Where was I going? I watched my feet step, toe to heel, one after another, like a captive led in a triumph. The sun was going away again, the clouds were coming, and I didn’t know what to do. The squish of icy mud played harmony to my breath-in, out, in, out. This morning I made a plan. This morning seemed too long ago for memory.
I was heading east again, toward the river and some warehouses. Mollius lived there. Maybe I could find him. He could tell me what the story was with the vigiles, if they knew anything yet. Maybe he could tell me if I knew anything.
I turned right at the next corner. There were a couple of ships at the dock, unloading grain, wine, garum. Food for the army. The sailors were loud-sailors were always loud. Romans didn’t like the sea, too much. Maybe being out there, on the wine-dark waves, they got a little drunk on loneliness. They yelled so they could hear themselves breathing. I skirted around the men in dirty tunics, yesterday’s dinner rubbed on their fronts, grunting as they unloaded barrels and amphorae.
Mollius’ insula was on this street somewhere. At least he lived on the first floor, above a baker, and with running water. The top three stories had no such luck. I spotted the building, a mud and timber affair badly in need of another whitewash.
A couple of grifters lounged against the wall. They must not be too good at grifting or they’d be at the gladiator show with everyone else. They looked at me, too bored to make a pitch, or maybe they didn’t like my size. One took out a couple of dice from a pouch with patches on it, and they both crouched in the mud, tossing the dice, half-heartedly asking a god for benediction.
I walked past the shops, past the small bakery stall and felt the heat from its oven. A woman was haggling over a price inside, the baker was ignoring her. I walked in through the doorway, into a run-down courtyard with a small well lacking a cover. The wail of a baby startled me, and sparked a couple of others to wail back, like the howls of hungry wolves. The walls were as thin as a debtor’s excuses. I could hear sobbing in one, a man shouting in another. The first baby abruptly stopped, and the others followed. Maybe its mother shoved a dirty rag into its mouth. It was that kind of place.
I climbed the stair, and tried not to make the wood scream too much while I clutched the wobbly banister. I hoped Mollius was in. Third door on the right. No sound from his neighbors. The Esquiline of insula floors, I guess. The door was spindly, and shook dramatically when I knocked. I knocked again. A head covered in a grey rag, looking like it wiped dishes, from two doors down on the left, poked out, saw me, and poked back in again. I tried one more time, and gave up. The winter daylight hours were running by me, and I needed to get home to Bilicho, get word to Agricola. Figure out when and how to tackle Caelius.
I made it down the stairway again, and my stomach growled. I didn’t feel like eating, but it was empty and cold, and the least I could do for it was buy it something to gnaw on. One of the stalls on the ground floor was a small tavern. The grifters were gone, dice and all, when I came out into the bankside air.
The sailors were singing, now, something rough and rude about girls with tits like wine jars. I turned right, and three shops down was the tavern. Mollius was sitting on a low stool, a large cup as close to his hand as an overprotective bodyguard.
Mollius drank too much. That’s one reason he lived here, even though he made a decent living as a vigil. The second reason was that he also gambled too much. And maybe he did both because he’d been hurt in the army, and the ache of the mangled leg never went away.
Instead of mustering him out, someone-I forget who-recommended him for the vigiles company that Agricola formed. I seconded the nomination, to the governor himself. It kept him in wine and winnings, and occasionally, women. It also kept him drunk and poor, and living in a shithole. Mollius didn’t seem to notice, or care. And still he was cleaner than Meditor.
I squeezed in beside him, and he looked at me without recognition, his eyes rheumy. A large-bodied, blue-black fly buzzed heavily around us, finally landing on a half-eaten plate of fried pork bellies and cabbage. I watched it rub its legs together. Even it wanted to wash before it ate what was on the plate.
“Mollius. I’ve been looking for you.”
He squinted hard. “Ah-Arcturus. Glad to see you. Thought you’d be comin’ t’see me. Din’t recognize you. Been awhile.”
I’d seen him drunker. He grasped the cup lovingly, and swigged a shot of beer, dark with malt. Maybe the drink kept the smell of the food from getting to him. A woman with straggly grey hair chained up but trying to escape came over with intention. I was occupying one of the few stools in the place. I checked my pouch. Only one denarius left. A glint of gold caught my eye, and I remembered I hadn’t taken out that bit of pin I found in Maecenas’ room. Just like this case. Every time I thought about going straight ahead, something shoved me sideways. I pushed it back down in the seam, and extracted the coin.
“How much for a beer and some bread?”
“Two asses for the bread, three for the beer.” She leered at me a little. “I ain’t seen you ‘round here before.”
“Just visiting. Change for a denarius?”
She got a little red in the face. “Do I look like a bank?”
Mollius was watching me in amusement. He started to shake a little, but it was only suppressed laughter. He fumbled around in his blood-brown cloak, and pulled out a pouch. He counted out five asses, and the woman, glaring at me, scooped them up like a pelican gulping a sea bass.
“My treat, Arcturus. You’re in the wrong neighborhood. Now-what was I going to tell you?” He was trying to speak more clearly, and he seemed to shake off some of the stupor.
“I came to you about a murder.”
He eyes wrinkled up at me from beneath a ginger-haired eyebrow. “You kill somebody?”
“Go ahead and laugh, Mollius. Meditor’s on my ass. Set one of his men on me today. I’m investigating a murder for the governor, and you know what Meditor’s like.”
“I do, indeed. A rat in a hole is Meditor. But a rat is a smart animal.” He hunched over the counter closer to me, and gestured with his eyes for me to do the same. I shoved the plate-the fly was still feasting-out of the way and leaned in, my elbows on the scarred wood.
“The Maecenas murder, right?” he murmured. “He called us together late last night. Told us you were involved, you were covering up something.”
My face got tight. “The bastard. I’m involved, all right, but not like he’d like it. What’s he know?”
“I got off duty about an hour and a half ago. I was waiting for a friend of mine when Meditor came in, very excited. He called us back in, had one of the men run out to find the rest, and told us he had the murderer.”
“What? In custody?”
Mollius shook his head and leaned closer. The grey-haired woman flounced by and threw a plate of warm bread by me, and without taking her bloodshot eyes from my face, drew me a hemina of beer, and threw that at me, too.
“You really know how to make friends, Arcturus.” Mollius chuckled, and shook some more. “Nobody is in custody. But he had us track where Maecenas was staying, and somebody squawked about a fight that night, so he’s looking for a native named Rhodri. He thinks it’s all a plot of the Brits.”
Meditor was nothing if not predictable. “What’s he going to do?”
Mollius tore off a piece of the bread, and downed a gulp of the beer. “What do you think he’s going to do? Find him, arrest him, and kill the poor bastard. Meanwhile, we’re supposed to really put the screw to the natives. He’s trying to convince Agricola right now to chop down all the oak groves around Londinium. And he wants a curfew. Meditor doesn’t give a shit if he hounds the innocent, as long as he can hound somebody.”