And no disillusioned girlfriend had launched herself on Scaeva in festival jealousy; we knew the women he had dallied with accepted his attentions as a fact of life; and they liked him, at least for his generosity.
Anyway, the festival had not yet started. I could not make any of this fit… Well, I had a feeling I would end up being wrong, but if Saturnalia was important, it wasn't showing up on the evidence I had scraped together so far. At home, the fun was at hand. Our two slaves, Galene and Jacinthus, had given up all attempts at work, an aspect of the festival they found greatly attractive. Legionaries were hanging green boughs everywhere. I guessed they had spent all day acquiring the foliage, cutting it to size and weaving garlands, instead of continuing the hunt for Veleda. Dinner was progressing; two of the soldiers, Gaius and Paullus, were cooking away happily, watched by our daughters. Julia was singing what I recognised, even through her half-chewed mouthful of mustcake, as a verse from the Little Mess Tin Song. Luckily it was one of the clean verses. Luckily too, Helena gave no sign of recognising the song. From evidence on their tunics and faces, both children had been tasting stuff in the kitchen all afternoon and would not want their proper food. Someone had given Favonia a sigillarium, one of the pointless earthenware figurines that are sold in hundreds for reasons no one can remember; she was using it as a teething device. As I entered the room, a broken piece choked her. Swift action – upending the darling with a sharp smack on the back – remedied that in time in the traditional way. Sensing terrified parents who had thought they had lost her, Sosia Favonia began screaming for more attention. The soldier Paullus remedied that, also in the traditional way: by offering her a big stuffed date. Triumphant, Sosia gobbled it with perfunctory thanks, while Julia began screaming because she hadn't been given one. I left. My excuse, which Helena received much too frostily I thought, was needing to see Petronius Longus about whether any civic-minded citizen had apprehended the runaway flute boy and handed him over to the vigiles. 'Seeing Petro was always on today's list.' 'Can't you do it tomorrow?' 'Could be vital. Why would the boy run away? Maybe he saw something -' 'He saw a headless body in a room full of blood, Marcus!' 'If he thinks Veleda killed the young master, he should feel perfectly safe now that she has left. I suspect he isn't only shocked by discovering the body. He is terrified by something else. This boy is a key witness.' 'Well he's a fine excuse for you!' Helena scoffed. 'Don't bother to promise me you won't stay out long.'
I did promise. I always do. I never learn. Fortunately women learn very quickly, so Helena would not be disappointed when I failed to come home. Petro was not at the patrol house; nobody was, except the clerk. 'Give me the details, if you must, Falco – but be quick! Are you reporting him for his master? I'll need full details of the owner -' 'What for? I don't need to find the master, just the boy. He's a material witness to a homicide -' 'Was he a trained virtuoso? Exceptionally beautiful physical specimen? Did he steal the expensive flute when he ran away?' 'All you bastards care about is valuable property.' 'You get it.' 'Listen, you melon seed, he's traumatised by what he witnessed, he's a vulnerable teenager, he's lost, he's scared, and I think he can tell me something about a gory killing that has deep political overtones.'
The clerk sighed. 'So what's new? All your cases are like that. It's obvious: he saw something. Now he's scared someone may come after him – so work it out, Falco. He must have seen the killer at the scene. He knows who it is, and they either come visiting – or they even live at the house.' That pulled me up. 'Slow down. Your job is to take shorthand notes. I'm the investigator.' 'I think like Petronius Longus, Falco. I've written up his case notes often enough.' 'All the more reason to find this boy urgently.' 'I'll do a memo tomorrow and have the lads look out.' 'Aren't you going to check if he's already in your holding cell?' 'He isn't.' 'How can you be sure?' 'I am sure,' explained the clerk meticulously, 'because the cell is empty. '
I was amazed. 'What? No arsonists or balcony-thieves? No drunks, muggers or raucous insulters of frail elderly women? Can this be Saturnalia? Whatever has happened to riot in the streets?'
'We had a bunch of house guests, Falco. I personally supervised letting them all off with a caution. In return I have a pile of promissory notes several inches high. The riot begins officially tomorrow,' said the clerk. Then he explained why he was the only person left in the station house, and why even he was about to lock up and leave. 'Tomorrow we'll need every man on the streets: no leave, no sick notes, no stopping at home with toothache without a sick note, and no bunking off to your grandmother's funeral for the fourth time this year. Tomorrow is mayhem, and we'll be there. Tonight, therefore, is the Fourth Cohort's Saturnalia drinks party.'
I said they would all be there tomorrow with dreadful hangovers, then – and he said, he couldn't wait around any longer, so did I want to come? I should have gone straight home. I knew it. I had managed to avoid this particular event in the calendar for several years, but I was well aware of what went on. Those who attended always spent the following twelve months reminiscing about it. They would have longing looks as if they wished they could remember the best bits: what the raw recruit had innocently said to the tribune just before they both passed out and why the bill for breakages had been so high. I had been joking when I told the clerk that the troops would all be on duty tomorrow with bad heads. Most would not reappear at the patrol house for about four days, and when they turned up, ashen and trembling, it would take several hours of pep talk, stomach-settlers all round from their doctor Scythax, and a bought-in breakfast to remove the sedative effects of the stomach pills, before the situation that the innocent public know as 'on duty' could possibly occur.
I was too young for this. I had too many responsibilities. I should have run a mile from the legendary night of degeneration – but I did the same as you would have done: I let him lure me into it.
XXXIII
I was led to a large, unused warehouse. I told myself nothing could go wrong; after all, my sister – the virtuous, pompous one – was in charge of the catering.
A cohort of vigiles is about five hundred strong. Sometimes there is a shortfall, with a group on detachment to guard the corn supply at Ostia, but the Fourth had recently finished a tour of duty there. It is just like the army: on a good day, ten will be laid off with wounds (more after a large building fire, many more after a major city conflagration), twenty in the sick bay with general illnesses, and fifteen specifically unfit for duty due to conjunctivitis. The treasurer has always gone to see his mother. The tribune in charge is always present; nobody can get rid of him, whatever devious ruse they try.
The first sight to greet me, then, was Marcus Rubella, the Fourth's untrustworthy, over-ambitious cohort tribune. He was standing on a table, with his shaven head thrown back, draining the biggest double handed goblet of wine I had ever seen. In a gathering of blacksmiths or furnace stokers, who are the world's heaviest quaffers, this would have been the final stunt of the evening, after which everyone would collapse. Normally a loner, whose men had yet to learn to like him, Rubella was just warming up in between raiding the early canapй trays. Occasions like this were when he did win the vigiles' wary respect. After a handful of quails' eggs and a few oysters, their hard man would accept some other drinking challenge, remaining vertical and apparently sober throughout. The vigiles could admire that. It deserves mention that in order to show how conscientiously he threw himself into occasions of cohort festivity, Marcus Rubella (a staid man, conscious of his dignity) was currently wearing a silly hat, winged sandals and a very short gold tunic. I noticed with a shudder that he had not shaved his legs.