This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Grand Central Publishing Edition
Copyright © 2002 by Lindsey Davis
All rights reserved.
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Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
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First eBook Edition: September 2003
ISBN: 978-0-446-55660-6
Contents
Principal Characters
Londinium, Britannia August, A.D. 75
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
LII
LIII
LIV
LV
LVI
LVII
LVIII
LIX
LX
Archaeological Note
ALSO BY LINDSEY DAVIS
The Course of Honor
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 Bathhouse
To Ginny, who deserves it
Now look here; you had better not expect half a page of sentimental guff. If you are a treasure and an inspiration and a dear friend who has suffered a year of stress, I shall certainly not say so. This is a British dedication, after all!
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
M. Didius Falco an auditor on holiday
Helena Justina companion of his life and heart, poor girl
Maia Favonia Falco’s sister; a widow (heading for trouble)
L. Petronius Longus a vigiles officer (aiming for Maia)
S. Julius Frontinus governor of Britain (thinks he runs the province)
G. Flavius Hilaris procurator of finance (really does run it)
Aelia Camilla Helena’s aunt, his wife (runs Flavius Hilaris)
King Togidubnus a Roman ally with a mind of his own
Verovolcus past tense; a British mugging victim
Flavia Fronta a “respectable” barmaid, allegedly
Crixus a disrespectful centurion, who knows it all
Silvanus another centurion, who should know better
Norbanus Murena a “charming” property developer; perhaps a suspect
Popillius an “honest” lawyer; definitely suspect
Amazonia a fighter with a future . . .
. . . aka Chloris trouble from the past
“The Collector” working at the office; a cowardly pimp
Epaphroditus a brave baker; in really bad trouble
Albia a troubled young survivor
Firmus a sunbather, in the customs service
Amicus the official torturer
Splice a different kind of persuader
Pyro a persuasive arsonist
Children too numerous to mention especially Julia, Favonia, Marius, Cloelia, Ancus, Rhea, and Flavia
Dogs ditto
Barkeepers, gladiators, crooks, soldiers, slaves, and so forth
A bear
A tired bee
Londinium, Britannia August, A.D. 75
I
It depends what we mean by civilization,” the procurator mused.
Staring at the corpse, I was in no mood to discuss philosophy. We were in Britain, where the rule of law was administered by the army. Justice operated in a rough-and-ready fashion so far away from Rome, but special circumstances meant this killing would be difficult to brush aside.
We had been called out by a centurion from the small local troop detachment. The military presence in Londinium was mainly to protect the governor, Julius Frontinus, and his deputy, the procurator Hilaris, but since the provinces are not manned by the vigiles, soldiers carry basic community policing. So the centurion attended the death scene, where he became a worried man. On investigation, an apparently routine local slaying acquired “developments.”
The centurion told us he had come to the bar expecting just a normal drunken stabbing or battering. To find a drowned man headfirst down a well was slightly unusual, exciting maybe. The “well” was a deep hole in a corner of the bar’s tiny backyard. Hilaris and I bent double and peered in. The hole was lined with the waterproof wooden staves of what must be a massive German wine container; water came nearly to the top. Hilaris had told me these imported barrels were taller than a man, and after being emptied of wine they were often reused in this way.
When we arrived, of course the body had already been removed. The centurion had pulled up the victim by his boots, planning to heave the cadaver into a corner until the local dung cart carried it off. He himself had intended to sit down with a free drink while he eyed up the attractions of the serving girl.
Her attractions were not up to much. Not by Aventine standards. It depends what we mean by attractive, as Hilaris might muse, if he were the type to comment on waitresses. Myself, I was that type, and immediately as we entered the dim establishment I had noticed she was four feet high with a laughable leer and smelled like old boot liners. She was too stout, too ugly, and too slow on the uptake for me. But I’m from Rome. I have high standards. This was Britain, I reminded myself.
There was certainly no chance of anyone getting free drinks now that Hilaris and I were here. We were official. I mean really official. One of us held a damned high rank. It wasn’t me. I was just a new middle-class upstart. Anyone of taste and style would be able to sniff out my slum background instantly.
“I’ll avoid the bar,” I joked quietly. “If their water is full of dead men, their wine is bound to be tainted!”
“No, I’ll not try a tasting,” agreed Hilaris in a tactful undertone. “We don’t know what they may stuff in their amphorae . . .”
The centurion stared at us, showing his contempt for our attempts at humor.
This event was even more inconvenient for me than it was for the soldier. All he had to worry about was whether to mention the awkward “developments” on his report. I had to decide whether to tell
Flavius Hilaris—my wife’s Uncle Gaius—that I knew who the dead man was. Before that, I had to evaluate the chances that Hilaris himself had known the casked corpse.
Hilaris was the important one here. He was procurator of finance in Britain. To put it in perspective, I was a procurator myself, but my role—which involved theoretical oversight of the Sacred Geese of Juno—was one of a hundred thousand meaningless honors handed out by the Emperor when he owed someone a favor and was too mean to pay in cash. Vespasian reckoned my services had cost enough, so he settled up remaining debts with a joke. That was me: Marcus Didius Falco, the imperial clown. Whereas the estimable Gaius Flavius Hilaris, who had known Vespasian many years ago in the army, was now second only to the provincial governor. Since he did know Vespasian personally, then (as the governor would be aware), dear Gaius was the emperor’s eyes and ears, assessing how the new governor ran the province.
Hilaris looked a quiet, clerkish, slightly innocent fellow, but I wouldn’t take him on at draughts—well, not unless I could play with my brother Festus’ weighted dice. He was dealing with the situation in his usual way: curious, thorough, and unexpectedly assertive. “Here’s one Briton who has not acquired much benefit from Roman civilization,” he had said on being shown the corpse. That was when he added dryly, “I suppose it depends what you mean by civilization, though.”
“He took in water with his wine, you mean?” I grinned.
“Better not jest.”Hilaris was no prude and it was not a reproof.
He was a lean, neat man, still active and alert—yet grayer and more haggard than I had remembered him. He had always given a slight impression of ill health. His wife, Aelia Camilla, seemed little changed since my last visit, but Flavius Hilaris looked much older and I felt glad I had brought my own wife and youngsters to see him while I could.
Trying not to show that I was watching him, I decided he did know the dead man at his feet. As a career diplomat, he would also be aware of why this death would cause us problems. But, so far, he was not mentioning his knowledge to me.
That was interesting.
II
I’m sorry to drag you out, sirs,” murmured the centurion. He must be wishing he had kept quiet. He was totting up how much additional documentation he had let himself in for, and had realized belatedly that his commander would give him all Hades for involving the civil powers.
“You did the right thing.” I had never seen Hilaris back off from trouble. Strange to think that this man had served in the army (Second Augusta, my own legion, twenty years before me). He was part of the Invasion force too, at a time for pragmatic dealings with the locals. But three decades of civic bureaucracy had turned him into that rare high-flying wonder, a public servant who followed the rules. Even rarer, instead of stagnating uselessly out here, he had mastered the art of making the rules work. Hilaris was good. Everyone said so.
By contrast the centurion covered his ineptitude by moving slowly, saying little, and doing even less. He was wide-bodied and short-necked. He stood with his feet planted wide apart, his arms hanging loose. His neckerchief was tucked into his armor with just enough untidiness to express contempt for authority, yet his boots were buffed and his sword and dagger looked sharp. He would be the type who sat around obsessively honing his weapons and complaining about higher offices. I doubted he grumbled at the Emperor. Vespasian was a soldiers’ general.
Vespasian would know that the army is stuffed with such characters: not as good as those in charge would like, but sound enough to coast along in a far-off province where the frontiers were fairly quiet and open rebellion was no longer an issue. The legions in Britain carried no dead wood. In a real crisis, something could be made of this centurion.
We had a crisis here. Correctly, the centurion had sensed it. And to be fair, he responded properly. He had noticed the white circle around the dead man’s neck where a torque had habitually sat, and he saw the grazes where the heavy twisted metal must have been wrenched off by a thief or thieves. He realized this was serious. It was not the theft itself that made for trouble, but in tribal Britain heavy gold and electrum neck torques were worn only by the rich and well-born. That torque, now missing, was a mark of rank. Persons of status do not usually die shabby deaths alone in taverns, whatever their culture. Something was up. So the centurion had sent a runner to the governor.
Julius Frontinus was in his first year of office here. When the message came, he was eating breakfast during an early-morning meeting with his right-hand man. We all shared the official residence so I was there too. “Gaius, go and see if you recognize the victim,” Frontinus told Hilaris, who had been in Britain all those decades and so knew absolutely everyone. Since the governor had previously worked with me on a murder hunt in Rome, he then added, “Sounds your sort of thing, Falco. You should trot along there too.”
So here I was. I had been dispatched to the crime scene as an expert in unnatural death. But I was a thousand miles from my own patch. How would I know the motive for a local British murder, or where to start looking for the killer? I was on holiday, intending to claim that I had nothing to contribute. My own official mission in Britain was finished; afterward I had brought Helena to Londinium to see her relatives, but we were pretty well en route for home now.
Then when the centurion presented the sodden body, Hilaris went quiet and I too felt queasy. I knew at once that I might have had a direct involvement in how the victim came to be here.
So far, only I knew that.
III
Wonder who he is?” The centurion nudged the corpse with the side of his boot—avoiding the tip, where he might have touched dead flesh with his big bare toes. “Who he was!” He laughed sardonically.
The dead man had been tall and well fed. The straggles of long hair that clung to his head and neck, tangling in the edges of his woolen tunic, were once wild and red-gold. The eyes, now closed, had been bright with curiosity and used to delight in dangerous mischief. I suppose they were blue, though I could not remember. His skin was pallid and swollen after drowning, but he had always been light-complexioned, with the gingery eyebrows and lashes that go with such coloring. Along his bare forearms, fine hairs began to dry. He wore dark blue trousers, expensive boots, a belt with hole-punched patterns into which the plaid tunic was gathered in thick clumps. No weapon was present. Every time I saw him alive, he had worn a long British sword.
He had been always on the go. He dashed around; was full of vigor and crude humor; always accosted me in a loud voice; regularly leered at women. It seemed odd to find him quite so still.
I stooped, picking up the cloth of a sleeve to inspect a hand for finger rings. One sturdy item in rope-twisted gold remained, perhaps too tight to drag off in a hurry. As I straightened, my glaze briefly caught that of Hilaris. Clearly he could see that I too knew the man’s identity. Well, if he thought about it, I had just come up from Noviomagus Regnensis, so I would.
“It is Verovolcus,” he told the centurion without drama. I kept quiet. “I met him officially once or twice. He was a courtier, and possibly a relative, of the Great King—Togidubnus of the Atrebates tribe, down on the south coast.”
“Important?” demanded the centurion with a half-eager sideways look. Hilaris did not answer. The soldier drew his own conclusions. He pulled a face, impressed.
King Togidubnus was a longtime friend and ally of Vespasian. He had been lavishly rewarded for years of support. In this province he could probably pull rank even on the governor. He could get Flavius Hilaris recalled to Rome and stripped of his hard-earned honors. He could have me knocked over the head and dumped
into a ditch, with no questions asked.
“So what was Verovolcus doing in Londinium?” Hilaris mused. It seemed a general question, though I felt he aimed it at me.
“More official business?” asked the centurion meekly.
“No. I would know of it. And even if he came to Londinium for private purposes,” continued the procurator levelly, “why would he visit an establishment as grim as this?” He now glanced directly at me. “A British aristocrat laden with expensive jewels is as much at risk of robbery in a hole like this as a lone Roman would be. This place is for locals—and even they have to be brave!”
I refused to be drawn, but left the yard, ducked inside the bar, and looked around. As wine bars go this lacked charm and distinction. We had found it halfway down a short, narrow alley on the sloping hill just above the wharves. A few crude shelves held flagons. A couple of windows with iron grilles let in some light. From its filthy straw-strewn floor to its low shadowy rafters the bar was as lousy as bars can get. And I had seen some.
I tackled the woman who kept the place.
“I know nothing,” she spouted immediately, before I could ask her anything.
“Are you the owner?”
“No, I just wait at table.”
“Did you summon the centurion?”
“Of course!” There was no of course about it. I didn’t have to live in Britain to know that if she could have hidden this crime, she would have done so. Instead, she had worked out that Verovolcus was bound to be missed. There would be trouble, and unless she made it look good today, the trouble would be worse for her. “We found him this morning.”
“You never noticed him last night?”
“We were busy. Lot of trade in.”
I gazed at her calmly. “What sort of trade was that?”
“The sort we get.”
“Can you be more specific? I mean—”
“I know what you mean!” she scoffed.
“Sinful girls, after sailors and traders?” I threw at her anyway.
“Nice people. Businessmen!” Nasty forms of business, I bet.
“Had this man been drinking here last night?”