A Body in the Bathhouse

by Lindsey Davis

  “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

  “Maybe you should sit indoors quietly doing office work,” suggested Helena.

  “It will soon sponge off,” I reassured her as she sprang past me and got her hands on the newly grubbied buff garment. I had bundled it up carefully, but she threw it out flat to see the worst. She screamed and made a face. Mud does have a habit of looking like fresh oxen dung from a beast with bad diarrhea.

  “Ugh! At least when we lived in Fountain Court, Lenia’s laundry was on hand. Now keep out of trouble, please.”

  “Of course, my love.”

  “Oh, shut up, Falco!”

  I did stay in the office for a while. Then she let me come out for lunch.

  I was glad she cared. I would hate to think we ever reached the point when my presence made her blasé. I preferred it when she still carne suddenly to find me, as if she missed me when I was absent for an hour or two. And when she looked at me, abruptly still. Then if I winked at her, she would say “Oh, grow up, Falco!”

  And turn away, in case I saw her blush.

  She made me go back and work in the office all afternoon. One of the clerks brought over more documents, shuffling in, believing I was safely out on-site and would not confront him. I sat him down, ignoring his terrified look, and took this chance to get to know him. He was a spare, thin-featured fellow in his twenties, with short dark hair and a line of beard that was less successful than he must have hoped. He looked intelligent and slightly wary; perhaps he was worried by me.

  Part of the problem with costs on the project quickly became obvious. They had changed the major records system.

  “Vespasian wants to run things tightly. What’s been altered? A few accounting tweaks?”

  “New docketing. New logs. New everything.”

  I threw back my head and blew out air in frustration. “Oh, don’t tell me! Complex new bookkeeping, redesigned from scratch. It probably works perfectly. But you hated to abandon the system you knew—then when you tried the unfamiliar version, it didn’t seem to work. … I bet you started the palace project with the old system, then swapped halfway through?”

  The clerk nodded miserably. “We’re in a bit of a mess.”

  I realized what had happened. He was now using two different accounting strategies at once. He could no longer tell how much muddle he was in. “This is not your fault.” I was angry and that worried him. He thought I was berating him personally. “The Treasury fly boys have set up a Corinthian-columned record scheme—but none of the elevated brains who devised this fancy thing would ever dream of training you clerks!”

  “Well, we only have to operate it, after all.” This clerk was not as subdued as I had thought. He had worked in government service for maybe a decade, acquiring a dry wit to sustain himself. He was scared of me. But I wanted that.

  “Did they send you out a new rule book?”

  “Yes.” He looked shifty.

  I knew how things worked. “Anyone snipped the ribbon and opened the scroll yet?”

  “It’s on my desk.” I understood that euphemism.

  “Fetch it,” I said. At my feet, Nux looked up curiously.

  The costing clerk seemed bright enough; he must have been selected for this crucial project because somebody thought well of him. So as he slunk to the door, I called out kindly, “You and I will get to grips with it together. Bring all the old site orders and invoices right from the start. We’ll rewrite all the bookkeeping from day one.”

  I could send to Rome for an official to come here and train people. That would waste months—even if he ever arrived. Vespasian employed me for my dedication and my willingness to knuckle down. So I would sort it: I would read the rules. Knowing little of the old ones, I would not be flummoxed by changes. So long as the new rules worked, as they were likely to, then I would teach the clerks.

  Some informers lead a life of intrigue, plunging into the dark seams of society, amazing people with their enquiry skills and their deductive talent. Ah, well. Some of us have to earn our fees pondering who had put thirty-nine denarii for hardcore on the Ides of April in the wrong column.

  At least if this site had any hardcore fiddles, I would trace them.

  Grow up, Falco. There’s no money to be made from hardcore. Any fool knows that.

  (Thirty-nine denarii? Exorbitant! There was one slip of the stylus to be corrected right away.)

  The clerk and I were soon getting along nicely, sorting flint requisitions into baskets on his side and work sheets for the boy who brought round beakers of hot mulsum, which I spiked to the table with my dagger, on mine.

  “Tell this boy to include us in his rounds now. Mine’s half wine, half water, not too much honey and no herbs.”

  “He never remembers orders. You get it as it comes.”

  “Oh nuts! That means cold, weak, and with funny floating

  things. …”

  “There’s a good side, Falco: only half a cup. He spills most as he comes across the site.”

  We worked all afternoon. When the light faded too much for figure-work and I decided we could stop, the clerk had relaxed somewhat. I was not so cheerful; I now saw the full scale of the job, and its boring qualities. And my bad tooth hurt.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gaius.”

  “Where do you normally work, Gaius? Where’s your nook?”

  “Alongside the architects.” I had to stop that.

  “Over in the old military block? Tell you what—it will be easier if you work in my office from now on.” I softened it: “At least so long as I’m here on-site.”

  He looked up and said nothing. He was bright. He knew my game.

  As he said good-bye, my new friend commented, “I like your tunic, Falco. That color is really unusual.”

  I would have growled a stern response, but inevitably, now that we were packing up, the mulsum boy arrived. That’s life in an office. You wait all afternoon, and then the refreshments finally appear just as you are pulling on your cloak to go home. We asked politely if we could have our drinks slightly earlier tomorrow.

  “Yes, yes.” He scowled. He was a stroppy runt with a tray he could hardly carry, unable to wipe his snotty nose on his sleeve because he was holding the tray. Perhaps it was because he worked out of doors in the cold British air that his nose was very runny. It dripped. I put my beaker back on the tray. “I’m only a bit late. I have to tell everyone the news, don’t I? Then people asks questions.”

  “So may I ask a question, please?” I was calm. The mulsum boy should never be rushed, crushed, or otherwise offended. You need him on your side. “What news?”

  “Give me a chance, Legate—today’s big thriller is: Philocles just died.”

  XXIII

  “DON’T YOU mean Blandus?” I corrected the mulsum boy. “He was in the fight earlier.”

  “All right. Blandus, then.” All he cared was that he had one less beaker to brew.

  “He got stamped on very badly—so what’s happened?”

  “I went in with his mulsum. He jumped up for it. Next minute he was falling down dead.” Spleen, I thought. Internal bleeding, anyway.

  “Wasn’t Alexas watching him?”

  “Alexas wasn’t there.”

  I lost my temper. “Well, he damned well should have been! What’s the point of taking people to the medical hut if they just lie on their board and die?”

  “It wasn’t in the medical hut,” protested the mulsum boy. I lifted an eyebrow, restraining myself. “He was in the lockup.”

  I would have ground my teeth, but was treating the sore one tenderly. “In that case it is Philocles.”

  “That’s what I said! You told me it was Blandus, Chief.”

  “Well, I don’t know what I’m talking about, obviously. …”

  I got him to take me to the lockup. It was a small, solid lean-to where the clerk of works held bloody-minded bingeing drunks for a day, or if necessary two days, while they sobered up. The i
nterior looked as if it had been well used.

  Alexas was at the scene now. Cyprianus must have sent for him.

  “You seem to have more corpses than live patients,” I said.

  “It’s not funny, Falco.”

  “I am by no means laughing.”

  Philocles was lying on some grass outside. He was dead all right. They must have towed him into the fresh air. Too late. As Alexas continued to rub his limbs and shake him, just in case, I looked over the orderly’s shoulder; I could see a few bruises, but no other marks. “It was Blandus who took the worst punishment. Philocles seemed fine.” I bent and turned his skull, inspecting where I hit him. “He was fighting mad. I had to crack him one.”

  Alexas shook his head. “You’ve confessed—sleep easy. Don’t trouble your conscience over hitting his head. The way the boy described it, his heart stopped. Excitement won’t have helped, but this would have happened anyway.”

  The mulsum boy did a dramatic show of clutching his side, staggering, then falling by stages to the ground. “Very good.” I applauded him. “I look forward to seeing you play Orestes at the Megalensian Games.”

  “I’m gong to be a cart driver.”

  “Good idea. Much better pay, and you don’t have to fight off swarms of adoring girls.” He shot me a disgusted look. He was about fourteen, a lad in a man’s world, growing up fast. He was old enough for girls, but money matters did not yet trouble him. Still, the girls would see to that.

  As the mosaicist’s body was carried away, with Alexas in train, Cyprianus shook his head. “I’d better tell Junior that his father has died.”

  “Ask him if he knows what the fight was about.”

  “Oh, we all know that!” Cyprianus snapped irritably.

  “Jealousy, you said.” I watched him.

  “They had a war going back decades.” Now Cyprianus spoke in a tired voice, telling me the sour site secrets he had previously tried to keep private from the Emperor’s man. There was no point sheltering Philocles Senior now, and for joining in the fight, Blandus must take his chance. “Most sites, the rule was if you employed Blandus, you had to forget Philocles—and vice versa. This was the first time in years they had been on the same project.”

  “This being Britain, where your choices of craftsmen are limited, because nobody wants to come out here?”

  “Yes.” Cyprianus spoke with rueful pride. “And being the Great King’s palace, where we want the best.”

  “Were these two warned before they came that they might meet up?”

  “No. Of course I warned them, when they got here, that I would not allow trouble. Pomponius had hired them. He awarded the special subcontracts. He either did not know they hated each other—or he didn’t care.”

  “Personal relationships are not his strong point.”

  “Tell me!” Cyprianus sighed wearily. “So now Philocles Senior is on his way to Hades, and Junior will probably walk out on us. Blandus is laid up, and who knows if or when he’ll be on his feet again. …”

  I thumped his shoulder. “Don’t let it depress you. What I still don’t see is what it’s all about?”

  “Oh, you know painters, Falco!”

  “Light-fingered?” I guessed.

  “Fingers everywhere, you mean. Randy little beggars, the lot of them. Why do you think they become painters? They go into people’s houses, with access to the women.”

  “Ah! So Blandus … ?”

  “Screwed the wife of Philocles Senior. The husband discovered them.” I winced. “But don’t tell Junior,” Cyprianus pleaded. “He’s a bit slow. We all think that he doesn’t know.”

  A thought struck. “Blandus is not by chance his real father?”

  “No. Junior was a baby.” Cyprianus had thought about it too. Then he chuckled. “Well, I think he was. … Let’s pretend we’re sure. He’d be torn whether to carry on floor-laying or to take up marbling walls instead!”

  “You need him piecing in the tesserae—I’ll keep mum.”

  For a moment Cyprianus did gaze at me. “There’s nothing else for you to do about this, Falco.” He was either checking my opinion anxiously, or seeking to influence my actions if I wanted to cause trouble.

  “Why should there be?” I answered him. “It’s death from natural causes. He left us his creative work. Either Philocles Junior or some other humorless floor fixer will eventually lay those designs. Otherwise, it’s Fortune. This happens all the time. You curse their timing, comfort any relations, fix up a funeral—then you move on and forget them.”

  Maybe Cyprianus thought me harsh. That was better than him thinking I would hold an enquiry. And, even though his work on building sites was dangerous, maybe I had seen more sudden deaths than he had. I was tough. Mind you, I could still get angry.

  While the clerk of works went to break the bad news to the chief mosaicist’s son, I tried to see Blandus. Alexas let me in to where he was lying, but he was snoring. He had been in so much pain the orderly had drugged him.

  “Poppy juice?”

  “Henbane.”

  “Careful!”

  “Yes. I’m trying not to kill him,” Alexas assured me somberly.

  XXIV

  THIS ENQUIRY was making more demands than I expected. Today I had had a fall and a fight, then been involved in accidental death. I was shaken both mentally and physically. That’s without counting toothache, hard work in the office, or personal matters that had more pleasantly drained my strength.

  I was glad I had brought Helena and the others here, so I did not have to face an evening donkey ride before I found dinner and solace. Anyway, it was clear I now needed regular access to my clothes chest. During a case, I liked a change of venue. The trouble with provincial assignments was always the same: the place and the personnel stayed with you day and night. There was no escape.

  I was missing Rome. Back there, after any long day working, I could lose myself in the Forum, the baths, the races, the river, the theater, and thousands of street gathering points—which hosted many kinds of edibles and drinkables to take your mind off trouble. I had been here three days and I was already homesick. I missed the tall, teeming buildings in the slum areas just as much as the high temples, glinting with bronze and copper, which crowned those famous hills. I wanted hot streets full of cracked amphorae, wild dogs, fish bones, and falling window boxes; itinerant sausage-sellers peddling lukewarm meats; line after line of washed tunics, hung between windows where ninety-year-old hags leaned out and cackled their disgust over girls who were flashing too much leg at slippery bath-oil salesmen who were probably bigamists.

  Nobody could collect several wives in Noviomagus; in this sparse population everyone would know him. Any be-torqued no-good boy would be found out and marched back to his own hut. I longed for a city where deception flourished and there was some hope for sophisticated guile. I yearned for a whiff of perversion among sweet scents of frankincense, pine needles, and marjoram. I was ready to accept a garlic-tasting kiss from a seditious barmaid or to let a slimy Lycian sell me an amulet made from some exotic sexual organ, imperfectly embalmed. I wanted stevedores and garland girls, librarians and pimps, snobbish financiers in luxurious purple togas, their overheated wool rich in that foul dye from the shores of Tyre that stinks so expressively of the shellfish it is squeezed from. Dear gods, I missed the familiar noise and stress of home.

  Three days in Britain: I could hardly wait to leave. But so soon after coming out here, the thought of the endless journey back to Italy was almost unbearable. Before we faced that, I might have to take us for a quick boost of city life up in Londinium.

  Anyone who has been there will see that’s a joke.

  It must be June. At home there would be blue sky. We had missed the great flower festival; they would have gone on into heroes and gods of war.

  Here it was pleasant; well, I could pretend. People sat out of doors on a fine evening, we Romans with mantles slung around our shoulders. Today casual food trays had been brought
to us by the King’s servants and we ate where we were in the garden. Camilla Hyspale spent her time ostentatiously shivering, which made others of us determined to enjoy the open air.

  The baby was restless. I tried dandling her. It never works in company. Babies know you would like to impress people with your magic touch; they stop niggling to fool you—then wail louder.

  “Another twenty years and she’ll be really good,” Maia sniggered. Nux crept under Helena’s skirt, whining softly. Helena, looking tired, whined back.

  I tried that trick of standing up and pacing slowly. My mother could always do it. Once, when Julia had been screaming for about three days without a break, I saw Ma quiet her in about five strides. Favonia was not fooled by my efforts.

  Farther down the large garden, near the King’s own quarters, we could see Verovolcus. He was with a small group of other Britons. They had been served at the same time as us, and were now dawdling through the food dishes, drinking too. It all seemed subdued, though perhaps would not stay so quiet. Verovolcus kept looking our way. Instinctively we avoided contact, keeping our group domestic. The last thing I wanted was to establish a pattern of heavy international socializing every night.

  “He seems to be taking to heart the King’s instructions to keep back and let you do your work,” Helena remarked in an undertone. She knew how I felt.

  I jiggled Favonia. She decided to stop crying. A bubbling hiccup reminded me this was a choice she could retract at any moment.

  Julia, who was crawling around on the grass, now noticed the silence and released a piercing yell. My sister Maia leaned down and waved a doll at her. Julia smashed it aside, but she did shut up.

  “Bed?” threatened Maia.

  “No!” Dear little poppet. It had been one of her first words.

  I glanced over at Verovolcus, watching him the same way he watched us. “I don’t like to be antisocial, but—”

  “Perhaps it works the other way.” Helena smiled. “Here we are—all smart clothes, loud Latin, and showing off our love of culture. Perhaps our shy British hosts are smitten with a fear that ghastly politeness will force them to mingle with a bunch of brash Romans.”