Family Commitments (Marcus Corvinus Book 20)

by David Wishart

  ‘There’s the original scenario,’ I said. ‘The necklace one. Oplonius had stolen something belonging to Rufus, and Rufus wants it back.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you know what I think of that one, dear. It’s far too much of a coincidence for comfort.’

  ‘Yeah, fair enough. I agree.’ I hesitated. ‘There is another possibility that occurred to me on the way from the Latin Gate. That Oplonius isn’t Oplonius.’

  ‘Marcus, please do try to make sense. I haven’t the patience.’

  ‘Look. We only know him as Oplonius because that’s what he called himself, and it was the name Damon gave us, right?’

  ‘Of course. But why should–?’

  ‘Perilla, I can’t answer the whys. If I could we’d be a hell of a lot closer to solving this thing. Just bear with me, okay?’

  ‘Very well. Go on.’

  ‘According to Damon – and the guy himself, when he was alive – he’s Gaius Oplonius, a small-time provincial merchant from Padua, in Rome to scare up some business. Fine, we know now that that last part is phoney, at least in an honest sense, but we’ve been assuming the first bit, his actual name, isn’t. Only that’s all it is: an assumption. We’ve no objective proof.’

  ‘Eutacticus knew him by that name as well; it’s how he tracked him down, presumably, because otherwise he would have said. And their involvement predated Oplonius’s arrival in Rome.’

  ‘The alias doesn’t have to be a recent one. For all we know he might’ve been using it for years. All I’m saying – or suggesting, rather – is that alias it is; that his real name was something different.’

  ‘Marcus, are you basing this on anything concrete, or is it pure guesswork? Because if so–’

  ‘Hang on, give me a chance here. Just think. It would clear up a good few of the problems and puzzles, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Would it?’

  ‘First off: when I talked to Lydia she said Oplonius spoke with an upper-class accent. “A touch of the lah-de-dah” was how she described it. Not what you’d expect from a provincial merchant, which was what he told her he was. She thought he might be from a good family originally and down on his luck. What’s to say she was wrong?’

  Perilla sighed. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said, ‘but this is pure speculation. The line of work your Lydia is in she probably hadn’t ever heard an upper-class accent in her life to compare it with.’

  ‘Cut out the snobbishness, lady. Lydia is no fool, and you sound like Bathyllus.’

  At least that got me a grin and a duck of the head. ‘All right. Point taken. What other problems and puzzles does it solve?’

  ‘The question of the ring, for starters. Where it came from, and what happened to it. Let’s say Lydia was right in her guess again: that it was an heirloom, a recognisable one, and that it was Oplonius’s own property to begin with. He didn’t sell it, which is what she assumed; he couldn’t’ve done because there was no sign of the money later. So where did it go? My guess is that he used it to prove his bona fides; that he sent it to the prospective buyer, who for sake of argument we’ll call Suillius Rufus, to confirm who he was and that he had whatever he had for sale. That’d be another problem solved: he and Rufus weren’t from different sides of the tracks at all, they were social equals. Where family was concerned, for all we know our pseudo-Oplonius might even have had the edge.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She was twisting the lock of hair. ‘I must admit it does sound convincing. As a possible theory, at least.’

  ‘Come on, Perilla! It fits the facts all the way down the line!’

  ‘He was still a crook. The business of the necklace proves that.’

  ‘No one’s claiming otherwise. Since when has being one of a family from high on the social register been a guarantee of honesty and moral rectitude? Quite the reverse: half the fucking senate are morally suspect, to say the least; the only things distinguishing them from your low-class thieves, muggers and con-men are that they operate on a bigger scale and the purple stripe and old boys’ network means they get away with it. And even with the honest ones you don’t need to go too far back into their family histories to turn up some bastard who could run a swindle or milk a province as easy as breathing.’

  ‘True. But that doesn’t mean you have to swear.’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Even so. You get black sheep in any family. Chances are, Oplonius had either been slung out on his ear and disinherited or he’d walked out on them off his own bat. That’d explain his lack of funds, certainly: no rich daddy to pick up the tab or keep his wayward son in the lush manner he’d been accustomed to. He’d be completely on his own, living hand to mouth, and the upper classes aren’t trained for that. Not where plying an honest trade’s concerned.’

  ‘So if he wasn’t Gaius Oplonius then who was he? And what was he selling?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Not yet. But obviously Rufus – if our chief perp is Rufus – knows the answers damn well, and whatever the thing is he’s desperate to get his hands on it. So we start from the Rufus end. Me, I’d reckon this is another one for Caelius Crispus.’

  ‘Oh, Marcus! You think he’d help?’

  ‘Of course he would; he always does. Not a bad lad, Crispus, if he’s handled in the right way.’ Which involved basically, going by past experience, a sheer unadulterated brazenness of approach, followed up as appropriate by brow-beating and/or blackmail. Mind you, to give him his due, Crispus was also a professional to his metaphorically-grubby fingertips; enough of a professional, certainly, to enjoy his work even when he was squealing about being forced over a barrel to tell you what you wanted to know. So yes, I was pretty certain that he’d help, eventually. ‘I’ll go and see him tomorrow.’

  Which is what I did.

  16

  Crispus and I went way back, in fact to pre-Perilla days, when he’d been a ragged-arsed plain mantle of doubtful parentage and even more doubtful morals. The acquaintance – you couldn’t call it friendship, not by a long chalk – started when I saved him from a fate worse than death at the hands of an outraged daddy who was after him with a very sharp knife, and it had gone steadily downhill from then, even as Crispus rose. All by his own considerable efforts, I had to admit: what the little rat didn’t know, through a lifetime’s constant and assiduous gleaning, about the cupboarded skeletons and dirty laundry of Rome’s top five hundred wasn’t worth bothering about. Which was why, at present, he held down a very responsible and respectable desk in the Foreign Judges’ office and the last time I’d seen him had been sporting a newly-acquired purple stripe on his mantle. Usually, to get on in the Roman political or administrative hierarchy, what matters is either who you are or who you know, preferably both. In Crispus’s case, you replaced the ‘who’ in the latter clause by ‘what’. Quietly making your boss aware that you know what really happened to that stray two million from the accounts, or whose wife, daughter, son or domestic pet he is currently screwing, and being able to prove it, is a pretty effective way of moving up the ladder.

  So there I was, not too bright and early – responsible and respectable judicial admin officers need their beauty sleep of a morning – knocking on Crispus’s office door.

  ‘Come.’

  Nicely brusque and authoritative; he was really picking up the mannerisms appropriate to his new elevated status, was Crispus. I grinned and pushed the door open.

  The lad was sitting at his desk with a pile of paperwork either side of him. He looked up at me like I was the grisly spirit of murdered Agamemnon come back to demand vengeance on his slayers.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

  ‘Morning, sunshine.’ I went over to the desk, pulled up a stool, and sat. ‘How are things in the judging business?’

  ‘I’d hoped you were dead, Corvinus.’

  ‘Nah, not me,’ I said. ‘Hale, hearty and thriving as ever. Full of the joys of spring. Perilla sends her regards.’

  ‘Bugger off.’

  ‘Come on, pal, we haven’t seen each other for ages! How
long has it been, now?’

  ‘Three years. And shortly afterwards an emperor was assassinated. You think that was a coincidence? Because I don’t.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me, Crispus,’ I said. Well, almost true: to be fair, for all Gaius’s faults I’d’ve stopped it if I could. ‘But since you ask, yes, you can help me with something. Thank you.’

  ‘I didn’t fucking ask, I’ve no intention of asking, and I’ve got work to do. Now I told you: bugger off.’ He reached for the flimsy on the top of the pile to his right.

  ‘Publius Suillius Rufus,’ I said.

  His hand paused. ‘Who?’

  ‘You heard. Know him?’

  ‘Of course I know him!’

  ‘Good. Let’s start there. Tell me about him; the recent stuff.’

  ‘I’ll tell you again: bugger off! And stay buggered off!’

  I sighed. ‘Look, do we really, really need to do this the hard way?’ He glanced at me suspiciously but said nothing. ‘Okay, if that’s how you want to play it. You still got the country villa in the Alban Hills? The one near my adopted daughter and son-in-law’s place in Castrimoenium, that you bought to entertain broad-striper bigwigs you want to impress?’

  ‘Corvinus...’

  ‘Only we’ll be going down there shortly, Perilla and me, to visit the family and see how the grand-sprog is getting on. If you happen to have a party staying we could drop by some evening, say hello. Nothing formal, no prior warning, and I’m sure your senatorial friends would be delighted if we – Perilla and I, that is – indulged over the nibbles in a few personal reminiscences. You remember that club on the Pincian you belonged to, for example? The one that was closed down suddenly? What was it called, now?’

  ‘Corvinus, you bastard. You promised me faithfully last time that you wouldn’t go near the place, particularly when I have guests.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ I shook my head. ‘Wrong. If you remember correctly I said that that particular deal was a one-off. I was very careful to stress it, too. So. Publius Suillius Rufus.’

  He sagged. ‘Okay. Let’s get it over with. What do you want to know?’

  ‘I told you: the recent stuff. Anything you think is relevant.’

  ‘Relevant to what?’

  ‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be asking. Anyway, you know what I mean.’

  That got me a very cagey look. ‘Nothing to tell,’ he said. ‘At least, nothing you couldn’t’ve found out elsewhere.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, pal. Just give, okay?’

  ‘He’s into the forensic side of things in a big way. Prosecuting.’

  ‘Namely?’

  ‘If you want recently, it’d have to be last year’s two big trials.’

  ‘Which big trials?’

  He looked at me in amazement. ‘You mean you don’t already know? Jupiter, boy, where–?’

  ‘I don’t keep up with the courts news, Crispus, not as a general rule. Anyway, last year I was abroad for a fair chunk of the time, so I probably missed them. Who were the defendants?’

  ‘Julia Livia and Catonius Justus.’

  I whistled softly. Julia Livia I knew, or knew of, rather. Of course I did. She was an imperial, the emperor Tiberius’s granddaughter and widow of Claudius Nero, the eldest son of Germanicus and Agrippina who’d been exiled and imprisoned by Aelius Sejanus’s doing and put to death thirteen years before.

  ‘Who’s Justus?’ I said.

  Crispus grinned. ‘Corvinus, if I knew as little about the great and good of this city as you do I’d still be pushing a pen in the secretaries’ room downstairs. Catonius Justus was one of the praetorian prefects.’

  I sat back. Gods! We were certainly moving in top-notch circles here. And things were definitely beginning to smell fishy. ‘How come Rufus got the job?’ I said. ‘Of prosecutor, I mean.’

  The grin faded. ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Come on, Crispus! It’s a simple question and you know the answer to it well enough. Give!’

  ‘You’re not being fair. Politics isn’t my main area of expertise. You know that.’

  ‘Crispus, you prevaricating bastard...’

  ‘All right. All right!’ He hesitated. ‘The word is that the emperor chose him personally.’

  ‘Claudius did? Claudius?’

  Crispus shrugged. ‘You asked. I’m answering. And word goes on to say that he wouldn’t listen to anything Julia Livia or her friends could offer in her defence, before, during or after the trial.’

  ‘So where did he send her?’

  ‘She wasn’t exiled, she was executed. Immediately after her conviction. So was Justus.’

  ‘What?’ Jupiter, this I just couldn’t believe! ‘Livia was Claudius’s own kin! His cousin’s wife! What the hell had she been charged with?’

  ‘Immorality.’

  ‘Screwing around? Is that all? And she gets the chop for it?’

  Another shrug. ‘Don’t blame me, Corvinus. I’m simply telling you like it was. The emperor passed the sentences himself.’

  ‘So what was Justus’s crime?’

  ‘Treason, plus immorality with Julia Livia. The two were lovers, seemingly.’

  ‘Convenient.’ My brain was racing. We’d been this way before, many times: immorality was a catch-all charge, used to cover a range of crimes or none, when for one reason or another, legitimate or otherwise, the accuser – usually the emperor – either didn’t want to be specific for security’s sake or was manufacturing a lie from whole cloth. So which was the case here? Julia Livia I didn’t know enough about to make a guess; for Justus, given his post as co-commander of the Praetorian Guard, treason was at least within the bounds of credibility; certainly it was a lead to be followed up. Immediate execution, though, now that was definitely weird. For a member of the imperial family like Livia was it didn’t make sense, even for treason: females were exiled, sent somewhere they couldn’t do any harm, usually to a fly-speck island like Pandateria off the Campanian coast. Even the males were disappeared to be killed off quietly later when they’d effectively been forgotten about.

  This needed serious thought.

  ‘Corvinus?’ Crispus was staring at me. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Hmm?’ I blinked. ‘Oh. Yeah, I’m fine. So what else can you tell me?’

  ‘That’s it. That’s all I know.’ He held up a hand before I could object. ‘Genuinely! I told you, politics isn’t my field. You want more, you’ll have to ask someone else.’

  ‘Such as who?’

  He hesitated again, then glanced over his shoulder – the gods knew why, because we were alone in the room and there was a wall behind him, but this was Crispus; it was probably ingrained, like a tic – leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Me, I’d have a word with a lady by the name of Pomponia Graecina.’

  ‘Who’s Graecina?’

  ‘A friend of Livia’s. Her best friend, in fact. Just don’t mention my name, okay? In fact leave me out of everything altogether. That’s all you’re getting. Now push off.’

  I stood up. ‘You happen to know where I can find her?’

  ‘Big house on the Quirinal, up Long Street just before the junction with High Path.’ He reached again for the flimsy on top of the pile. ‘Remember, if shoving your nose into this kills you, and I hope to Jupiter that it does, I’ll dance on your grave. Now go and lose yourself. Properly, this time.’

  I grinned. ‘Right. Thanks, Crispus, I’ll see you around.’ I paused, my hand on the doorknob. ‘Oh, by the way, you happen to know anything about a Gaius Oplonius? Posed as a wool merchant from Padua but probably wasn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  Well, that single syllable had the definite ring of finality and truth to it: if he had known anything about our pseudo-Oplonius the shifty bugger would’ve wrapped the denial up in fancier language. And it didn’t surprise me, really. I was coming round to the belief that whoever in propria persona the dead man was he’d been out of circulation for quite some time.

  ‘It doesn’
t matter,’ I said. ‘Thanks again, pal.’

  He didn’t answer, just carried on reading and raised a single finger in salute. I grinned again and turned to leave.

  It was still well short of noon; plenty of time, then, to go over to the Quirinal.

  The houses there are old-money-rich. Most of them are big and rambling, and they look like they’ve been there since Scipio Africanus cut his first tooth, which in fact most of them have. The families, too. I asked one of the door-slaves dozing in the spring sunshine for directions and he pointed me to Graecina’s place a bit further up the hill.

  Crispus’s ‘big house’ was right, and you can add the ‘rambling’ for good measure: I reckoned, from the length of the outside wall, it took up at least half as much ground again as the houses I’d already passed. I gave my name to the door-slave and waited while he checked whether the lady was At Home.

  She was, in the garden, standing chatting to a smallish, thin-branched tree with narrow leaves and sprays of pinkish-white flowers.

  Right. Chatting. To a tree.

  Uh-huh.

  She turned towards me as I came down the path from the house, a youngish woman no older than late thirties, small and dumpy, but not a bad looker. I noticed she was wearing as many amulets draped around her neck as would equip a stall outside one of the more popular temples.

  ‘Valerius Corvinus, welcome!’ she said, stretching out both hands to me. There wasn’t much I could do, under the circumstances: I took them and gave them a perfunctory shake.

  You can add several charm bracelets to the above. The resulting effect was like rattling a couple of tambourines.

  ‘Good of you to see me, Pomponia Graecina,’ I said.

  She let my hands go. ‘Nonsense!’ she said. ‘Your wife is Rufia Perilla, yes? The poet Ovid’s stepdaughter?’

  ‘Ah...yeah. Yes, she is, as it happens.’ I was feeling more than a tad disorientated. ‘How did you–?’