'Middling.'
'Weight?'
'Middling.'
'Distinguishing marks?'
'None visible.' The butcher leered. 'I hadn't got around to inspecting his rude bits!'
'Trained for any fancy duties?'
'General runabout.'
'I suppose,' Petronius deduced, 'he was wearing a rough-sewn, homespun tunic and worn country shoes? Well, thank you for your keen observation, sir. That gives us some very useful points to go on.'
Petro was a po-faced, placid humorist. The butcher could not decide whether he was being mocked or praised.
XVIII
We could have stayed the night in Lanuvium but we all agreed that somewhere else – - anywhere else – - might suit us better. I remembered there was a hamlet about halfway down to Antium; it would put us well on our way tomorrow, so we headed off there. It was a very ancient settlement, a place that made us feel we had strayed into Old Latium back when it was New. They claimed to have ninety inhabitants; they must have been counting in their goats. I kept expecting to run into the old hero Aeneas, tramping across this low-lying bog that the gods had sent him to colonise, still wearing the loincloth in which he escaped from Troy.
There was a cluster of poor houses, gathered together for company because it was near a crossroads; about a mile further on, a bridge crossed a river. There, a rutted track led off the narrow road. Rectus said the track wandered south, passing close to Satricum, so we could have nipped down there immediately, but we still planned to try in Antium to learn about the official efforts to find Modestus and Primilla. We only expected disdain from another magistrate. But why abandon a well-tried system just because it doesn't work?
A man and his wife conjured up basic meals for travellers. If there were places to stay, we preferred not to investigate. We ate, drank, told stories, then camped out. Next day, the man had gone to check his fig tree, but his wife made us a simple breakfast. Then we pressed on.
At Antium our qualms proved groundless. The magistrate was not going to be the least bit unhelpful; we were not even able to meet the man. His house was locked up and he was away.
'So…' Petronius Longus mused thoughtfully. 'If you live in a scenic old town on the coast, when summer comes you still have to go off on holiday?'
'That lummock with the fig tree nipped down here and warned him you were coming,' gloated his brother. This was pretty well the first opinion he had volunteered on anything. The rest of us gazed at Petronius Rectus and carefully kept quiet, as we belatedly assessed him as a crackpot fantasist.
We asked around. That was a lark. Half the people refused to speak to us, the rest said they knew nothing.
After these fruitless forays, we did move on to Satricum. It was another very ancient township, on low-lying ground, right at the edge of the Pontine Marshes. Around this remote crossroads, cultures had clashed for aeons. The warlike Volscians had fought over the archaic place; they probably still lived here. Not only did it feel as if we might bump into a bunch of slant-eyed, smiling Etruscan ancestors, there was an end-of-civilisation atmosphere, brought about by the little town's proximity to the dreaded wetlands.
A tightly built settlement was going about its business. Up on a hill stood a temple to Mater Matuta: the mother of the morning, Eos, Aurora – - the rosy-fingered harbinger who unlocks the gates of heaven so the sun can roll out each day. We climbed the acropolis like good tourists and saw the ancient goddess, chiselled in pitted stone, enthroned and mourning her son Memnon, killed at Troy by Achilles, whose corpse lay across her lap.
She was a goddess of provender as well, and a game girl who had been cursed by the jealous Venus into a habit of taking many lovers (the kind of curse most young girls fervently pray for). The Mater Matuta at Satricum looked a bit weathered for lovers, but had done her job with opening the gates for Helios today. The sky was clear blue and the sun shone brilliantly.
'That's the Pontine deception,' Petronius Rectus informed us gloomily. 'Gorgeous weather, vegetation blooming – death behind every bush.' As a travel companion, the man was a laugh a minute.
We went back to our lodging house, in need of a drink.
It had taken us a while to find an inn that could accommodate seven of us. Satricum might be a crossroads, but most people who came this way must be heading somewhere else. It had little to attract visitors. The main feature was the old temple; that was hardly a unique shrine. Mater Matuta once flourished all across mainland Italy. She had a temple in Rome, right beside the Cattle Market Forum and so close to my house the memory made me homesick.
Perhaps a mother mourning her dead son was a sight I was not yet ready for. Heaviness fell upon me. I lost myself in my own thoughts.
Most of us were spinning out the evening in the inn courtyard.
Auctus and Ampliatus, the two vigiles, were outside on a bench at the roadside. Although they were ex-slaves, we were equals on this trip and the rest of us genuinely wanted to include them; they stubbornly remained aloof. Meanwhile, as Justinus was a senator's son it was his birthright to chat up the girl who had served us. He was, however, unsure whether Lentullus, who had only recently joined his household, would report to his wife Claudia anything he got up to. Petro and I had our wives under control, or so we convinced ourselves; even though flirting with bar staff went against our noble natures, we did the necessary with the waitress, just as we had done for the past twenty years.
We were picking her brains. What did you think I meant, legate?
Because it was the largest roadhouse in the area – the only acceptable inn, it seemed – - this had to be where the posse that came to look for Modestus and Primilla also took a breather. At first the waitress was reluctant to say much. The riders from Antium counted as local to her; we were foreign. Under the curious eye of his older brother, Petronius set about persuading her how much he hated gossip and admired a discreet waitress, but how much more he liked a civic-minded young woman who poured wine so nicely while she revealed all. (All she knew, legate; don't go off pop.) It took him about ten minutes before she had sat down with us and was gabbling information just as fast as he could ask the questions. Rectus, Justinus and Lentullus were impressed. I had seen Petro reach this point in half the time, but in those days he was young and in army uniform.
Her name was Januaria. She looked fifteen, was probably twenty, and would be killed by hard work before another decade passed. She had stabled our ox, cooked our dinner, explained the wine list (that took no effort), pulled heavy benches closer to the table, filled jugs from a cask and served us, including several detours to the two vigiles outside. None of us had asked, but it was understood that if we wanted, she would go to bed with us as well; all seven, if necessary, on whatever rotation basis we suggested. It would probably cost no more than a soft-boiled egg.
Januaria obligingly told us a posse turned up here about two months ago. A town magistrate who was hoping to go home as soon as possible arrived on horseback, in charge of volunteers who were hoping at least for a fight. After a hearty lunch, they toddled off into the marshes to tackle the Claudii. Following ingrained tradition, those scurrilous runts all swore blind they never saw Modestus or Primilla after the broken fence incident. They provided alibis for one another, in the usual way of large families.