Graveyard of the Hesperides (21 page)

I sighed gently to myself. Thinking like my mother, I reckoned that if only they all sat down to a decent meal together every day, while they were socializing they might decide to cooperate and better their lives.

I had wine as well, to show I was not snooty. After a sip I left most of it. There are limits.

While the others ate, I talked to them and discussed their way of life. Their initial wariness faded. I guessed I was the first person who expressed any human interest in them since they came to Rome. This was so because, at the end, one of them complimented me on not being standoffish.

*   *   *

By the time we finished, I knew their existence was terrible. What I learned was intriguing.

Unlike the Dardanians, their trip to Rome had been far from self-motivated. They were all slaves. Most had been sold to dealers by their own relatives, or people to whom relatives owed money. Dragged off to Delos, the filthy Greek island where thousands of slaves came onto the market every day even nowadays, they had been purchased by a Roman dealer who transported them here, then sold them on to a pimp to be run as prostitutes. It had always been their end destination. No one had ever intended them to do needlework or hairdressing. No one bothered to lure them with that pretense.

They lived in, and operated out of, a local district just south of the Ten Traders. It lay close by, at the start of the Viminal Hill. From what I could tell, theirs was a smaller version of the big brothel area in the Second Region, the Caelian, around the Amphitheater and Nero's Great Market. That was one of the most densely occupied parts of Rome; it was crammed with bars, stalls, barbers, cheap souvenir shops and barracks for soldiers on temporary assignment here. The Second Region was thus an ideal spot for brothel owners to colonize, so it was grim. I had worked on the Caelian recently, but tried to stay on the opposite side of the hill.

These girls had a base up here, from which they were sent out to cruise nearby streets. Their sordid home district was called the White Chickens.

*   *   *

What the Macedonians also told me was that, as I had already realized, there were two levels of tavern prostitution. Individual waitresses who had genuine jobs serving drinks could be hired for a casual bunk-up. It worked happily or unhappily for them, depending on their work premises. But there were also professional whores.

The professionals lived in brothels of various sizes, some of them rooms in otherwise normal properties. Perfectly respectable people would hire out a space on an hourly basis and think nothing of it. Prostitutes had pimps or they had mothers—who were not maternal according to high Roman ideals and, in fact, were rarely related to them at all. The girls' work was organized by these people, who treated them ruthlessly. They either suffered long, soulless hours in cubicles, or they could be sent out to cruise the streets.

They were slaves. They were constantly watched, frequently beaten, brutalized by their pimps, poorly clad, poorly fed, given no relief from misery. Most of the money they earned was immediately taken away from them by their pimps or brothel mothers. They would work until their dingy charms no longer attracted clients, or until they died. If they managed to stay alive but were no use, they would be cast out like so many enfeebled slaves and would die anyway, on the street or under a bridge or beaten up by louts. Even the hospital of Aesculapius on Tiber Island, which generally gave a refuge to old, dying slaves, tended to reject prostitutes.

“You will never earn enough to buy your freedom and give up this life?”

They stared at me as if I was mad for even suggesting it.

 

XXXIV

Now they were talking freely, at my urging they revealed more about how brothels like those in the White Chickens operated. Some were directly owned by a pimp or procuress, who installed girls to work there, and occasionally boys too. Others were owned by property agents who hired out rooms to independent workers as direct subtenants. As we discussed more details, there was giggling about the kinds of men who paid for sex, which led to variants—for instance, fine Roman ladies visiting incognito for a thrash with a gigolo. Further laughter followed, as the Macedonians harped on about such women coming back for more.

We all chortled at the thought of Roman fathers not knowing that their children had been sired in the stews, then the talk swung to the risk that women thrill-seekers might afterward find themselves in trouble; a pregnancy meant their adventures would become public knowledge. They would have to get rid of it. At least the well-to-do could afford a quick solution, we agreed.

One of the girls, Chia, went rather quiet at this point.

I made a face at a girl with a mole sitting near me, who replied behind her hand that I was right; Chia could be expecting. She looked to be the youngest. I could see she was extremely anxious. She frowned a lot, moved jerkily, picked at her cuticles.

It would be her first time. That was bad enough for most women. But the worst problem for Chia was that soon it would prevent her from working. The pimp would beat her and give her no pocket money, so she was liable to starve. Even if she came through and managed to produce a child, there was nowhere to keep it, no one to look after it. The poor mite would be a slave anyway, probably taken away by the pimp as soon as it was saleable. Masters of that type don't hesitate to separate mothers and babies—and they do not sell slave babies to be nicely taught to read and write as docket clerks or secretaries. Girl or boy, it faced abuse.

None of us spoke to Chia about her predicament. That did not make us unsympathetic. I picked up a silent understanding that first she had to be sure she was pregnant, then she must face up to it and decide what she wanted to do. After that, if she wanted help, she could ask.

*   *   *

Finally, I tackled my reason for approaching them. “You know that some bodies have been found at the Garden of the Hesperides. One is a woman.”

They all nodded. “Rufia.”

Rufia's story had reached even women who were too young to have known her.

“It must have been before your time, but have you heard anything about her? Why I am asking is because everyone calls Rufia a barmaid, but I am starting to wonder. I certainly have the impression most people were in awe of her, and she kept the Hesperides running her own way. I know there are women who organize and control other working girls. They tend to be powerful characters. I am trying to find out if she ran things.”

The Macedonians listened. They considered. They said they had never heard of Rufia being
that
kind of barmaid, although of course it was possible.

Then I asked, “There is another woman now, once connected with her. Do any of you know Menendra?”

Brighter than I expected, the one with the oddly placed mole on her cheek asked, “Do you think she does that?”

“Organizes girls?”

“So you think she runs a racket.”

“Am I wrong then?”

Several of them shrugged. If Menendra did control a vice ring, it did not include these young women. They had a pimp. They admitted as much, pointing him out. He was a lean dandy with a slick hairdo, sitting outside the Romulus with one knee elegantly crossed over the other, holding a small cup between three fingers, enjoying a tisane. Watching whatever they did.

I loathed him on sight, but he was theirs. In a grim way they accepted him. I daresay they knew worse men.

I had a cold feeling that later that vermin over there would batter every one of them because they had been talking to me. They were risking it. Maybe he would have battered them all anyway. I wanted to hope our conversation was an act of defiance on their part, but I did not wish it to cause them harm.

“So how do you girls know Menendra?”

A glance passed among them, which I could not interpret. “She lives in the White Chickens.”

“In a brothel?”

They sniggered. In their world any house might be used for sexual commerce, any room was a potential location for trade. If it had a bed, that clinched it.

Menendra rented a place of her own over a cookshop. They had never seen her take men there—or women, giggled the one with the uncombed goat-girl curls. But that meant little. There were plenty of nooks for assignations. What they seemed sure of was that Menendra did not have other prostitutes using her own premises.

I believed that. Any woman of business needs her private place for after work. So Menendra kept a room that was her personal retreat, just as I had my apartment.

I asked where exactly hers was. They told me an address. I asked where they themselves lived. They were cagier. I did not press them.

*   *   *

With a decent meal inside them, the girls were reluctant to resume working. As we sat there at the Brown Toad, out of habit one or two made desultory attempts to lure men off the street, but they were half-hearted. Their pimp had left the Romulus. Speculating among themselves, they reckoned he had gone off to a dice game. They were obliged to work that evening, but decided to take time off this afternoon, behind his back.

We drew our conversation to a close. I thanked them, and that was when I told them I came from Britain. We laughed; it made them feel they were the high and mighty ones. Well, I was used to that.

On the verge of parting, the one with the wild curls gave me a narrow look. “What we've been talking about didn't seem to surprise you.”

Another backed her up. “Is it from personal experience?”

I gave them a wan smile. “Close.” I took a deep breath. “I escaped. But I do know what it feels like to be fourteen, hungry and worthless in your own eyes, then some filthy brute picks you up, calls himself your friend, promises kindness—but curses and kicks are all you get as he grooms you. You soon become too scared to refuse to work for him.”

“And all the time he's telling you, this is what you deserve,” said the one with the mole.

I nodded.

“So what happened to you, Albia?” asked the curly one, in a hard voice.

“Luck. Some rich people saw me and thought I would make a cheap nurse for their babies.” Better to put it that way. “I just want to tell you—if I could get out, you can too.”

The Macedonian sex slaves knew it wasn't true for them. That was the worst aspect of the life that had been imposed on them. They had absolutely no hope.

As I left I ventured to ask whether they were afraid of ending up like Rufia. I was surprised that they showed no fear of sharing her fate. Any one of them was vulnerable to being beaten up, all of them risked death on a daily basis. Presumably they had to blank that.

*   *   *

I left them and went back to the Hesperides. The workmen were still hard at it, with Tiberius in charge. He broke off when he saw me returning.

I sat down and told him some of what I had learned. I said that increasingly I thought this bar might once have been the center of a prostitution racket, with Rufia strongly implicated.

“All bars are brothels, officially,” he answered.

“Well this one has only three rooms upstairs. I am wondering if Rufia carved out a wider empire.” That would fit with what witnesses had told me, how everyone in the neighborhood knew her.

“So who would the five dead men have been? Clients? Someone who decided not to pay?”

“I don't know.”

If a whore's customer refused to hand over her fee, he had to expect a violent reaction—though killing five would seem extreme, and the neat, organized burial at the Hesperides surely argued for advance planning. As a general rule in business, if somebody fails to honor a bill, you don't kill them—you want them alive to pay up. Mind you, there had probably been plenty of Roman executors who were asked to settle debts for sexual favors procured by the deceased. I expect favorite prostitutes were sometimes even passed on as bequests.

“If Thales was a brothel-keeper, wouldn't it be recorded somewhere?” I asked Tiberius.

“Brothel-keeping is not illegal. Prostitution neither. If Old Thales profited from vice, so long as he declared his income at the census, and duly paid his taxes, that was his only responsibility. The state's interest is not moral, merely fiscal.”

I laughed gently. “The government never minds the source, so long as cash clinks into the Treasury! But I thought prostitutes counted as outlawed noncitizens, along with actors, gladiators and the like?”

“Whores only. Their masters not. Perfectly ‘respectable' people fund their lives by the sex trade. You would be surprised how many society people have fortunes that come from brothels.” I could see Tiberius thought as I did, that this was hypocrisy. He added, “The Emperor Caligula levied a direct tax too; each prostitute has to pay a one-off to the Treasury, whatever she charges per man. It was an unheard-of measure when he introduced it—but quickly became accepted, given how lucrative it is.”

I kept niggling. “I know you have records. Aediles keep them. So who does have to be registered?”

“Any woman acting as a prostitute.”

Again, Tiberius saw my disapproval: I thought it typical that only the women were monitored so closely. That was in addition to their being tied to pimps and brothel-keepers. Everyone had power but them. Meanwhile, those who organized the game escaped censure. “I want to understand the rules. Tell me?”

Tiberius shifted uncomfortably. “This has not been my favorite aspect of the job…”

“All right, I'm not accusing you.”

“Every prostitute has to register with the aediles. She must present herself, give her correct name, her age, her place of birth, and the pseudonym under which she intends to practice. If a girl turns up who looks young and respectable, we try to persuade her to change her mind.”

I shot him a look. He managed not to squirm. “Look, we do our best! Well, I have tried always to … If she is adamant,” he continued, still looking abashed, “we are bound to issue her a license. She tells us what price she intends to charge. We enter her name in the roll.”