. Is it important?’
‘Probably not…’
‘But the second knife, Lord Brutus’s, was out in the shrine so the household gods would bless it. Drive out the evil…’
‘So, you think that Vesta, goddess of hearth and home, is more powerful than the Lady Servilia?’ he teased, pulling up his trousers and grabbing hold of the lantern.
‘Not in this world,’ she laughed, shaking her head as she too stood up and adjusted her tunic. ‘And possibly not in the next.’
II
The ostiarius of the insula where Artemidorus’ fellow spies Telos and Cyanea were lodging was called Vitus. He and his dog Canem answered at the first knock. They both knew the visitor well and signified the fact with a nod of the head and a lick of the tongue. Then they turned their attention to Puella. She offered a hand to each one and they all seemed to become friends at once.
‘She hasn’t been here, Vitus,’ said Artemidorus to the doorkeeper, nodding towards the girl. ‘You haven’t seen her.’
‘I won’t go around announcing her presence,’ he answered. ‘But if anyone serious comes looking for her, then they’ll only have to ask forcefully enough.’
‘I know,’ said Artemidorus. ‘They’ll be able to beat it out of you with a feather. Fair enough. You don’t owe us anything.’
The doorkeeper nodded. ‘Visiting as usual?’
‘As usual.’ Artemidorus slipped him a gold Caesar denarius. The sort that the Divine Julius had issued to the legions that had crossed the Rubicon behind him. The VIIth among them. Without even seeming to look at the newly minted coin, the doorkeeper slid it into the leather purse at his waist. ‘Some of that is for Janus,’ warned Artemidorus.
The ostiarius looked sideways at the spy. ‘I’ll toss him for it. He can keep what he catches.’
Artemidorus gave a bark of laughter. The doorkeeper picked up a smoking tallow candle and led the way along a dark corridor towards a set of steep, narrow stairs. The dog trotted at his heels. The spy and the slave girl followed. He still held the lantern.
‘You’re up late, Vitus,’ observed Artemidorus as the doorkeeper led them onto flight after flight of stairs. He had to raise his voice. The raving of the storm outside was matched by the various sounds and snatches of conversation coming through the flimsy walls inside. The spy wondered whether the slave girl would be shocked by some of what she heard. Lord Brutus’s villa would be like the Temple of the Vestal Virgins compared to this.
‘It’s the weather,’ announced Vitus after a while. ‘That’s why we’re wide awake, Canem and me. One of these cheaply built insulae collapsed last week. It wasn’t raining half as hard as this. No thunder
bolts then either. Still managed to kill and injure a good number of the plebeian residents and the doorkeeper there. They dug him out last. Never found his dog. A good friend of mine. And the month before, another one burned down during that cold snap at Terminalia on 23 Februarius, the end of last year. Did you hear about that? Thought not. Yet more poor plebs and their families roasted like dormice at a feast. Both death-trap slums were owned by his worship Marcus Tullius Cicero. This one is owned by the Junii family as you probably know. Marcus Junius Brutus himself is the landlord. Tight-fisted spurius…’
Suddenly Artemidorus felt Puella very close behind him. Her breath on his neck. Panting. Shortened by exercise. Or fear. They had climbed five flights already and Artemidorus knew there were three more to go. Luckily the doorkeeper’s pace was slackening as he began to puff and limp. Puella crowded even closer. She smelt of a familiar, fragrant herb. Hyssop, he thought as his nostrils flared. He hadn’t noticed that before. Moved by a combination of compassion and sudden desire, he turned and handed her the doorkeeper’s lantern. The light would make her feel safer, he thought.
‘Lord Brutus’s rents are higher than Cicero’s but his buildings are not much safer,’ the doorkeeper continued apparently unaware of the reaction he had caused by naming the landlord. ‘At least we don’t have to worry about fire tonight,’ he observed at last, chuckling breathlessly as he led them to the top-storey apartment, his left leg beginning to drag more obviously. ‘Here we are. I’m afraid it’s only one room now, for young master Telos has been forced to sub-let the inner room to meet a rise in the rent. The rise in rent hasn’t led to much civic improvement, mind. The roof still leaks so badly that the occupants below are more likely to drown than to burn.’ He stopped on the threshold and turned, holding his light high. ‘You know, there have already been complaints tonight about dampness oozing through the ceilings into the apartments downstairs on floors seven and six.’
‘This is the home of my friends and associates Telos and Cyanea,’ Artemidorus explained to Puella. ‘You’ll meet them in a moment but before you do it might be as well if I told you one or two things about them. Just as I have been working in the house of Lord Brutus…’ he paused until he saw the full implication of what he had said sink in. The pause also gave him a moment to school his expression. To conceal a deeper truth. That he and Cyanea were lovers. Had been passionately re-enacting many of the illustrations from the wall of the public latrine for several months past. ‘They have been working for his brother-in-law Cassius. They too have a list…’ he frowned, wondering if he was taking too much of a risk explaining this in front of the ostiarius who, by his own admission, would reveal everything he knew to someone who frowned at him sufficiently fiercely. But they were on first-name terms. Moreover, Telos trusted Vitus. And Artemidorus trusted Telos’ judgement. ‘They have a list,’ he emphasised. ‘But no witness. No proof. Unless things have changed quite radically since I saw them both earlier this evening.’
Artemidorus turned and raised his fist to hammer on the door into the tiny flat. The doorkeeper turned away. ‘Wait,’ called Artemidorus. ‘Vitus. Wait.’ There had been enough light for him to see something disturbing. He lowered his fist and opened his hand. Used his palm gently to push at the door. Which creaked open an inch or two with a groan of tortured hinges. Sagged brokenly to one side. The door-foot scraped against the floorboards. Stopped. The flickering light showed a simple bolt, shattered. ‘This has been kicked in,’ said the spy, quietly, his voice a dangerous sing-song. ‘Puella, you wait there. Many strangers about in the last couple of watches, Vitus?’
*
‘No strangers that I noticed especially,’ answered the doorkeeper thoughtfully, turning and bringing his tallow candle closer. ‘People coming and going all night. You know how it is. I got more whores than cockroaches in some of these rooms. They don’t all work in the lupanarae brothels.’ He suddenly looked bigger. More threatening. He was responsible for the safety of the residents. He did not take kindly to this sort of thing. Like many in his trade, he was a retired soldier, late of Legio VI Ferrata, Caesar’s Ironclads, Artemidorus knew. Wounded during the debacle in Alexandria. Lucky to survive; invalided out. Still walked with a limp, especially when his legs got tired.
With the smoky golden light from the candle behind him, Artemidorus pushed the door again. It screamed wider. Sagging door-foot juddering across the floor. Both men padded in – spy first then doorkeeper. Both moving like soldiers on a battlefield. One step in and they were shoulder to shoulder, tallow candle high, surveying the wreckage. Artemidorus frowned. The room seemed even smaller than he remembered it. This afternoon it had contained a modest wicker chest with some clothing in it. A bed just large enough for two – though Telos, he knew, slept on the floor. A straw mattress and a thin blanket. A terracotta bowl that contained their modest fish and puls wheat-porridge dinner during the first watches and their night soil in the later ones. No table – they sat on the bed to empty the bowl. No latrine – they squatted in the corner to fill it. A tiny wood-shuttered window under the eaves out of which they emptied it once again in the morning. Before scrubbing it clean at the nearest public fountain and filling it at the fish kitchen on the way home. A couple of horn spoons. Some wooden-backed wax tablets and a stylus for making notes. A cheap little lamp capable of giving just enough light to use the tablets. A pewter crucible and a ball of beeswax for repairing and reusing them. A man that he respected and a woman he loved. And none of it was as he had left it when the water clocks that counted the daylight hours stopped with the sunset and the first night watch began. When he had departed in the darkness to collect his ladder, to break into Lord Brutus’s villa and bring Puella out.
‘Looks like things might have changed since sunset,’ said Vitus quietly. ‘Quite a lot, in fact.’
Artemidorus grunted. Nothing that had been in the room as he last saw it was where – or as – it had been. The wicker basket lay spread, gutted. The clothing it had contained strewn all over the floor. The bed was in pieces, the mattress disembowelled and the straw scattered as though this was a home for horses rather than humans. The bowl was shattered. Artemidorus stooped and picked the largest shard up. Brought it to his nose as he studied the others. Some of them were smeared with blood. It had been broken over someone’s head. Or in someone’s face. It had contained the last of the fish supper. None of the night soil. ‘First watch,’ he said.
Vitus nodded silently, his eyes as busy as the spy’s but seeing nowhere near as much.
Puella and Canem stepped silently into the carnage, adding to the light. Which was not necessarily a good thing. Neither one looked happy to be here. Artemidorus could see the girl’s point at least. Since he brought her out of Lord Brutus’s villa on the promise of protection and safety, she had been hunted, brutalised, nearly raped and watched a man die at far closer quarters than even the arena offered. Now here she was in a tiny room that reeked of yet more violence. No wonder she looked less than happy. And frozen to the bone, judging by the way her skin was gathered into goosebumps and her nipples stood erect.
A little lamp lay beside the shattered bowl, miraculously unbroken. The spy stooped and picked it up. Shook it. On hearing the sound of oil sloshing from side to side, he held it beside the tallow candle in Vitus’ fist until the wick caught, then he knelt, carefully, and used the light to look more closely at the wreckage. Out of the scattered straw he pulled several writing tablets. They were of standard design – wooden boards covered in thin skims of wax, secured in pairs by cloth straps or metal rings so that the wax faces could close on one another and protect the writing on each surface. But they had been torn apart now. Some of the delicate wooden panels were broken in half, others splintered altogether. At least one contained a footprint – or part of one. Studded boot soles. Soldiers had done this. Or gladiators, perhaps. Someone wearing caligae, at least. He held their slick wax surfaces to the lamp flame, nodded, and piled them together, splinters and all. The next t
hing he did was to pick up some of the scattered clothing. First a woman’s tunic. A day tunic, much more substantial than the sleeping tunic the shivering Puella was wearing. ‘Here,’ he said passing it to her. ‘Put this on. It will be loose. But it’s dry and it’s better than the one you’ve got on.’
Puella took it. Put the lantern on the floor. Without a second thought, she hauled up the sodden one and slipped it over her head. Artemidorus caught Vitus’ eye and the doorman hurriedly looked away as the young woman pulled the warm, dry garment over a starkly naked body illuminated graphically from below by the lantern by her feet. Apparently painted with gold once again. The spy pulled another tunic free of the mess and copied Puella’s action. But whereas her new tunic was a little too big, his was too small, stretching over his torso like a second skin. As she looked at him Puella’s gaze suddenly became almost as speculative as Vitus’ had been as he had fleetingly observed her nudity. Something answering stirred in the spy. But he dismissed it at once. There were other relationships at risk here. Lives and limbs as well, he calculated. He had to keep his mind clear and focused.
‘And you saw nothing?’ he asked the doorkeeper. ‘At least four, I would have thought. Large men. Soldiers or gladiators. Four coming in. Six coming out, given that they’ve taken Telos and Cyanea. And you saw nothing?’ For the first time, he was beginning to lose faith in Telos’ judgement of people.
