Even in Athens, the community which had founded democratic legal principles, there was a wide gap between law and life.
Helena and I returned to the city, deeply disturbed yet helpless.
We left Marcella Naevia to her hillside existence. If anybody wanted to pursue her for her actions, they would find her. She was going nowhere. Greece had claimed her. She would most likely live out her semi-reclusive existence without interference. Poor diet and lack of care would deny her a long life. Dreams and spiritual fantasies would sustain her for a few more years, until she wasted into a slow decline, perhaps tended by bemused locals.
People would believe she had money (maybe she did have; she must have been wealthy once. That would guarantee her some notice from the community.
We could not even tell if she realised her niece's corpse had now been removed from Olympia by her distraught father. Talking to the woman, it was hard to tell which of our words made contact and which she chose to blot out.
I never thought her mad. She was rational, in her own way. She had made herself different, out of perversity. For me, if Marcella Naevia was culpable, she should be blamed for that deliberate withdrawal from normal society. Good Romans respect the community.
She had indulged herself, at the expense of destroying Caesius Secundus. He could be told the truth when Helena and I returned to Rome, but he would never fully recover from his long search. Once, he might have learned to live with the accident of nature that killed his daughter, but too much distress had intervened. He had lost his balance permanently. For him, peace of mind was now irretrievable. Helena said, every family has a crazy aunt. But they do not all cause such anguish or inflict such damage.
LIX
Helena and I arrived back at our inn, appalled and subdued. We then dampened the atmosphere for our young companions, telling them what we had learned from Marcella Naevia, and what we thought of her behaviour. All of us retired early to bed.
The evening was sultry and had made us short-tempered. It seemed appropriate that we were woken some hours later when the weather broke. Flashes of light through my eyelids disturbed me first, closely followed by brief cracks of thunder. As the storm came nearer, Helena also awoke. She and I lay in bed together, listening to the rain's onset. The thunder passed over but steady rain continued. It matched our melancholy mood. I fell asleep again, lulled by the incessant wash of water on the shutters of our room.
Later I woke a second time, suddenly aware of my mistake. Shocked by Marcella Naevia's story, I had left a big question unasked. I should have pressed her for the name of the man who bothered women. I needed to make her identify him formally. Phineus, presumably. He may not have killed Caesia – yet the aunt blamed him, and her father would always regard Phineus as implicated. Even Phineus himself had fled back to Rome, as if nervous of the consequences of his bad behaviour. It made him now my prime suspect in the murder three years later of Valeria Ventidia. But to accuse him, I must have evidence that he was a menace and a danger to the women on his tours. I needed Marcella Naevia to make a statement naming him.
I would have to go back again to Mount Lykabettus. I would have to speak to the crazy lady again. Now even more depressed, I sank towards miserable slumber.
Helena grabbed my arm. She had heard something I had missed above the storm. Groaning, I forced myself back awake yet again. We listened. We became aware of voices in the inn courtyard, a storey below us. Men were shouting. One of the things they were shouting was my name.
I had been called out at night for many things – all bad. The old panic gripped immediately. If we had been in Rome, I would have thought at once that this commotion was caused by the vigiles – my crony Petronius Longus, the enquiry chief of the Fourth Cohort, summoning me once again to some grim scene of blood and mayhem in which he thought I had an interest. Here, who knew how the streets were policed? And why would anyone seek me to attend on trouble?
"Didius Falc o- where are you?'
I grabbed a blanket and stumbled out on to the balcony which ran around the inn's dark courtyard. The night was pitch black and the rain currently pouring harder than ever. Only someone with an emergency would be out in this – or idiots. Angry shouts from other bedrooms told us most guests reckoned it was idiots calling out. I soon agreed.
Dim torches struggled to stay alight, showing us our visitors. They were too drunk to care about the weather. Hair plastered their foreheads. Tunics clung to their backs and legs, running with rivulets of rain. One or two still had wreaths of flowers, now dripping water into their reddened eyes. Some leaned against one another for balance, others teetered, solo. I spotted Young Glaucus, recognisable by his size, his sobriety, and the fact that he alone was trying to impose sense on the procession. Helena came up behind me; she had dragged on a long tunic and held another round her shoulders.
"What's happened? Is it Aulus?' Alarmed, she thought her brother must be in some desperate situation.
"Oh it's Aulus all right!'
Aulus looked up at me, with a hint of apology. Then bowed his head and slumped helplessly against Young Glaucus. Glaucus held him up with one arm and with his free hand tapped his own forehead, signalling madness.
"You are Falco!' a man called out triumphantly, his Latin so heavily accented it was nearly Greek. Heedless of the weather and the late hour, heedless of good manners and good taste, he bawled to us at the top of his voice. It was a good voice. Baritone. Used to addressing the public. Used to silencing academic critics and opponents in turbulent lawcourts. It would be pointless to berate him. He would enjoy the challenge.
"Hail to you, Falco! I am Minas of Karystos! These are my friends. He waved to a group of almost twenty men, all in advanced states of serious good cheer. I could see one fellow urinating at great
length against a pillar; the sound of his monumental pissing was lost in the rain. Some were young, many older, old enough to know better. All had had a brilliant evening up until now. They were game for more.
"May we come in?' demanded their atrocious leader. He had the formal politeness of the very drunk, thank goodness. Whether we could fend him off remained debatable.
Quick thinking gave me a riposte."Sadly no – we have children with us, sleeping.'
Helena and I had squared up like the Few at Thermopylae, prepared to hold the field until death took us. We refused to yield to this colourful invading horde, although they seemed bound to overwhelm us. Under the balcony roof, rain was gusting in; we were soaked through. My feet were in standing water too.
Minas of Karystos made a curious figure. He was small, elderly, and
keen, like a grandfather taking his grandsons to a stadium. He wore a long tunic in a gaudy hue, with a six-inch embroidered border in which precious metal glinted. Beneath a neatly placed wreath of flowers, grey hair hung in wet straggles.
"Minas of Karystos, I have heard much of your eminence and |
reputation. I am delighted to make your acquaintance. \
"Come down, Falco!'
"You go and it's divorce!' muttered Helena. Wimpishly, I chose to
stay.
"You get rid of him then!' "How can I? Don't let them come up, Marcus.' \
"If they do, here's the plan – we abandon the boys and dump the luggage. We'll just leave, make a run for it. Head for the harbour and take the first ship \
that's sailing… Minas, it is very late and my wife needs to rest.
"That's right; blame the woman!'
"She is pregnant.