A Body in the Bathhouse (23 page)

Togidubnus had a house here, and so did Helena’s uncle, Flavius Hilaris. His boasted hot-air flues and a very small black-and-white mosaic. In his almost permanent absence, it was run by a couple of wimpish slaves, who were apparently out at market today. Lovely. Turnip soup was the gourmet speciality they would provide for Camillus Justinus, their honored Roman guest. Ma would say, if we gave this province nothing else, people would thank us for the turnip. …

Justinus was still in bed. I found the rascal asleep. I hauled him out, poured cold water into a washing bowl, handed him a comb and found a scrunched-up overtunic on the floor under his bed. He had shaved—though not since I last saw him. According to my calendar, that was two days ago. He looked rough—yet to do the job I had given him, he was passable.

Someone appeared to have seen through his act: he had a black eye.

“I notice you are going into this task thoroughly. Lying in all morning with a terrible hangover—and sporting shiners.”

He groaned.

“Oh
very
good, Quintus. You do have the art of sounding half dead. Do you want your belt, or would firm support around the midriff be too much to tolerate?”

With a huge yawn, Justinus took the belt and wound it halfheartedly around himself. Fastening the buckle was too complicated. I tightened it for him as if he were a dreamy three-year-old. The belt was a splendid effort in British tooled leather with a silver-and-black buckle—though I could tell from the elongated prong holes it was not new.

“Secondhand?”

“Won it.” He grinned. “Game of soldiers.”

“Well, take care. I don’t want to find you sitting here naked next time because some trickster has cleaned you out playing strip checkers!” Helena would be horrified. Well, his darling bride, Claudia, would. “Shall I reel you back in for safety—or are you doing good work?”

“I’m having a delightful time, Falco.”

“Really? Who hit you?”

Justinus touched his eye gently. I found a bronze hand mirror among his kit and showed the damage. He winced, more at the marring of his looks than the pain.

“Yes,” I said calmly. “You are a big boy now. Looks like you’ve been playing with some older boys that your mummy would disapprove of.”

My assistant was not in the least discomfited. “He was young, actually.”

“Just stupidly drunk, or hated your accent?”

“Slight disagreement about a young lady.”

“You are a married man, Quintus!”

“So is he, I gathered. … I was squeezing her for information—while he was just squeezing her tits.”

“Marriage has made you very crude.”

“Marriage has made me—” He stopped, on the verge of some enormous sad confession. I let it pass.

As I pulled him to his feet and carried him off to the kitchen for sustenance, I kept him talking lest he fall asleep again. “So you compared notes with the assailant? That would have been when you became blood brothers in a heartrending reconciliation, over jugs of British beer?”

“No, Falco. We are two homesick Romans stranded here. When the disloyal girlie went off with someone else, he and I found a quiet wine shop where we shared a very decent Campanian red and a civilized platter of mixed cheeses.” Justinus had the knack of telling an unbelievable story as if it were entirely true.

“I bet.” I shoved him to a bench by a table. Someone had been chopping onions. Justinus went green and put his head in his hands. I moved the bowl away smartly.

“It was civilized,” he vowed again weakly.

“I don’t like the sound of that.” I put some bread in front of him. “Eat, you beggar. And keep it down. I will not clear up a mess.”

“What I really fancy is some nice traditional porridge. …”

“I’m not your adoring grandmother. I’ve no time to pamper you, Quintus. Stuff in the bread; then tell me what you’ve found out.”

“The nightlife,” declared my disreputable agent through a mouthful of stale crust, “is almost nonexistent here. What there is—well, I’ve found it!”

“I can see that.”

“Jealous, Falco? When the troops were here thirty years ago, they must have quickly taught the natives what tough lads needed in the way of a brothel and a couple of dingy drinking dives. You can get several colors of imported wine, not well traveled, and dried-up whelks as appetizers. In very small dishes. Second-generation hostesses and tapsters run those places—people, I’d say, with half or quarter Roman blood in them. The Second Augusta—that was your legion, wasn’t it?—must be well represented in their pedigrees.”

“Don’t look at me. I was based at Isca.”

“Anyway, you were a shy boy, weren’t you, Falco?”

Truer then he knew. “Innocence is more normal than most boys admit.”

“I believe I remember it myself. … Falco, the canabae hosts speak with a bastard Esquiline twang and can part you from your cash as quickly as any caupona-keeper in the Via Sacra.”

I caught his drift at once. “You are getting no more money.”

“On expenses?” he wheedled.

“No.”

He sulked, then carried on reporting. “Men from the palace site come into town most evenings. They walk here and back.”

“It’s about a mile. Easy when you’re sober and not impossible when drunk.”

“Once they arrive, they tend to divide up. The foreign labor drinks in one area, near the west gate, which is the first part of town they come to. The Britons venture farther and favor the south-gate end. The road there goes out to a native settlement, on a headland at the coast.”

“What I’d expect. There are two gangs, with two different supervisors. The supervisors don’t like each other,” I told him.

“And nor do the men.”

“Is there much trouble?”

“Almost every night. From time to time they hold a running street battle and throw bricks at shuttered windows to deliberately annoy the locals. In between, they arrange one-to-one punch ups. And knife fights—that was what happened to that Gaul you asked me to find out about.”

“Dubnus?”

“He fell foul of a gang of British. Insults were traded and when the Britons scattered, he was lying there dead. He had been alone at the time, so his mates don’t know who to take vengeance on—though they think it was brickmakers.”

“Is this tale common knowledge?”

“No, but I had it from a rather common source. …” Justinus leered. “I discovered it in confidence from the young lady I mentioned. Her name,” he said, “is Virginia.”

I gave him a look. “Sounds a regular flower to cultivate! But then what about your fighting friend?”

“Oh.” He grinned. “The painter and I can share her!”

“He’s a
painter
? Well, if he’s the new assistant, then I’ve been looking for him, and word has it he wants to talk to me. Hyspale wouldn’t say no either—she thinks he’s a cute prospect.”

Justinus was grimacing. “Hyspale’s our freedwoman. Can’t have her smooching the pig’s-bristle boy!”

“So
you
will drink and fight with this fellow, but your womenfolk are off limits to him? Let’s have no snobbery. He can take her, if his wife will let him,” I retorted with feeling. “Anyway, tell your boozing mate, he’s known on-site as ‘the smartarse from Stabiae.’ ” I paused. “But don’t tell him that you know me.”

Justinus was bored with eating. He slowed down, looking as if he wondered when the next drink and fight might come along. “So I can carry on? It’s exhausting me, having such a good time—”

“But you will be brave and uncomplaining?” I rose to leave him. I gave him a very small allowance in cash. “Your commendatory gold medal is being molded. Thanks for suffering.”

“It’s a tough assignment, Falco. Tonight I am off to my favorite den of iniquity, where, if the rumor is correct, a
really
interesting female from Rome will come in to entertain the lads.”

I was halfway back home on my pony when for some reason his remark about the female entertainer bothered me.

XXVIII

I
HAD GROWN
depressed.

“One of my assistants wants to be a playboy; the other simply doesn’t want to play.” I was moaning to Helena. She adopted her usual method of showing sympathy—a heartless expression and burying her head in a poetic scroll. “Here I am, trying to reimpose order on this huge chaotic project, but I’m a one-man arena orchestra.”

“What have they done?” she murmured, though I could see the scroll was more interesting than me.

“They have done nothing; that’s the point, sweetheart. Aelianus lies in the woods with his feet up all day; Justinus goes on the town drinking all night.”

Helena looked up. She said nothing. Her way of staying silent implied I was leading her brothers astray. She was the eldest and she cared about them. Helena had a habit of diligently loving wastrels; that was what had made her fall for me.

“If this is what it means to be an equestrian,” I told her, “I would rather be half starved at the top of a tenement.
Staff
”—I spat the word out—“staff are no good to an informer. We need light and air. We need space to think. We need the freedom—and the challenge—of working alone.”

“Get rid of them, then,” said the loving sister of the two Camilli callously.

When Aelianus called on us that evening, still complaining sulkily about his conditions, I told him he ought to be more placid and even tempered, the way I was. I felt much better after mouthing this hypocrisy.

He lay on some grass with a beaker balanced on his stomach. The whole Camillus family seemed to have a drink problem on this trip. Even Helena was diving into the wine tonight—though that was because baby Favonia was crying endlessly again. We sent Hyspale into our room with both children and told her to keep them quiet. Nux followed her to supervise. After that I could see Helena all keyed up, expecting trouble indoors. I was listening for it myself.

“What’s the matter around here?” scoffed Aelianus. “Everyone is growling like unhappy bears.”

“Falco has toothache. Our children are niggly. The nursemaid is moping after a fresco artist. Maia is plotting alone in her room. I,” maintained Helena Justina, “am complete serenity.”

Being her brother, Aelianus was allowed to make a rude noise.

He offered to tie a string on my tooth and slam a door on it. I said I had doubts that the door furniture installed by Marcellinus in the old house would survive. Aelianus then passed on some horror story Sextius had told him about a dentist in Gaul who would drill out a hole and stick a new iron tooth right in your gum. …

“Aaarch! Don’t, don’t! I can unearth buried corpses or change a baby’s loincloth, but I’m too sensitive to hear anything that teeth doctors do. … I’m worried about my sister.” I diverted him. Maia had slunk off indoors by herself; she often did. Most times, she wanted nothing to do with the rest of us. “We got her away from Anacrites temporarily, but it’s no real solution. Someday she will have to go back to Rome. In any case, he’s a Palatine official. He will learn that I am on a mission to Britain. Suppose he guesses that Maia came with us—and sends someone after her?”

“In a province like this,” Aelianus soothed me, “a trained spy will stand out rather.”

“Nonsense. I’m a professional myself and I meld in.”

“Right.” He chortled. “If anybody comes to get Maia Favonia, we are here. She is more closely protected than she would be in Rome.”

“And in the long term?”

“Oh, you’ll sort something out, Falco.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Deal with it when you need to.” Aelianus was sounding like me these days. He lost interest in my problems. He sat up. “Well, I want to do something, Falco. And I’m not going back to mind those damn statues. Sextius can mollycoddle his own junk.”

“You are going back right now.” I had to keep this trooper in line. Anyway, I had a plan. “I am coming with you.” There had been the usual tramping of booted feet all evening as the labor force marched off into town. “By the sound of it, they have all gone to see the wondrous female entertainer Justinus mentioned. Bare flesh, bad breath, leather knickers, and a ratty tambourine—while the laborers are trying to paw her bikini strings, the coast is clear for us. You and I are going to have a look in some of those delivery carts. Something’s going on.”

“Oh, I know what it is!” Aelianus amazed me by saying this as he scrambled to his feet. “It has to do with them sneaking materials off-site. A new cart came in today; all the drivers looked at me and said loudly, ‘Here’s the stolen marble; don’t let Falco find out,’ nudging each other.”

“Aulus! I should have been told about that hours ago—you’re a lot of use.”

As I went to fetch light, boots, and outerwear, the baby started wailing again plaintively. Helena jumped up and suddenly said she was coming with us.

“Oh, no!” cried her brother. “Falco, you can’t allow it.”

“Hush, be calm. Someone has to hold the lantern while we search.”

“What if we run into trouble? What if someone discovers us?”

“Helena and I can fall down on the ground in a passionate clinch. We’ll be two lovers having a tryst in the woods. Perfect alibi.”

Aelianus was outraged. He could never cope with the thought of me making love to his elegant sister—least of all because he rightly sensed that she liked it. Publicly I gave him credit for some experience and he of course played the worldly type, yet for all I knew he was a virgin still. Nice girls of his own age would be chaperoned, he would be scared of disease if he paid for his fun, and if he ever eyed up his mother’s matronly friends for a little adultery across the generations, they would only tell his mother. Senators’ sons can always jump on their household slaves—but Aelianus would hate having to meet their eyes afterwards. Besides, they would tell his mother too.

He became extremely pompous. “And where does that leave me, Falco?”

I smiled gently. “You are a pervert, spying on the leg over from behind a tree, Aulus.”

XXIX

R
OME HAS
its deep areas of darkness at night. Nothing quite like the open country, though. I would have felt safer in narrow twisting alleys, unlit courtyards, and colonnades where any lamps had been doused by passing burglars. There even seemed to be fewer stars in Britain.