A Dying Light In Corduba Part 14

The Camillus estate lay bathed in sunlight when I finally rode back. As I expected, Helena had already followed up her promise to go over to the Licinius Rufius spread and pursue the next suspect for me. Marmarides, looking annoyed at having his nose put out of joint, told me Marius Optatus had driven her.

It gave me time to bathe and change my tunic, then to hang around the kitchen until the cook found me the kind of nourishing breakfast certain old women like to lay before an honest young man who is known to have fathered an almost-born baby and who clearly needs his strength built up. As I enjoyed the food, she cleaned my cut neck with a thyme wash and stuck on some sort of salve. Needless to say, its main ingredient was olive oil.

Helena returned to find me still being pampered. Shegrabbed me by the scruff of the neck and inspected the damage. 'You'll live.'

'Thanks for the loving concern.'

'Who did it?' I winked; she took the point. We walked outside to the shady area of garden near the house, where a bench was placed under a fig tree on a wall. There, safe from being overheard, I told her about the shepherdess. Helena winced. 'You think this pageant queen all bundled up in smelly wool is the "dancer from Hispalis"?'

I did not want to say I had definitely recognised her, since that gave a false impression of me gawping too keenly at women. 'Striking down men from behind certainly seems to be her trademark. But Anacrites and Valentinus were then rammed against walls. Apart from the fact that there were none available last night, if it was Selia, she made no attempt to follow up.'

'Maybe she relies on her two musicians to do the dirty work, and didn't have them with her.'

'Then what was the point of the stone? It seemed random - more like a warning than anything.'

'Marcus, if the stone had hit you on the head, would you have been killed?' Sparing Helena's feelings, I said no. It certainly could have done more damage. But stone- throwing takes a good aim.

'Don't worry. What it's done is put me on my guard.' Helena frowned. 'I do worry.'

So did I. I had been struck by a recollection of Anacrites mumbling 'dangerous woman' when I said I was coming to Baetica. I now realised it was not Helena he had meant. He too must have been warning me - about his a.s.sailant.

To lighten the atmosphere I related my experience with Annaeus Maximus. 'I gained some insight into his att.i.tude. His family is in a political trough. He is socially crippled by what happened to Seneca. Undeserved or not, the taint has lingered. Wealth alone might recapture the family's old l.u.s.tre, but they've clearly lost heart too. Maximus certainly does not want a career in Rome, though he doesn't seem to mind being the big boy around here. Still, the Annaei areyesterday's heroes, and now it all depends whether running Corduba will be enough for them.'

'Will it?'

'They are not stupid.'

'What about the younger generation?' Helena asked. 'Running wild with great panache.' I described what Ihad seen of the sons and the jewel-clad daughter.

Helena smiled. 'I can tell you about the daughter -including where she stayed last night!'

I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears. 'Scandal?'

'Nothing like it. Her name is Aelia Annaea. She was at the Licinius Rufius house. Despite the alleged feud between their families Aelia Annaea and Claudia Rufina, the other fellow's granddaughter, are good friends.'

'Flow sensible you women are! And so you met both of them today?'

'Yes. Claudia Rufina is quite young. She seems genuinely good-natured. Aelia Annaea is more of a character; the bad girl enjoys knowing that her papa would hate her to accept hospitality from Licinius when the two men aren't speaking.'

'What does Licinius feel about it?'

'I didn't meet him.'

'Aelia sounds a bundle of trouble. And if Licinius encourages her to upset her father, he sounds a wicked old man.'

'Don't be a prig. I liked Aelia.'

'You always like rebels! What about her little friend?' 'Much more serious. Claudia Rufina yearns to endowpublic buildings and earn a statue in her honour.' 'Let me guess: the Annaea babe is pretty -'

'Oh, you thought so?' Helena asked quickly; she had not forgotten me saying that I had seen Aelia Annaea at her home last night.

'Well, she's rich enough to get herself admired for her necklaces, and she's polite,' I corrected myself. 'Honestly, I hardly noticed the girl ... Nice sapphires!'

'Not your type!' Helena sneered.

'I'll decide my type, thank you! Anyway, she was being picked up by someone last night; I bet she's betrothed to the handsome G.o.d I saw in the carriage when she went off. I suppose the Rufius poppet with the commendable social ambitions will be very plain -'

Helena's eyes were bright. 'You're so predictable! How can you ever judge human nature when you're so bound up in prejudice?'

'I get by. Human nature makes people fall into distinct pigeonholes.'

'Wrong!' Helena said crisply. 'Claudia is just rather serious.' I still reckoned Claudia Rufina would turn out to be plain. 'The three of us had a civilised chat over a refreshing tisane. And you're wrong about Aelia Annaea too.'

'How's that?'

'She was happy and light-hearted. n.o.body has burdened her with a future husband of any kind, least of all a gooddooking untrustworthy one.' Helena Justina had never liked handsome men. So she claimed, anyway. There must have been some reason why she chose to fall for me. 'She was overdressed in jewellery, but wore nothing like a betrothal ring. She is very direct. If the situation called for it, she would have asked for one.'

'The arrangement may not be public knowledge yet.'

'Trust me; she's not spoken for! Claudia Rufina, on the other hand, was sporting a heavy bracelet of garnets, which cannot be to her taste (she told me she collects ivory miniatures). The awful bracelet looked just the thing a man would grab at a goldsmith's for a girl he feels obliged to present with a formal gift. Expensive and horrible. If she does ever marry the man who gave it to her, she will be obliged to treasure it for a lifetime, poor soul.'

I found myself smiling. Helena herself was dressed simply, in white, with hardly any extra decoration; while pregnant she found wearing jewellery uncomfortable. She unconsciously fingered a silver ring which I had given her. It was a plain design with its love message hidden inside. Itrepresented the time I had suffered as a slave in a silver mine in Britain. I hoped any comparison she was making with Claudia Rufina's gift was favourable.

I cleared my throat. 'Well, did you meet any male hangers-on today?'

'No, but there was talk of "Tiberius", who was thought to be at the gymnasium. He sounds like the man you saw. If he's good-looking enough to irritate you, he's also bound to be crazed on sports.'

'Because he's handsome?' I chortled. In fact having seen him I agreed he must be a handball lout. The man I saw had a thick neck and probably a brain to match. When he chose a wife he would be looking at the size of her bust and wondering how readily she would let him run off to exercise or hunt.

The thought of hunting made me wonder if his formal name was Quinctius.

'The youth you saw being sick on the steps was probably Claudia's brother.'

'The lad who was taken to Rome with the Baetican group?'

'He never appeared this morning. He was still in bed. I heard distant groans that were supposed to be him with a wine-headache.'

'If the handsome dog is after Claudia I bet there's a scheme to marry her brother to her best friend Aelia.' I was always a romantic.

Helena was scathing: 'Aelia Annaea would eat a young lad for lunch!' She seemed well disposed towards both girls, but I could tell Aelia Annaea was the one who really appealed to her.

I scowled. 'There's not much to gain from courting the young people. It's the old men who run Corduba. From what I saw last night that's wise; their heirs look thoroughly overindulged: bored girls and bad young men.'

'Oh, they're just rich and silly,' Helena demurred. Her trip to the Licinius house had cheered her up since yesterday. Her mother's highly expensive midwife hadadvised me to keep her mind occupied for these last few weeks - though the woman probably did not expect Helena to be gallivanting about Baetica.

'So what's your verdict, my darling? Have we decided these young creatures just have too much spending cash and too little parental supervision - or are the brats up to no good?'

'I don't know yet, Marcus. But I'll find out.'

I stretched lazily. 'You should enjoy yourself more. A good long bathe is what I recommend. If you whistle loudly while you're steaming, Optatus and I will keep out of the way.'

Helena Justina patted her bulge and told the child-inwaiting that if she had as many baths as its father suggested the baby would be washed away. Sometimes I wondered if Helena saw through my schemes. It would be like her to have found out exactly what the midwife had told me - and to disobey deliberately.

'So I've seen the gem-encrusted Aelia. What's Claudia Rufina like?'

'Neat, smart, and rather shy,' said Helena. 'She has a rather big nose which she unfortunately accentuates by tilting back her head then looking at people over it. She needs a tall husband - which is interesting, Marcus, because from the way Marius Optatus insisted on driving me today instead of Marmarides, I'd say he has a yen for Claudia! When we got there he vanished to discuss farrning with the old man, but I swear he only wanted to go so he - could offer greetings to the girl.'

I raised my eyebrows. Naturally I disapproved of unions that broke barriers. 'Unless I've misunderstood the rules of Baetican etiquette I reckon Optatus is risking it!'

'He's a free man,' Helena reminded me snootily. 'Anyway, when did the fact that a girl was unsuitable ever stop a man taking a chance?'

I grinned at her.

At that point we shelved the discussion because Optatus himself came out into the garden. He was splitting his sidesover the decrepit horse I had brought home, and said he hoped I had not paid out money for it; I a.s.sured him it was a virtual gift from the gracious Annaei. Marius Optatus gravely replied that the Annaei had always been renowned for their generosity.

I noticed a whiff of smoke and burnt rosemary hanging around his work clothes. It would not surprise me if he was the serious sort who quietly cleansed his stables each Parilia with a private l.u.s.tration made in genuine reverence. The sober tenant seemed like a dedicated farmer with no s.p.a.ce in his life for frivolity. But once I had started to see him as a ladies' man, eyeing up the handsome dowry of a neighbour's rather big-nosed granddaughter, anything could be possible.

XXVIII

Helena had invited Claudia Rufina to return her call, but the social rules dictated there should be a short lapse of time first. Our young neighbour was probably dying to inspect Helena's paramour, but the poor thing would have to wait to see my friendly face. Meanwhile I decided to see her grandfather; now I had met Annaeus I needed to compare the rivals soon before I ended prejudiced either for or against the one just because I met him first. Since the Rufius family had had one visit from us today, Helena told me I should wait until tomorrow. It gave me an afternoon loafing about. That suited me.

'You'll like their house,' Helena giggled, for reasons she refused to divulge.

I rode over the next 'mirning on my borrowed horse. His name was allegedly Prancer. It must have been given to him a long time ago. I think he wanted to be a botanist. His notion of a canter was a decorous sidle, slow enough to inspect every dockleaf on the way.

The Licinius Rufius estate lay comparatively close, though (given my mount) not as near as I would have liked. This was mainly because of a large number of intervening - olive groves which belonged to someone else. Marius Optatus had warned who it was: his ex-landlord, Quinctius Attractus. I surveyed the senator's holding with great interest. He was happily ostentatious. After the olive groves I had to pa.s.s his fields of flax, his market gardens, his vineyards, his pig farm and his wheat.

When I did reach the Rufius villa, I saw what Helena Justina had meant: the family had embarked on a truly brave improvement programme. It was easy to see where the money for it came from: once I had entered a gatewaywith their name on a column I had ridden through at least a couple of miles of well-aged olive trees, grand monsters with several trunks growing from stocks with huge circ.u.mferences; these were clearly only a fraction of the whole estate. I had pa.s.sed a working area where they had not one but two oil-presses. Even more significant was the fact that they actually owned their own kilns for making amphorae. This estate, which ran on until it bordered the river, was obviously near enough to water transport at Corduba not to need to use mules for carrying the oil down for shipment. (The estate roads were in fact immaculate.) The kilns were five in number; alongside them were rows of bricks drying in the sun awaiting their turn to be home-fired too.

Iu an area the builders were using as their yard, I spotted the youth I had last seen being ill at the Annaeus house. He must be the grandson, as we had guessed. He was wearing a brilliant tunic in broad stripes of red and murex purple, a garment that shouted loudly that his family could afford the best. He was helping a bailiff decide something with a carpenter who had a new window-frame on a trestle. Young Rufius looked barely into his twenties, awake though perhaps not yet fully alert. Still, he was the one holding the building plan, his relations with the workmen sounded pleasant, and he did appear quite confident discussing the chart. I went past without making myself known and left Prancer under an oak tree; it did not seem worthwhile tethering him.

The house made me gulp.

It had once been a modest Baetican country villa, like the one on the Camillus estate - a short axial design based on a single corridor, with a very basic suite of reception rooms and small cubicles for private use on either side. But this was no longer enough for people who clearly thought themselves the rising stars in Corduba.

The whole building was scaffolded. The roof was off. A second storey was being raised on top. Some of the walls were being torn down so their traditional construction could be replaced with Roman concrete faced with the typeof bricks I had seen being made in the yard. A ma.s.sive entrance portico had been stuck on the front, complete with marble steps and columns the full height of the new roof. The Corinthian order had arrived in Baetica in a big way. These capitals were fabulously carved riots of acanthus leaves - though one had unfortunately been dropped. It lay where it had fallen, split in two. Work on the entrance had come to a standstill, presumably while the masons went into a corner to think up a good story to explain the accident. Meanwhile the entire ground plan of the house was being expanded to twice or three times its original area. To my astonishment, the family were still living in the old core of the house while the work went on.

When I asked for Licinius Rufius, the first person who came to greet me was his wife. She found me in the new vestibule, gawping at some gigantic paintings of Alexander the treat's campaigns. I was wondering whether I dared explore the huge internal peristyle garden which had been expanded from an original courtyard into a wonder of imported marble colonnades and topiary lions, beyond which I could just see a- monumental dining room still under construction.

An elderly, upright woman, Claudia Adorata's centrally parted grey hair was held in a low bun in the nape of her neck with a circle of crystal pins. She was swathed in saffron linen and wore a fine necklace of twisted gold wires, with agate, emerald and rock crystal stones in a complex setting that resembled a b.u.t.terfly. 'Excuse the mess!' she apologised, reminding me of Ma. Maids had decorously followed her into the echoing atrium, but when she saw I looked fairly tame she clapped her hands and sent them scurrying back to their looms. Their work must have been well impregnated with building dust.

'Madam, I salute your courage and initiative!' I grinned candidly.

It appeared the old lady had no notion of why I had come. We mentioned Helena, and the Camillus family, which seemed enough to gain me admittance. She said herhusband was out on the estate but had been summoned to meet me. While we waited, she offered a tour of the renovations. Since I try to be polite to ancient dames, I said obligingly that I was always glad of a chance to pick up ideas. The crude apartment that Helena and I were renting in Rome would have been beyond this lady's comprehension. I was not even sure she realised that I was the father of the n.o.ble Helena's child.

By the time Licinius Rufius appeared his wife and I were sitting beside the new fishpond (the length of the house), exchanging gardening notes on the new Campanian roses and Bithynian snowflake bulbs, and taking warmed wine from bronze goblets like a pair of old friends. I had admired the five-room bath-house with its complicated heating system, special dry heat box, and exercise area; praised the half-finished but pleasing black and white mosaics; envied the new kitchen suite; taken the name of the fresco painter who ornamented the summer and winter dining rooms; cooed over the s.p.a.ce where the library was to be; and expressed suitable disappointment that I could not view the suite of upstairs bedrooms because the stairs had not been built.

Now we were seated on an expensive set of folding chairs, placing our drinks on a matching collapsible table, covered with a fine Spanish linen tablecloth. These had been set out for us on a small paved patio which had an astounding vista of a fashionable apsidal grotto at the end of the pool, where a twinkling gla.s.s mosaic of Neptune enthroned amidst a lot of writhing sea creatures was surrounded by a heavy border of sea-sh.e.l.ls. No doubt the Baetican murex industry had helped provide the sh.e.l.ls.

Delicate probing had ascertained that Claudia Adorata described her family's financial position as 'comfortable'.

There was a reason for the sudden renovation campaign. She and her husband were creating a glorious backdrop for the antic.i.p.ated achievements of their much-loved grandchildren, the youth in particular. His handle was GaiusLicinius Claudius Rufius Constans, which would make a long and ornamental honorific inscription when his fabudous deeds came to be celebrated in his native town one day. Clearly the Senate in Rome must be keeping a chair warm for him, and it was hoped he would eventually rate a consulship. I tried to look impressed.

Claudia told me she and her husband had brought up the two grandchildren since they were orphaned at an early age. Their mother had died a few weeks after producing the young male prodigy; their father, himself the only son and heir, had lasted another three years then caught a fever. The two tots had become their grandparents' consolation and hope for the future - as dangerous a situation as young people could ever find themselves in. At least they had money in indecent quant.i.ties to help them through it. On the other hand, having so much money so young could make their situation even more dangerous.

Licinius Rufius strode out through the fug of dust, washing his hands in a silver bowl held by a slave who had to scamper after him. He was but not overweight, with a heavy face and a shock of crinkled hair that shot off to one side. Of an older generation than Annaeus Maximus, he remained firm on his feet and dynamic. He greeted me with a knuckle-crushing handshake, then took one of the chairs, flattening its cushion and causing the delicate legs to bow. He helped himself to black olives from a fancies dish, but I noticed he did not take wine. Perhaps he felt more cautious than his wife about my motives. Claudia Adorata herself smiled, as if she felt rea.s.sured now he was in charge, then she slipped away.

I too picked up some of the olives. (They were superb quality, almost as lush as the finest from Greece.) Eating allowed us both a short pause to do some sizing up. Licinius would have been viewing a thoughtful character in a plain green tunic and a graded Roman haircut, clearly displaying the traditional virtues of honesty, uprightness, and personal modesty. I saw an elderly man with an inscrutable expression, whom I decided I would not trust one jot.

XXIX

From the beginning I felt that, unlike his wife, Licinius Rufius knew exactly why I had come to Baetica. He let me pa.s.s some idle remarks about the mad scale of his home improvements, but soon the conversation shifted to agricultural matters, which would lead to the real subject of my interview. We never mentioned the magic word 'cartel', though it was always our point of reference. I began frankly: 'I could say I'm checking over the family estate for Decimus Camillus - but actually my trip out here has an official purpose -'

'There was a rumour of an inspector from Rome,' Rufius answered readily. Oh yes. Well, why pretend? News that Anacrites had planned to send an agent, and that I for one was actually here, would have been leaked from the proconsul's office - and possibly confirmed to all his Baetican friends by the proconsul himself.

'I am hoping to talk to you about oil production, sir.'

'Obviously Baetica is the place for that!' Licinius made it sound as though I was just on a mild fact-finding survey, instead of investigating a vicious conspiracy where agents had had their heads smashed m. I could feel the old man taking over. He was used to sounding off with his opinions. Thinking they know it all is a habit of rich men who build up large outfits of any kind.

'I've been discussing some figures with Marius Optatus at the Camillus estate,' I interrupted as quickly as I could. 'He reckons there may be as many as five million olive trees and a thousand oil presses in the River Baetis hinterland. An owner of standing like yourself could possess maybe three thousand acts. quadrati - say eight or ten centuries of land?'

He nodded but made no comment, which almostcertainly meant he owned more. That was a ma.s.sive area. There used to be an old system of measurement which we all learned at school, where two acts equalled a 'yoke', and two yokes were a 'hereditary area' - that's the amount of land that was supposed to suffice for one person in the frugal republican days. By that reckoning the average oil magnate in Baetica could support seven hundred and fifty people - except that the old method of measurement would have been when farming merely consisted of barley, beans and cabbages for domestic consumption, not a luxury export crop like olive oil.

'What's an average yield per century?'

Licinius Rufius was offhand. 'Depending on the soil, and the weather that year, between five and six hundred amphorae.' So the typical plot we had been talking about would produce between four and five thousand amphorae per year. That would buy a whole forest of Corinthian columns, plus a fine public forum for their owner to endow.

'And how is my young friend Optatus?' Rufius smoothly changed the subject.

'Bearing up. He told me a little about his misfortunes.'

'I was delighted when he took his new tenancy,' the old man said in a tone of voice I found irritating, as if Marius Optatus were his pet marmoset. From what I had seen of Optatus, he would not accept being patronised.

'The way he lost the old one sounds hard. Do you think he had bad luck, or was he sabotaged?'

'Oh, it must have been an accident,' Licinius Rufius exclaimed - as if he knew d.a.m.n well it had not been. He was not going to support accusations against a fellow landowner. Quarrelling with colleagues is a bad business move. Encouraging victims never brings in cash.