‘That possibility is discussed daily.’
‘I’m sure it is. What else do Romans have to talk about these days, between plates of caviar and stuffed quail?’
‘Pompey is always a popular subject for gossip,’ I offered. ‘They say he’s almost put down the rebels in Spain. Popular opinion looks to Pompey to hurry back and put an end to Spartacus.’
‘Pompey!’ Faustus Fabius infused the name with almost as much disdain as had Marcus Mummius. ‘Not that he doesn’t come from a good family, of course, and no one can discount his military achievements. But for once Pompey is not the right man in the right place at the right time.’
‘And who is?’
Fabius smiled and dilated his broad nostrils. ‘You’ll be meeting him shortly.’
Horses awaited us. Accompanied by Fabius’s bodyguard, we rode through the village of Misenum and then headed north on a stone-paved road beside the broad, muddy beach. At length the road turned inland from the beach and ascended a low wooded ridge. On either side, through the trees, I began to glimpse great houses, set far apart with cultivated gardens and patches of wilderness between them. Eco widened his eyes. At my side he had met wealthy men and had occasionally been allowed in their homes, but such ostentation as that which thrives on the Cup was new to him. The city houses of the wealthy, set close together with plain facades, do not impose as do their country villas. Away from the jealous eyes of the urban masses, in settings where no one but slaves or visitors as wealthy as themselves are likely to come knocking, the great Romans show no fear in advertising their taste and their ability to pay for it. Old-fashioned orators in the Forum say that wealth did not flaunt itself in earlier days, but in my lifetime gold has never been afraid to show its face, especially on the Bay of Luxury.
Faustus Fabius set a leisurely pace. If this errand was urgent, he did not show it. There seems to be something in the very air of the Campanian coast that relaxes even the most harried of city dwellers from the north. I sensed it myself ��� a crispness in the pine-scented air spiced with sea spray, a special clarity of sunlight charging the sky and reflected from the vast bowl of the bay, a feeling of harmony with the gods of earth, air, fire, and water. Such contentment loosens tongues, and I found it easy to open up Faustus Fabius by exclaiming at the views and asking a few questions about the topography and the local cuisine. He was a Roman through and through, but clearly he visited the region often enough to have a thorough knowledge of the coastal Campanians and their old Greek customs.
‘I must say, Faustus Fabius, my host on land is certainly more informative than the one I had at sea.’ He acknowledged the comment with a thin smile and a knowing nod; I could see he had little affection for Marcus Mummius. ‘Tell me,’ I went on, ‘just who is this Mummius?’
Fabius raised his eyebrow. ‘I thought you would have known that. Mummius was one of Crassus’s proteges in the civil wars; since then he’s become Crassus’s right-hand man in military affairs. The Mummii aren’t a particularly distinguished family, but like most Roman families that survive long enough, they do possess at least one famous ancestor. Unfortunately, the fame goes hand in hand with a taint of scandal. Marcus Mummius’s great-grandfather was a consul back in the days of the Gracchi; he won triumphs for his campaigns in Spain and Greece. You never heard of Mad Mummius, also known as the Barbarian?’
I shrugged. The minds of patricians are surely different from those of us ordinary men; how else can they effortlessly catalogue so much glory and gossip and scandal about so many ancestors, not just their own but everyone else’s? At the least prompting they can recount picayune details of life after life, going all the way back to King Numa and beyond.
Fabius smiled. ‘It’s unlikely, but if the matter should happen to come up around Marcus, be careful what you say; he’s surprisingly sensitive about his ancestor’s reputation. Well, then: many years ago this Mad Mummius was commissioned by the Senate to put down the revolt of the Achaean League in Greece. Mummius destroyed them completely, and then systematically looted Corinth before levelling the city and enslaving the populace by senatorial decree.’
‘Another glorious chapter in the history of our empire. Surely an ancestor any Roman should be proud of
‘Indeed,’ said Fabius, his teeth slighdy clenched at the irony in my voice.
‘And his butchery earned him the name Mad Mummius?’ ‘Oh, by Hercules, no. It wasn’t his bloodthirstiness or his cruelty. It was the indiscriminate way he handled the works of art he shipped back to Rome. Priceless statuary arrived in pieces, filigreed urns were scarred and scraped, jewels were torn from caskets, precious glassware was shattered. They say the man couldn’t tell a Polyclitus from a Polydorus!’ ‘Imagine that!’
‘No, really! They say a Juno by Polyclitus and a Venus by Polydorus each lost her head in transit, and when Mad Mummius was having them reassembled he ordered the workmen to attach the wrong heads to the wrong statues. The error was evident to any fool with two eyes. One of the Corinthian captives, outraged by the blasphemy, advised Mad Mummius of the error, whereupon the general had the old man soundly whipped and sold to the mines. Then he ordered his men to leave the statues exactly as they were, saying he thought they looked better that way.’ Fabius shook his head in disgust; to a patrician, a scandal a hundred years ago is still a scandal this morning. ‘Old Mummius became known as Mad Mummius, the Barbarian, given that his sensibilities were no better than those of a Thracian or a Gaul. The family has never quite shaken off the embarrassment. A pity, since our Marcus Mummius idolized his ancestor for his military skills, and rightly so.’
‘And Crassus recognizes the skills of Marcus Mummius?’
‘His right hand, as I said.’
I nodded. ‘And who are you, Faustus Fabius?’
I looked at him steadily, trying to pierce his feline countenance, but he rewarded my scrutiny with a bland expression that seemed to be a smile on one side and a frown on the other. ‘I suppose that would make me the left hand of Crassus,’ he said.
The road grew level as we gained .the summit of the ridge. Through the trees to the right I caught occasional glimpses of water below and, far away across the inlet, the clay rooftops of Puteoli, shimmering like tiny red beads. For some time I had seen no houses on either side; it seemed that we were passing through a single large estate. We passed grape arbours and cultivated fields, but I saw no slaves at work. I remarked on the absence of any signs of life. Thinking Fabius had not heard me over the clatter of our horses, I repeated my remark more loudly, but he only looked straight ahead and did not answer.
At last a smaller road branched off to the right. There was no gate, but two pylons flanked the road. Each red-stained column was surmounted by the bronze head of a bull with a ring through its nose.
The land on either side of the road was wild and forested. The way wound gradually downward towards the coast. Through the trees I could see blue water flecked with faraway sails, and again the roofs of Puteoli across the water. Then the way took a sharp turn around a large boulder. The trees and thickets abruptly drew back, revealing the massive facade of the villa.
The roof was of clay tiles which blazed fiery red in the sunlight. The walls were stained saffron. The central mass was two storeys high, flanked by wings that projected to the north and south. We halted in the gravel courtyard, where a pair of slaves ran to help us dismount and to lead the horses to the nearby stables. Eco dusted his tunic and looked about, wide-eyed, as Faustus Fabius escorted us to the entrance. Funeral wreaths of cypress and fir adorned the high oak doors.
Fabius knocked. The door opened just enough for a blinking eye to peer out, and then was pulled wide open by an unseen slave who cowered behind it. Fabius raised his hand in a gesture that invited us to follow and at the same time demanded silence. My eyes were used to the sunlight, so that the hallway seemed quite dark. I saw the wax masks of the household ancestors in their niches only as vague shadows on either side of us, like ghosts without bo
dies peering from little windows.
The dark hallway opened into an atrium. The space was square, surrounded by a colonnaded portico on the ground floor and a narrow walkway on the floor above. Cobblestone pathways meandered through a low garden. There was a small fountain at the centre, where a bronze faun threw back his head in delight as tiny jets of water splashed from his pipes. The workmanship was exquisite. The creature seemed to be alive, ready to leap and dance; the sound of bubbling water was almost like laughter. At our approach, two yellow birds who were bathing themselves in the tiny pool flew in a startled circle about the faun’s prancing hooves, then upwards to perch nervously on the balustrade that circled the upper storey, and then upwards again into the blue sky.
I watched them ascend, then lowered my eyes to the garden again. That was when I saw the great funeral bier at the far end of the atrium, and the body that lay upon it.
Fabius walked through the garden, where he paused to dip his fingers into the basin at the faun’s feet and then touch them to his forehead. Eco and I followed his example and joined him before the body. ‘Lucius Licinius,’ said Fabius in a low voice.
In life, the dead man had possessed great wealth; either that or his funeral arrangements were being provided by someone with a remarkable purse. Even very wealthy families are usually content to lay their deceased upon a wooden bed with ivory legs and perhaps some decorative ivory inlays. This elegantly carved bed was made entirely of ivory, from head to foot. I had heard of such lavishness, but had never before seen an example. The precious substance glowed with a waxen paleness almost as smooth and colourless as the flesh of the dead man himself.
Purple blankets embroidered with gold lay upon the bed, along with adornments of asters and evergreen branches. The corpse was dressed in a white toga with elegant green and white embroidery. The feet were clad in freshly oiled sandals and pointed toward the door of the house, as prescribed by tradition.
Eco wrinkled his nose. An instant later I did the same. Despite the perfumes and unguents with which the body had been anointed, and the pan of incense set above a low brazier nearby, there was a decided odour of decay in the air. Eco moved to cover his nose with the hem of his sleeve; I batted his hand away and frowned at his rudeness.
Fabius said in a low voice, ‘This is the fifth day.’ It would be two more days until the funeral then, to allow the seven days of public mourning. The body would be quite pungent by then. With such an ostentatious display of wealth, surely the family had paid for the best anointers to be found in Baiae, or more likely had brought them over from bustling Puteoli, but their skill had not been good enough. There was an added irony in the carelessness with which the deceased was displayed; a few stray tendrils of ivy had fallen over his head, obscuring not only half his face but any laurel crown that he might have been wearing in remembrance of some earthly honour.
‘This ivy,’ I said, ‘looks almost as if it had been placed over his face on purpose …’
Fabius did not stop me as I gently lifted the green tendrils that had been so skilfully arranged to hide the dead man’s scalp. The wound beneath was of the sort that makes anointers of the dead throw up their hands in despair ��� almost impossible to purify and seal, too large to be hidden in any subtle way, too deep and ugly to be looked at for long. Eco made an involuntary sound of disgust and turned his face away, then leaned back to take a closer look.
‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ whispered Fabius, averting his face. ‘And Lucius Licinius was such a vain man. A pity he can’t look his best in death.’
I steeled myself to look at the dead man’s face. A sharp, heavy blow or blows had destroyed the upper right quadrant of his face, tearing the ear, smashing the cheekbone and jaw and ruining the eye, which despite any efforts to close it after death remained narrowly opened and clotted with blood. I studied what remained of the face and was able to imagine a handsome man of middle age, greying slightly at the temples, with a strong nose and chin. The Lips were slightly parted, showing the gold coin that had been placed on his tongue by the anointers - the fee for the boatman Charon to ferry him across the river Styx.
‘His death was not an accident?’ I offered.
‘Hardly.’
‘An altercation that came to blows?’
‘Possibly. It happened late at night. His body was found here in the atrium the next morning. The circumstances were obvious.’
‘Yes?’
‘A runaway slave ��� some fool following the example of Spartacus, it appears. Someone else will explain the matter to you in more detail.’
‘This was done by an escaped slave? I am not a slave hunter, Faustus Fabius. Why was I brought here?’
He glanced at the dead man, then at the bubbling faun. ‘Someone else will explain.’
‘Very well. The victim ��� what did you call him?’ ‘Lucius Licinius.’
‘He was the master of the house?’ ‘More or less,’ said Fabius. ‘No riddles, please.’
Fabius pursed his lips. ‘This should have been Mummius’s job, not mine. I agreed to escort you to the villa, but I never agreed to explain the matter to you once you arrived.’
‘Marcus Murnmius isn’t here. But I am, and so is the corpse of a murdered man.’
Fabius grimaced. Patrician or not, he struck me as a man used to being stuck with unpleasant jobs, and he did not like it. What had he called himself ��� the left hand of Crassus? ‘Very well,’ he finally said. ‘This is the way things were with Lucius Licinius. He and Crassus were cousins, closely linked by blood. I gather they hardly knew one another growing up, but that changed when they became men. Many of the Licinii were wiped out in the civil wars; once things got back to normal under Sulla’s dictatorship, Crassus and Lucius formed a closer relationship.’
‘Not a friendship?’
‘It was more in the nature of a business partnership.’ Fabius smiled. ‘But then everything is business with Marcus Crassus. Anyway, in any relationship there must be a stronger and a weaker partner. I think you must know enough about Crassus, if only by hearsay, to imagine which of them was subservient.’
‘Lucius Licinius.’
‘Yes. Lucius was a poor man to start with, and he would have stayed that way without Crassus’s help. Lucius had so little imagination; he wasn’t the sort to see an opportunity and seize it, unless he was pushed. Meanwhile, Crassus was busy making his millions in real estate up in Rome ��� you must know the legend.’
I nodded. When the dictator Sulla finally triumphed in the civil wars, he destroyed his enemies by seizing their property and rewarded his supporters, Pompey and Crassus among them, with villas and farms; thus had Crassus begun his ascent, driven by an apparently boundless appetite for property. Once in the streets of Rome I had come upon a burning building, and there was Crassus bidding on the tenement next to it. The owner, confused and desperate and believing he was about to lose his property to the spreading flames, sold it to Crassus on the spot for a song, whereupon the millionaire called out his private fire brigades to put out the flames. Such tales about Crassus were commonplace in Rome.
‘Everything Crassus touched seemed to turn to gold,’ Fabius explained. ‘His cousin Lucius, on the other hand, muddled about trying to make a living off the land, like all good, old-fashioned plebeians. He lost and lost until he was bankrupt. Finally he begged Crassus to save him, and Crassus did. He made Lucius a kind of factotum, a representative to look after some of Crassus’s business enterprises on the Cup. In a good year - without pirates or Spartacus - there’s a great deal of business transacted on the Cup; it’s not all luxurious villas and oyster farms. Crassus owns mines in Spain, and a fleet of ships that bring the ore to Puteoli. He owns metalworkers in Neapolis and Pompeii who turn the ore into utensils and weapons and finished works of art. He owns ships that transport slaves from Alexandria to Puteoli. He owns farms and vineyards all over Campania, and supplies the hordes of slaves that ate needed to work them. Crassus can’t oversee
all these small details himself; his interests extend from Spain to Egypt. He delegated responsibility for local business here on the Cup to Lucius, who oversaw Crassus’s investments and enterprises in a plodding but adequate manner.’
‘The running of this house, for example?’
‘Actually, Crassus himself owns the house and all the land around it. He has no need for villas; he scoffs at the idea of retreating to the countryside or the coast to relax and read poetry. And yet somehow he keeps acquiring them, dozens of villas by now. He can’t keep empty houses all over Italy, so he prefers to rent them to his family and his factotums. Then, when he travels, he can reside in them when and as he needs to, a guest and yet more than a guest.’
‘And the household slaves?’
‘They are also the property of Crassus.’
‘And the Fury, the trireme in the harbour that brought me from Ostia?’
‘That belongs to Crassus, too, although it was Lucius who oversaw its use.’
‘And the deserted vineyards and fields we rode through on the way from Misenum?’
‘Property of Crassus. Along with numerous other properties and manufactories and gladiator schools and farms in the region, from here to Surrentum.’
‘Then to call Lucius Licinius the master of this house���’
‘Licinius gave the orders and acted independently in his own home, to be sure. But he was nothing more than Crassus’s creature. A servant, really, if a privileged and very pampered one.’
‘I see. Is there a widow?’
‘Her name is Gelina.’
Arms of Nemesis - Roman Sub Rosa 02 Page 5
