Enemies at Home
Authors: Lindsey Davis
Table of Contents
Rome, the Esquiline Hill: June
AD
89
The Course of Honour
Rebels and Traitors
Master and God
A Cruel Fate
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
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Lindsey Davis 2014
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 76662 2
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
Friends and Acquaintances
| Flavia Albia | escaping a holiday, on the case |
| Aulus Camillus Aelianus | a legal adviser, her uncle |
| Quintus Camillus Justinus | ditto, more raffish and popular |
| Claudia Rufina | still his wife, against all odds |
| Hosidia Meline | Aelianus’ first ex, Claudia’s crony |
| Helena Justina | a force to be reckoned with |
| Tiberius Manlius Faustus | a plebeian aedile, with a problem |
| Laia Gratiana | another ex-wife, just a problem to herself |
| Apollonius | a very old waiter |
The Dead and their Associates
| Valerius Aviola | a happy bridegroom (dead) |
| Mucia Lucilia | his lucky bride (dead also) |
| Polycarpus | their loyal freedman and steward |
| Graecina | his wife, a home-maker |
| Sextus Simplicius | Aviola’s friend and executor |
| Hermes | Mucia’s guardian and executor |
| Galla Simplicia | a single mother, a legacy-hunter |
| Valerius, Valeria and Simplicia | the children she brought up single-handed |
| Fauna and Lusius | neighbours who saw something |
| Secundus and Myrinus | neighbours who heard nothing |
Crime and Punishment
| Titianus | diligent investigator of the Second Cohort |
| Juventus | anonymous, on special duties, do not ask |
| Unnamed | their cohort tribune, disposition unknown |
| Cassius Scaurus | caring tribune of the Fourth Cohort |
| Fundanus | on contract for torture and burials |
| Old Rabirius | a shadowy capo |
| Young Roscius | a coming threat |
| Gallo | fixer and trusty, do not trust him |
| A prisoner | a dead man |
Slaves, various
Dromo, Gratus, Libycus, Amethystus, Diomedes, Daphnus, Phaedrus, Nicostratus (not for long), Chrysodorus, Melander, Amaranta, Olympe, Myla (and a baby), Gratus, Onesimus (off the scene), Cosmus
Pets
| Puff | a spoiled lapdog, a bad girl |
| Panther | itching for trouble, a good boy |
June
AD
89
E
ven before I started, I knew I should say no.
There are rules for private informers accepting a new case. Never take on clients who cannot pay you. Never do favours for friends. Don’t work with relatives. Think carefully about legal work. If, like me, you are a woman, keep clear of men you find attractive.
The Aviola inquiry broke every one of those rules, not least because the clients had no money, yet I took it on. Will I never learn?
One warm, starry June night in the city of Rome, burglars invaded a ground-floor apartment on the Esquiline Hill. A large quantity of fine domestic silverware was taken, which people assumed was the primary target. The middle-aged couple who rented the fashionable suite had married only recently, which made what happened to them more poignant. After the robbers left, their bodies were found on the marital bed, amid signs of violent struggle. Both had been strangled.
The dead couple were wealthy enough to merit an investigation, a privilege that was generally thought too good for the poor, though it was normally available to victims who had left behind influential friends, as was the case here. Enquiries were first assigned to a vigiles officer, Titianus of the Second Cohort. In fairness, Titianus was no more inept than most vigiles. He knew that two plus two made four – unless he happened to be preoccupied with watching a good cockfight, when he might inadvertently say five. But he had a decent record of arresting pickpockets in the Market of Livia. For about two hours he even thought that trying to solve a double murder was exciting. Then reality set in.
Titianus found it impossible to identify the thief or thieves. After asking around a bit, he turned his attention to the household, declaring that this must be an inside job. Inevitably his gaze fell on the owners’ freedmen and slaves. The freedmen were mature, articulate and well organised; that was how they had managed to gain their liberty and how they now bamboozled Titianus. The slaves were more vulnerable: younger and naive, or else older and plain dim. Nobody ever said any of them had threatened their master and mistress, but to a law officer in Rome any culprits were better than none and with slaves no real proof was necessary. They could be accused, tortured, prosecuted and executed on simple probability. Titianus put on a clean tunic to look good, then went and announced to his cohort tribune that he had the answer. The slaves did it.
The slaves got wind of their plight. They knew the notorious Roman law when a head of household was murdered at home. By instinct the authorities went after the wife, but that was no use if she was dead too. So unless the dead man had another obvious enemy, his slaves fell under suspicion. Whether guilty or not, they were put to death. All of them.
The good thing about such systematic capital punishment, occurring in public of course, was that it helped make other slaves, of whom there were hundreds of thousands in Rome, more well behaved. The proportion of masters to slaves was very small so nobody wanted this big slave population to get the idea of staging a rebellion. In our city it had been decided not to dress slaves in any distinguishing way, because then they might realise the power of their own numbers.
Many owners lived in constant fear of slaves turning against them. You cannot batter loyalty into a sullen, captive foreigner and neither can you even guarantee that kindly treatment will gain their gratitude. In Rome, executing slaves who betrayed their masters was extremely popular therefore. At least it was among the slave-owning classes.
Terrified, and with good reason, some of the accused slaves bolted from the elegant Esquiline house and took refuge a distance away at the Temple of Ceres. By tradition, this monument on the Aventine Hill offered a haven for refugees. They could claim sanctuary, be kept safe and even hope to be fed.
In theory, the authorities fostered the great temple’s famous role as a focus of liberty and protector of the desperate. However, nobody wants to take fine ideals too far.
In a swift, panic-stricken meeting just after dawn, the issue of how to get rid of the fugitives was handed to a magistrate whose duties gave him close connections to the temple. His name was Manlius Faustus, one of that year’s plebeian aediles, and I knew him. I liked his methods. He always stayed calm.
Charged with solving the problem, Faustus solemnly agreed with the Temple of Ceres authorities that it was important to take the correct action. This situation could easily turn ugly. They wanted to avoid censure. The public were shouting for a solution, preferably bloody. The
Daily Gazette
had already asked for a quotable comment and
was about to feature the story in its scandal section; publication would fire lurid Forum gossip. The unseen eye of the emperor was probably on the Temple. Faustus had been handed a rather hot platter here.
As this dutiful man tried to come up with ideas, he walked to a bar called the Stargazer. There, while he pondered the meagre choice for breakfast, he ran into me.
I
had seen the aedile coming − always a good idea with magistrates who can impose large fines. Anyone who runs a market stall, anyone with a pavement outside their premises, anyone whose profession is heavily regulated (any prostitute, for instance), loathes aediles. Informers like me avoid them. My relatives who ran the Stargazer would not thank him for eating there, given that part of his job was the regulation of bars. They would not thank me either. They would think he had chosen it because he knew it was my local.
I had first met Faustus a few weeks before, working jointly on an investigation and sometimes putting our heads together in this very caupona. I had known him to go about in disguise, though not today. He was a solid man in his mid-thirties, who came down the drab street with a steady tread. He had no flashy train of attendants, relying on his purple-striped tunic to deter trouble-makers. Aediles were not given bodyguards. They were sacrosanct, protected by religious laws. Besides, he was obviously tough; even when he was preoccupied, Faustus looked as if he punched his weight. That was assuming people even noticed him; he was not the kind of official who made a lot of noise wherever he went.
