The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (32 page)

Vespasian nodded thoughtfully, and then turned his attention to the ghost. “I await your story impatiently,” he said.

Caesar fell to his knees. “My name, so it please your honour, is Lysidamus. I am from the island of Crete. I was brought here as a child and sold to a company of touring actors. It was never clear which of them actually owned me, and I suppose it didn’t matter. I was eventually given small parts to play, usually girls or women. When my voice changed, I played the insolent slave, or on occasion the young lover –”

“Let’s get to the part where you’re hiding in secret passages in this palace,” Domitian interrupted.

“Yes, your honour. Of course, your honour. The emperor Nero saw me in a production of Plautus’s
The Boy From Carthage
– I played the boy – and immediately purchased me and made me a freedman. I joined the imperial troupe of actors, and became Nero’s voice coach. For when he played parts in Greek. He spoke Greek with a terrible Latin accent. I became adept at not quite telling him that.”

“Get to the secret passages,” Domitian said.

“Yes, your honour. The hidden corridors were used by Nero to spy on his enemies and, I suppose, his friends. There are tubes in the walls that can be uncapped and, if you put your ear to them, you can hear what is being said in the room outside. On that horrible day when the people turned against him, he hid at first in the secret rooms. I went with him, but when the next day he fled the palace, I remained behind. I have been living in these secret places ever since, coming out only for food and to, ah, borrow clean garments.”

“Three, almost four, years?” Vespasian asked, incredulously.

“I believe so. One loses track of time in, ah, my situation.”

“Why did you stay?”

“At first through fear, I thought the subsequent emperors would just as soon eliminate all memories of Nero, and I was one of those memories. And then because I really had no place else to go.”

“You’ve been listening to what goes on here for all that time?” Domitian demanded.

“Oh, no!” Lysidamus said, sounding shocked. “I never took the caps from the listening tubes. That wouldn’t be right.”

“And just when did you become a ghost?” Vespasian asked.

“It must be over a year ago now. I was, let’s see, in the pastry kitchen, I believe. Someone walked in on me while I was gathering a few pastries to take back to my lair. I raised my arms in fright, and much to my surprise, he was more frightened than I. He raced from the room screaming that he’d seen a ghost – Great Caesar’s ghost, to be precise. And, of course, when the others came in to see, I was back in the wall.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost?” Quintilian asked. “Even that first time?”

“That’s what the man said – yelled. I did not realize how much I had come to resemble the great Gaius Julius with the passage of time. I still thought of myself as the young lover. But I decided to take advantage of this chance resemblance and never leave my hidey-hole without wearing an imperial toga and a laurel wreath, and dusting my face with a little flour.”

Domitian glared at the sad little man. “Sneaking into the imperial palace,” he said. “That’s a serious offence.”

“I don’t know if we can get him for that,” Vespasian said, smiling. “After all, he was here before we were.”

“Yes? Well, what about that ‘Ides of October’ nonsense?”

“I don’t think he’s responsible for that,” Quintilian said. “Are you?” he asked Lysidamus.

“Well, I –”

“I mean you did it, of course, but you’re not responsible for it.”

“Yes,” Domitian said, “but murdering that lad . . .”

Quintilian turned back to Domitian. “Oh, that he didn’t do.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He was discovered,” Quintilian said. “Weren’t you?” He leaned over Lysidamus. “Weren’t you?”

“Yes, yes.”

“By whom?” asked Vespasian.

“I don’t know his name. He caught me about a month ago, while I was making my nightly foray for a loaf of bread, and ever since I’ve been living in fear. He told me that, were he to turn me in, I would be instantly executed. But he said he had use for me. He explored the secret ways and found places for me to appear. He told me what to say. Last night, when a young lad almost caught me he – he took away the lad’s little knife, and jabbed at him with a long stiletto that he kept concealed in his toga. I think he killed him.”

“You don’t know?”

“He told me to go back to my room. I went.”

“He did kill the lad,” Quintilian told Lysidamus.

The actor burst out sobbing and fell to the floor. “What a pity, what a pity,” he cried. “And he was such a handsome lad!”

“Who did this?” Vespasian asked.

“I swear, I don’t know his name,” Lysidamus sobbed. “He wears a senatorial toga.”

“His name is Marius Trabitus,” Quintilian told Vespasian. “He is a senator.”

“Trabitus?” Vespasian repeated. “Why, I know him. He told me he actually saw the ghost, I remember. He has been spending a lot of time in the palace. He knows of my intention to move, and has an interest in taking the building over to turn it into an I-don’t-know-what. Some sort of forum, or such. Or so he told me.”

“I think you’ll find he’s associated with one of the groups you mentioned that has its own ideas about who should be emperor,” Quintilian said. “Perhaps he thought that if he made enough noise about the ‘Ides of October’, some superstitious guardsman or courtier would think the gods were giving him instructions?”

“And why do you name this Trabitus as the instigator?”

“And as the murderer of young Septius. He would have been better served by keeping the youth’s body hidden. Ghostly appearances are one thing, who knows about ghosts? But a corpse lying in a room has to have arrived there somehow. I knew it was he when he told me of seeing bloody wounds on the ghost of Caesar; an obvious, ah, exaggeration. Why would he make such things up were he not involved? And then he told me that little knives are no defence against ghosts. But nobody knew that lad had a knife, since the sheath was concealed under his body until I turned him over. Bring Trabitus here and let our actor friend identify him.”

“I shall,” Vespasian said, and gave the order.

Trabitus was not found in the palace and, by the time a squad of the praetorian guard reached his villa, he had committed suicide by slitting his wrists in the bath. When Lysidamus was taken to look at the body, he identified Trabitus as the man who had caught him, and who murdered Septius.

It was about a month later that Vespasian created the Imperial Office of Teaching Rhetoric to the Young, and appointed my master Quintilian to be its head.

How does the Sybil know these things?

I
don’t know why, but when you’re unusually big and strong, people tend to think you’re stupid. “All brawn and no brain,” they say, and treat you like a mindless bull – good for strength and courage, but no use for thinking.

My patron doesn’t make that mistake about me though. Tadius Sabinus knows better. I’m head and shoulders taller than him, and I’ve been his bodyguard for years now, ever
since he bought me as a slave in the Emperor Nero’s time. After he’d owned me for a couple of months I saved his life, and he said to me, “Rufus, you’ve got a good head on those broad shoulders. Make sure you use it, that’s all I ask.”

That’s why I stayed with him even after he gave me my freedom, and he became my patron instead of my master. He has other bodyguards now; I’m a kind of chief guard-cum-personal assistant, and I – but you don’t want to know all that; I only mention it to explain what I was doing at a family banquet given by my patron’s mother, the Lady Cornelia. She probably didn’t like it, but she knew that if she invited my patron, she’d have to invite me too.

Of course I didn’t sit near Sabinus – I was in a distant corner with the other freedmen – but before it all started, he took me aside. “Rufus, I want you to be on the alert tonight. I’m sure Cleopatra is up to mischief. She says she’s planning a surprise for my brother, and I don’t trust her. Keep an eye on her, will you?”

“It’ll be a pleasure!” The young lady was well worth looking at. “I promise I’ll watch her every move. And if you want me to sit near her and offer her my personal protection . . .”

He laughed. “I wish I could arrange it. I think you could control that little madam. I’m not so sure Marcus can,” he added in an undertone.

Marcus, the patron’s young brother, would soon be marrying this Cleopatra – no, of course that wasn’t her real name, she was actually Chloe; but Cleopatra was what she insisted on being called. Ever since childhood – and she couldn’t have been more than eighteen even now – she’d been fascinated by stories about the celebrated Queen of Egypt, and wanted to be like her. She was from Alexandria, and Marcus had met her there and fallen as completely in love with her as Mark Antony did with the famous queen. They’d come to Rome
for the wedding, and this was the first chance his mother had to show off the bride-to-be to all the friends and relatives in the city.

It was quite a party – glittering I think is the word. The forty or so guests were in for a treat, and her ladyship wanted them to realize the fact as soon as they arrived at her house, which was a grand one just outside Rome. Rooms and passages were all decked out with vast bouquets of flowers and wreaths of laurel, and the big dining-room was as bright as day with dozens of silver lamps hanging from ornate carved stands; in fact there were so many lamp-standards they were getting in the way of the table-slaves, coming and going among the dining-couches with food and wine. The meal itself was wonderful (I remember the swans stuffed with peaches in saffron sauce were especially good), and the wine was the best, from Campania. There was some lively flute music played by nearly naked little girls, and between courses there were dancers, acrobats, and an Egyptian lad with a clever performing monkey. Glittering, as I say. But to me it was like a gaudy painting concealing a crack in a wall. It deceives your eye, but the crack is still there underneath.

This Cleopatra, like her namesake, was beautiful, intelligent, and charming when she chose; Marcus was handsome, romantic, and besotted; and both families were happy. Cleopatra’s, who were rich but only equestrian in rank, were thrilled by a marriage into a powerful senatorial clan, and Marcus’ dear mama, having met Cleopatra at her most charming, declared she was “just the right sort of girl to help his political career.” Actually her father’s fortune was the real attraction. The Tadius family were well-born but constantly short of cash; Cleopatra’s could have built themselves a gold pyramid.

Sabinus was the only person who wasn’t happy about the marriage. (Well, I wasn’t either, nor were the slaves, but our views hardly counted.)

“She has him running around like a puppy-dog,” he complained to me, after she’d been in the house only a couple of days. “I don’t like to see her taking advantage of him like that. And as for all this Cleopatra nonsense – it’s a childish game, and it’s time she grew out of it. Egyptian clothes and eastern perfumes are all very well, but going on about how she wants to live her life just as Cleopatra did . . . I keep expecting her to emerge from a rolled-up carpet one fine day!”

“That would spoil her fancy imitation-Isis hairstyle,” I said. “She might try sailing up the Tiber in a golden barge, I suppose.”

He didn’t smile. “Oh, well, I expect he’ll learn to stand up for himself a bit better once they’re married.”

But I doubted it. Marcus was a gentle young man – affectionate, idealistic, wanted to be a poet – not over-bright, but then he didn’t have to be; his family influence and the Egyptian money would get him into the Senate when the time came. Maybe he was a bit too soft, and I reckon that’s what his mother thought, and Cleopatra was supposed to toughen him up.

The young madam lost no time in showing everyone how devoted was her adoring Mark Antony, as she called him. She bossed him about almost the way she ordered her slaves, only in a honey-sweet tone that he was incapable of resisting. “Oh, Markie dearest, I’ve left my stole in the garden. Would you just . . . ?” “Antony, sweetheart, my sandal’s come undone. Would you be a dear . . . ?” And then the big one: “Marcus darling, I really need some new pearls to wear at the banquet your mama is giving for us. Won’t you take your little Cleopatra shopping?” And whatever she asked, he did willingly, lovingly. Including buy her a lovely necklace, with pearls the size of walnuts.

But what even my patron didn’t see was the way she
laughed at Marcus in private, mocking his dog-like devotion, and boasting about the hoops she would make him jump through once they were married. I heard all about how she behaved from my own girl, Amanda. She was one of the slaves lent by Marcus’ mother to look after the bride-to-be, who seemed to need three times as many servants as any other female in the house.

“She’s evil,” Amanda said to me on the day of the banquet. “She enjoys humiliating him, and he’s such a sweet gentle boy. I wish there was some way we could stop the marriage, Rufus. Master Marcus deserves better.”

I pretended to be annoyed. “You’ve always had a soft spot for Marcus, haven’t you? Now he’s found himself a beautiful girl, and you’re jealous!”