Lindsey Davis - Falco 01 - Silver Pigs

by Silver Pigs(lit)

  eating squelchy melons and wearing country hats, with their noses already stuck well down their gourds of wine and their throats full of ready abuse, the troopers accepted a slice of melon each then shambled off without trying to tear the scaffold down.

  Luckily, by the time I arrived the senators had passed, so the trumpets and war horns were being carried by, their towering bell-like mouths just level with our heads. Victorina and Alia mouthed obscenities at me. The rest of the family covered their ears against the din and decided not to strain their vocal chords complaining I was late.

  “Do you remember,” Victorina reminisced in a loud voice, as the blaring ranks of trumpeters reached a momentary gap, ‘that time at the Triumph for the Conquest of Britain when the Emperor’s elephants frightened Marcus so much he was sick?”

  It had nothing to do with the elephants. I was seven. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a tray of Persian sweetmeats that were standing in the shade. All I could view of the British Triumph were other people’s legs. That whole afternoon I munched my way through three pounds of honey fried stuffed dates, until my little lips were tender from licking off the salt and my aching belly decided to revolt. I never even saw the elephants…

  Maia threw me a hat. Of all my sisters, Maia displays the most consistent good nature towards me with the single exception of the fact that it was Maia who did me the honour of importing into our family my brother-in-law Famia. This Famia was a chariot-horse vet for the Greens and I would have found him a specimen of crass mediocrity even if I had not inclined quite strongly to the Blues. In fact I disliked all of my sisters’ husbands, which was one reason I hated family gatherings. Being formally civil to idiots and wastrels was not my idea of a festive day. Apart from Galla’s husband, whom Galla had temporarily thrown out on a rubbish heap, these despicable characters came and went in the course of the day, and my only consolation was that their wives treated them even more poisonously than they treated me.

  And it was a long day. After heralding by the trumpets, we had the spoils of war. Titus was right, nothing like it had ever been seen anywhere in the world. It was a year since Vespasian seized the throne, six months since he came home himself. Plenty of time for the Palace to organize a spectacle, and they had. For hour after hour we were treated to representations of

  Vespasian’s Judaean campaign: deserts and rivers, captured towns and blazing villages, armies wheeling over baking plains, siege engines invented by Vespasian himself all teetering by in vivid tableaux on floats that towered three-or four-storeys high. Then, amid the aching creak of solid drum wheels and the smell of newly painted canvas as it cracked in the sun, stages with painted oars on their skirts blundered and dipped through the streets like high-crested sailing ships. I liked the ships best; sailing on dry land seemed perfect to me.

  On it went. Row after row of bearers in crimson uniforms and laurel wreaths marched through the city from the Plain of Mars, past the theatres where crowds crammed the outer walls, through the Cattle Market, round the Circus, up between the Palatine and the Caelian, then on into the Forum by the Sacred Way. They brought banners and hangings in rich Babylonian stuffs, painted by fine artists or encrusted with jewelled embroidery. Swaying on palanquins, statues of the city’s most cherished gods were carried by in festive dress. And flaunted in such quanitities that it became almost meaningless, came treasure by the ton: not only the rich gold and jewellery excavated from the rubble of devastated Jerusalem, but priceless marvels extracted with steely diplomacy at Vespasian’s command from cities in the wealthiest corners of the world. Loose gemstones were tumbled in mounds on litters just as they came, as if all the mines of India had hiccupped overnight: onyx and sardonyx, amethysts and agate, emeralds, jasper, jacinth, sapphires and lapis lazuli. Then followed, on stretchers in casual heaps, the gold crowns of conquest, diadems spiked like glittering sunbursts, coronets set with monstrous rubies and great sea pearls. After that more gold, until the streets flickered with the glow of it as the molten tide flowed on towards the Capitol in one slow, swollen meander of heroic extravagance.

  I remember that towards the afternoon the noise dimmed not because the crowds were hoarse (though they were) or losing interest (they were not), but as if folk could no longer contemplate this lavish show of Empire with the simple exuberance that first brought them to cheer. Applause no longer seemed enough. At the same time, the endless marching feet pressed past with increased pride at the climax of this, the main part of the procession: the treasures from the sacred Temple at Jerusalem the strange seven-branched candelabrum, a golden table weighing several hundredweight, and the Five Scrolls of the Jewish law.

  “Festus should be here!” Galla whimpered, and they all sniffed. (The wine gourds were well drained by this point.)

  There seemed to be a pause. Maia and I jumped all the children down to street level and marshalled them by families to the nearest public latrine. We took them back and filled them up with water again before they died of dehydration and excitement.

  “Uncle Marcus! That man’s got his hand up that lady’s skirt!” Marcia. What an observant child. This sort of embarrassment had been happening all day. Her mother Marina said nothing; worn down by Marcia’s constant piping indiscretions, Marina rarely does.

  “Picking that lady’s pocket, I dare say,” I remarked recklessly.

  Maia exploded. “Gods, Marcus, you’re so lewd!”

  Dazzling white animals, with flowers round their horns, were led by on crimson streamers by light-footed priests from all the sacred colleges. Flute players escorted them in a swirl of incense fumes, while dancers exultantly cavorted in handsprings wherever there was room. Acolytes carried golden censors and implements for the sacrifice.

  “Uncle Marcus, that man’s there! That man who stinks!”

  A face in the crowd. Well, a smell.

  I saw him as soon as she shouted. He lounged against a portico pillar across the street. His long face, sallow skin and thin disgusting hair were unmistakable: the hot-wine waiter I found in my room after my British trip. It struck me at last that it was no coincidence Smaractus found a spare tenant when I was away. That rank piece of pungency had been planted, planted to watch me. He was watching me still. Unclamping a two-year-old who was sitting on my shoulders, I whispered to Maia that I was leaving her in charge while I slipped off to see a man about a racing tip.

  I don’t think our Maia has ever forgiven me; one way and another I never got back.

  LVII

  I crossed the street under the toes of the first ranks of the captives from Judaea. Seven hundred prisoners, specially selected for their impressive stature to be brought overseas and displayed by Titus in his victory parade. They were smothered in expensive robes to hide the bruises where soldiery had assaulted them on the journey; as I tumbled over the pavements before they ground me down, I could smell their fear. They must have known it was part of the Triumphal ceremony that before the Emperor made sacrifice on Capitol Hill, he would pause until word was brought that his enemies had been ritually executed in the Mamertine Jail. For all these poor blighters could tell, all seven hundred of them faced the noose, not just one token leader of their revolt.

  A certain Simon son of Gioras had in fact been selected for strangulation today. Already getting their pecker up to thrash him in the kidneys as they dragged him out of the line at the Gemonian Steps, the prisoners’ escort flailed viciously at me as I scurried across the road just in front of them. I barely made it intact to the crush on the other side. The waiter had spotted me coming and was squeezing off towards the Sacred Way. Packed as the street was, he had no difficulty persuading citizens to allow him a space to ooze by. Without the advantage of his personal fragrance my task was stickier, but frustration with this filthy case was giving me an edge; I elbowed people mercilessly out of my own way.

  I trailed him all along the street that used to go north, under the shadow of what we called the Upper Palace, through part of the grounds of N
ero’s Golden House. We hit the Sacred Way. On the corner by the Temple of Vesta, with its mock thatched roof and lattices, the crowds craning their necks for the approach of Vespasian and Titus had clustered so thickly there was only one way my quarry could turn into the Forum on its southern edge. We were hemmed back against the public

  buildings as the prisoners overtook us. We were both struggling now. Our only way to move was to be eased along by muscular contortions in the crowd, like a recent dinner undulating inside a snake.

  There was no hope of concealment as from time to time the waiter glanced anxiously back. He bludgeoned across the front of the Julian Courts, and I sweated after him. On the processional way I could hear the stamp of twenty-four members of the college of lictors, the escort for the Emperor presumably all in red tunics and shouldering their bundles of staves, though they were hidden from my view by the press of the crowd. Vespasian himself was coming now. The excitement rose, and with it my desperate mood. I tried to fight my way forwards, yet to do anything but stand still and applaud Vespasian like everybody else was virtually impossible. By the Temple of Saturn, I had made up no ground on the waiter and as I turned, distracted by the racket of the Emperor’s chariot, I finally lost sight of him for the last time.

  I let him go. Life was too precious to waste. Fighting to keep my feet, I found myself on the steps, almost where I had been standing on that summer day when Sosia Camillina ran towards me and all this began.

  There I stood, squeezed breathless, while the Emperor in whom she so dearly believed rode up to meet the senate at the Temple of Jupiter, to celebrate his victory as a champion of the city and dedicate himself in his role as Chief Priest to the peace and prosperity of Rome. Four powerful white horses dragged his mighty chariot into the grateful roar of the crowd. The old man stood in his richly embroidered robes, beneath a golden oak leaf wreath held over his head; it was the Crown of Jupiter, and too heavy for a mortal man to wear. On his sturdy arm lay the laurel bough he would place in the lap of the gods on Capitol Hill; in his great firm hand he carried the traditional ivory sceptre with its eagle taking flight. The public slave whose task was to murmur reminders of the Emperor’s own immortality seemed to have given up. There was no point. Vespasian was a grim old cynic; he knew.

  Slowly the gilded triumphal chariot thundered by. Vespasian looked, as he himself said afterwards, as though he was calling himself a fool to have wasted a day on this endlessly crawling parade. I did not cheer, but despite myself I laughed.

  After him, Titus. Titus in a second great chariot, looking as if his heart was going to burst. Finally Domitian, the junior prince, handsome as mustard on a prancing white horse.

  They had done it. They were here. Three Sabine provincials no one had ever heard of until last year had, with good luck and some merit, made themselves dynastic princes in Rome.

  I turned away. Behind the three Flavians, the full mass of the army now came marching in: line after line of standard-bearers, trumpeters, baton-wielding officers in tall crimson crests, augurs, engineers, then the endless ranks of foot sloggers six deep, swinging along in the easy tramp that had taken the legions effortlessly throughout the world. Regulars piled through the streets in cohort after glittering cohort, followed by their exotic auxiliaries swarthy-faced archers in shimmering scale armour mounted on swift ponies, then heavier cavalry, ominous today in chased golden face masks that made them quite expressionless as they shook their feathered spears in unison.

  There was going to be a long wait while the Emperor climbed the Gemonian steps on his knees, then more delay while he made formal sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter on Capitol Hill. Turning back the way I had come would be impossible for another hour. I decided to circle right round the Palatine and weave back to the others along the Caelian side. This would enable a discreet check of certain premises on the way.

  I followed the line of the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Sewer, built five hundred years ago to drain the marshes round the Forum and the river side of the Aventine. My road soon brought me among the spice markets, where I came upon a watchman guarding the manhole where sewer men still plugged away daily under Nap Lane. They were not here today. On a public holiday no one works; only watchmen sometimes watch, if they want somewhere quiet to get drunk. This watchman had guzzled his way through one raw skinful and was taking a nap to encourage him for more.

  So far nothing unexpected. Yet at the head of the alley I spotted a girl I vaguely thought I knew.

  “Naissa?” It was Helena Justina’s constantly abandoned maid.

  She had made up her face with borrowed paint in honour of the day. She had done it in poor light so in broad sunshine the final effect passed beyond enhancing her features to a vivid glaze of colour; it gave her an unnatural, astonished stare.

  “Where is your lady, girl?” I demanded anxiously.

  Tn her fatherin-law’s warehouse. I was frightened to go any further; she told me to wait here.”

  “It’s just a warehouse, nothing sinister; you ought to have gone in with her!”

  “What shall I do now?” Naissa queried nervously, widening her fantastically painted eyes.

  “Whatever she told you, Nai’ssa!” I instructed unsympathetically, while my mind raced.

  Having informed Helena Justina yesterday that I was not free to go to the warehouse, I knew I ought to abandon my present plan. I wanted very badly to see her, but turned away. Now I had accepted that at least one of her close relations was involved in the conspiracy, facing her was hard to contemplate. Yet all the time I kept remembering that the warehouse was where Sosia had been murdered. To leave Helena alone there would have been even more difficult.

  “Are you Didius Falco?” Naissa asked, with a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. I stopped. “She told me to go to your house with this ‘

  She was holding something out. It was wrapped in a scarf, but the weight felt familiar as soon as it dropped into my hand.

  “Was there a message?”

  “No, sir.”

  Already I realized something serious was happening. I said urgently to the maid: “Go back and watch the Triumph with the family again. Tell Helena Justina’s mother, as discreetly as you can, that your lady is under my escort now. Her father should be attending the sacrifice, no need to bother him yet. But if Helena does not reappear by the time of the celebration dinner, go immediately to the senator and tell him where we are.”

  The next time I began to walk it was rapidly down Nap Lane. As I went, I unfolded Helena’s scarf.

  What I held in my hand then was a bracelet of British jet, fashioned in interlocking pieces like whale’s teeth. It was the bracelet that Sosia Camillina once gave to me, which had been stolen from me on the doorstep of the senator’s house.

  LVIII

  Sometimes a case consists of a progression of facts that lead you from one to another in a logical sequence; with these an informer who has any sort of brain can do all the work himself, at his own pace. Sometimes it is different. All you can do is stir the mire, then keep prodding so pieces of flotsam float to the top, while you stand there and watch for some putrid relic to emerge and at last make sense. Something had swirled into view now; the only problem was, it must be Helena who had stirred the mire. But if Helena had found this bracelet where Sosia found her list of names, it made sense. And it meant Helena Justina now knew who the last conspirator was. To keep it safe, I buckled the bracelet onto my belt.

  When I walked into the alley some things had changed, some were exactly the same. Rank weeds lolled against decaying doorposts where fungus gleamed like shrimp roe; further on, new chains flaunted bright padlocks on businesslike new doors. It must be a place where property ownership constantly changed, shifting with the storms of commerce, be they blown up on the ocean by the gods in their wicked mood, or manufactured in the Emporium by speculating men.

  At the Marcellus warehouse there seemed little alteration on the outside. In the lane a broken down waggon which I remembered
had been shunted along a couple of yards; I was surprised it could be moved. I noticed the difference because there was a manhole with its cover off where the clapped-out vehicle had stood before in apparently permanent decay. The yard gates were closed, but unlocked. I walked in on hurried feet.

  When I came here looking for Sosia, the Marcellus warehouse had appeared almost abandoned. Since then, the sea routes to Alexandria had reopened, and evidently several triremes laden to swamping-point had made the trip for Pertinax while he was

  still alive and operating in trade. This was obviously a working unit now. A line of carts stood against the yard wall, and when I approached the warehouse door I could smell the difference from five paces away. Someone had left a great key in the outside lock. The twelve-foot door gave with a creak, though I had to lean against it with my whole body weight to heave the monster ajar.

  What a place! Now that Pertinax and his partner Camillus Meto had been using it again, the atmosphere was magical. But the dead silence told me nobody was here.

  The pepper warehouse was a square, high, cluttered space, dimly lit from far above. Even now it was still less than half full, but on that warm afternoon the varied aromas of the rich goods inside hit me at the entrance like the whoomph of a well-sealed steam-room at the baths. Once my eyes focussed in the weird light I could see bell jars of root ginger standing in shadowy rows like pharaohs’ statues lining the route to the tombs in some silent city of the dead. Sacks were piled in the centre of the floor stuffed with cloves, coriander, cardamoms and cinnamon bark. One entire wall wds lined with wooden stalls where I plunged to the elbow in peppercorns, black, white and green. I stuffed half a handful worth a year’s salary into my pocket absentmindedly.