Ode To A Banker (11 page)

'Leave it, Junia. Pa is in a mess, but he will sort himself out once he thinks up some new way to annoy people.'

'Well, if you lack a sense of duty, brother, I know I don't.'

'Isn't it just a question of falling on him in his grief, and pointingout that you would like to be his heirs?' I was too tired to be careful.

'Come off it, Marcus,' muttered Gaius, roused to defend thespecimen of womanhood he had chosen as his prickly wife. I had had enough.

'What do you want, Junia?'

'I came to keep you informed.'

'Of what?'

'I have volunteered to help our Father: I shall be running his caupona for him.'

It was at that moment that the party increased in numbers and the tension rose rapidly too: Maia stormed in.

She had Marius with her - her nine-year-old elder boy - whom I had recommended as a spare hand for the auction house. Maia clutched him to her skirts, with her hand tangled in his tunic as if he was in some trouble. He must have been present when Junia tackled Pa, and had let slip to his mother what he had heard. He winced at me. I mimed back a cringe.

'So!' exclaimed Maia. She definitely knew then. It was going to be rough. Ajax sprang up and was about to jump all over her, but Maia snarled herself and sent him slinking into a corner, completely cowed.

'Hello, Maia you poor darling,' cooed Junia. They had never got on. Junia stepped over her own prone child (who had stopped holding his breath since he could see it was not working) and grappled Maia for sympathetic kissing.

Maia broke free, with a shudder. I waved frantically to tell my outraged younger sister not to press charges over the caupona scam.

Ever quick, Maia belted in her wrath. She and I had always been conspiratorial, and usually allied against our elder siblings. That left Junia looking for a quarrel which failed to materialise. She assumed an expression of slight puzzlement. With years of practice, Maia and I could make her feel threatened without revealing how.

'How are you bearing up to widowhood, Maia?'

'Oh, don't you worry about me.'

'And here's poor little Marius!'

Marius sidled free of both my sisters and huddled against me where I gave him a surreptitious hug. Knowing that Maia hated her children being showered with treats, Junia insisted on donating him an as to buy sweetmeats. Marius accepted the coin as if it were coated with poison, deliberately forgetting to say thanks. Junia pulled him up on that, while Maia seethed.

Junia then made sure she told Maia of her own scheme to run Flora's.

'Oh really?' said Maia indifferently - then she and I set about making fun of the idea that stiff and stately Junia might ever work behind a foodshop bar.

'A caupona is hard work,' Helena joined in.

'You're all being ridiculous,' Junia assured us. 'I shall only supervise from a distance. The place is worked by waiting staff.'

We laughed openly at that. I knew Apollonius, the sole waiter, much better than she did, and I could not see him putting up with her. Anyway, Junia had a long history of quarrelling with minions. 'I don't know why you want to take on such a burden,' said Helena. Her voice was deceptively gentle. 'I thought your role in life was as Gaius' companionable partner - true Roman marriage: keeping the home, nurturing your child, and sharing your husband's intimate confidences.'

Junia looked at Helena with deep suspicion; all my wicked lass had left out of the idyllic myth was 'working your loom in the atrium', though that really would have given the game away. Not a flicker of a smile betrayed Helena.

'
Junia always was an independent woman,' Gaius oozed. 'She is so capable we can't waste her talents. She will enjoy a little project of her own.'

'It will be the first time I ever remember our Junia holding down a job,' I scoffed. As far as I knew, she had lined up Gaius as a respectable prospect when she was about fourteen. She had sniffed out that he happened to be an orphan, left with his own apartment. He was older than Junia and already in work in the customs service - his only career. Gaius was a one job lifer; his employer could treat him like a slave, yet his loyalty would never fade. Equally, being snaffled by my sister had been a relief to him. I doubt if he would ever have had a romantic experience otherwise. He and Junia had started saving up for ghastly furniture and an eight-bowl dinner set the minute they first held hands on a garden bench.

'Better send word to the Valerian that they'll be getting a lot of new customers from over the road,' Maia jibed acidly.

'What's the Valerian?' Junia had clearly not surveyed the market before rushing in to claim this enterprise. We told her. She still rejected all suggestions that her venture might fail due to unsuitability and inexperience. 'I just think people should rally around Pa,' she boasted. We congratulated her on her piety, making it sound as insincere as possible. She and her family left not long afterwards.

Immediately I told Maia about the Emperor's ban on hot takeaways. 'Trust me, girl. I'm quick to find you opportunities - and even quicker to get you out of mistakes.' She thought about the commercial implications, then simmered down.

I told Marius to go and rescue Nux from the bedroom; if she bore live pups, he had been half-promised one of them. He carried Nux in, then sat quietly, stroking her and talking to her in a low voice. After a while the dog suddenly reached up and licked him with her bright pink tongue. His face lit up. Maia who had opposed the pup idea, scowled heavily at me.

She chewed her lip. 'I'm well out of that caupona. I'll have to find something else.'

'Go and see Geminus anyway,' suggested Helena. 'The caupona may not have been the only sideline Flora had-'

'That's the trouble,' said Maia 'He is in a grand mess without her. Flora kept all the accounts at the warehouse. She managed the diary of sales, organised the bookings for Pa to view items, followed up bad debts, and virtually ran everything.'

'There you are then.' Helena grinned at my sister. 'Decide what it's worth to you, then offer to be his secretary.' She seemed to be joking, but laughed quietly. 'I'd like to be a spider in a cranny when Junia comes to split her first week's caupona takings with Geminus – then discovers that while she's scrubbing fishscales off dirty cold bowls, you are sweetly in charge of the deskwork.'

'I hate Pa,' said Maia.

'Of course you do,' I told her. 'But you want a chance to put one over on Junia.'

'Ah, some sacrifices are just begging to be made,' agreed Maia. After a while she added, 'Knowing Pa, he won't have it.'

So that was organised.

Petronius came over for a report on the Chrysippus case, and we all spent a casual evening until Maia had to leave to fetch her other children from a friend's. Petro vanished at the same time, so he missed what happened next. Helena and I were quietly clearing up, when one of the vigiles from Lysa's house tumed up. But I was not required to head off into the night with him. The woman and her son had decided a better way to spoil my evening was to bring themselves to me.

XVII

CONVENTION WOULD have prophesied that Lysa, the ex-wife whom Chrysippus had rejected for a fluffy lamb, would be miserable mutton. That's not how it works. Chrysippus must have had the same taste in women thirty years ago as recently. Lysa might now be the mother of a grown man in his twenties, with half a lifetime of business experience and home-making behind her, but she also possessed a straight back and fine bone structure.

She was darker than Vibia and less prone to painting herself like a twice-a-night prostitute, but she had presence. As soon as she marched in, I prepared myself for trouble. Helena Justina was bristling even before I was, I noticed. For a small woman, Lysa could fill a room. She might have been one of my relatives; discomfort was her natural element.

The vigilis must have had a hard time from her. After a perfunctory introduction, he escaped. Helena Justina cast a swift eye over Julia who was playing quietly while she considered how to try out the hideous behaviour she had witnessed from young Marcus Baebius. Safe from immediate interruption, Helena plonked down on a bench with her arms folded. She jerked her skirts straight and silently let it be known she was a respectable matron who did not leave her husband to the snares of strange females in her own home. Lysa pretended she had been offered a seat on the same bench and sat down as if she owned the joint. Unconsciously, both women fondled their necklaces. Declarations of status were being lined up. Helena's Baltic amber just won on exotic origin, over Lysa's expensive yet slightly pedestrian pendant emerald on a gold bobbin chain.

Diomedes and I stood. He had all the presence of a lamp boy. Another nobody, a copy of his father but for the beard, and I suspected that now Papa had died a beard would sprout on his descendant in the next few weeks. The son had the same ordinary face and stance, the same squared-off forehead with only slightly less wispy eyebrows and hair. About twenty-five, as Vibia Merulla had estimated, he obviously liked the fancy things in life. Multicoloured embroidery was visible around the neck of his fine-weave tunic, and on one uncovered sleeve. I could smell his pomade from six feet away. He was shaven and formally togate. I was bootless, unbelted, and decidedly unbarbered; it made me feel rough.

'You are investigating my husband's death,' began Lysa, not waiting for me to agree or not. 'Diomedes, tell him where you were today.'

The son obediently recited: 'I was engaged at the Temple of Minerva all day.'

'Thanks,' I said coolly. They waited.

'Is that all?' asked Diomedes.

'Yes. For now.' He seemed puzzled, but glanced at his mother, then shrugged and turned to go out. As Lysa made a move to follow, I held up my hand to stop her.

Her son looked back. She gestured impatiently for him to go ahead. 'Wait outside by the litter, darling.' He went, obviously used to being ordered about.

I left it until he ought to be well out of earshot, then I walked to the porch, checked, and closed the outer door.

Lysa was regarding me curiously. 'You ought to be interested in people's movements.' Gods, she was bossy.

'I am.'

'But you are not questioning my son!'

'
No point, lady. You've got him far too thoroughly rehearsed.' If she flushed, it was imperceptible. 'Don't worry, I shall establish how your offspring amused himself while his father was being battered to death. Other people will be rushing to inform on him, for one thing.'

'Vibia!' she snorted. 'I'd like to know what she was doing this morning.'

'Not killing Chrysippus,' I said. 'Well, not personally. Anyway, I have been told they were a devoted pair.' At that, Lysa laughed hoarsely. 'Oh? Did the young widow have a reason to dispose of him, Lysa?' Lysa kept quiet judiciously, so I answered myself: 'She'll get the scriptorium. A nice little earner.'

Lysa looked surprised. 'Whoever told you that? There is no money in scrolls.'

This woman was supposed to have helped Chrysippus establish his business. So she would know, presumably. 'Surely your husband was a wealthy man? He must have been, if he was a major patron of the arts.'

'It never came from the scriptorium. And that's all the little cow will get. Vibia knows it too.'

I was thinking about that when Helena asked casually, 'We heard where your son has been today. What about you, Lysa?'

This affidavit sounded more real: unlike Diomedes with his one-stop temple story, Lysa produced a complicated catalogue of visiting old friends, other friends visiting her, a business meeting with a family freedman, and a trip to a dressmaker. A busy day, and if the people listed all confirmed what she had said, Lysa was accounted for. It was an intricate tapestry, with a horrible timescale and a large number of people involved. Checking would be tedious. Perhaps she was relying on that.

Helena crossed one knee over the other and leaned down to wave a doll at Julia. 'We commiserate with your loss. You and Aurelius Chrysippus were together for years, I'm told. And your support had been invaluable to him - not only in the home?'

'I made the man what he was, you mean!' growled Lysa through evidently gritted teeth. She was proud of her achievement. I for one believed in it.

'So they say,' replied Helena. 'The trouble is, crude rumourmongers may mutter that when you lost control of the business you had helped create, that may have driven you to violence.'

'Slander!' Lysa dismissed that suggestion calmly. I wondered whether she would sue - or was she so strong-willed she would ignore that kind of gossip? Strong-willed, I decided. More harm would be done by the publicity of a court case than by silent dignity. And that way, nobody could test whether the gossip was truth or lies.

'Of course we are supposed to be a paternalist society,' Helena mused. 'But our history is written by men and perhaps they underestimate the part played by women in real life. The Empress Livia, it is well known, was a rock to Augustus throughout the decades of his reign; he even allowed her to use his seal on state papers. And in most family businesses, the husband and wife play an equal part. Even in ours, Falco!'

Helena might smile, but ours was a family business where the husband knew when to look meek.