'On the Ides. So what can't wait, Falco?'
'I've stumbled on a scam. It must have been going on for some time; the other cohorts have failed to get a grip.'
Rubella bared his teeth, shark-like, as if he saw through my flattery. He enjoyed thinking his lads had an opening to show up their rivals. I outlined the kidnappings, never suggesting they went back in time too far. Pardon me for sounding like a schoolboy's arithmetic problem, but if seven cohorts are working four-month shifts in rotation, then they must each return to the out-station every two years and four months.
I happened to know that Rubella had joined the Fourth, as a new appointment by Vespasian, three or four years ago, so I had to create a pretty panorama where all members of the glorious Fourth had kept their ugly noses blown the last time they served at Ostia and no hint of these kidnaps could have reached their tribune then. The whole point of me being here in Rubella's office was to stir him to action now.
It worked. After I described the situation, Rubella decided to implement the officers' answer to everything: a special exercise. In order to lend it gravitas and impetus [and in order to escape the burning heat of Rome in August] Rubella would head up this exercise himself. Hades. Rubella was coming to Ostia. Now Lucius Petronius would really hate me. I carried out one last task during my flying visit to the city. I was supposed to meet Helena at our house, but after I left Rubella, I took a long detour and made my way down to the Forum. I checked the Daily Gazette column; of course it told me Infamia was still on holiday.
Then I went to see Holconius and Mutatus in the Gazette office. Neither was there of course. Most of the Gazette's readers are away in July and August. Nothing of note happens. Everyone is at the coast. Everyone with any money goes into the hills for cooler air, or south to the sea.
'You could create a special edition called the Neapolis Exciter,' I fantasised to the slave who was slowly plying a damp sponge around the otherwise deserted rooms. 'Seaside gossip. Sandy Surrentum secrets. Baiae bathing-pool outrages. Hints that there may soon be a shortage of scallop omelettes, unless senators on holiday curb their maritime villa banquets.'
'Market day in Pompeii is Saturn day,' replied the slave glumly. It sounded as if a Campanian Companion had already been considered – and rejected as too boring. 'In Nuceria it's Sun day, in Atella it's Moon day.'
I told him I took the point. As I was leaving he revived suddenly.
'Falco, how is Diocles? Is he still at his auntie's?' I paused. This was unexpected. The gentle Fates had handed me a bonus.
'Holconius and Mutatus gave me the impression that was just a ruse. I thought Diocles didn't really have an auntie.' The slave looked scornful.
'Of course he does. He goes to see her every year.'
'How come you know?' The slave looked swanky.
'People talk to me.' He probably wanted to be an investigator when he was freed. If I failed to find Diocles, there might be a job going.
'So, Auntie what?'
'Auntie Vestina.'
'Know where she lives?'
'Near a temple.'
'Portus or Ostia itself?'
'Ostia.'
'Ostia is a very religious town, my friend; any clue to which temple?' All the slave could come up with was that water had something to do with it. Well, that should be easy in a town on a river-mouth, down at the coast. I gave him a half-denarius. He didn't know he could have just put an end to my nice little summer commission. Infamia was no longer missing; he was swanning on a sun bed while a loving relative plied him with cool drinks and home-made olive pate. All I had to do now was locate the right temple, collect Diocles from his Auntie Vestina, and bring him home again. Ah, if only it had been that easy.
XXVI
I had told the slave the truth. Ostia had always been very religious. There were temples absolutely everywhere, some spanking new, some that harked back to when the town was just a cluster of salt-workers' huts in a marsh. If the Ostians had space for any sort of dedicated enclosure, they whipped a wall around three sides and put up a podium in a pillared shrine. Their motto was: why build one when there is room for four? A cluster of altars was better than a solo. When they ran out of gods, they threw honours at allegorical concepts; near our apartment stood a row of four little temples, dedicated to Venus and Ceres, plus Hope and Fortune too. I for my part had no time for love, and with two very young children under my feet in a small apartment I was dead set against any further fertility.
As I failed to track down Diocles, I was soon cursing my bad fortune and running out of hope. On my return, the quest for the scribe's aunt took me all over town. I reckoned I could omit the giant temples to Jupiter and to Rome and Augustus which dominated the Forum; anyone who lived there would describe their house as near the Forum. Pompous types might call it the Capitolium. Vague ones would say they lived in the middle of town. Otherwise, I had to visit the lot. I became adept at scenting out smoke from sacrificial offerings. I also became a real nymphaeum bore. The Ostians liked gracing wayside walls with water-troughs, and though some were plain drinking points for beasts of burden, many were set up as decorative shrines to water gods.
Helena had to listen to me counting up each day's haul as temples became my obsessive collecting fad, worse than the time I tried to explore all the Seven Hills of Rome when I was only eight years old and not supposed to leave the Aventine by myself. Now I would be death at a party. I kept note-tablets jotted with details of temples I had spotted, like some ghastly tourist's diary. At the slightest encouragement I showed people my sketch map with shrines marked in red.
My mother, who was staying with Maia, became very excited when she thought Helena had begun sacrifices to the Good Goddess. [I was absolved from taking part; men are too Bad.] Bona Dea was for a while our favoured divinity in the conundrum, as her neat sea-view temple lay outside the Marine Gate. We did wonder if Diocles had chosen lodgings in an area he knew, though if his auntie was in that vicinity we could not explain why he went into lodgings…
We failed to track down Vestina near the Bona Dea, so my search moved back to the centre of town. Top deity here was Vulcan. A straightforward anvil god with a fetching limp. Helena and I spent a pleasant day at his ancient complex; we took Albia and the children, making it an excuse for a picnic, which was just as well because as a work exercise our trip was pointless. We could only associate Vulcan with water via a long-winded link involving the vigiles dousing fires. Tenuous. For reasons nobody knew any more, the fire god's high priest was the most important man in Ostia, lording it over the cult's own praetors and aediles; it was a lifetime appointment of ancient derivation which carried, as far as I could see, no advantage nowadays except being grovelled to by sycophantic town councillors, all hoping that the current pontifex of Vulcan would quickly drop dead so they could jostle for his post.
That night Helena Justina sat up suddenly in bed with a shriek of 'Cybele!'
This did not enthral me. Eastern gods are generally deplorable and I really wince at the Great Mother with her self castrating sidekick, Attis. No man with a love life can think calmly of a consort who cut off his genitalia.
Anyway, I had done the Eastern cults already. I had examined houses all around the Temple of Isis. Seemed a good bet. Isis equals Nile god equals very important water if you live in Egypt. Isis is also a sea goddess, and protects sea voyagers. Her temple was in the west end of town, on the riverbank. To match the slave's description, this was about as likely as anywhere could be, so I scoured the neighbourhood thoroughly. Always uncomfortable with the sistrum-shaking priests, the dubious priestesses in their topless, see-through pleated linen and the unnerving portraits of dog-headed fellows with their arms folded, I was glad to escape. I had had no luck searching around the Isis enclosure for waterfront houses where a scribe's aunt might live. To cheer myself up, I bought a good hanging lamp in the form of a ship, and only noticed when I got it home that it had three little shrines of Isis, Anubis and Serapis.
&nb
sp; Ours was not a household that liked statuettes of gods. We did not even own our own Lares. [Thinking of that, I went back out and checked around the Forum shrine of the town Lares.]
'No, it's Cybele we want,' Helena insisted that night. 'The cult statue was brought from the East to Rome by sea when Claudius decided to legitimise worship. There's that story of the young woman with the soiled reputation.'
I perked up. 'Oh, my kind of girl!'
'Think again, Falco. The ship got stuck in the estuary. Whatever-her-name-was went and claimed that if her chastity remained intact she would touch the ship with her girdle.'
'She did the girdle trick. the ship moved off up the Tiber. Now can I go to sleep again?'
'You can go to the Temple of Cybele tomorrow, Marcus.'
I did; I found nothing. Cybele had a huge enclosure by the Laurentine Gate where she was attended by various associate gods in their own little shrines but, as far as I could discover, no aunts.
Helena allowed me to resume my dogged search elsewhere. I investigated temples of Castor and Pollux, Mars, Diana, Neptune, Liber Pater, round and rectangular temples of divinities whose names were not even obvious, Pater Tiberina, and the Genius of the Colony. The craft guilds had their own temples, prominently the Temple of the Ship Builders and a temple in the Forum of the Wine Growers [I enjoyed that morning.] I was running out of podiums.
At this point, my dedicated religious trek must have caught the eye of some soft-hearted Olympus deity. I had been poking around backstreets on the west side of the Forum, where somebody had suggested there might be a shrine with ships on it. I never found them.
Despondent, I headed back to a road that would take me to the Decumanus. It had a couple of small temples which I had already dismissed. Squashed in on the same site was one major temple: to Hercules Invictus. Empathising with any other hero afflicted with hard labours, I paid it more attention than previously and walked right up the steps. There were nine. On a hot day it was a steep climb, which was why I had omitted this last time.
I entered the sanctum. There I had my breakthrough. In the interior, a set of friezes depicted how the cult statue had been discovered years before. Hercules had been dredged up from the sea by some fishermen. Probably some ship carrying works of art had foundered in the shoals off Ostia, taking the statue down, club, bearskin, beard and all. I tipped my forelock to the hero's smooth, handsome torso.
'Thank you, delectable demi-god. And by the way, – nice arse!' I began a fast search of the neighbouring area. Parts appeared to be in the process of redevelopment; there were cleared spaces and a couple of elderly atrium houses standing empty.
In a side street, I finally found the place where Diocles used to stay. I learned that his Auntie Vestina, a freedwoman of the imperial house, had lived for many years right beside the Temple of Hercules Invictus. The aunt's house had burned down about this time last year. The first woman I spoke to had not seen the aunt since. That would have been bad enough, but if Vestina had escaped and relocated I might have tracked her down eventually. Sadly, I found another neighbour who knew the whole story. The fire had started at night. Help took a long time coming. Vestina had been crippled with arthritis and she was asthmatic. She could not struggle out of her burning house quickly enough, and was killed by the smoke before she could be rescued.
XXVII
Feeling melancholy, I cut back towards the Forum and started walking home. I hit the Decumanus Maximus at a crossroads, where it took a slight bend as it turned from its original axis towards the Marine Gate. This was a major junction with a shrine and market stalls, old established fishmongers and butchers. Ahead were public buildings, first the Basilica and then the Forum itself. Those bore the marble stamp of Augustus, telling locals and new arrivals how exceedingly rich the spoils of Egypt had made him, and how determined he was to be seen as ruler of the world. The area where the streets met was full of life. It made a sad contrast to the dead spaces behind me, – though when the empty lots were redeveloped, that part of town would be a fine place to live: central and probably select. Some builder was due to make a killing if he could get his hands on the land, and it did look as if a steady acquisition programme was in progress. Around one corner from the Decumanus, in a scaffolded block that seemed to be already earmarked for redevelopment, I found a small group of vigiles.
It was unexpected; Petro had never mentioned an outstationed unit, though we were a long way from the creaky patrol house, so it did seem a good idea. It was miles to run to the main patrol house to report a bath house on fire or to ask for reinforcements when someone had left his wife sitting on a captured burglar. They had a deserted shop set up as an office. The frontage of what must once have been an artisan's workshop was now a gaping hole, minus its pull-across doors. There were four men on duty, not the liveliest bunch I had ever met. At a beaten-up table they lolled around while awaiting citizens with complaints. I could see bits of chewed old loaves on the floor, which was rubble. There was a smell of wine, though none in evidence. I made a mental note to warn Petronius this bivouac needed sharpening up.
'Name's Falco.'
'What's your problem?' I had not expected to be offered chamomile tea and an almond fancy. Even so, the approach seemed belligerent.
'Can you supply some information?'
'We are not encyclopaedia salesmen.' The pallid oaf who was addressing me showed too much of his surly slave origins.
'Whatever happened to shmoozing the public? I pay my taxes, you washed-out bucket of whey!' Well I was supposed to pay, and in a previous job for the Emperor I had made many wealthy tax evaders say they were sorry and cough up. That was much more useful to the state than if I had paid my own. A new face homed in.
'Now then, sir!' This one must have attended a neighbourhood-relationships lecture. 'What were you wanting?'
'Apart from a bit of courtesy? I'd like to know about a fire in the next street where a woman died last year.'
'We can give you courtesy, high class saluting, and a very hard kick up the arse,' said the second man, – the charming, witty one, – while his idiot cronies ogled. 'We don't know anything about that fire. Details of past incidents are not made available to the public.'
'Not unless you pay the record-search fee,' inserted a third specimen. I saw his partner thump him, telling him to shut up.
'Search fees?' I folded my arms and looked thoughtful. 'Whose bright idea was that one? I know Vespasian needs to raise money for his civic building programme, but this is new. Is it special to the Sixth? Does it only apply when you cheerful lot are on duty, or is the procedure cohort-wide? Is this Ostia only? Or Rome-led?' Mistake, Falco.
The mood grew sinister. Two vigiles who had so far only chewed apples now closed in on me. The loon who had asked for fees squared up. The main spokesman was already only a foot from me. None of them were tall. All were sturdy and wide. By definition they came from rough backgrounds and were employed for hard labour, fearless of danger. They were ill-shaved, dirty-tunicked heavy-duty boys, who reeked of smoke and building dust, – and none were frightened of me. They were off their home patch, twenty miles from Rome, and confident that their actions here were unlikely to be criticised. I could see why the people of Ostia must have ambivalent feelings about them. The spokesman placed a muscle-bound arm in front of two others.
'Now then, lads. This seems to be the sort of grand fellow who will tell us he is best friends with the Urban Prefect.' He made it plain that did not worry him. I kept cool and looked him straight in the eye. Prefects are too no remote to count, even if I knew any. I could have mentioned Brunnus – but most likely they hated him; citing their officer could be a very bad idea. I wondered what their names were, but thought better of asking.
'We don't know anything at all about any fires last year,' the spokesman repeated, inches from my face. His filthy finger prodded my chest. 'So, Falco,' He repeated the poke, much harder. 'We would like you to remove yourself!'
The others all took a
step towards me. Behind me, my exit was clear so I took it. I heard them laughing. I continued home, feeling soiled and disconcerted.
On the first stretch of the Decumanus I kept looking over my shoulder, and I made sure I mingled quickly with the crowds once I reached the Forum. The moron who talked of search fees had plainly asked me for a bribe. The general threat of violence was real. I wondered whether this showed the reaction local people had met when they called for help, the night Diocles' aunt found her house on fire. Then I wondered whether Diocles had been staying with her, last year when the blaze happened.
When I returned to our apartment I was gloomy and introspective. Any joy at finally locating the scribe's aunt had vanished when I learned of her death.
My confrontation with the vigiles added to my foul mood. I told Helena about the episode, playing it down. We discussed the aunt's tragedy.
'I can see,' I said, 'that if Diocles had always stayed with her in summer, he may have come back automatically this year. Once he got here, he could have booked into lodgings and then started brooding about what happened to his aunt. If he's sensitive, this could be why he has gone off somewhere.'
'You think he can't stand being here again, so he's taken himself to have a holiday at Lake Nemi instead?' After Helena asked, 'You don't think Diocles was applying to join the vigiles so he could expose some inefficiency that caused his aunt's death?' I pulled a face.
'I know what Petro would suspect if Diocles has a fascination with fires: he'll think Diocles is an arsonist.'
'No!'
'Arsonists don't just start fires, you know. Some like to hide in a portico and watch what happens, but some want to show themselves as heroes who can save people and put fires out. Types like that regularly apply to join the vigiles. Smart recruiting officers have a nose for it and reject them.'
'You met a recruiting officer. You thought Rusticus was smart, didn't you, Marcus?' I pondered that.
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