‘Oho! Then your devoted aedile will be even more keen on you.’
‘I told you before; he’s not mine!’
I mimed a lute-plucking gesture. It did no good. Uncle Quintus would keep harping.
I munched a bite but did not dally. Still leading a tired Dromo, I skirted around the southern side of the Palatine, capped with its summit-top burden of marble palaces. We trudged past the apsidal end of the Circus Maximus, then kept going on the flat along the long western side, until we were below the part of the Aventine that held the Temple of Ceres. We climbed slowly up the hill, a short ascent but steep, then we crossed to the aediles’ office beside the squat old-style temple with its wide-set thick pillars and its air of Greek disdain.
As we completed that last part of our journey, I felt a twinge of homecoming. Why should this be? There were the same dusty tenements and introverted private mansions as on the Esquiline, the same teeming stalls and bars, the same colourful crowds in the street. Yet even the taste and smell of the air seemed different. I found myself coughing mildly, before my lungs became acclimatised. It was still June, so the roses that grew in enclosed gardens and the lilies in sun-baked doorstep pots were zapping out pollen at their top rate. The bakers, fishmongers and greengrocers arranged their loaves, sardines and vegetables in special Aventine patterns. Street cries had a new ring. When Aventine dogs chose rats and litter to bark at, they woofed from shallower lungs. Working on the largest, highest hill in Rome, Aventine mules developed a special wheeze. Some of the people had it too. You could hear it when they cursed, every time they made a bad judgement while crossing a road where the dung was deep.
Home. I was home. I realised that although this case had intrigued me, I had not enjoyed working in what had been somebody else’s house, far from my base, a stranger in the neighbourhood. I yearned for my own apartment, containing my own things. However much I derided my own folk, I was longing to be back among them. I wanted the laundry where they still had a tunic and sheet of mine, the bakery and bath house where I had built up customer goodwill, the caupona run by my relatives. Once the rest of them returned from the coast, I wanted to be among my own family in our riverbank town house.
I did not regret working for Manlius Faustus. I would do it again, if ever he asked me. I knew, as a woman, that was a distinct possibility. He had a germ of interest in me that would drag him back. Even so, it would be better if I could somehow turn in this commission with a satisfactory final report.
I was feeling low, as if I had lost my confidence.
I felt truly grim, though I presumed I had the hangover from Hades after that Caecuban wine. Had it gone bad in the ageing process? Was the gorgeous flavour an illusion? Even my stomach seemed to be growling, which could not be from what I had eaten with my uncle just now. Claudia kept a well-run house. She never served slimy salad or covered up the smell of bad meat with strong sauces. You don’t risk six small children performing synchronised diarrhoea.
I preferred not even to think about that.
Well, biliousness could be useful when I had stubborn suspects to interrogate. I would like to believe kindness works, but I knew from experience that shouting at people and tetchily suggesting you are going to throw them to the beasts often has a quicker effect and produces more details.
So in that spirit, for the last time I went in to see the slaves.
55
Faustus was not there. He had left me an extremely peevish note (‘should your condition ever allow you to appear’).
I guessed he was upset that I had not come to carry out interviews this morning according to my promise. But now here I was, bringing the answers he hired me to find: I had identified the killer of the bridal couple. Even better, I had found their missing property, which always carries more weight than mere life. His agent had succeeded. The killer had been identified and would be caught. Meanwhile I, the uncomplaining hireling, would also sort out what to do with these pesky slaves.
The nine culprits — and they were all culprits, I believed — were loafing about in dappled shade in the garden as if they had no cares. I would put a stop to that.
I hauled out Olympe, the fifteen-year-old, a soft target.
I led the little sweetie-cake into the office, taking some comfort from its association with Manlius Faustus. I fussed about, as if preparing myself, adjusting furniture, laying out note tablets.
‘Tell me about your family,’ I began conversationally, while I pretended to get ready.
Olympe presumed the real interview had not yet started. She had never had any kind of regular employment; she was unfamiliar with being routinely messed about by some supervisor …
As she had hinted previously, she grew up a member of a travelling group of Lusitanian musicians, all one big family; like most Iberian entertainers, they used tambourines and castanets, but also other traditional instruments, which they plied with frenzy while they danced and sang, and occasionally sliced one another up with traditional Lusitanian boning knives. Mucia Lucilia had seen them perform once; on one of her whims, she asked for Olympe and was sold her.
Olympe had convinced herself her family were shocked by the money; she innocently believed that they intended to return it.
‘You ran away back to them, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but my people explained to me we are obligated by a work contract.’
‘I have to disappoint you, sweetheart. That was not a contract, but a sale into slavery. Your people knew it too. Trust me, they understood perfectly what they were doing. When you ran away from Mucia Lucilia and came back to them, your relatives must have been terrified they would be accused of harbouring a fugitive slave, which is theft. For foreigners in Rome, that would be serious. No wonder they hauled you back to Mucia. In fact,’ I kept my voice grim, ‘in running away, you were a thief yourself, Olympe. The law says, you deprived your mistress of her property — I mean, you. Of all the people being held here, yours is the worst position. I may be able to extricate the rest, but a slave who is a known thief is almost impossible to save.’
‘I just want to go home!’
‘Poppet, you never will. Concentrate on ways to stay alive.’
Olympe quivered nervously, a petite, pretty lyre-player who had been betrayed by her family and could not accept that the world was so horrid. Now she was all puppy fat and panic. I knew men who would want to wrap their arms around this poor palpitating bundle, kiss her better and set her scurrying free into the world (well, after they had their way with her). Sadly for her, her fate lay in my hands instead.
I set aside my notes. I looked friendly — as friendly as a weasel, though not many of those can ever have strayed into the campfire light of the Lusitanian band. ‘Let’s have a talk, shall we, Olympe? See what I can do.’
‘What do you want to know, Albia?’ she replied, full of gratitude. I might have felt bad about cheating her, had I not been feeling seedy.
I shrugged. I was easy. She cheered up. She couldn’t see danger. ‘Not a lot left,’ I told her. ‘I do know it was Cosmus who did those awful things that night at the apartment.’
Olympe nodded. If I had realised before how naïve she was, I might have saved a lot of time. You don’t allow for anybody else being so completely daft. And this child played the flute and lyre, which demanded a degree of confidence …
‘So what did you all think,’ I asked, ‘when Cosmus started shouting?’