I grinned into my wine. It all slotted together, sure it did. Bubo was no problem: robbery was enough of a motive to satisfy the militia, Aternius could've dealt with him any time, and because there was no link with the Vetuliscum murders the fact that Papatius was already out of the frame didn't matter. I might even manage a case for Hilarion. Sure, the timings were well out but Nepos could've been mistaken: the guy might've seen Aternius murdering Clusinus and been caught on his way back with the news.
Proving it all, though, was another matter. I didn't underestimate the opposition: the Cominii were tough nuts to crack, and purple-striper or not out in the sticks any clout I might have was limited. It was lucky we were on our way to Rome after all; sure, the original intention had been to interview Publius Bubo, and the tomb-robbing angle was a red herring now, but I still had friends there in high places. Maybe if I argued my case well enough at the praetor's office I could scare up some sort of official investigation from the city end.
Besides, I hadn't been back to Rome since Sejanus died. I hated to make the admission even to myself, but I was looking forward to it.
'You're looking pleased with yourself, Marcus.'
I let my eyes focus. Perilla was watching me, smiling. She looked relaxed and happy. Well, at least we could start having a proper holiday now. We might even go down to Baiae for the oysters, if I could swing the loan of a villa. I leaned over and kissed her.
'Yeah,' I said. 'The case is solved. Corvinus strikes again.'
'Really?' She sniffed. 'Now where have I heard that before?'
'Believe it.' We hit a pothole and the wine splashed over my wrist. 'Shit!'
'Hubris,' Perilla murmured. 'It serves you right.'
'Cut it out.' I licked the skin clear and glanced out of the window. More scenery. Miles and miles of it. 'The gods don't speak through potholes.'
'Are we stopping somewhere for lunch?' Marilla had woken up. 'I'm starving.'
Yeah; come to think of it, I was hungry myself. Usually on these trips you bring your own food, but I'd had enough of coaches and being rattled around like a dry pea in a pod. We found a clean roadside cookshop and I watched the kid eat her way through a chicken while I explained to Perilla how everything fitted together.
34.
We finally made Rome just before sunset. The Aurelian Road swings into the city from the west through a crease in the Janiculan, which is a chichi area of urban farmhouses that I don't know at all well, so the smell of ripe Tiber mud caught me almost unawares and brought tears to my eyes: Tiber mud, especially when there isn't an 'r' in the month, is about the most pungent substance known to man short of the Wart's boil ointment, and it doesn't take prisoners, either. The best smell in the world, bar none. I opened up my nostrils and drank it in.
Perilla was watching me while I did it. I couldn't quite place her expression: tolerant? amused? long-suffering? sad? It was all of these, and none of them.
'What's biting you, lady?' I said.
'Nothing.' She turned away. 'I'll be glad to get in. It's been a long day.'
Marilla, I noticed, was sitting quiet and eyes-front, which was unusual for her because breaks for sleep and omelette sandwiches excepted she'd spent the entire journey hanging out the window goat-spotting and chatting to Lysias. Then I remembered, and mentally kicked myself: she'd spent a large chunk of what should've been her childhood cooped up on the Janiculan before Perilla and I had sprung her, and the memories wouldn't be good. I was just glad she was sitting on the wrong side of the coach to catch a glimpse of the Tarpeian Rock once we were across the Tiber and in sight of the Capitol; but maybe that particular memory wouldn't register. She'd been up in the Alban Hills with Aunt Marcia when her father died, and she had no reason to remember that bastard with any fondness at all.
We crossed the Sublician Bridge that Horatius had defended against Lars Porsenna and the Tarquins – at least in its earlier version – and cut through the Velabrum towards the Circus. It felt funny not to be making for the old Palatine house – that was sold, of course, long since – but Mother's house was straight on, on the Caelian, where the Staurian Incline met Head of Africa Road. We wouldn't be expected – I should've sent a slave ahead on horseback, but I hadn't bothered – but Mother for all her wooliness ruled the household with an iron rod, and we ought to be comfortable enough.
The streets were full: it was a beautiful evening and after their day's work people were out shopping, or maybe just strolling around taking the air. Ten hours in a coach, even with the extended lunch break, had left me fidgety. I shouted up to Lysias and got him to pull over.
'I'll walk the rest,' I said to Perilla. 'You mind?'
'Not at all.' There was that expression again. 'Go ahead, Marcus. Enjoy yourself.'
I opened the door and jumped down, not bothering with the steps. I'd be just as quick walking anyway: the horses were tired, although Lysias hadn't been pushing them, and now we were inside Rome proper the going would be slow. In any case, now the sun was down the carts were out – wheeled traffic isn't allowed inside the city boundaries between dawn and dusk – and the Septimontium would be packed wheel-hub to wheel-hub.
It was good to feel stone under my sandals again. Sure, Athens has roads, of a kind, and they're far older than Rome's, but where they're paved the stone is smoother, less gritty. Slick, almost. The smells are different, too. You get roasted pumpkin-seed sellers in the Old Market by Twelve Gods and the Odeion, but somehow the scent that comes up off their braziers isn't quite the same. Maybe it's the overlay of Tiber mud. Foreigners say they can smell it as far east as Maecenas Gardens, and maybe that's true. For real Romans like me it's just the city's natural odour.
It must've been a race day. Oh, the Circus was closed by that time, sure, and the races would be long finished, but you can always tell when it's been a race day in the Circus district. People come in from all over and they don't go home when the gates shut; they hang around the local cookshops and wineshops eating and drinking and shooting the breeze until all hours, making a holiday of it. I saw one cheerful bastard – he looked like a Syrian – weaving his way past the Temple of Hercules clutching a wine jar like it was a baby and doling out cupfuls to everyone he met. The guy must've struck lucky on the cars – Syrians know their racing – and be blowing the proceeds; technically, organised gambling on the teams is illegal, but there're always touts, if you know where to get hold of them, and because they've got a reputation to keep up they usually pay out when they have to. Either that or sooner or later they're found stiff and cold up an alleyway or floating backside-up in the Tiber.
I saw another guy, too, mouth bloody, crawling along the pavement just short of Butchers' Market looking for his teeth while passers-by edged round him laughing. If he was another winner he'd obviously been mugged. Rome's no utopia, far from it. Sometimes it can hurt.
Still, it was good to be home.
I got to Mother's just behind Lysias. Mother's head slave, plus of course her mad chef Phormio the Dinner-Guest Poisoner, were with her and Priscus back at Vetuliscum, so there was only a scratch staff. Bathyllus, as was the little guy's wont, went through the buggers like a dose of salts and the result was that by the time I'd wrapped myself round a pre-dinner cup of Priscus's Falernian the baths were hot, the domestic arrangements were somewhere on the excellent side of average and Mother's slaves were wondering what the hell had hit them and which way was up. Credit where credit's due. I know I knock Bathyllus from time to time, sure, but that's not to say the little bald-headed hernia sufferer isn't an organisational genius. If Bathyllus had been put in charge of the Second Punic War he'd've had that bastard Hannibal washing down the front steps of the senate house and polishing Jupiter's thunderbolt before you could say 'elephants'. There wouldn't've been any backchat, either.
So by dinner-time I was nicely steamed and sweet-smelling. According to Perilla, as soon as he'd arrived Meton had gone off in the direction of the local market with the fixed expression of a sleepwalk
er, and despite the late hour the result was pheasant in a saffron nut sauce, truffles with spiced celery and half a dozen sweet cinnamon tartlets to follow. Plus the wine. Priscus may be no drinker, but for a fluff-brained academic he's no bad judge of quality, either; which means that his cellar's stacked with top-notch stuff that's sat there untouched for maybe ten or fifteen years and was drinkable when he bought it. I checked the label on the jar myself before Bathyllus dug the clay stopper out and took the stuff away for mixing: consuls Augustus Caesar for the twelfth time and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, which meant it was almost forty years old. And it wasn't from the reserve bin, what's more.
Beautiful!
'So.' I moved the dessert plate away and took an appreciative sip from my fifth cup. 'What're your plans for tomorrow, lady?'
Perilla glanced at the Princess who was tucking in to half a vineful of grapes. That on top of more than her fair share of the pheasant and three tartlets. Jupiter! You'd think she hadn't eaten for a month! 'I thought we'd have a look at the mantle shops in Augustus Market,' she said. 'Then perhaps up to the Saepta.'
'Unless you want to take me with you, Corvinus,' Marilla said. 'I've got all the mantles I need, and I've nothing else to get except a present for Aunt Marcia. Sleuthing would be a lot more fun than shopping.'
Yeah, well, I'd go along with that. Shopping I hate. If the concept had been around when Prometheus was nailed for fire-smuggling, instead of being chained to a cliff while a vulture ate his liver the gods could've condemned him to tag along while his wife chose a new pair of earrings. 'Sorry, Bright-Eyes,' I said. 'I'll have a lot of ground to cover.'
'You're seeing Lippillus?' Perilla said. Lippillus was a guy I'd known off and on for years, currently the head of the Public Pond district Watch. What he didn't know about what went on in Rome – or anything else you could think of, for that matter – wasn't worth quoting.
'I thought I might.' I took a pull at the Falernian. 'Then up to the praetor's office on the Capitol. Plus the Sacred Way, of course, for Publius Bubo.'
'Take your time, then. Don't hurry back.'
I grinned. 'You got two or three ex-lovers you want to visit while we're here?'
'No. I just thought you'd like some time to yourself.'
Sometimes I couldn't make Perilla out. Back in Vetuliscum she'd been complaining that I was spending all the hours the gods sent out and about talking to potential candidates for a murder rap; now we were in Rome she couldn't get rid of me fast enough. If it had been anyone else but Perilla my last question might not've been a joke.
‘Fine,' I said. 'You can keep Lysias and the carriage, incidentally. I'll walk. And I'll see you back here for dinner.'
She yawned suddenly. 'Juno, I'm tired,' she said. 'I think I'll go to bed.'
I glanced at her over my wine-cup. Well, I know when I'm being propositioned. 'Good idea,' I said, downing the last of the Falernian. 'You want to pack in too, Princess?'
Marilla's eyes were already closing. She nodded.
'Okay. Let's call it a day.'
We made love in the main guest bedroom to the sound of carts rumbling back and forth beneath the window. Afterwards, I thought the noise would keep me awake – you don't get much passing traffic in Diomeia and of course at Vetuliscum one guy on a mule is news – but it didn't, any more than it ever had in the house on the Palatine. I went out like a light and stayed out until I was woken up just after dawn by our door slave arguing with the neighbour's over whose turn it was for the dung shovel.
35.
I left Perilla sleeping, ate a quick breakfast and set out for Public Pond.
The Pond is Rome's Twelfth District, lying south-west of the Caelian and taking in half of the Aventine and the Remuria, two of the poorest parts of the city: everything, in fact, between Ostia Road to the west and the Capenan Gate to the east. As one of the seven Regional Watch Commanders, Lippillus was in charge of both it and the Circus district that stretched up towards the Sublician. No sinecure, in other words. I had a lot of time for Flavonius Lippillus. When I'd first met him just under ten years before he'd looked like a fresh-faced kid just into his first adult mantle, and he had the sharpest brain I'd ever come across. Since then he'd come a long way. He'd lost the fresh-faced look and matured into something between a dwarf and a pixie, but the brain was still there. It was a mark of how good the guy was at his job that he'd made commander status fifteen years early and kept it, even in a business where names are everything: you can search the old consular and tribunician rolls until you're blue, but you won't find no Flavonii Lippilli.
Maybe that was another reason why I liked him.
I called in at Watch headquarters and got one of the squaddies. I'd missed Lippillus by about ten minutes: there'd been a late-night break-in at a house near the temple of the Good Goddess, and the owner had got fatally in the way. The squaddie gave me more precise directions and I went round to see if I could catch him up.
The house was easy to spot, largely because of the dozen or so ghouls hanging about round the doorway waiting for the corpse to be lugged out. It was an upmarket property by Aventine standards, which meant it wasn't a tenement, and whoever had built it had cleverly sited the little garden so it got watered for free by the drips coming from the Appian Aqueduct overhead. There was a squaddie on the steps keeping the ghouls at bay, but I gave him my name and Lippillus's and he let me through.
When I went into the tiny atrium Lippillus was kneeling by the dead man examining the wound on the side of his head.
'Festus, get –,' he began, and then did a double take when he looked round and saw me. 'Corvinus? What the hell are you doing in Rome?'
I grinned. 'Breaking promises.'
He set the man's head down gently on the tiled floor, stood up and absently wiped his hands on his tunic. I noticed they left red smears.
'You made them,' he said. 'You can break them.'
'Yeah.' I nodded at the corpse. While it was still erect and breathing it'd been a wizened-looking man in his sixties with warts and a penchant for brightly-coloured bathrobes. Now it was just sad. 'Anything interesting?'
'No. Just the usual. The bastards got in through the garden door. They probably thought the house was empty, because the neighbour says the rest of the family were at the races. Unfortunately for this old guy he had a bout of rheumatics at the last minute and stayed in bed.' He frowned. 'We'll get them. Maybe. If we're lucky.'
'How's Marcina Paullina?' Marcina was Lippillus's 'stepmother': definitely in inverted commas, because the lady was long widowed, only a couple of years older than he was and built like an African Praxiteles Venus. Also, I'd seen their sleeping arrangements.
'She's okay. Eating too many honeyed dates, though.' He grinned suddenly, and his ugly face lit up. 'You here for long?'
'Only a couple of days. We've borrowed a place near Caere.'
'Perilla's with you?'
'Sure. And the Princess.'
'Business or pleasure?'
'Business.' I hesitated. 'You know of a guy named Publius Herminius Bubo? Has an antiques store on the Sacred Way?'
'The Owl?' He hadn't even paused for thought, but that didn't surprise me: what Lippillus didn't know about Rome and Romans you could write on a bust sandal strap and forget. 'Sure. Just round the corner from Venus's Temple. What sort of business?'
'Maybe nothing.' I gave him a quick run-down of the Vetuliscum situation. 'I just need to talk with him. Tie up the loose end.'
'Uh-huh.' He was rubbing his jaw. Obviously he hadn't had time to get shaved that morning because I could hear the rasp. 'Loose ends I don't know about, but you're right about him being a crook. And about the high-class fencing angle. We've had our eye on the bastard for years.'
So. The brothers had been two of a kind. That added up nicely.
'Only an eye?' I said.
'More than that sometimes, but nothing serious so far. Or nothing we can prove. The Owl's sharp but he'll step out of line some day.'
Yeah
; that made sense, too. Aulus Bubo had been so sharp that he'd cut himself. Still, that was the risk guys like that took. The grey area between legal and illegal was lucrative, but put a foot wrong and you could find yourself in an urn. 'You have time for a cup of wine, pal?' I said.
Lippillus glanced back at the corpse. 'Not now, I've got people to talk to. Later, sure, if you want.'
Yeah, well; I supposed the guy did have his living to earn, and though he hadn't said as much he'd have other things on his mind than entertaining layabout aristocrats. 'No problem,' I said. 'Perilla's given me the whole day off. Just tell me a time and place.'
'Hold on. We can do better than that.' His brow creased. 'You in a hurry to see the Owl?'
'No.' I wasn't: I'd been meaning to call in at the Foreign Praetor's office on the Capitol first to see what I could arrange in the way of an investigation of the Cominii, and like most officials these guys tended to get grouchy if you infringed on their afternoon siesta. 'I'd planned that for after lunch.'
'Fine. There's a cookshop half way along Tuscan. They do good tripe with fennel. Meet me there an hour after noon and have a jug waiting and we'll go together once we've finished it. I wouldn't mind the chance to sweat the Owl myself.'
'Great.' I paused. 'Uh...you're sure you're not tramping on anyone's corns here, pal?' I wasn't just being polite: the question needed asking. Whether Lippillus chose to put it that way or not he was doing me a big favour here because having a Watch Commander at my shoulder when I talked to the Owl would give me clout in spades; but at the same time he was putting himself out on a professional limb, and he knew it. Lippillus's patch was the Eleventh and Twelfth districts, full stop. The Venus's Temple stretch of the Sacred Way is Fourth District, and one thing you learn early in any business is not to poach.
Old Bones (Marcus Corvinus Book 5) Page 22
