Two For The Lions (19 page)

XXXVI

HELLO. Still waiting for an unexpected development?

There was none. 

It happens. 

It happens all the time.

XXXVII

Since Falco & Partner were unable to solve who had killed Rumex, we returned to our commission for the Censors. We were not men who became obsessed. I, Marcus Didius

Falco, was an ex-army scout and an informer of eight years standing: a professional. Even my partner, who was an idiot, could recognise a dead end. We felt frustrated, but we handled it. After all, we had our fortunes to earn. That always helps maintain a rational attitude.

At the end of December was Saturnalia, my daughter's first. At seven months, Julia Junilla was still too young to understand what was going on. Far from clamouring to be King-for-the-Day, our prim miss hardly noticed the occasion, but Helena and I happily made fool... of ourselves arranging presents, food and fun" Julia endured it gravely, already aware that her parents were as crazed as a cheap pot. Since we had no slaves we made Nux take the role of lording it over us; Nux got the hang of being insubordinate very fast.

Saturninus and Calliopus both left Rome, ostensibly for the festival. When neither had returned after several weeks, I made enquiries and discovered both had now gone to Africa, taking their wives. Hunting, it was said.

Lying low, we thought. I asked at the Palace if we could head off in pursuit but, unsurprisingly since there was no evidence against either man in the Rumex case, Vespasian sent word that we were to buckle down to our Census work.

"Ow!" said Anacrites. I just got on with it.

For three months we worked harder than either of us had ever done. We knew these enquiries were a finite goldmine. The Census was supposed to take a year, and it would be difficult to extend much beyond that unless we had exceptional grounds. We just made out our report on the evidence we had, and the culprit was told to cough up.

This was a job where suspicion alone sufficed. Vespasian wanted the income. If our victim was important it was wise to be able to substantiate our accusations, but in the arena world "important" was a contradictory term. So we suggested figures, the Censors issued their demands, and most men did not bother to ask if they could appeal. In fact, the grace with which they accepted our findings told us we perhaps even underestimated their degree of fraud.

Our consciences, therefore, remained clear.

Of course we did have consciences. And we hardly ever had to bend them into shape.

I received a letter from Camillus Justinus who had reached the city of Oea, thanks to the money I had sent. After some swift exploration, he confirmed that Calliopus had no "brother", though he did own a thriving business supplying beasts and gladiators for the local Games as well as exporting them; the arena was a highly popular sport in all parts of Tripolitania. Horribly Carthaginian. A religious rite, replacing actual human sacrifice, in honour of the harsh Punic Saturn--not a god to tangle with.

Justinus supplied enough detail... of the lanista's Tripolitanian landholdings for us to innate our estimate of unpaid tax in his case by a satisfying whack. In return for these efforts I sent the fugitive lad my drawing of silphium, though no more money. If Justinus wanted to make a fool of himself in Cyrenaica, nobody was going to blame me.

The day after the letter went off my mother was visiting; as she poked around in her usual fearless way she saw my rough for the sketch.

"You messed that up. It looks like a mildewed chive. It should be more like giant fennel."

"How do you know, Ma?" I was surprised anyone in the backstreets of the Aventine would be familiar with silphium.

"People used the chopped stem, like garlic; it wasn't a veg on its own? And the juice was a medicine. Your generation thinks we were all dumbclucks."

"No, Ma. I just think you lived on short rations and this is a highly-prized luxury."

"Well, I know silphium. Scaro tried to grow it once."

My great-uncle Scaro, deceased whilst in pursuit of the perfect false teeth, had been a noble character; a complete liability, in fact. I had dearly loved the crazy experimentalist, but like all Ma's relations out on the Campania, his schemes were ludicrous. I had thought I knew the worst of them. Now I learned he had tried to break into the notoriously well-protected silphium trade. The merchants of Cyrenaica may have cherished their ancient monopoly, but they reckoned without my family, it seemed.

"He would have been rich, if he'd managed it."

"Rich and daft," said Ma.

"Did he obtain seed?"

"No, he pinched a cutting from somewhere."

"He was in Cyrenaica? I never knew that."

"We all thought he had a girlfriend in Ptoloma's. Not that Scaro ever admitted it."

"Dirty old rogue! But he can't have had much hope of a crop."

"Well your grandfather and his brother were always hunting myths." Ma said that as if she held Grandpa responsible for some aspects of my own character.

"Did nobody tell them silphium had never been domesticated?"

"Yes, they were told. They reckoned it was worth atty."

"So Great-Uncle Scaro sailed off like an overweight, slightly deaf Argonaut? All set on plundering the Gardens of the Hesperides? But silphium grows in the mountain sour market garden isn't a hillside in Cyrene! Was Scaro ever able to reproduce the right conditions?"

"What do you think?" answered Ma.

She changed the subject, now taking me to task for renting an office over at the Saepta Julia, too close to Pa's evil influence. Anacrites had obviously pretended that this was my idea, not his' He was a shameless liar; I tried to expose him to Ma, who just accused me of denigrating her precious Anacrites.

There was not much danger of Pa subverting my loyally. I almost never saw him, which suited me.

Working at full stretch, Anacrites and I were hardly ever in the office during the months after New Year. I was rarely at home, either. It was hard. The long hours took their toll on us, and also on Helena. When I saw her, I was too tired to say much or do much, even in bed. Sometimes I fell asleep in my dinner. Once we were making love. (Only once, believe me.)

Like any young couple attempting to get established, we kept telling ourselves the struggle would be worth it, while all the time our dread slowly grew. We felt we would never escape from the drudgery. Our relationship had come under too much strain, just at the time when we should have been enjoying it most sweetly. I became bad tempered; Helena was run down; the baby started crying all the time. Even the dog gave me her opinion; she made a bed under the table and refused to come out when I was around.

"Thanks, Nux."

She whined dolefully.

Then things really went wrong. Anacrites and I submitted our first major fees claim to the Palace; unexpectedly, it came back unpaid. There was a query against the percentage we had charged.

I took the scrolls up to the Palatine and demanded an interview with Laeta, the chief clerk who had commissioned us. He now maintained that the amount we were charging was unacceptable. I reminded him it was what he himself had agreed. He refused to acknowledge that and proposed instead to pay us a fraction of what we had expected. I stood there gazing at the bastard, all too well aware that Anacrites and I had no supporting contract document. My original bid existed, the inflated tender I had been so proud of swinging; Laeta had never confirmed in writing his agreement to the terms. I had never thought it mattered, until now.

Contractually, right was on our side. That didn't matter a damn.

To strengthen our case, I mentioned that our work had first been discussed with Vespasian's lady, Antonia Caenis, implying in the most delicate way that I was subject to her patronage. I still had faith in her. Anyway, I was certain she had taken a shine to Helena.

Claudius Laeta managed to disguise his undoubted relish and assume a suitably doleful face: "It is with regret that I have to inform you Antonia Caenis recently passed away."

Disaster.

For a moment I did wonder if he might be lying. Senior bureaucrats are adept at misinforming unwelcome suppliants. But not even Laeta, a snake if I ever met one, would compromise his professional standing with a lie that could be so easily checked and disproved. His deceit was always the unquantifiable kind. This had to be true.

I managed to keep my face expressionless. Laeta and I had a history. I was determined not to show him how I felt.

In fact he appeared slightly subdued. I had no doubt that cutting the rate was his idea, yet he seemed daunted by the personal damage to me. He had his own reasons: if he ever wanted to use me in future for off-colour official work, this knock-back would inspire me to new flights of rhetoric in telling him to disappear up his own rear end and without leaving a clue of thread to find his way out.

Like a true bureaucrat he was keeping options open. He even asked if I wanted to make a formal request for an interview with Vespasian. I said yes please. Laeta then admitted that the old man was currently keeping to himself: Titus might be prevailed upon to look into my problem; he had a sympathetic reputation, and was known to favour me. Domitian's name never even came up; Laeta knew how I felt about him. Possibly he shared my views. He was the kind of smooth senior politician who would regard the young prince's open vindictiveness as unprofessional.

I shook my head. Only Vespasian would do. However, he had just lost his female partner of forty years; I could not intrude" I knew how I would behave if I ever lost Helena Justina. I did not suppose that the grieving Emperor would feel in a mood to approve exceptional payouts to informers (whom he used, but famously despised), even if their rates had been agreed. I did not know for sure that Antonia Caenis had ever spoken to him about me; anyway now was the wrong moment to remind him of her interest.

"I can make you a payment on account," said Laeta, "pending formal clarification of your fees."

I knew what that meant. Payments on account are made to keep you happy. A sop. Payments on account are volunteered when you can be damned sure that is all that you will ever get. Turn down the offer, though, and you go home with nothing at all.

I accepted the stage-payment with the necessary grace, took my signed voucher for the release of the cash, and turned to leave.

"Oh by the way, Falco." Laeta had one final jab. "I understand you have been working with Anacrites. Will you tell him that his salary as an intelligence officer on sick-leave will have to be deducted from what we pay to your partnership?"

Dear gods.

Even then the bastard had to have one more go at flaying us. "Incidentally, Falco, we must be seen to do everything properly. I suppose I ought to ask: have you completed a Census declaration on your own account?"

Without a word, I left.

As I was storming from Laeta's office a clerk rushed after me. "You're Didius Falco? I've a message from the Bureau of Beaks'

"The
what
?"

"Joke name! It's where Laeta pensions off incompetents. They're a pokey section who do nothing all day; they have special responsibilities for traditional augury--sacred chickens and the like."

"What do they want with me?"

"Some query about geese."

I thanked him for his trouble then continued on my way.

For once I turned away from the Cryptoporticus, my customary route down to the Forum. I was spurning public life. Instead, I worked my way through the complex of pompous old buildings on the crest of the Palatine, out past the Temples of Apollo, Victory and Cybele, to the supposedly unassuming House of Augustus, that miniature palace with every pampering amenity where our first emperor liked to pretend he was just a common man. Devastated by the blow Laeta had delivered, I let myself stand high on the hill's crest above the Circus Maximus, looking across the valley, homeward to the Aventine. I needed to prepare myself: Telling Helena Justina I had worked myself into the ground just for a sack of hay would be hard. Listening to Anacrites whining was even worse to contemplate.

I bared my teeth in a bitter grin. I knew what I had done, and it was a grand old irony. Falco & Partner had spent four months gloating about the draconian powers of audit we could exercise over our poor victims: our authoritarian Census remit, from which there was so famously no appeal.

Now we had been shafted with exactly the same rules.

XXXVIII

To cheer me up, Helena Justina attempted to distract me by using her own money to hire a lecture hall to stage the recital of poetry over which I had been dreaming for as long as she had known me. I spent a long time preparing the best pieces I had written, practising how to recite them, and thinking up witty introductions. As well as advertising in the Forum, I invited all my friends and family.

Nobody came.

XXXIX

A dippy dog called Anethum, the property of Thalia, did his best to cheer me up that spring. He was a big, warm, floppy old thing who rolled the whites of his eyes manically, and who had been trained to act in pantomimes. He could play dead. A useful trick for anyone.

Anethum was making his debut as a warm-up act at the Megalesian Games in honour of Cybele. These are a welcome highlight, starting off the theatre season in April when the weather improves, and are preceded by a drawn-out series of dauntingly peculiar Phrygian rites. As usual the whole business had started back in the middle of

March with a procession of persons bearing reeds, which are sacred to Attis, the Great Mother's beloved, whom she apparently first discovered lurking in a bed of bullrushes. (A perfectly understandable act if he had any inkling that his future role was to castrate himself with a potsherd while in a crazed frenzy.)

A week later the Sacred Pine tree of Attis, cut at the dead of night, had been borne to the Temple of Cybele on the Palatine and hung up with wool and with violet crowns while the blood of sacrificial animals was splashed about. If you have a sacred pine tree, obviously you like it treated with reverence. This was followed by a street procession of the Priests of Mars, who leapt about vigorously to the accompaniment of sacred trumpets, causing a few stares in our sober city even though they did it every year.

Then, in honour of the wounds Attis inflicted on himself; the chief priest of the cult ritually slashed his own arm with a knife; given the very specific nature of what Attis had endured, the fact it was only the priest's arm had always caused me great amusement. At the same time, a wild dance was being enacted around the Sacred Pine tree; to keep up his spirits the chief priest flagellated himself and his fellows with a whip hung with knucklebones; the priests' mutilations were later turned into permanent tattoos as a sign of their dedication. There were screams and yells from devotees, faint from fasting and hysterical from the dance.

More bloody rites and solemn liturgies occurred for those who still had the stamina, followed by a day of formal rejoicing and the real start of the great festival. The reward for lasting out the blood and violence was a general carnival" Citizens of all ranks donned improbable masks and disguises. Thus freed from being recognised, they indulged in improbable behaviour too" Shocking. The priests of the cult, who were norn1alIy confined to their enclosure on the Palatine on the grounds that they were foreign and frenzied, were now let out for an annual bash. Flutes, drums and trumpets pounded out strange eastern music with unnerving rhythms as they whirled through the streets. The sacred image of the goddess, a silver statue, its head mystically represented by a great black stone from Pessinus, was taken to the Tiber and washed. The sacrificial implements were also cleaned up, then transported home in showers of rose petals.

Alongside the processional elements ran a secret women's orgy, famous for positively Bacchic scenes. Women who ought to know better tried to revive the old traditions, though in the new Flavian mood of respectability they were on to a loser there. "I can assure you," Helena assured me gravely, "after the doors are closed to men, all that really happens is mint tea and gossip." She then claimed that the rumours of frenetic debauchery were just a confidence trick to cause worry to the male sex, and I believed her, of course.

The Games started three days after the Kalends of April. Once again a procession bore the sacred image through the streets in a chariot, with the priests of the cult singing Greek hymns and collecting coins from the populace. (Always a useful way for people to dispose of out-of-date and foreign small change.) The chief priest took a prominent role; he was supposed to be a eunuch, a fact borne out by his wearing a purple frock, a veil, long hair under an exotic eastern turban with a peaked top and ear lappets, necklaces, and a portrait of the goddess on his breast, while carrying a basket of fruit to symbolise abundance, plus a bundle of cymbals and flutes. Conch shells boomed alarmingly. It ought to be terribly exotic, a grim cult that should probably be expelled from the city, but for those who wanted to believe that Trojan Aeneas had founded Rome, then Mount Ida was where Aeneas hewed the wood for his ships and the Great ldaean Mother was the mythical mother of our race; Cybele was here to stay. You could see it as a lot more respectable than us all being descended from a pair of murderous twins who had been fostered by a she-wolf.

Once the Games started, we endured several days of earnest drama in the theatres. Then the chariot races took place in the Circus Maximus, with the statue of Cybele enthroned on the spina beside the central obelisk. She had been carried there in the solemn entry procession on a litter placed in a chariot drawn by tame lions. That had depressed me, remembering Leonidas.

By the time of the races I was in an oddly detached mood. The exotic rituals of the Megalesis had reinforced it. Normally one to avoid such festivals, I found myself taking part in the public gawping, yet in a grey spirit. This was Rome. Alongside the archaic mysteries of religion, other more sinister traditions still flourished: unfair patronage, grinding establishment snobbery, and the harsh cult of blighting the aspirations of the little man. Nothing would change.

It was with relief that we had reached the races and gladiatorial displays. That first ceremonial start, with the president of the Games clad in triumphal uniform as he led in the participants through the main gate of the Circus Maximus was always more vital than any of the succeeding summer shows. It heralded a new dawn. Winter was over. The procession trod on a carpet of spring flowers. The open-roofed theatres and circuses would hum with life again. The streets would abound with life by day and night" Competitive arguments would dominate public discussion. The ancillary trades--snack-sellers, betting touts, prostitutes--would flourish. And there was always a chance that the Blues would drive the Greens off the racetrack and come in victorious.

In fact the one bright spot in my life that April was that my team coasted home. It always carried the secondary benefit that any discomfiture of their archrivals the Greens upset my brother-in-law Famia. That spring the Greens were fielding lousy teams; even the big Cappadocian greys of whom Famia had boasted to me so outrageously on the day the leopardess escaped were actually shipwrecked first time out. In between drowning his sorrows, Famia kept trying to persuade his faction to adopt a radical new purchase strategy, while the Blue teams thundered past them time and again and I enjoyed myself sniggering"

Work was slack. The Census assessments were tailing off, as they had been bound to. To help him forget how Laeta had cruelly axed his sick-pay, Anacrites busied himself tidying up final reports that were already satisfactory; I left him to grumble and tinker. Instead, one fine, bright day when most of Rome was feeling optimistic, I had volunteered to help Thalia present her wonderdog in his first public acting role. It was, of course, unthinkable for a respectable citizen to appear in a stage performance. But I felt gloomy and obstreperous; breaking the rules suited me just fine. I only pushed it to the limit: all I had to do was look after the dog when he was off-stage.

The pantomime was at the Theatre of Marcellus. It took place at the end of the morning, just before everyone transferred to the Circus Maximus for the races and gladiatorial displays which would happen after lunch. This was a temporary measure: the great stone Amphitheatre of Statilius Taurus where gladiators used to perform had been destroyed in Nero's Great Fire ten years ago. The flamboyant new Flavian creation at the end of the Forum had been designated its formal replacement, but while that was being built the Circus Max stood in. Being the wrong shape, it was not entirely successful, so today we had an extra few hours of theatricals.

A lively programme had been advertised for later in the afternoon at the Circus: gladiators, a fom1al venatio, and to start with an execution of prisoners. One of them, finally, was to be the mass murderer Thurius.

Thurius, in whom I had such an interest, would be despatched by a new trained lion, the property of an importer called Hannobalus who had a curious history: although he was wealthier than anyone else Anacrites and I had investigated, we had been forced to conclude that this man's Census declaration was unimpeachable.

He came from Sabratha, but was otherwise a mystery man. As far as we were ever able to tell, he had told the Censors nothing but the truth--with an insolence that seemed to say he was doing so well in his business that deception was beneath him. We never met him; there was nothing in his accounts to make us demand an interview.

He seemed to have a complete contempt for cheating--or as Saturninus, Calliopus and all our other subjects for study would call it, the finer points of accountancy" This man had paid an enormous tax bill as casually as if it were a snack-bar tab for two rissoles. His lion was reckoned to be first-rate too.

With my mind on the execution, it was hard to give Thalia's trained dog his due. However, we had planned that if he was a success I would turn the event to my advantage, so I had to concentrate. It was a comedy with a large cast of characters, its frenetic scenes accompanied by Thalia's circus orchestra--a fine ensemble which included the strenuous tones of long trumpets, circular horns, and Sophrona the sweetly pretty water-organist. As the organ boomed a throbbing crescendo the dog trotted out, with his coat burnished and his tail up. Pretty quickly the audience allowed themselves to be won over by Anethum's appealing personality. He was a charmer, and he knew it" Like every playboy since antiquity, he was utterly brazen; the crowd knew they ought to have seen through him, but they let him get away with it.

At first the dog was merely required to pay attention to the action and behave appropriately. His reactions were good--especially since the ludicrous plot was so hard to follow most people just looked around for drink-sellers. At one point, for reasons I didn't tax myself with, one of the clowns on stage decided to do away with an enemy and supposedly poisoned a loaf: Anethum ate the bread, swallowing it down greedily. He then appeared to shiver, stagger, and nod drowsily as if drugged; finally he collapsed on the ground.

Playing dead, the dog was dragged about and hauled to and fro. When he continued to lie prone, however roughly he was towed across the stage, it looked as if he might really have been killed--a lousy sacrifice to popular taste in drama. Then, on cue, he slowly roused himself shaking his great head as if waking from a deep, dream filled sleep. He looked around, and then ran to the right actor, on whom he fawned with doggy joy.

He was such a good performer, his revival had an eerie quality. People were strangely moved. This included the president of the Games. As Thalia and I had known, today's president was not some half-baked praetor but, resplendent in a palm-embroidered triumphal robe, the Emperor himself: When the play ended (a relief all round, frankly), word came down for the dog's trainer to attend on Vespasian.

Thalia bounded out followed by me on the end of Anethum's lead.

"New career, Falco?" As soon as Vespasian spoke, I knew I would get nowhere. Straightening up after parring the wonderdog, the old man gave me one of his long cool stares. His broad forehead creased characteristically into a frown.

"At least dog-walking has the benefits of fresh air and exercise--that's better than working for the Censors, sir."

As they queued to leave the theatre prior to walking around to the Circus, the crowd was making a lot of noise. Nobody was interested in what passed between the Emperor and mere proponents of a speciality act. My hope of achieving a decent life was being destroyed here, yet it attracted little public notice--and even less sympathy from Vespasian himself:

"Problem? Why can't you send in a petition decently?"

"I know what happens to petitions, sir." Vespasian must be aware how they were deflected by the very clerks who were thwarting me. He knew all about the Palace secretariats. But he also had no truck with people insulting his staff: I could see Claudius Laeta lurking among the retinue. The urbane bastard was in his best toga, and unconcernedly chomping a packet of dates. He ignored me.

Vespasian sighed. "What's your gripe, Falco?"

"A difference over fees'"

"Sort it out with the bureau who commissioned you."

The Emperor turned away. He only paused to signal a slave to bring Thalia a bulging purse in reward for her trained dog's charm and cleverness. Turning back again to salute her as she curtsied, Vespasian blinked a bit at the flutterings of her indecent skirts, then inadvertently caught my eye. He looked as though he was growling under his breath.

I said in a low voice, "Helena Justina and I would like to offer our sympathies on your great loss, sir."

I reckoned if Antonia Caenis had ever discussed my case, he would remember what she had said" I left it at that. This was how it had to be: I had made one last throw, and I would not try to pressurise him any more. That would spare him embarrassment. And it would spare me losing my temper in front of the sneering imperial retinue"

Thanking Thalia, I strode off to the Circus Maximus where I joined Helena at our seats in the upper terraces. Down below, they were already carrying in the placards which recorded the appalling deeds of the men who were to be executed. All around the stadium slaves were sweeping the sand smooth ready for the lions and criminals. Attendants were placing veils on the statues, lest the divine effigies be offended by the convicts' shame and the ghastly sights to come. The stakes to which the condemned criminals would be tied had been hammered into place.

The convicts themselves had been dragged in, chained together by the neck. They were huddled near an entrance, being stripped naked by an armour-clad warder. Surly deserters from the army, spindly slaves caught in flagrante with their noble mistresses, and a notorious mass murderer: a good haul today" I did not try to identify Thurius' Soon he and the rest would be dragged out and tied to their stakes; then the beasts, whom we could already hear roaring outside, would be loosed to do their work.