Graveyard of the Hesperides (32 page)

“That's right,” I agreed, not disputing her claim. “Every time some hungry worker orders a pottage of green lentils on his way to his employment, you are acting as Rome's savior. I shall suggest you be awarded a medal—though that may have to wait, Menendra, until we know whether you had a hand in stabbing Gavius.”

Menendra and the men were dragged away by the vigiles. Macer stayed behind with us. He and Tiberius gazed at me with a mix of amazement and satire.

“So that's it.” Tiberius was gentle in his mockery. “First you have a garden full of bones, but the only corpse you can identify is the landlord's dog.” Listening, Macer snorted. Tiberius lovingly murmured: “And now, my sweet, you are investigating lentils!”

 

XLIX

I was probably not looking at a grocery war; the idea seemed ridiculous. However, I smiled quietly and said sometimes the smallest thing can rouse a storm of passion. Macer, a literalist, flapped the neck of his tunic and answered that he wished the weather would break and give us a real storm to clear the air. Though wiry, he was feeling the heat. We were all sweating lightly.

The fragile creature with the face paint was edging closer to the Brown Toad, trying to reoccupy his-her propositioning seat. For a private chat we moved along to the Four Limpets, which looked quiet. That too had tables illegally blocking the pavement, where we sat. It didn't matter about us not wanting to order anything, because all the time we sat there, no staff came out to ask. A board claimed the legitimate dish of the day was porridge; I had started to make a point of checking what grains were offered. With the presence of an aedile in the area, prominent signs offering utterly blameless menus had popped up all over the place. It should do wonders for Menendra's business plan.

The Limpets' L-shaped counter was in three shades of gray. I was now noticing that too. The sign depicted only three conical seashells, not four, though their noduled rays were finely drawn. I saw a basket for a cat or dog, though it must have gone out for a walk. Their price list showed not only wines but how much it cost per session for Orchivia or Artemisia. Virginity was extra. Some joker had added that in different chalk.

Macer was here in reply to our message about needing an overview of extortion in the Ten Traders. It had only taken him a day to respond. He seemed to think we should thank him for making it so urgent. He pointed out that he did have other work; for instance it was the tribune's birthday yesterday, which required a whole day's celebrating. Their governor was a sad case who had no family. Anyone could see why. Nevertheless the lads did their best to compensate him for being so unlikeable. At least, they did when he was buying. “Was it you who sent me a bright-burning lamp called Juventus? Burbling on about ‘liaising' on a ‘special project?' Completely bonkers. What a sad-arsed clown.”

“Must have come of his own accord,” Tiberius assured him gravely. “We would never do that to you.” So Macer knew it was our fault. He seemed to bear no grudge.

Thinking about Juventus made Macer thirsty. He went into the bar, where he whistled for a waiter, gaining no response. This place was dead. Undeterred, he chose a beaker, selected a wine jar from a shelf, sniffed it, poured a large drink for himself, wiped a drip off the jar with his finger and licked it, then clinked a copper or two in a saucer. When he came back to us he sat for a moment taking his drink. We waited politely.

His gangster overview was short. The Ten Traders territory was currently claimed by old Rabirius, overseen through his hard man Gallo. The young nephew Roscius had his eye on the neighborhood too, but so far had made no move. Macer agreed that Gallo would try to lean on Liberalis even though his bar was closed for renovation; however, he thought it unlikely the gang would have destroyed our site. It was in their interests to keep places decent in order to earn more money. The Rabirii
liked
improvements to be made. And whatever Liberalis had told us about not paying, he probably had done so, or soon would.

Regarding the attack on Gavius, Macer doubted it had been carried out by the Rabirius gang. It had all the wrong signatures. The key points were:
one
, that the hideous Gallo would have killed the dogs as well, no question, plus
two
, when intent on silencing someone, he would never leave his victim alive. If we needed even more convincing, Gallo's method was to batter people. He wanted the results to look spectacularly painful, to instil terror into others. Anyway, he enjoyed doing it.

We were gloomily silent for a while.

I asked whether Macer knew anything about the pulse-suppliers. He said no, though it sounded very interesting. He might look into it.

I could tell what that meant.

Ha!

 

L

“Never mind,” teased Tiberius. “You have plenty to do trying to identify the deceased chicken.”

He had kindly waited until Macer had left before he started ragging. Even so, I felt my hackles rise. If there had been any way to trace the late and unlamented fowl and its one-time owner, or if there was any point in doing so, I would have set about it, just to show him.

*   *   *

Despite knowing better, I started thinking about that chicken bone.

Next thing, I had asked Tiberius the name of the undertakers who had taken away our skeletons—and off I went by myself to have another look. Some informers would not have bothered. I like to be thorough (when I can think of nothing else to do). But do not mock. I was about to prove that diligence pays off.

 

LI

Tiberius and his workmen were going over to Lesser Laurel Street. He looked amused at me going to see the undertaker. “You're the expert! I reckon the key to this is whether the chicken clucked in the Dorian or Lydian mode…” Leaving him, I raised my arm in that universal gesture meaning,
Go wrap yourself around a standard-bearer's pole, Smarty!

I found the undertaker's. In view of the heat, he had no trade. Even the bereaved were staying at home while they let their dead go blue and bloated on the bier in the atrium. I wondered if the deaths at the Hesperides took place during hot weather; it could have been an extra factor for burying the victims fast.

At the funeral company, I was a welcome surprise. Well, any lone female—especially a live one—was welcome, though the fellow did not push it. Mentally I thanked him. I was too hot to start fending off a grabber. Still, I wished my tunic was less flimsy and not sticking to me in the heat.

His name was Silvinus. He attended the upper level of High Footpath society. This was not a large client base, since people there were either low-born or so lofty they spent all their time in palaces and villas. The Flavian emperors and members of their family owned private homes on the Viminal, but they tended to die either at or on their way to their many country estates. Diarrhea polished some of them off, though not Domitian, unfortunately.

Despite his empty order book, Silvinus had a hopeful expression and, given the nature of his business, an incongruously bright outlook. I explained who I was and what I wanted to inspect. He gurgled how lucky it was that he had followed the aedile's orders and kept the bones in a box, when he could have spread them around other people's cremation pyres. I answered coolly, yes it was.

He fetched them all out. Realizing that the female pelvis almost certainly belonged to someone I could now name gave me an odd jitter. I had seen bodies, but this must have been the first time I looked at bare bones and knew something about their owner. I commented as much; the undertaker nodded. He said most of the bodies he received were strangers to him, and frankly that was how he preferred it. When friends of his died, he asked a colleague to embalm them.

He was more refined than the funeral director I had recently taken to using for unidentified corpses. Unlike the disreputable Fundanus, little about Silvinus suggested he played with the dead for secret sexual pleasure. This did not make him entirely civilized. “Keeping the skeletons for a while,” as requested by Manlius Faustus, meant they were disrespectfully jumbled in a large chest, so broken-up and higgledy-piggledy they could never be reassigned to sets. “So what will you do if a relative is found? If they want to reclaim one of the bodies?”

“Ask pertinent questions to weed out a description, then use my skill to put together a few bones that look nearest.”

“In fact, we thought the males all looked similar in build. Maybe they worked in the same profession, or came from the same village.”

“Want my expert opinion?” he offered, carrying on whether I wanted it or not. “One of these men's nasal bones survived, which doesn't always happen. See…” He rummaged merrily among the skulls, tossing aside the noseless ones. “He must have had a hooked snout; could have been eastern. Possibly even North African, but if so, from the Greek end of the Mediterranean.”

“You are talking Egypt?” I suggested.

“This nose would look very appropriate in the Nile basin. But it's only a guess. Half the republican Senate had a beak like this, if you believe the Forum statues.”

“It would cause a stir if I said five senators were buried under the Garden of the Hesperides. A cynic might mutter in that case it was no surprise nobody noticed them missing for the past ten years. But disappearing senators are unlikely … I can tell you take an unusually keen interest in features,” I complimented Silvinus.

“The only way the dead can communicate. ‘
When I was alive I looked like this. Drink up and enjoy your time, for you will soon be ashes'…”

Silvinus himself had a bald head and significant ears. Perhaps they helped him catch the faint sigh if ever a corpse had been brought in mistakenly. It would prevent that nightmare nervous people have, where they are helplessly buried or burned alive.

“Now, Flavia Albia, to work! What are you looking for?”

“A little fragile scrap of rib. One of the vigiles told us it was a chicken bone.”

“Ah, that!”

“You know what I mean?”

“I saw it.”

“I hope you didn't throw it out?”

“Oh no.” Did a strange expression appear then? “Your man miscalled it.” Well, that was Morellus. “Definitely not poultry in my humble opinion—which is never wrong. Are you here because you suspect as much, Albia?”

“I don't know what I suspect,” I answered honestly. “I feel uneasy—the more I think about it, the more I have to take a second look.”

“Well, that's understandable!” he commented obliquely.

Silvinus began excavating in his assembly of bones, which took a long time since the rib in question was so small. At first he followed the well-known masculine route of tossing stuff around unsystematically, soon losing track of what he had searched already. Bones were broken in the process. Eventually I managed to prod him into being more methodical. When he had searched through and set aside about a quarter of the remains, he reached in and picked out what we wanted.

I managed not to say wasn't he glad he did it my way? I just smiled and thanked him. Better keep him sweet. I still needed his expertise.

The fragment looked as much like a chicken bone as when I first saw it. I reminded Silvinus that the skeletons had been found in the backyard of a bar, where all manner of food leftovers could have been chucked out for decades. “It seems reasonable that this should be a relic of somebody's Chicken Vardana.”

“Doubt it. A customer might toss a small bone over his shoulder onto the ground if he was badly brought up. Invariably, a dog or cat or vermin would remove it,” Silvinus demurred. “How many rats do you think live in the average eating house?”

“Too many! And indeed the bones were buried deep. I accept what you say. So what is it?”

“Did you dig up any other food remains?” I had agreed with him, but he kept pressing his point, clearly proud of his skill. “Bars cannot afford to hurl their cooking products out into an area where people will sit. Customers will be put off by awful smells, and scavengers running over their feet. No, no, cookshops and bars will take their rubbish to the nearest dump outside. Let the rats run wild at the end of the street or, better, in someone else's street.”

“Right. So was this some hasty sacrifice, buried with the dead?” While he lectured me, I was holding the tiny piece of bone in the palm of my hand. “I suppose I am now half-prepared for your verdict, Silvinus,” I hinted.

He accepted the prod. “It was a kind of tragic sacrifice. A soul was given to the gods … That is from a child, Flavia Albia.” He broke the news gently, so I was braced. “In my view, that is a rib from a baby.”

I let out an unintended sigh.

Having broken the news, the undertaker went into unrestrained macabre detail: “It was probably unborn. Could have been lying in the pelvis and became separated when the workmen were digging.”

“It's true they were not careful with the first body they found. The woman had perhaps been disturbed; a lot of her is missing.”

Silvinus would not be deterred. “Alternatively, sometimes in burials the body's gases expel a fetus into the grave. Don't ask me how I know about that.” Pointedly, I did not ask, so he told me anyway. “If you are digging a hole for a funerary urn and you come across an old grave, you can occasionally find the baby has been pushed out between a woman's thighs. I mean, after she was put in the ground.”

“Alive?” I revised my opinion:
all
undertakers are gruesome. “I mean the baby.”

“Not for long!” If he saw my face, he ignored my qualms. “Almost certainly the fetus would be dead when its mother was interred. However, there is a school of thought that expulsion can happen even while a female corpse is being laid out. It's a horror story directors use to scare their apprentices.”