Deadly Election
Authors: Lindsey Davis
Contents
Rome, the Caelian Hill: July AD 89
The Course of Honour
Rebels and Traitors
Master and God
The Falco Series
The Silver Pigs
Shadows in Bronze
Venus in Copper
The Iron Hand of Mars
Poseidon’s Gold
Last Act in Palmyra
Time to Depart
A Dying Light in Corduba
Three Hands in the Fountain
Two for the Lions
One Virgin too Many
Ode to a Banker
A Body in the Bath House
The Jupiter Myth
The Accusers
Scandal Takes a Holiday
See Delphi and Die
Saturnalia
Alexandria
Nemesis
The Flavia Albia Series
The Ides of April
Enemies at Home
Deadly Election
Falco: The Official Companion
Lindsey Davis
A Flavia Albia Novel
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Lindsey Davis
Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2015
Map by Rodney Paull
The right of Lindsey Davis to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 444 79420 5
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
EC4Y 0DZ
| Flavia Albia | an informer, feeling seedy |
| The Camillus brothers | her useful uncles |
| L. Petronius Longus | her father’s old crony, another uncle |
| Maia Favoniaher | laid-back aunt |
| T. Manlius Faustus | a magistrate, not her lover |
| Tullius Icilius | his uncle, with big plans |
| Dromo | Faustus’s slave, with little sense |
| Laia Gratiana | Faustus’s unforgiving ex-wife |
| Gornia | a very old auction porter |
| Staff | porters, security, messenger, donkey boy |
| T. Claudius Laeta | a retired bureaucrat |
| T. Claudius Philippus | his son, a chip off the old stylus |
| Abascantus | a mandarin, on gardening leave |
Candidates for Plebeian Aedile and their manifestos:
| Trebonius Fulvo | devoted wife, strong core, harsh attitude |
| Arulenus Crescens | disappointed mistress, weak principles |
| S. Vibius Marinus | missing wife, good intentions |
| L. Salvius Gratus | loyal sister, cynical manipulator |
| Dillius Surus | rich wife, convivial appeal |
| Ennius Verecundus | quiet wife, stern mother, no hope |
| Volusius Firmus | loving wife, thwarted hope, standing down |
| |
| Callistus Valens | who has gone to the country |
And his family – sons, nephew, wives, ex-wives, granddaughter, slaves
| Julia Verecunda | the mother-in-law from Hades |
And her family – daughters, son, in-laws, grandchildren
| Marcella Vibia and her husband | proud parents |
| Strongbox Man | a mystery |
| Titus Niger | an efficient agent |
| Claudia Galeria | his wife, a good manager |
| ‘Puce Tunic’ | a loafer with a terrible dress sense |
| Fundanus | an undertaker with a horrible job |
| Priestess of Isis | a wounded plaintiff |
The financial fraternity
| Nothokleptes and Son | Egyptian bankers |
| Balonius | a Gallic banker |
| Other bankers | Greek, Syrian, unavailable |
| Claudia Arsinoë | a different kind of banker |
Miscellaneous
| Consul/‘Incitatus’ | a spirited hound |
| Venus with the Big Behind | popular art (in quadruplicate) |
| Boy with a Thorn in His Foot | unpopular art |
| Ursa | a mouldy bear, unsaleable |
| Patchy | a deplorable donkey |
July AD 89
1
N
ever hold an auction in July. In Rome, who’s around then? People who can escape will have fled to rural retreats in cooler parts of Italy. The rest are on their deathbeds or have stayed here to avoid relatives.
Hopeless. Everybody’s tunic is sticking to them; sweat pours down their greasy necks. Porters drop things, then storm off in a huff. Sellers vacillate and buyers renege. Dockets go missing. Payments ditto. Wild dogs invade and scatter the punters. Afterwards, somebody points out that no advertising notice was ever put up in the Forum. Rival auctioneers are not bothering to gloat at your poor takings: it’s too damned hot.
My father owns an auction house and in high summer he hides away at his seaside villa. His staff keeps the family business chugging along. It’s always a quiet period.
Nothing was different in the year of the consuls Titus Aurelius Fulvus and Marcus Asinius Atrantinus, except that before one sale in July our workers found a corpse.
I was in Rome. I had been at the coast, carried off there by my mother – ‘rescued’, she said – during an illness that had nearly killed me. She plucked me from my apartment and took me off to the family spread, south of Ostia. After three weeks of people fussing, I was longing to come back. A friend had originally found me lying half dead and gallantly saved my life, so I wanted to thank him properly and believed I was now strong enough for city life.
You may be thinking this friend and I were lovers. How wrong you would be.
It was an all-day journey by rackety cart down the Ostia Road to Rome. That really drained me. As soon as I stepped into my stuffy and silent apartment on the Aventine, I knew I was too weak. I stayed in bed for two days, fortunately sustained by a hamper of dainties from my mother. Lonely and tearful, I propped myself on pillows and munched my way through everything. I thought I had no appetite, but I had been a starving street child once. I hate waste.
All too soon, I licked out the last little dish of aspic salad. I would now have to fend for myself – or crawl back to the parents ignominiously. No chance of that.
Still, I love them. They adopted me when I was lice-ridden and desperate, a difficult teenager to whom they were loyal and affectionate when others would quail. They had turned a lost soul from far-away Britain into a fairly normal Roman daughter. I was now twenty-nine and an independent widow, but I had whined and argued to come back from the coast, worming away at it like my two younger sisters when they wanted new sandals.
‘Go, then. We’ll keep your bed made up!’ the parents scoffed. So now I had to live up to my claim of being fit.
I forced myself to drag on a tunic. Slowly, I descended a flight of outside stairs towards a balcony walkway. This half-rotten structure, a so-called fire escape, was inaccessible to most tenants. It ran around the bare interior courtyard, once a laundry but nowadays deserted. I lived in the Eagle Building, Fountain Court: one of many dark, creaking, stinking tenements in which miserable, poverty-stricken Romans – most of us – endure what passes for life. The edifice was full of inadequate apartments and prone to extremely odd smells. Father owned it, I regret to say. This did not add lustre to his reputation, though since he was a private informer, it was low to start with. People were amazed he had the money to possess a building – though much less amazed once they heard he was also an auctioneer, a profession that is famous for wealth.
I was an informer myself. Public opinion was even harder on me, because a respectable woman ought to remain at home all day. I should be weaving at my loom in a gracious atrium, between beating my inoffensive slave-girl or screwing a litter-bearer rather than my husband. Stuff that for a game of knucklebones. ‘Loom’ was a dirty word among my mother, sisters and me. I didn’t own a slave-girl and my husband died ten years ago. I worked. Not that I felt like it at the moment.
