'What's the point?'
'He may turn up.'
'That good-for-nothing is long gone.'
'Well, we do like to have runaways listed properly; apart from being useful if we catch them involved in a felony, it helps deter the next one from trying it if he knows he'll be on a list for the bounty-hunters… Where do you think this Syrus is headed? Would he go back home to Antium?'
The butcher was full of bluster and certainty. 'Oh he's chased off where they all go – straight up to the Via Appia, hop on the back of a winecart, and disappear in Rome. They think the streets are paved with gold. Maybe they are. I think I'll go myself one day!'
Petronius Longus remained undaunted. 'Better give me his description and I'll have a docket sent on your behalf in case he's rounded up. You may get him back, sir. The Rome vigiles are adept at spotting country runaways…' He implied that agricultural incomers stood out in our sophisticated city. It wasn't true. A loser in flight from a farm looked little different from one on the loose from a town house – well, once the townee had rolled up his smart uniform and shoved it under a bush. 'Let me take down a few details. Height?'
'Middling.'
'Weight?'
'Middling.'
'Distinguishing marks?'
'None visible.' The butcher leered. 'I hadn't got around to inspecting his rude bits!'
'Trained for any fancy duties?'
'General runabout.'
'I suppose,' Petronius deduced, 'he was wearing a rough-sewn, homespun tunic and worn country shoes? Well, thank you for your keen observation, sir. That gives us some very useful points to go on.'
Petro was a po-faced, placid humorist. The butcher could not decide whether he was being mocked or praised.
XVIII
We could have stayed the night in Lanuvium but we all agreed that somewhere else – - anywhere else – - might suit us better. I remembered there was a hamlet about halfway down to Antium; it would put us well on our way tomorrow, so we headed off there. It was a very ancient settlement, a place that made us feel we had strayed into Old Latium back when it was New. They claimed to have ninety inhabitants; they must have been counting in their goats. I kept expecting to run into the old hero Aeneas, tramping across this low-lying bog that the gods had sent him to colonise, still wearing the loincloth in which he escaped from Troy.
There was a cluster of poor houses, gathered together for company because it was near a crossroads; about a mile further on, a bridge crossed a river. There, a rutted track led off the narrow road. Rectus said the track wandered south, passing close to Satricum, so we could have nipped down there immediately, but we still planned to try in Antium to learn about the official efforts to find Modestus and Primilla. We only expected disdain from another magistrate. But why abandon a well-tried system just because it doesn't work?
A man and his wife conjured up basic meals for travellers. If there were places to stay, we preferred not to investigate. We ate, drank, told stories, then camped out. Next day, the man had gone to check his fig tree, but his wife made us a simple breakfast. Then we pressed on.
At Antium our qualms proved groundless. The magistrate was not going to be the least bit unhelpful; we were not even able to meet the man. His house was locked up and he was away.
'So…' Petronius Longus mused thoughtfully. 'If you live in a scenic old town on the coast, when summer comes you still have to go off on holiday?'
'That lummock with the fig tree nipped down here and warned him you were coming,' gloated his brother. This was pretty well the first opinion he had volunteered on anything. The rest of us gazed at Petronius Rectus and carefully kept quiet, as we belatedly assessed him as a crackpot fantasist.
We asked around. That was a lark. Half the people refused to speak to us, the rest said they knew nothing.
After these fruitless forays, we did move on to Satricum. It was another very ancient township, on low-lying ground, right at the edge of the Pontine Marshes. Around this remote crossroads, cultures had clashed for aeons. The warlike Volscians had fought over the archaic place; they probably still lived here. Not only did it feel as if we might bump into a bunch of slant-eyed, smiling Etruscan ancestors, there was an end-of-civilisation atmosphere, brought about by the little town's proximity to the dreaded wetlands.
A tightly built settlement was going about its business. Up on a hill stood a temple to Mater Matuta: the mother of the morning, Eos, Aurora – - the rosy-fingered harbinger who unlocks the gates of heaven so the sun can roll out each day. We climbed the acropolis like good tourists and saw the ancient goddess, chiselled in pitted stone, enthroned and mourning her son Memnon, killed at Troy by Achilles, whose corpse lay across her lap.
She was a goddess of provender as well, and a game girl who had been cursed by the jealous Venus into a habit of taking many lovers (the kind of curse most young girls fervently pray for). The Mater Matuta at Satricum looked a bit weathered for lovers, but had done her job with opening the gates for Helios today. The sky was clear blue and the sun shone brilliantly.
'That's the Pontine deception,' Petronius Rectus informed us gloomily. 'Gorgeous weather, vegetation blooming – death behind every bush.' As a travel companion, the man was a laugh a minute.
We went back to our lodging house, in need of a drink.
It had taken us a while to find an inn that could accommodate seven of us. Satricum might be a crossroads, but most people who came this way must be heading somewhere else. It had little to attract visitors. The main feature was the old temple; that was hardly a unique shrine. Mater Matuta once flourished all across mainland Italy. She had a temple in Rome, right beside the Cattle Market Forum and so close to my house the memory made me homesick.
Perhaps a mother mourning her dead son was a sight I was not yet ready for. Heaviness fell upon me. I lost myself in my own thoughts.
Most of us were spinning out the evening in the inn courtyard.
Auctus and Ampliatus, the two vigiles, were outside on a bench at the roadside. Although they were ex-slaves, we were equals on this trip and the rest of us genuinely wanted to include them; they stubbornly remained aloof. Meanwhile, as Justinus was a senator's son it was his birthright to chat up the girl who had served us. He was, however, unsure whether Lentullus, who had only recently joined his household, would report to his wife Claudia anything he got up to. Petro and I had our wives under control, or so we convinced ourselves; even though flirting with bar staff went against our noble natures, we did the necessary with the waitress, just as we had done for the past twenty years.
We were picking her brains. What did you think I meant, legate?
Because it was the largest roadhouse in the area – the only acceptable inn, it seemed – - this had to be where the posse that came to look for Modestus and Primilla also took a breather. At first the waitress was reluctant to say much. The riders from Antium counted as local to her; we were foreign. Under the curious eye of his older brother, Petronius set about persuading her how much he hated gossip and admired a discreet waitress, but how much more he liked a civic-minded young woman who poured wine so nicely while she revealed all. (All she knew, legate; don't go off pop.) It took him about ten minutes before she had sat down with us and was gabbling information just as fast as he could ask the questions. Rectus, Justinus and Lentullus were impressed. I had seen Petro reach this point in half the time, but in those days he was young and in army uniform.
Her name was Januaria. She looked fifteen, was probably twenty, and would be killed by hard work before another decade passed. She had stabled our ox, cooked our dinner, explained the wine list (that took no effort), pulled heavy benches closer to the table, filled jugs from a cask and served us, including several detours to the two vigiles outside. None of us had asked, but it was understood that if we wanted, she would go to bed with us as well; all seven, if necessary, on whatever rotation basis we suggested. It would probably cost no more than a soft-boiled egg.
Januaria obligingly
told us a posse turned up here about two months ago. A town magistrate who was hoping to go home as soon as possible arrived on horseback, in charge of volunteers who were hoping at least for a fight. After a hearty lunch, they toddled off into the marshes to tackle the Claudii. Following ingrained tradition, those scurrilous runts all swore blind they never saw Modestus or Primilla after the broken fence incident. They provided alibis for one another, in the usual way of large families.
'Then there wasn't much more to be done. Suspicion fell mainly on Probus and Nobilis.'
'Nobilis and Probus? Noble and Honourable?' I could hardly believe the irony of these names.
The simple girl didn't see my point. 'Those two are the best known – and most feared. They hang around together a lot. But Probus now has his own business – - he buys and sells harness; second-hand mostly.' That probably meant stolen, though she did not suggest it. 'Nobilis has been working for Thamyris, a grain supplier in Antium, though Probus swore blind to the militia that his brother had gone away. So he couldn't have done anything, could he?'
'Away where?' asked Petronius. 'Campania? Rome? Overseas?'
'No, somewhere real foreign.' The girl knew nothing of other regions of Italy, let alone the overseas provinces. Our glorious Empire meant little to her. She had never even been to Antium, which was only seven miles away.
'When did he leave?'
'We haven't seen him in Satricum for months, but that's not unusual. The Claudii come and go.'
'Do you think he fled because he knew people would be looking for him?'
'He's never been scared before.'
I shoved Petronius along his bench and muscled in. It took effort. He was bigger than me and resisting like a recalcitrant old hog. 'So, excellent young lady with the beautiful eyes – -' Januaria giggled as if no man had ever chatted her up before. Clearly few from Rome stayed here. 'What do you know about these rascals, the Claudii? Are there many of them?'
'Plenty. They live a bit rough, except some of the girls, who got away and married and have families.'
'I'm Falco, by the way.' I gave her my best smile, the version with dimples, which has been called seductive.
Sadly Januaria lost her chance with me. There was a landlord keeping an eye on her in case she snatched five minutes to herself. We never found out whether he was her husband or father, or even her owner if she was a slave. Around here, arrangements were freestyle. All three situations might apply simultaneously. In Rome we have a wide range of social entertainments on offer; in country dumps they tend to be stuck with witchcraft and incest.
The man was a waddling, inquisitive slob in a meal-sack apron. When he put in an appearance, the girl slid to her feet and made off indoors. She knew he had come out to stop her gossiping. Maybe he beat her if she slacked. In the country, people who may be kindness itself to their valuable animals treat staff management as harshly as an arena blood sport.
We never found out his name. We never wanted to be that friendly.
He just liked to do all the talking himself. They had a system. This wastrel chatted to customers; Januaria did everything else.
'Oh yes, fine sirs! I can tell you all about the Claudii!'
He said he remembered them arriving here. He was a child then. They had been manumitted in the time of the Emperor Gaius, which would be forty years ago. Freed from the rural farms of Antonia, the Emperor Claudius' mother, they arrived near Satricum and took possession of some soggy fields they claimed had been given to them. No imperial land agent had ever come to question it, though that could be because the sodden fields in question were rubbish. The Claudii hit the district like a plague of rats. Since then, anything portable had to be locked up, which the landlord said included all women younger than great-grandmothers.
The father was called Aristocles. He was a cold, odd man who certainly beat his children; people reckoned he knocked his wife about too, though some said that in fact he was frightened of her. Others maintained both parents acted together as a terrible team; the mother once hit a three-year-old so hard he lost an ear. This matriarch, a woman known as Casta, had borne about twenty offspring, in whom she showed little interest, although they all strangely revered her. The children were feral and generally disliked. The boys became renowned for wild tempers. They had bad relations with their girlfriends, when they were able to find any. Their sisters, who knew no other kind of man, tended to ruin any hope of a new life by choosing work-shy, thieving wife-beaters who resembled their own kin. The whole family were regularly suspected of burglary and arson, though it took a brave person to accuse them. Criticism of one was viewed as an attack on them all. It would bring the whole tribe into town, out for retaliation.
'Isn't it rumoured they have imperial protection?' I asked.
'Oh they do. Everybody knows about it.'
'How does that work?'
'We just all know. The Claudii have powers in Rome looking after them. That's why nobody official tries to clear them out. That's why most of us steer clear of them.'
'Did they give the posse from Antium any trouble?' Petronius asked.
'Oh no, laddie. Resistance would have proved they were up to no good, wouldn't it? That's their trickery. When troops go down there to their camp, they act meek as lambs. They make out that all complaints against them are dreamed up out of local spite. They pretend to be helpful. They throw open their doors to let their places be searched.'
'But no evidence is found?'
'They are very clever.'
Petronius leaned his chin on his hands. He was thinking about bullies who fester in society, accepted as a hazard of life, while they terrorise communities for years. He had to deal with situations like this in Rome. There were foul alleyways that nobody went down. Even the vigiles would only venture there in groups and they whistled loudly first, to let it be known they were coming. They would not want to surprise anyone. They gave the specially violent ones good time to get away.
The landlord decided he had said enough, though he gave us directions for tomorrow. Rectus, our intended guide, looked down his nose; the information was of the 'take the first turn out of town then just keep going straight' variety. This always leads you to sharp bends and forks in the road with no signboard. 'You can't miss it,' said the innkeeper, complaisantly. Our hearts sank.
We turned in early. My dinner lay heavy in my guts and even after it deigned to go down I had an ache in the pit of my stomach. I cannot have been the only one. We all knew we were about to visit one of the most dangerous areas on earth.
XIX
First thing next morning, Petronius and I handed round the insecticide ointments Helena and Maia had made us bring. Amidst a lot of joshing about the reek, and how scared of our women Petro and I must be, surprising amounts were applied to exposed skin. Petronius Rectus called us a bunch of fragile florets, but even the two vigiles dipped into the pots and daubed their foreheads.
None of us bothered much with breakfast, except Rectus. Since he had already had a dose of marsh fever, nothing worried him. We were tense, but he was placid. Immediately he had stuffed himself, he harnessed up Nero the ox, then without a word, threw his pack on the cart and set off. Luckily the rest of us were ready to go. You couldn't call the man surly; he just never bothered to communicate. His distaste for talk was religious. Being in his brother's company seemed to make Petro equally gloomy. I didn't try to chivvy him out of it; I was gloomy myself.
There were towns on the coast, west of us; there were stopping points along the Via Appia, to the east. Between them, once we put Satricum behind us, the way ahead was a vast empty quarter. We had a sense that the sea was somewhere over on our right hand, less than ten miles away though we never caught a glimpse. When Appius Claudius struck his great road south from Rome, he only added to the problems of this low-lying interior, his hefty causeways interfering with the water table. There were tracks, down which the ox could just haul his cart, though in narrow parts we had to dismount and manhandle the vehicl
e. These tracks all had the look of overgrown, deserted byways that would take you miles into nowhere then peter out without warning.
Everywhere had a wild beauty. The sun burned bright, its effects tempered by coastal breezes. Seabirds and marsh birds cried incessantly. Clouds of butterflies roamed fitfully, seeking out aromatic mints and oregano. Crickets jumped ahead of us. As we expected, there was a mass of insect life. Black bugs and tiny midge-like flies swarmed in clouds everywhere we stopped for a breather, along with worrying bright red things that looked as if they had already dined on blood. I reckoned there must be snakes too.
We were crossing great tracts of scrubland. We did see small fields, planted with grain or fast-growing crops to take advantage of the short summer period when the land at least partly dried out. Everything that grew, grew with astonishing vigour; the soil was both well watered and enriched with silt from all the rivers and tributaries that poured off the Lepini mountains. We never saw anyone tending the fields.
Where there had been grazing to keep down the foliage, the ground was covered with maquis – - small, very tough bushes, some of which were broad-leaved, though more were of the vicious, prickly kind. If you stepped too far off the track, you were likely to find yourself sinking suddenly up to the ankle in swamp water. Its suck would be ominous. Once you managed to pull out your foot safely, your heart would be pattering.
Where there had been no attempt at agriculture, larger vegetation had grown. There were wild olives and figs, which could have been reassuring as domesticated trees, though left to nature they had become enormous rampaging monsters, forming impenetrable thickets. Rectus broke his silence to say happily that the forests would be even thicker, the further across the marsh we went.
Sometimes in the distance we glimpsed cattle, generally where the levels remained flooded. They probably belonged to someone, but were not visibly herded. We did not risk approaching them. Trampling the edges of dark saltponds and stagnant pools where fallen vegetation putrefied, these beasts in their lonely location gave me a grim shiver. Once in Germania, I had had an encounter with a wild aurochs; I glanced at Camillus Justinus and knew he too was remembering our narrow escape from that huge bovine throwback.
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