Enemies at Home (4 page)

Our first contact was the household steward, a freedman called Polycarpus. He looked as if his geographical origins were somewhere eastern, with chin stubble up to his cheekbones as if he came fresh from the desert. Even so, he spoke adequate Latin and had absorbed all the Roman myths about masculine superiority. He ignored me, but was perfectly pleasant when Faustus explained his official interest; the freedman readily agreed I could lodge there temporarily.

He showed Faustus the room. It was in a good position, just to the right of the main entrance area. Over the aedile’s shoulder I could see that it had fancy frescos and a geometric mosaic floor, but was barely furnished. Only a bed with a footstool alongside and an empty cupboard. I don’t ask for flower garlands, but a chamberpot would have been handy.

‘Our guests are people of status who tend to bring their own home comforts,’ Polycarpus explained, still addressing all remarks to Faustus. ‘Shall I find a few bits for the lady …?’

‘Don’t bother,’ I snapped.

I was not ready to interview the freedman, well, not while Faustus was lingering. I said I would see Polycarpus first thing next morning, to discuss what precisely had happened and who had been in the apartment when the murder took place. I shooed Faustus away as soon as I could, then set about familiarising myself with my surroundings.

Even before Faustus took his leave, their apartment seemed extremely quiet. Once he had gone, it was sepulchral.

Very pleasant.

I settled down on my bed to read a list of the refugee slaves, which had been given me by Faustus. Ink on papyrus. Nice lettering. Only later would I realise that even though he came from a home packed with staff, and could also call on the publicly employed secretaries in the aediles’ office, he wrote this himself. Charming. I do like a man who pays attention to my personal needs.

He listed those who took sanctuary at the Temple of Ceres by name, age, sex and occupation.

Amethystus, approx. 50, general work in house

Daphnus, 18, tray carrier/table attendant

Phaedrus, 24, litter bearer/door porter

Nicostratus, 28, litter bearer/door porter

Chrysodorus, approx. 40, philosopher

Melander, 20, scribe

Olympe, 15, musician

Diomedes, 47, gardener

Amaranta, 29, attendant/adorner to Mucia Lucilia

Libycus, 36, body slave/dresser to Valerius Aviola

No cup bearer. Still, I prefer the other proverb.
The flute girl did it.

I wondered if Olympe, 15, wore ankle chains and had wanton eyes? My father reckons castanets are always suspect − but most Roman men get excited when talking about foreign female entertainers. My mother points out that it is not necessary to have a big bosom to play the lyre well; in fact the opposite. Too much anatomy gets in the way.

Polycarpus turned up again while I was still pondering. He was clearly drawn by curiosity though he said he needed to explain arrangements for my meals: there were no kitchen staff, so trays would be brought in for my lunch and dinner from a thermopolium. I told him not to bother about lunch as I could never be sure where I would be; for example, one day I would certainly have to go over to the Temple of Ceres to interrogate the runaway slaves. Polycarpus said I could eat dinner in my room, or in the garden if I preferred.

Why no staff? Valerius Aviola had sent the chefs and pot-washers to Campania, ready to look after him in the holiday villa; he borrowed slaves from a friend while he and his bride remained in Rome – a normal kind of favour among the property-owning set. The slaves on loan had gone home that night, so I could assume they were not involved in the murders, though they could have passed details of the silverware to thieves.

‘You definitely saw the borrowed slaves leave?’

‘I counted them out every one. You cannot be too careful.’

Quite. On the same basis, I took a good look at Polycarpus, letting him see me do it. He was the usual − thought himself special, but he was overestimating. Rome was packed with freedmen, some of whom were genuinely talented. Others, like this one, just had big ideas.

He was trying to assess me. I had been introduced by Faustus as ‘a professional investigator who regularly assisted him’. I normally stress my independence, but I had accepted this. I needed validity, the right to give people instructions.

What Polycarpus was seeing was a nearly thirty-year-old woman of spare build and inscrutable expression. I could tell he judged everyone solely by appearance. So many people make that mistake. I look beyond, which is why I am a good informer.

I was quietly dressed, though with coloured hems on my gown and stole. I wore a wedding ring, plus everyday earrings. In working mode, I came with nothing on my belt where leisured matrons carried their manicure sets and keys, but a neat satchel slung across my body, in which I kept a note tablet, small change and a very sharp knife. Dark hair, simply knotted at the nape of my neck. Laced shoes I could walk in. Businesslike, but nothing to attract notice on the street.

‘No attendants?’ asked the freedman. He meant females; for chaperone purposes Dromo didn’t count. Polycarpus had judged me as not quite respectable − theoretically correct. I watched him wonder if it was an invitation for groping.

‘Touch me and you’re dead!’ I mentioned quietly. He extinguished the hope without remorse; he would give me no trouble, well, probably not much. This was Rome. He was a man. He had to dance the dance. ‘Let’s get one question out of the way, Polycarpus. Where were you when the attack happened?’

He pretended affront at the question (again as a matter of principle) then confidently declared: ‘I left after dinner for my own home.’

‘Which is where?’

‘A small apartment upstairs in this building.’

‘I may need to see your accommodation … Who can vouch for you leaving?’

‘My people, and everyone here.’ His alibi was unsound, since everyone he mentioned would be biased, and moreover he could have bribed them. I made no comment. I would return to the subject later, if I had to.

‘As a freedman, you still worked for your original master?’

‘Aviola found me indispensable. I continued with my old duties as his steward.’

‘How long?’

‘Past five years.’

‘Paid?’

‘Enough to live on. I moved out; I have rooms, with a wife and family. I come in on a daily basis.’

Separate living quarters were now his entitlement. He was a citizen, though he could not stand for office; however, any descendants would hold full civic rights. He managed not to sound too proud of it, just letting me know he had a normal life, able to come and go. His own place, his woman, his freeborn offspring.

‘Are there other freedmen associated with this household?’

‘Yes, but all gone away to run the master’s country estates.’

Time to tackle the crimes. ‘So! When and how did you learn of the tragedy, Polycarpus?’

‘I don’t know why, I just had a strange feeling that night, so I came back.’

‘No one fetched you?’

‘Oh, they would have done. But in fact I walked in during the hubbub straight afterwards.’

‘Had the thieves left?’

‘No sign of them. It was me who called the vigiles.’ Polycarpus wanted me to know that. Since suspicion had fallen so quickly on the household, he was anxious to seem law-abiding.

‘Did you go to fetch the vigiles yourself?’

‘I stayed here to supervise, to make sure no one touched anything …’ He had the subdued look of a man remembering horrors. I reckoned it was genuine, but I kept an open mind. ‘A slave went.’

I asked which one, but he still seemed too affected by shock to answer. I could ask them directly. I gestured to my list. ‘I have these details of the slaves in the temple. Did the whole household flee? Are any left in the apartment?’

‘Myla,’ said Polycarpus. ‘Heavily pregnant at the time. Too unwieldy to run. She popped a child out three days ago. Anyway, she seems to think her condition will rule her out as a suspect.’

‘I think I’ll run that idea past our legal advisers!’

Polycarpus caught my sceptical tone. ‘Not a defence?’

‘In Roman law? Probably no,’ I told him cynically. ‘Roman law probably says that the foetus should have broken out of the womb to defend Aviola and his wife, whose property it was … What is her role here?’

‘Oh, she’s just Myla. Been with us for years. She does whatever is needed. You’re bound to see her pottering around. Feel free to ask her for anything.’

‘What – even though she just gave birth?’

‘I had her back on duty straightaway. She knows what is expected. She was
verna
– born in the house.’

‘As her child will be,’ I commented. ‘Boy or girl?’ The freedman looked blank. ‘What is this baby Myla has produced?’ He shrugged; he had no idea. ‘Don’t you have to list it as a new possession?’

‘A scribe’s job,’ Polycarpus reproached me huffily. ‘I run the home. I never touch anything secretarial.’

Melander, 20, scribe, was in the Temple of Ceres.

The steward must have seen my face so he decided to elaborate. ‘I have to know manpower numbers, yes, and their capabilities. We use them young, carrying the odd towel or basket, but I don’t want any disturbance, no little wobbler going arse-over-tip. So I’m not interested in a babe-in-arms that will probably die in the next few years anyway. It’s no use to me until it’s decently walking.’

I said that was fully understandable.

Polycarpus was not to know that I had once been a small child in a house where I was expected to fetch and carry for people who viewed me as a commodity. I tried not to dislike him for this conversation – though I did not try hard.

A
s afternoon subtly became twilight, the youth Dromo reappeared. He had been taken away by Faustus, but came whistling back with a high-piled handcart. The aedile must feel guilty about my bare room, so his slave produced various items to improve my comfort: writing materials; a set of bowls, beakers, spoons and scoops, all on a tray; two cushions and a bolster, with embroidered covers; a couple of floor-mats; a small side-table with curved legs; three lamps, oil to put in them and a lighting flint (a thoughtful man); even a comfortable lightweight wicker chair. And a cudgel.

‘What?’

‘That’s for me to use,’ protested Dromo, grabbing it as I tried its weight.

‘For protecting me?’

He sniggered. ‘No! For protecting all this stuff of my master’s. I bet I know what they are like here. He’s asking to have everything pinched. Don’t you go looking at that handcart; I’ve got to take it back.’

I smiled at his presumption that I would snaffle a handcart for personal use. Mind you … ‘You can take it tomorrow when I send you over to Faustus with a report.’

‘You think I’ll forget it!’

I knew he would. Dromo regarded himself as the archetypal clever slave, but really he was much less clever.

He slouched off into the colonnade outside my room, where he started making himself a nest, laying out the best of the mats, then arranging his choice of crockery around it with the cudgel as a phallic centrepiece. I pottered indoors, doing what I knew he would consider suitable women’s work like positioning cushions. I soon grew tired of that.

I marched out and was about to begin investigating the apartment’s floor-plan when someone arrived with my supper. Dromo snatched it from the take-out waiter (who would be annoyed because he lost his tip). I was ushered back to my room. Dromo disapproved of where I had put the side-table, so he moved it, plonked the tray down, relocated my chair too, rattled me up a bowl and spoon, then produced a napkin grudgingly.

I lifted covers and found two kinds of cold bar food, one beaten-up bread roll, a wilting side salad and some spotty fruit.

‘I expect I have to make do with your leftovers,’ said Dromo, fixing me with a glare.

‘What if there aren’t any?’ I asked mildly.

‘Better be, or I’ll starve.’

Gods, this was hard work. I remembered why I did not own slaves myself.

I soon gave up on my unpalatable dinner, so took what I didn’t want to Dromo then set off to explore.

The apartment was unsymmetrical due to the street-plan outside. The front row of street shops meant there was a very long entrance corridor through them, after which came a decorative space that would have been an atrium, except that upper storey apartments overhead prevented it having an open roof. Where a collecting pool for rainwater might have been stood only a marble table: rectangular, heavy supports at each end, nothing on it. Unexciting. I would have kicked it out and got a rude statue.

Beyond the roofed hallway and overlooked from above was an open courtyard; looking across it should have given a fine view to impress important visitors. Not impressive, in this case. Too small and bare, with no flowers, and scruffy colonnades where the cheap pillars had chipped. Again, statues would have helped. If they existed, they had been taken away to Campania (low plinths remained, so this was likely).

The room allocated to me and other good guest bedrooms lay to right and left of the entrance suite, facing onto the courtyard. There were three or four, all handsome.

On the left were summer and winter dining rooms. Since they both faced the same way, the distinction was pointless. They had folding door-leaves that could be opened for air and a garden vista, had there been one – I made a mental note to ask ‘Diomedes, 47, gardener’ how exactly he spent his time, since he cannot have been tending topiary.

Over on the far side of the courtyard lay a service area, fairly well disguised. More prominently, the best feature of this apartment was a large, double height saloon. There I discovered the kind of domestic basilica that is supposed to give people of status somewhere to hold banquets or semi-public meetings – judicial hearings by minor magistrates or local government gatherings, when they are convened in a big man’s private house. Inside, it had two rows of columns dividing the space into a nave and side-aisles, although as this was a modest property not the elite home it wanted to be, the ceiling height, even in the domed centre, was too low. The only light came through high square windows, so the interior was as gloomy as tenements back in Fountain Court, where I lived. And I can tell you that Manlius Faustus and his uncle were important in their community, but I had been in their house, which was bigger than this, yet they did not bother to have a Corinthian oecus, as I knew such saloons are called.