Negrinus went off to his sister's house, and I trotted into the city to research that other source of friction: the will. After they are read, wills are stored in the Atrium of Liberty. I spent a couple of hours there, growing frustrated. Eventually I was attended to by a sad-eyed public slave, some ill-nourished clerk with no hopes and no incentive. Since the Metellus will was recent, he did find it. If it had been an older deposition I would never have seen it. I had the impression I was the first member of the public who had asked for a viewing of anything.
Still, this gave me curiosity value. Finally I had access, while there was still enough light to read through the will quietly and find out its secrets. Or so I had thought.
The limp clerk laid the will on a table. It was a double-fold wooden tablet. It was tied up with legal thread – and it was sealed seven times on the thread.
`I can break these seals?'
`No, Falco!' He snatched it back and snuggled it against his tunic protectively.
I took a fierce breath. `Oh excuse me! I thought this document had been opened and read. I came here to study its provisions.'
`Keep your temper.'
`Am I missing the point?'
The clerk still clutched it. `This is the usual form.'
`It is the will of Rubirius Metellus?'
'Gnaeus Rubirius Metellus -' From a safe distance he showed me the label on the outside of the tablet. `Did they not read it?'
`Yes they did.'
`So why is it still sealed?'
`Resealed… Do you want to know the procedure?'
`Teach me!' I growled.
`Say you are holding a reading. You fetch the will from the Temple of Vesta, or wherever it was put in safe keeping. You break the seals, in the presence of all or most of the original witnesses.'
`They know what is in it?'
'Not necessarily.' The clerk paused, seeing me stare. `The testator was not obliged to show them. Sometimes as long as they are alive they really want it a secret.'
`If the bequests are likely to cause trouble, you mean?'
`Exactly. When people first witness a will, they are merely signing to say the outside of the document has been shown to them formally as the man's testament. That,' explained the clerk carefully, `is why they must then be present when he dies and the will is read, to see that their seals have not been tampered with. They can't vouch for the contents, you see.'
`Go on, then.'
`The will is opened and read. A copy is usually made. Then it is resealed, with thread and wax, and placed in our archive.'
`Very funny! Where's the copy?'
`With the heir, presumably.'
`And how,' I asked, `am I supposed to know who the heir is, if you won't let me unseal the sealed original that names him?'
`Ask somebody who knows.'
`You don't have that information?'
`We only store the tablets,' he protested. `We don't know what is written in them, it isn't our job!'
A good day. Such a typical day in an informer's life.
I went up on the Arx to clear my head. At the Temple of Juno Moneta lived the Sacred Geese who guarded the Citadel and the augurs' Sacred Chickens. I checked them out. This was my public sinecure: religious bird guardian.
`Someone was asking about you,' the custodian told me as I prodded around the chicken huts, looking for eggs. Eggs were my official perk. I could have expended time and effort pretending to investigate the feathered ones' health and happiness, but they didn't need it. I knew they were all thoroughly spoiled. Anyway, the darling geese always had a go at me. Who wants to be pecked?
`Asking for me? Who was that?'
`He didn't say.'
`So what did you say?'
`I said we hadn't seen you up here for months.'
Nobody normal who wanted me would look for me on the Arx. I had no idea what this could mean, so I did not let it trouble me.
Being in the neighbourhood, I then explored an angle I had not listed in my notes. I walked down to the Forum and gave myself another unpleasant hour of officialdom. I wanted to know more about why Metellus and his son had been exposed in the corruption case. Where better to start, than the aediles' office?
Wrong, Falco. There was a new young brat in charge of Rome's road contracts. A friendly one would have thought the sins of his predecessor were good for a gossip, but this gilt-edged dong fell back on `issue of national security' and maintained I was not entitled to enquire into such matters. I mentioned working as an agent for Vespasian; he still blocked me. He did not know what happened under Metellus Negrinus. He could not discuss previous errors. He was far too busy with muddy streets, crooked market weights, and endless complaints about rats rioting all night by the Altar of Peace. I could go and ram myself head-first into a narrow drain.
I should have known. The corruption case had made the aediles' scams too obvious. Audits had been instituted. Procedures had been tightened. This new young fellow might have made a killing, but for the Metellus trial. How was he now to assemble enough cash to finance lavish public Games in order to obtain the votes to move up his career ladder to the next flashy post?
He clearly wished he had jurisdiction over temple maintenance, where the bribes were notorious.
Being thwarted can damage an enquiry; I get hooked on beating the system. But it makes me more determined. So never mind the fine detail of poison and timescales which I was supposed to investigate today. I decided to find Verontius. Verontius was appalling, but he would talk to me. I knew how to make sure of it.
Normally I would walk barefoot across a mile of burning bitumen before I would encounter Verontius. He was a shifty, shambling worker in the semi-public world of road contracts. He could bend figures better than a conjurer stuffing doves up his fundament. I would be lucky if I could get away from him without a burst blood vessel and having to lend him my carpentry plane (if I ever let him get his hands on it, I would never see it again). He stank of armpits and feet. He despised me. I loathed him. Except in this emergency, we would,avoid each other from one Saturnalia to the next – though at Saturnalia we were always compelled to meet. Unluckily for me, he had been married to my lumpish sister Allia for the past twenty years, so we were bonded inescapably: Verontius and I were family.
Allia was out, thank the gods. A pitiful slave with scurvy let me in. I had to wade past pallid children to reach the back room where Verontius hunched like a toad down a well. He had a tablet of official looking tables, but was doodling at speed on a separate piece of old fish wrapper. (He had a secret second job as a squid-negotiator.) He would scribble like fury, work out a long sum, then carefully insert a single figure in the tender table with a better pen and new ink. Everything about his rapid calculations suggested he was up to no good. When he was not fiddling new contract applications, Verontius worked long hours supervising the bent contracts he had already won. I won't say he and Allia lived in squalor. We all knew that they had money. It was squirrelled away somewhere. Hoarded meanly, never spent. They would both die early, worn-out victims of a hard life they need not have had.
`Marcus!' He was colourless, bald, squinty and half deaf. He always had been, even way back. Such a catch for Allia! He had long ago learned to avoid looking guilty, but I watched the doodles being smoothly shunted into a fruit bowl while the tender was speedily rolled up under his stool. Even before he knew what I had come for, Verontius was clearing a sanitised space for his nosy in-law.
Once he knew that I wanted him to finger someone else, he was happy. 'Metellus Negrinus? Lovely boy, smashing little aedile – oh we did all like him!'
'Because he was on the take? Don't go coy on me. I don't want a dangerous commitment from you – I just need to understand how it worked. You knew about the corruption, I imagine?'