The Ides of April (29 page)

After he left, I went right upstairs to the office to fetch the blue gown on which I had sewn the braid the other day, especially to wear now. It still had the needle in the neck facing, where I had parked it when Andronicus visited. I intended to put away the needle in the bone case that I kept in my sewing box, but maddeningly could not find it. The box was crammed so its contents overflowed if I rummaged too much, and I was hurrying. I assumed I simply failed to see the case, the way you do sometimes even when an object is right in front of you. In the end, I had to stab the needle into a spare end of ribbon. Grabbing the box and the dress, I locked up the office and returned downstairs.

By the time I had made my way back to my apartment, I had become annoyed with myself for bungling. I like to keep equipment neat. I was now in a clumsy state where even putting on earrings was awkward; I could not find the hole in one lobe, which must have been made at an angle and was always elusive when in haste. Once I had changed into the dress and tidied my appearance, I calmed down. Before I left, I upturned the sewing box onto a low table and systematically sorted through its contents, determined not to be beaten. The needle-case was not there.

It could have dropped out on the floor of the office, but I had no time now to return and look. Anyway, I was sure I would have noticed. I hate the feeling something is not right. I particularly hate any hint that someone has tampered with my things. The needle-case was pretty and useful, but not exquisite; the office contained other items to attract a walk-in thief, all perfectly portable. Not many can be bothered to intrude so far up inside a building, with added risks to them at every storey; my apartment downstairs was far more at risk of burglary. So what trickery was this?

Eventually, I was ready to leave, in my blue dress, gold sandals and best earrings, knowing that Mother would comment I was looking tired, as mothers are obliged to do apparently. Tiredness, when it derives from the trials of life, cannot be altered. Nor can a mother be thwarted from looking at you narrow-eyed, even though you know it is her way to show you she cares. The first thing my sisters would shriek would be, ‘Horrible hair, Albia!’ Those two madcaps, Julia and Favonia, would fall on me with combs and ornaments, carrying me off to remedy at least that perceived defect.

Suddenly I wanted to be there. I wanted to be pampered by my sisters and feted as the queen of the day. I wanted familiarity. I would relax – indeed, I was starting to relax already. I would emerge from the girls’ patting and primping at once more bright-eyed and fun-loving, and quite willing to enjoy my birthday. I even wanted, marginally, relief from Andronicus, because there is a subtle strain when you are with a new man, whose reactions remain uncertain. With him, I still felt constantly wary.

At home, I could simply be myself. They all knew and happily deplored me. That, as I had learned since my teens, was the point of a family.

Departing, I saw Rodan and demanded, ‘Have you let anyone up to the office in the past few days without telling me?’

‘No.’ He was bound to say that. Who wants trouble?

‘What about the other night? That man called Tiberius was looking for me, with Morellus from the vigiles.’

‘They came to my cubicle. I knew you weren’t here.’

‘They believed you?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because anyone who knows you doesn’t trust you to remember anything!’

Rodan looked at me and said slowly, ‘They never went up. They seemed to think they knew where you were that evening. They just danced off somewhere else.’

I too spoke more levelly. ‘Rodan, I think someone has been in my room.’

‘Not that I know, Albia.’

I gave up. ‘Well, keep your eyes peeled.’

Rodan looked sheepish. ‘Happy birthday, by the way.’

‘Thank you, Rodan.’

Yes, I had a wonderful birthday. My relatives can throw a party. As was traditional, it was so good, darkness fell before I realised. Admittedly bleary, I intended to call up the chair and toddle home, but was delayed at the last minute. Nobody was making good decisions at that point. I was prevailed upon to have a comforting word in private with my little brother.

Postumus was eleven now. We all knew his birth mother, a colourful character who ran a large entertainment company. Thalia might be maternal with baby lions, but had shrunk from ownership of a human child and handed him over to us. There were doubts over his paternity, but the story we all stuck with was that my grandfather had fathered him, just before he died. It was certainly what Grandpa in his vanity had wanted to believe.

My parents took the baby and because he too was adopted, it was always assumed he and I had a special bond. In truth, we shared neither blood nor sympathy. I felt sorry for him in some ways, but if I had to be honest (and I hoped this did not show to Postumus) I could never warm to him. He was none too keen on me either. Mind you, he was no lover of other people. My parents and sisters treated him kindly and fairly, but he endured it with suspicion, aware from the start that his existence obliged my father to share with him, as a half-brother, a major legacy; anyone who loved my father would therefore view Postumus as a cuckoo in the nest. Anyone who saw my pa as a much more wily operator would in fact suspect he only adopted the boy because, as his son, the legacy provision no longer applied . . . That was probably what my brother thought.

Postumus made few friends, within the family or outside, and seemed to enjoy his isolation. He had the kind of personality that makes you think a boy will grow up to be a public torturer. However, he harboured genuine anxieties. He had worried about his security during all his little life. Now, I was told, he felt convinced that his birth mother had her eye on him. He had reached an age when he could be useful to her in her work. Postumus feared she would be coming to claim him (he was a bright child, because not long after this she did).

‘Cheer up,’ I told him, when I was asked to probe and intervene like a big sister. ‘Then you can be the only boy in history who, instead of running away from home to join a circus, has to run away from a circus to go home.’

My brother bestowed on me his most baleful look. I would say he was going through a difficult phase, but with him, one difficult phase simply flowed into the next without a kink. ‘How would you feel, Albia, if those cabbage-sellers came from Londinium and fetched you back?’

‘Trust me, child; life with the Didii has taught me to make exciting decisions. I would run away from the cabbages and become a lion-tamer.’

I admitted to myself that I had been drinking wine for so long I might be viewing his unhappiness too flippantly. My brother stomped off, then I was so guilty I felt the need to drink more wine with my parents, who were similarly depressed by their helplessness in handling him. I abandoned any thought of returning to Fountain Court that day. They kept my old room there for me; as on many previous occasions, I stayed overnight.

I did pop home next morning, but only for a flying visit. I needed to pick up things because, at intervals during the party, we had had discussions about work. On the mysterious killings, everyone decided there was only one thing to do next. As relatives do, mine handed me their orders; as you do to avoid arguing, I caved in. So I was being despatched to Aricia where Laia Gratiana had sent her maid, Venusia.

Venusia had to be interviewed. Neither the vigiles nor the aediles’ office would ever get around to it and, even if they did, we could be sure they would bodge it. Morellus was a deadbeat; Faustus and his runner were implicated. I was not only a neutral party but female. I could bamboozle a maid. Crucially, unlike everybody else, I was efficient. Father would lend me a cart and driver next morning, so I could do it.

Someone I normally thought well of had the bright idea that the sullen one, my brother, could come along on the trip, to take him out of himself.

Thank you, Mother.

S
ome informers lead different lives from mine. Those big names will be insulted by satirists and historians, but hardly care because they retire on their profits to luxury villas with delicious clifftop settings above gem-like azure seas. I mean the famous faces who prosecute in notorious court cases. True, they are despicable tools of despotic emperors, but they can balance public loathing against the simple joy of fine working conditions. Their offices are elegant. Discreet staff pad about, carrying silver salvers. Their hours are short and convenient. When they have to travel, assuming an emergency where no agents can be sent on the errand for them, it is in immense style and comfort, all plush litters and an enormous entourage, with many stops for sustenance, which will include vintage wines and potted lobster, served by naked Numidian boys under a demountable canopy. With tassels.

As a one-woman outfit, this was not my way. But for my father stepping in to loan me a ride, I would have been standing at the roadside on the Via Appia, trying to hitch a lift in a haycart. Those haycart drivers are all beasts, believe me.

Instead I was graced with a certain Felix and his mule, Kicker, the deathless team that made up the auction house’s secret money-moving cart. This was by definition ramshackle. It had to look fifty years old with a rickety axle, a vehicle so unsophisticated nobody could be using it for anything other than transporting three chickens and a very smelly woolsack. In reality, the axle was well-oiled and the wheels were new. It had a false floor, beneath which lay a reinforced compartment to hold treasure and/or coinage in bulk. Kicker had knock-knees, but if you fed her as much fodder and water as she wanted, she could be a deceptively smooth mover. Felix was the most inappropriate person ever named Happy or Fortunate, living proof that nobody can tell how a babe-in-arms will turn out when they are imposing its lifetime label. We used him because he could be relied on in roadside inns; everyone would shun this glum-face, so he never got sozzled in the wrong company and told prospecting highway robbers he was carrying money. The hens, who had been named by my sisters, were called Piddle, Diddle and Willykins. They were devils for pecking passengers.

Felix collected me from the old laundry, with Postumus already looking unhappy in the cart. Wheeled vehicles were not supposed to work in Rome in daylight hours, but exceptions were made for builders’ carts so Felix had long mastered the art of keeping a plank in the back to look legal. I told my brother this was so we had a handy plank with us, ready to lay down across any marshy ground when we stopped on the journey to pee behind a bush. Postumus was horrified; he could not bear teasing.

Some boys would have brought their toy charioteers to play with harmlessly. He had his ferret. It was called Ferret. That was the kind of wild imagination my little brother not only had, but was proud to own.

I asked Felix, who confirmed my fears that ferrets and chickens do not mix. Indeed they don’t. We spent the entire trip with Ferret going crazy as he tried to get at the three hens.

I remember visiting Aricia as a young girl. My parents had gone to the shrine of Diana at Nemi, during one of their official top-secret missions. Nobody can talk about some of their mad adventures. My pa won’t be able to publish his memoirs for about two thousand years.

When we stayed there before, it was a grim mid-December stopover at a hideous inn. This had given me a poor impression of a place that I now found to be extremely prosperous. As the first staging-post on the well-travelled route between Rome and southern Italy, Aricia was in a prime position to persuade folks to part with cash while they were still in a good mood. Hanging up on the outer rim of the Alban Hills, its climate was airy. Its situation was equally fine, with gorgeous views down a sweet valley that must be an old volcanic crater, views that extended away to the sea in the misty distance. These benefits, combined with its closeness to the city, had drawn many Roman families of good name and even better finances to have second homes in the area. For their culinary delight, rich volcanic soil furnished the market stalls with excellent vegetables, there was a fabulous local dish of pork cooked with fennel, wine was made and the mountain strawberries were justly famous. A further bonus was the start of a three-mile sacred way through the woods to Nemi, with its beautifully sited lakeside shrine to Diana in her role as the goddess of painless childbirth. Fashionable medical services on offer included conception guidance for the freeborn rich, who flocked in droves.

Obviously much advice at this shrine involved intercession with the goddess and prayer, expensive processes to buy, but possibly supplicants were also told, ‘Have more sex’, which made the visit worth the money. I bet it worked too. Nemi certainly had a wonderful reputation, plus an income to match.

My father reckoned if they were bunged an extra fee by the childless, the priests would help out. He’s appalling.

But so often right.

At Aricia was a virtually forgotten shrine to Ceres. Also a fertility divinity, although unlike Diana specifically not virginal, Ceres in her wheat-stalk crown was honoured with busts and seated statues, nursing two young children. Abundant motherhood depressed the couples struggling to have babies who came to Nemi, so this shrine was short of benefactors. It lacked all the elegant facilities at Diana’s nearby complex.

Nor did being dumped among its dilapidated acolytes hold much appeal for the spinsterish maid of Laia Gratiana. I found her moping. If she had been dumped here for her own safety, she was certainly not grateful.

I had left Felix and our luggage at what I hoped was a different travellers’ mansio from the one my parents cursed previously. I had to bring Postumus with me. You can’t leave a boy with a ferret on his own at an inn. With his surly, insulting attitude, he was bound to be grabbed by kidnappers in mistake for a consul’s son and shipped off to a village in Sardinia. The bandits would be stuck with him, as he complained about the conditions they held him in and criticised their inefficiency at negotiations. We would pay no ransom. The crestfallen gang would end up desperately pleading for us to take my brother off their hands. Worse, Postumus would soon be running the racket, a task that would suit him, but that was no life for a ferret and, as a convinced animal lover, I had to think about Ferret’s future.