A Dying Light In Corduba Part 13

'And no women,' Helena nodded, apparently sympathetically.

I ignored the jibe. 'Too much drink; too much noise; half-cooked, half-warm greasy meat; and listening to boasts and filthy jokes.'

'Oh dear! And you the refined, sensitive type who just wants to sit under a thorn bush all day in a clean tunic with a scroll of epic poetry!'

'That's me. An olive tree on your father's farm will do.' 'just Virgil and a sliver of goat's cheese?'

'Seeing we're here, I'd better say Lucan; he's a Corduban poet. Plus your sweet head upon my knee, of course.'

Helena smiled. I was pleased to see it. She had been looking tense when I found her at the basilica but a mixture of banter and flattery had softened her.

We watched a pontifex or flamen, one of the priests of the imperial cult, make a sacrifice at an altar set up in the open forum. A middle-aged, portly Baeticau with a jolly expression, he wore a purple robe and a pointed, conicalhat. He was attended by a.s.sistants who were probably freed slaves, but he himself flashed the equestrian ring and was a citizen of social solidity. He had probably held a senior military post in the legions, and maybe a local magistracy, but he looked a decent jolly soul as he rapidly cut a few animals' throats, then led out a fitful procession to celebrate the Feast of the Parilia, the l.u.s.tration of the flocks.

We stood respectfully in the colonnade while the troop of civic dignitaries squashed by, on their way to the theatre where a day of fun would take place. The procession was accompanied by some worried sheep and a skipping calf who clearly had not been told he was to form the next sacrifice. Persons who were pretending to be shepherds came past with brooms, supposedly for sweeping out stables; they also carried implements to light fumigatory fires. A couple of public slaves, clearly fire watchers, followed them with a water bucket, looking hopeful. Since the Parilia is not just any old rustic festival but the birthday of Rome, I bit back a surge of patriotic emotion (that's my story). A personification of Roma armed with shield and spear and a crescent moon on her helmet, swayed dangerously on a litter midway down the line. Helena half turned and muttered sarcastically, 'Roma Resurgans is rather perilous on her palanquin!'

'Show some respect, bright eyes.'

An offrcial statue of the Emperor teetered before us and nearly toppled over. This time Helena obediently said nothing, though she glanced at me with such a riotous expression that while the wobbly image of Vespasian was being steadied by its bearers I had to pretend a coughing fit. Helena Justina had never been a model for perfect sculptural beauty; but in a happy mood she had life in every flicker of her eyelashes (which were in my opinion as fine as any in the Empire). Her sense of humour was wicked. Seeing a n.o.ble matron mock the Establishment always had a bad effect on me. I mouthed a kiss, looking moody. Helena ignored me and found another tableau to giggle at.

Then, following her line of sight, I spotted a familiarface. One of the broad burghers of Corduba was sidestepping the shepherds as they wrestled with a wilful sheep. I recognised him at once, but a quick check with someone in the crowd confirmed his name: Annaeus Maximus. One of the two major oil producers at the dinner on the Palatine.

'One of those puffed-up dignitaries is on my list. This seems a good opportunity to talk to a suspect...'

I tried to persuade Helena to wait for me at a streetside foodshop. She fell silent in a way that told' me I had two choices: either to abandon her, and see her walk away from me for ever (except perhaps for a brief return visit to dump the baby on me) - or else I had to take her along.

I attempted the old trick of holding her face between my hands, and gazing into her eyes with an adoring expression.

'You're wasting time,' Helena told me quietly. The bluff had failed. I made one more attempt, squashing the tip of her nose with the end of my finger while smiling at her beseechingly. Helena bit my playful digit.

'Ow!' I sighed. 'What's wrong, my love?'

'I'm starting to feel too much alone.' She knew this was not the moment for a domestic heart-to-heart. Still, it never is the right time. It was better for her to be abruptly honest, standing beside a flower stall in a narrow Corduban street, than to bottle up her feelings and end up badly quarrelling later. Better - but extremely inconvenient while a man I wanted to interview was scuttling away amongst the ceremonial throng.

'I do understand.' It sounded glib.

'Oh do you?' I noticed the same frowning and withdrawn expression Helena had been wearing when I found her outside the basilica.

'Why not? You're stuck with having the baby - and obviously I can never know what that's like. But maybe I have troubles too. Maybe I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the one who has to look after all of us -'

'Oh, I expect you'll cope!' she complained, almost toherself. 'And I'll be poked out of the way!' She was perfectly aware it was her own fault she was stuck on her feet in a hot noisy street in Baetica.

XXV

Later that day, after a few enquiries, I left by the northwestern gate. Annaeus Maximus owned a lovely home outside the town walls, where he could plot the next elections with his cronies and his wife could run her salon for other elegant socially prominent women, while their children all went to the bad. Beyond the cemetery lining the route out of town lay a small group of large houses. An enclave of peace for the rich - disturbed only by the yapping of their hunting dogs, the snorting of their horses, the rioting of their children, the quarrelling of their slaves and the carousing of their visitors. As town houses go, the Annaeus spread was more of a pavilion in a park. I found it easy to identify - lit throughout, including the long carriage drive and surrounding garden terraces. Fair enough. If a man happens to be an olive oil tyc.o.o.n, he can afford a lot of lamps.

The clique we had seen at the theatre were now a.s.sembling for a dinner party at this well-lit house with garlanded porticos and smoking torches in every acanthus bed. Men on splendid horses were turning up every few minutes, alongside gilded carriages which contained their over-indulged wives. I recognised many of the faces from the front rows at the theatre. Amidst the coming and going I also met the shepherds from the parilia parade; they may indeed have been here for ritual purification rites in the stables, though I thought it more likely they were actors who had come to be paid for their day's work in town. There were a few shepherdesses among them, including one with hugely knowing dark brown eyes. Once I would have tried to put a light of my own into eyes like that. But I was a responsible father-to-be now. Besides, I could never take to women with straw in their hair.

I made myself known to an usher. Baetican hospitality is legendary. He asked me to wait while he informed his master I was here, and as the whole house was pervaded by delicious cooking smells I promised myself I might be offered a piquant dish or two. There was bound to be plenty. Excess breathed off the frescoed walls. However, I soon learned that the Cordubans were as sophisticated as Romans. They knew how to treat an informer - even when he described himself as a 'state official and a.s.sociate of your neighbour Camillus'. 'a.s.sociates' received short commons in Corduba - not so much as a drink of water. What's more, I had to wait a d.a.m.ned long time before I got noticed at all.

It was evening. I had set out from town in the light, but the fitst stars were winking over the distant Mariana mountains when I was led outside to meet Annaeus Maximus. He had been mingling with his guests on one of the terraces, where they were soon to hold an outdoor feast, as is traditional at the Parilia. The supposed shepherds had really been setting fire to sulphur, rosemary, firwood and incense in at least one of the many stables so the smoke would purify the rafters. Now heaps of hay and straw were being burned on the well-scythed lawns, so that a few by now extremely tired sheep could be compelled to run through the fires. It's hard work being a ceremonial flock. The poor beasts had been on their trotters all day, and now they had to endure being ritually l.u.s.trated while humans stood around being sprinkled with scented water and sipping bowls of milk. Most of the men had one eye out for the wine amphorae, while the women kept flapping their hands about, in the vain hope of preventing their fabulous gowns being imbued with l.u.s.tral smoke.

I was kept well back in a colonnade, and it wasn't to protect me from the sparks. The invited guests began to seat themselves for the feast out amongst the regimented topiary, then Annaeus stomped up to deal with me. He looked annoyed. Somehow I have that effect.

'What's this about?'

'My name is Didius Falco. I have been sent from Rome.'

'You say you're a relative of Camillus?'

'I have a connection -' Among sn.o.bs, and in a foreign country, I had no qualms about acquiring a respectable patina by shameless usage of my girlfriend's family. In Rome I would have been more circ.u.mspect.

'I don't know the man,' Annaeus snapped. 'He's never ventured out to Baetica. But we met the son, of course. Knew my three boys.'

The reference to Aelia.n.u.s sounded gruff, though that could be the man's normal manner. I said I hoped Helena's brother had not made himself a nuisance - though I wished he had, and that I was about to hear details I could use against him later. But Annaeus Maximus merely growled, 'High spirits! There's a daughter who's got herself in trouble, I heard?' News flies round!

'The n.o.ble Helena Justina,' I said calmly, 'should be described as high-minded rather than high-spirited.'

He stared at me closely. 'Are you the man involved?'

I folded my arms. I was still wearing my toga, as I had been all day. n.o.body else here was bothering with such formality; provincial life has some benefits. Instead of feeling civilised, being overdressed made me hot and slightly seedy. The fact that my toga had an indelible stain on its long edge and several moth-holes did not help.

Annaeus Maximus was viewing me like a tradesman who had called with a reckoning at an inconvenient time. 'I have guests waiting. Tell me what you want.'

'You and I have met, sir.' I pretended to stare at the bats swooping into the torchlight above the laughing diners' heads. I was really watching him. Maybe he realised. He appeared to be intelligent. He ought to be. The Annaei were not country b.u.mpkins.

'Yes?'

'In view of your reputation and your position I'll talk straight. I saw you recently in Rome, at the Palace of the Caesars, where you were a guest of a private club who call themselves the Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica.

Most neither own olives nor produce oil. Few come from this province. However, it is believed that among your own group the oil industry in Hispania was the topic under discussion, and that the reason is an unhealthy one.'

'That is an atrocious suggestion!'

'It's realistic. Every province has its own cartel. That doesn't mean rigging the price of olive oil is something Rome can tolerate. You know how it would affect the Empire's economy.'

'Disastrous,' he agreed. 'It will not happen.'

'You are a prominent man, Annaeus. Your family produced both Senecas and the poet Lucan. Then Nero left you with two enforced suicides because Seneca had been too outspoken and Lucan allegedly dabbled in plots - Tell me, sir, as a result of what happened to your relatives, do you hate Rome?'

'There is more to Rome than Nero,' he said, not disputing my a.s.sessment of his family's reduced position.

'You could be in the Senate; your financial position ent.i.tles you.'

'I prefer not to move to Rome.'

'Some would say it was your civic duty.'

'My family have never shirked our duty. Corduba is our home.'

'But Rome's the place!'

'I prefer to live modestly in my own city, applying myself to business.' If Seneca, Nero's tutor, was renowned for his dry Stoicism and wit, his descendant had failed to inherit this. Maximus became merely pompous: 'The oil producers of Baetica have always done business fairly. Suggesting otherwise is scandalous.'

I laughed quietly, unmoved by the feeble threat. 'If there is a cartel, I'm here to expose the perpetrators. As a duovir - and a legitimate trader - I a.s.sume I can count on your support?'

'Obviously,' stated the host of the feast, making it plain he was now returning to the singed meats at his open-air barbecue.

'One more thing - there was a dancer at that dinner; she came from this area. Do you know her?'

'I do not.' He did look surprised at the question, though of course he would deny a connection if he knew what she had done.

'I'm glad to hear it,' I said coldly. 'She's wanted for murder now. And tell me, why did you leave Rome so abruptly?'

'Family troubles,' he shrugged.

I gave up, without obvious results, but feeling I had been touching nerves. He had remained too calm. If he was innocent I had insulted him more than he had shown. If he was truly ignorant of any conspiracy, he ought to have been excited to discover that one existed. He ought to be shocked. He ought to be outraged that maybe some of the well-clad guests at his own table tonight had betrayed the high standards he had just proclaimed for Baetican commerce. He ought to be afraid that they had offended Rome.

Without doubt, he knew a cartel was being brokered. If Annaeus did not himself belong to it, then he knew who did.

As I was leaving I saw what his family troubles must be. While their elders were only just sitting down to their banquet, the younger generation were rushing off to places unknown and habits unseemly. If the three Annaeus sons had been friends of Aelia.n.u.s, he must have enjoyed a jolly time in Baetica. They were various ages, but of a similar mentality: as they set off riding out from the stables when 1 began my own slow walk to the front of the house, they galloped either side of me, coming closer than I found comfortable, while they whooped and whistled and chided each other loudly for not flattening me properly.

A young woman who might be their sister was also leaving the house as they raced off down the drive. She was a self-a.s.sured piece in her mid-twenties, wrapped in a furred stole. She was wearing more pearls and sapphires than I had ever seen layered on a single bosom - too many,in fact, to let you see what kind of bosom it was (though it looked promising). She was waiting to enter a carriage from which emerged the head of a man about the same age as her. He was indeceutly handsome. He was cheering a younger male, very drunk already, who had rushed out from the carriage to be violently ill on the mansion's immaculate steps. Corduba at festival time was the place to be.

I might have asked for a lift in the carriage, but I did not fancy being thrown up on. To her credit, as I pa.s.sed her the daughter did warn me to watch where I stepped.

Unfed, unwatered, and unl.u.s.trated, I turned away and set off wearily back towards Corduba. There was no chance of returning to the Camillus estate tonight. I needed to find myself a lodging where the owner was still sober and had a bed to offer despite the festival crowds. Before that I would have to flog through the dark countryside that lay beyond the Annaeus property, back to the even darker streets of the town, pa.s.sing the cemetery on the way. I am not afraid of ghosts - but I don't care for the hideous real-life characters who lurk among the tombs of a necropolis at night.

I walked steadily. I folded my toga, as well as you an fold a c.u.mbersome ellipse, then slung it over one shoulder. I had gone beyond the reach of the torches, though I had pulled one up and stolen it. I was finding my way along the track back to town, concentrating on my thoughts about the day. I did not hear anyone following, even though I stayed alert to the possibility. But I certainly felt the sharp stone that flew out of nowhere and smacked into the back of my neck.

XXVI

Instinct wanted me to slap my hand on the pain, and to bow my head. d.a.m.n instinct. I wanted to stay alive.

I spun around. I drew my sword. In Rome carrying a weapon is illegal - but here that did not apply. All Romans know the provinces are hotbeds of banditry. All Romans on holiday or foreign service go armed.

Ironically my sword, an unofficial relic of my five years in the army, was a short stabbing blade made from the finest Spanish steel.

I listened. If there were more than one a.s.sailant out there I could be in deep trouble. Was this how Anacrites and Valentinus had felt when the arrows stopped them in their tracks?

n.o.body rushed me. There was only silence, however hard I listened.

Had I imagined it? No; there was blood on my neck. At my feet lay the culprit stone, large and pointed like a flint. There was no mistake. I picked it up; it also had my blood on it. I tucked it into the pouch at my belt. Well, I was enjoying myself in a foreign province; I was bound to want a souvenir.

Sometimes in the country yokels let fly with missiles. Sometimes in the city idiots hurl tiles and bricks. It is a territorial gesture, an act of defiance when strangers pa.s.s. I did not believe that was what had just occurred.

I rammed my torch into soft ground at the edge of the track and moved away from it. Letting the toga slide down to my elbow, I wound the cloth around my forearm so it could act as a shield. With the torch alight I was still providing a target, but I preferred to risk that than to douse the flame and plunge myself into darkness in the middle ofstrange countryside. I strained my ears, shifting position continually.

Eventually, when nothing happened, I pulled up the torch again and searched around in circles. On either side of the track lay olive groves. In the dark they were full of hazards, though these were purely natural. Weeding hoes lay waiting to be stepped on, their handles all set to spring up and break my nose. Low branches were ready to crack my brow. For all I knew the groves contained courting couples who might turn nasty in a wild provincial manner if I interrupted them in mid-fumble. I was about to give up when I stumbled into a disorientated sheep.

The animal was very tired. It must belong to the l.u.s.tral flock. Then I remembered the shepherdess with the interesting eyes. I had seen her before. She had looked very different in her sophisticated little gold costume as Diana, but even smothered in sheepskin I ought to have recognised the girl.

Keeping my sword out, I walked back grimly to the Annaeus house. n.o.body attacked me again - which was odd. Why hadn't the dancer tried to kill me out there on the track?

Fired up by annoyance at myself as much as anything, I made a formal complaint. This time, with blood trickling down my neck, I was given a better welcome. I kept making a fuss until Annaeus Maximus reluctantly ordered a search for the girl. The chief shepherd, who was still there with most of his accomplices, was summoned to respond to my accusations.

Annaeus seemed taken aback by my story. According to him, most of the group were well known to everyone, actors from the local theatre. They routinely earned extra money by providing a.s.sistance with civic rituals. This was better than allowing real shepherds to get big ideas, I could see that. Naturally the man then claimed this particular girl was a stranger to him.

The leader of the actors turned up, still dressed as thechief shepherd and emitting a belch after his supper. He confessed he had employed a few extras to pad out the parade today. This included the shepherdess with the big brown eyes (whom he rather clearly remembered). She had presented herself when he was auditioning; he had no idea where she came from, though her name was supposed to be Selia. He said she wasn't local, though by that he merely meant she did not come from the immediate confines of Corduba; Hispalis would still be a possibility. I had just let the killer of Valentinus slip right through my fingers. And needless to say, all the slaves Annaeus had sent out to look for her came back empty-handed.

'I'm sorry.' The actor appeared pretty genuine. 'Next time I'll ask for references.'

'Why?' I scoffed bitterly. 'Do you think she'd admit she was up to no good? Anyway - are you constantly being offered the services of undulating women?'

He looked shamefaced. 'No,' he mumbled. 'Though that was the second one this week.'

'And what was the first one like?'

'Older, though she could dance better.'

'Why didn't she get the job instead of Selia, then?'

'She wasn't from around here.' Trust a local to take precedence. He looked even more ashamed, then rallied with his big excuse: 'Well, Selia was thoroughly professional; she even brought her own sheep!'

'She's abandoned it now!' I retorted. She was a professional killer - and if she could claim a whole sheep, whoever was paying her expenses must be allowing her a substantial daily rate.

XXVII

I spent the night at the Annaeus house. The notables let me feed at their table (well, their tenants' table). They loaned me an empty cell in their slaves' barracks. It was near the well, so I even managed to get something to wash my wounded neck - and tnere was all I could wish for to drink. What civilised people. Next morning their steward sent me away on a very slow horse which he said I could borrow indefinitely since its useful life had run out. I said I would report my gracious treatment by the Annaei to the Emperor. The steward smiled, openly showing his contempt.

The three sons had come home at dawn. I met them thundering in as I rode away. On principle they left me in a cloud of dust again, though the initiative had gone out of them to some extent and they were all looking faintly tired. As far as I knew the daughter was still out. Women have more stamina.