The Jupiter Myth

by Lindsey Davis

  For the dessert course we all moved outside into the garden. It was a warm night. Surprisingly so for Britain, though I remembered that they did have summer for about a fortnight here. This must be it. They had no way of dealing with the heat; all the bathhouses either kept their water piping hot as usual, or let it go stone cold. Nobody closed their window shutters in daylight, so houses became stifling. And when dining in the open air, there were only benches; no one owned a proper exterior dining room with permanent stone couches or a shell-decorated nymphaeum.

  I moved to sit beside the final guest, the quiet one. We explored a bowl of dates. They had come a great distance and needed picking over.

  “I think I’d say that these don’t travel well! I’m your substitute host. Marcus Didius Falco.”

  “Lucius Norbanus Murena.” He was trying to place me.

  “Your relaxed confidence at a formal dinner implies you are from Italy?” I was determined to place him. He had three names. That means nothing. I had three names myself, yet I had spent much of my life scratching for the rent.

  He was in his forties, maybe a little older; heavy, but he kept fit. He spoke well, with lack of accent. There seemed to be enough money to kit him out in decent cloth; I think he arrived here togate. This was not required in the provinces (where most locals did not even own a toga), but for visiting a residence it was good manners. His neat hair, beardless chin, and manicured fingernails all spoke of acquaintance with a decent set of baths. With a strongly angled jawline, dark eyes, combed-back thick straight hair, I suppose he could be called handsome. You would have to ask a woman that.

  “I’m from Rome,” he said. “And you?”

  “Rome too.” I smiled. “Has tonight’s setup been explained? Due to the sudden arrival of an important British king, we are unexpectedly deprived of the governor and procurator. We’re in the proc’s house, as the gov still needs to build one grand enough; that lady in the embroidered gown is Aelia Camilla, your efficient hostess, wife of Hilaris. They are old British hands. She will ensure you are put on a future invitation list, with a chance to meet the notables.”

  “And what is your role?”

  “I’m family. Brought my wife to see her aunt.”

  “So which is your wife?”

  “The elegant Helena Justina.” I indicated her as she chatted pleasantly to the two dreadful Gauls. She loathed this kind of occasion, but had been brought up not to mock the concept of duty. She looked graceful and composed. “The tall piece in refined white.” I had a suspicion that Norbanus had leered at Helena. I had noticed that she glanced at us, then straightened her stole around her shoulders with an unconsciously defensive air; I recognized unease in her.

  Maybe I misread the mood. “Ah yes, your wife very kindly saw me through the appetizers.” Norbanus spoke with a light inflection of good humor. He was cultured and urbane. If such men prey on people’s wives, they don’t do it openly, and not at the first meeting, nor with husbands watching. For intelligent adulterers—and I felt he was intelligent—keepings husbands in the dark is part of the fun.

  “Her noble mother trained her up as a helpful table companion.” I joined in the quiet satire. “Helena Justina will have been responsible for setting you at ease, asking questions about your journey to Britain, and how you find the climate here. Then no doubt she passed you on to the stroppy madam in red for the main course and polite inquiries about whether you have family and how long you intend your visit to last. My sister,” I added, as he switched his gaze to Maia.

  “Delightful.” Maia had always been attractive. Men with an eye instantly fixed on her. As her brother, I had never been sure how she did it. Unlike Helena and her aunt, Maia tonight wore little jewelry. They both moved in fine ripples of gold, even out here at twilight where only small lamps swinging in rose bushes caught the filigrane beads in their bracelets and necklaces. My sister’s drama came naturally; it came from her dark curls and the flashy ease with which she wore her trademark crimson. I felt no surprise when Norbanus asked politely, “And is your sister’s husband here?”

  “No.” I let a bead of time elapse. “My sister is widowed.” I was tempted to add: she has four demanding children, a furious temper, and no money. But that would be overprotective. Anyway, she might find out, and that temper of hers scared me.

  “So, what line are you in, Falco?”

  “Procurator of the Sacred Geese at the Temple of Juno.” My ghastly sinecure did have some uses. It nicely gave the impression that apart from a dubious role cleaning out augurs’ hen-coops, I was a feeble man of leisure who lived off his wife’s money. “What about you?”

  “You may not like this!” He had an honest charm. Mind you, I was no follower of honest charm. “I am in property.”

  “I have lived in rented apartments!” I returned, mentally scratching out “honest.”

  “I don’t do domestic tenancies. Strictly commercial.”

  “So what is your field, Norbanus?”

  “I buy up or build premises, then develop them into businesses.”

  “A big organization?”

  “Expanding.”

  “How discreet. Still, no canny businessman reveals details of his balance sheet!” He only smiled politely, nodding in reply. “What brings you to Britain?” I tried.

  “Sniffing the market. Looking for introductions. Maybe you can tell me, Falco. This is the big question: what does Britain want?”

  “Every damned thing!” I laughed gently. “And first you have to explain to them how much they want to do it . . . The natives are still being tempted down from hilltop villages; some have only just come in from their round huts. You start by telling them that buildings should have corners.”

  “Gemini! It’s more of a backwater than I thought.” We were by now on friendly terms—two suave Romans among the naïve barbarians.

  I remembered that my job as a stand-in was to generate enthusiasm for this potholed byway. “Optimistically, if the province stays Roman, the potential must be enormous.” Julius Frontinus would have applauded my two-faced bluff. “Anyone who finds himself the right trading niche could make a killing.”

  “You know the province?” Norbanus seemed surprised.

  “Army.” Another useful cover; all the better for being true.

  “I see.”

  A slave brought us warm water and towels so we could rinse our hands after eating. The subtle hint broke up the party. Well, the Gauls might never have noticed that it was time to leave, but they were bored anyway. They bumbled off, discussing drinking dens for a late-night fling, with barely a nod to us. The British oysterman had already vanished. Norbanus bowed over the scented hands of the Three Graces in our good-bye lineup. He did thank Aelia Camilla and Helena perfectly civilly. It was to Maia that he stressed how much he had enjoyed the evening.

  “Maia Favonia, goodnight!” Interesting. Maia moved in a small circle and rarely used her full two names. I wondered how Norbanus knew them. Had he made a special effort to find out? Had I been jumpy, I might also have asked why.

  I saw the guests off the premises. I made it look like a courtesy rather than a ploy to ensure they stole nothing.

  Exhausted, I was longing for my bed. It was not to be. As I returned down a corridor of offices, I saw the centurion from last night’s watch patrol hanging around.

  XVI

  Waiting to be seen by someone?”

  “There’s been a development in the Longus case.” The centurion explained his presence only reluctantly.

  “Petronius Longus is not an undesirable and it is not a case, Centurion. What’s the development?”

  I was about to have trouble. I knew this type. His normal manner was a mixture of fake simplicity and arrogance. For me he saved a special sneer on top. “Oh, are you Falco?”

  “Yes.” The bakery fire was only last night; he cannot have forgotten meeting me.

  “It was your name on the information sheet?” My description of Petronius had gone ou
t from the governor’s office, but Frontinus was not name-proud and he had let it carry my signature.

  “Yes,” I said again, patiently. He did not like me, by the sound of it. Well, I had some doubts about him. “And what’s your name, Centurion?”

  “Crixus, sir.” He knew I had him now. If I carried any weight with the governor, Crixus was stuck. But he managed to stay unpleasant: “I don’t quite remember what you said you were doing in the downtown area last night, sir?”

  “You don’t remember because you didn’t ask.” His omission was an error. That evened things up between us. Why was he so bothered? Was it because he now realized I was not just some higher-up’s domestic hanger-on, but someone with an official role that he had misinterpreted?

  “So, you mentioned a ‘development,’ Crixus?”

  “I came to report it to the governor, sir.”

  “The governor’s in conference. There’s a flap on. I signed the sheet; you can tell me.”

  Crixus reluctantly backed off. “There may have been a sighting.”

  “Details?”

  “A man who resembled the description was observed by a patrol.”

  “Where and when?”

  “On the ferry deck by the customs house. A couple of hours ago.”

  “What? And you are only just here to report?”

  He feigned a crestfallen look. It was sketchy and brazenly fake. This man wore his uniform smartly, but in manner he was like the worst kind of dreary recruit who can’t be bothered. If he had succeeded in seeing Frontinus, I daresay things would have been different. Double standards are a bad sign in the military. “The info sheet made no mention of urgency.”

  “You knew its status!” It was too late now.

  The centurion and I were fencing quite toughly. I wanted to extract what he knew, while instinctively withholding as much as possible about Petro or myself. For some deep reason I did not want Crixus to learn that Petro and I were close, that I was an informer, or that he worked for the vigiles.

  “Finish your report,” I said quietly. In my time in the legions I had never been an officer, but plenty of them had pushed me around; I knew how to sound like one. One who could be a right bastard if crossed.

  “A patrol spotted a man who fitted the details. As I say, he was at the ferry landing.”

  “Crossing over?”

  “Just talking.”

  “To whom?”

  “I really couldn’t say, sir. We were only to be interested in him.” In the ten years since I left the army, the art of dumb insolence had not died.

  “Right.”

  “So who is this person?” asked Crixus, with an air of innocent curiosity.

  “Same as everyone who comes here. A businessman. You don’t need to know more.”

  “Only I don’t think he can be the right man, sir. When we asked, he denied that his name was Petronius.”

  I was furious and let the centurion see it. “You asked, when the sheet said ‘don’t approach’?”

  “Only way we could attempt to discover if he was the subject, sir.” This idiot was so self-righteous I barely refrained from hitting him.

  “It’s the right man,” I growled. “Petronius Longus loathes nosy questions from stiffs in red tunics. He generally claims to be a feather-fan seller called Ninius Basilius.”

  “That’s rather peculiar, sir. He told us he was a bean-importer called Ixymithius.”

  Thanks, Petro! I sighed. I had plucked a known alias of his from my memory—the wrong one. Any minute now, Crixus would decide it was a fact of note that the subject worked under cover using several false identities. Then the centurion would be even more nosy. If I knew Petro, he was just being rebellious; he had instinctively stiffened up when a strutting patrol apprehended him. On principle, he would lie to them. At least it was better than questioning their parentage, telling them to go to Hades in a dung cart, then being thrown in a cell.

  “You’re going the long way round to admitting that he gave you the slip,” I warned. “The governor will not be pleased. I don’t know why you’re playing silly beggars over this. The poor man has to be told some bad news from home, that’s all. Frontinus has a past acquaintance with him; he wants to do it personally.”

  “Oh well, next time we’ll know he’s the one. We’ll pass the message to him, never fear.”

  Not now. Not if Petro saw them coming again.

  XVII

  King Togidubnus’ long-term friendship with Vespasian went right back to when Rome first invaded Britain; Togi had played host to the legion that the young Vespasian had spectacularly led. That was over forty years ago. I had seen the King much more recently, and when we had our meeting the next morning we were comfortable together.

  To look at, he was clearly an elderly northerner, his mottled skin now papery and pale, his hair faded from a reddish tribal shade into a dusty gray. On any formal occasion he dressed like Roman nobility. I had not deduced whether any rank conferred on him actually entitled him to the broad purple stripe on his toga, but he called himself a “legate of Augustus” and he wore that stripe with all the confidence of a senatorial bore who could list several centuries of florid ancestors. Most likely, Togidubnus had been selected young, brought to Rome, educated among the various hopeful hostages and promising princelings, then replaced on a throne to be a bulwark in his home province. After thirty years the Atrebates seemed only a little less backward than any other British tribe in the Romanized area, while they and their king were unquestionably loyal.

  All except the dead Verovolcus. He had killed a Roman architect. Mind you, hating architects is legitimate. And the one Verovolcus took against had held opinions on spatial integrity that would make anybody spew.

  “We meet again, in sorry circumstances, Falco.”

  I adjusted my pace to fit the King’s sober grandeur. “My pleasure at renewing our acquaintance, sir, is only marred by the grim cause.”

  He sat. I stood. He was playing the high-ranked Roman; he could have been Caesar enthroned in his tent, receiving rebellious Celts. I was entirely subordinate. Anyone who works for clients expects to be treated like a tradesman. Even a slave who employed me as an informer would take a high-handed attitude. The King was not even hiring me; nobody thought that necessary. I was doing this job as a duty, for the good of the Empire and as a favor to family. Those are the worst terms ever. They don’t pay. And they don’t give you any rights.

  I ran through what I knew and what I had done about it. “To sum up, the most likely scenario is this: Verovolcus came to Londinium, perhaps intending to hide up here. He went into a bad location by chance and paid a tragic penalty.”

  The King considered it for a moment. “That explanation would suffice.”

  I had expected furious demands for retribution. Instead the Togidubnus response could have come straight from one of the deviously slick offices on the Palatine. He was trying to contain the damage.

  “It would suffice for the Daily Gazette!” I said harshly. Rome’s official Forum publication loves scandal in the lowbrow columns that follow its routine lists of Senate decrees and calendars of games, but the Acta Diurna is produced by official clerks. The Gazette rarely exposes uncomfortable truths in politics. Its wildest revelations involve lurid sex in the aristocracy—and then only if they are known to be shy of suing.

  One bushy gray eyebrow flicked upward. “But you have doubts, Falco?”

  “I would certainly like to investigate further . . .”

  “Before you commit yourself? That’s good.”

  “Let’s say, whoever dunked Verovolcus in the well, we don’t want a repeat.”

  “And we do want justice!” insisted the King. In fact, “justice” would have put Verovolcus in the amphitheater here, as lunch for starved wild beasts.

  “We want the truth,” I said piously.

  “My retainers are making more inquiries.”

  The King was glaring defiantly but I merely replied, “The more that dis
trict is shaken up, the more we show that violence won’t be tolerated.”

  “What do you know about the district, Falco?”

  “It’s a grim area at the back of the unloading and storage wharves. It’s full of small enterprises, mainly run by migrants, for the benefit of sailors on shore leave and transient import/export men. It has all the disadvantages of such districts in any port.”

  “A colorful enclave?”

  “If that means a hangout for tricksters and thieves.”

  The King was silent for a while. “Frontinus and Hilaris are telling me that what happened to Verovolcus was probably provoked by him, Falco. They say that the perpetrators would otherwise have only robbed him.”

  “His torque is missing,” I agreed, letting caution sound in my voice.

  “Try and find the torque, Falco.”

  “You want it back?”

  “I gave it to him.” The King’s expression showed nostalgia and regret at the loss of his long-term friend. “Will you recognize it?”

  “I remember.” It was unusual: fine strands of twisted gold, almost like knitted skeins, and heavy end pieces.

  “Do your best. I know the killers will have vanished.”

  “You are right to feel cautious, but it’s not entirely hopeless, sir. They may one day be exposed, even perhaps when arrested for some other crime. Or some small-time criminal may turn them in, hoping for a reward.”

  “They tell me it is a bad area, yet murders are infrequent.”

  I felt the King was working up to something. “Frontinus and Hilaris know the town,” I commented.

  “And I knew Verovolcus,” said the King.

  A slave entered, bringing us refreshments. The interruption was annoying, even though I for one had not had breakfast. Togidubnus and I waited patiently in silence. Maybe we both knew Flavius Hilaris might have sent the slave to observe our meeting for him.

  The King made sure of privacy and dismissed the slave. The boy looked nervous, but left the offerings on a carved granite side table.