David Wishart: In at the Death

It’d been three years since I’d last visited the Greens’ stables. Nothing had changed. The place still looked like a fortress: high, smooth-faced wall topped with pottery shards set in cement, a gate that would’ve stopped a charging elephant, and just in case visiting punters still hadn’t got the message a door-slave outside with biceps and pectorals that your common-or-garden gorilla would die for.

The scowl wasn’t exactly welcoming, either. I should’ve brought a bunch of bananas with me as a peace-offering, but it was too late now. I stepped up to the guy and gave him my best smile.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Remember me, pal?’

The slave stood up, his little piggy eyes under their mat of tangled hair narrowing as he gave me the once-over. It was like watching a titan off a pediment getting ready for round two of a theomachy. He nodded slowly and spat to one side. I swear the gobbet of phlegm sizzled on the cobbles, and in October that has nothing to do with temperature.

‘I don’t forget faces, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘What the fuck do you want?’

Yeah, well. It’s nice to be popular. I reached into my tunic and brought out Minicius Natalis’s letter.

‘I’m here to see the boss,’ I said, handing it over. ‘Personal invite.’

‘That so, now?’ He squinted at the seal: pictures he could cope with. Just. ‘What about?’

Yeah, I’d been wondering that myself, because the letter didn’t say; just that it was important and that Natalis would appreciate a visit as soon as I could manage. ‘You have me there, friend,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could sort of take me to him and I could ask? Would that be possible, do you think, or should we give ourselves three guesses?’

That got me a long hard stare. Par for the course: sarcasm’s wasted on a racing-faction door-guard. You may as well shoot dried peas at a rhino.

Finally, he spat again, reached up and unbarred the gate.

‘Wait here,’ he growled.

The bar on the other side clunked into place behind him, leaving me to kick my heels while he consulted higher authority. Not that I was surprised. If Jupiter himself were to come down in all his glory with his eagle on his wrist he still wouldn’t get past the front gate unless he was spoken for, and they’d probably frisk the eagle, too. The racing game’s a serious business, and faction bosses don’t take chances.

Ten minutes later, the troll reappeared.

‘Okay, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘You’re cleared. Follow me.’

Inside was a different world. The Greens are Rome’s top team, patronised by Gaius Caesar himself — crown prince, soon-to-be emperor (if the news from Capri was anything to go by) and all-round dangerous nut — and so equipped with the best of everything money can buy, plus a few things it can’t. There was no sign of the horses, of course — paranoia dictates that these beauties are kept well away from the curious eyes of even legit visitors — but everything else screamed cash and quality, right down to the natty tunics worn by the stable skivvies. Not that it was all surface show, mind: you can’t be inside a faction stable for long before you catch the sense of obsession. For these guys, anyone from the top man right the way down, the faction comes first, middle and last. And as far as esprit de corps goes, if you’re looking for the top variety you can forget the legions; they don’t even come close.

The admin building was out on its own, set in a snazzy formal garden. It could’ve doubled for a private house on the Esquiline or the Caelian, even — at a pinch, and barring size — for one on the Palatine itself: PR again, because the faction-master of the Greens is a man with serious clout, and if you have clout in Rome then you’re expected to flaunt it. My guide-troll nodded to the door-slave sweeping the porch, crossed the marble-pillared and mosaic-floored entrance hall and knocked on a cedar-panelled door at the opposite end.

‘Come in.’

We did. I’d been inside the inner sanctum before, so I wasn’t surprised. Forget the snazzy town-house, at least where the interior fittings were concerned: this was a working office, with the back wall lined with cubby-holes for documents, chairs instead of couches and a big desk rear of centre. The furniture was top quality, and the mosaics and murals must’ve cost an arm and a leg.

‘Quality’, though, wasn’t a word you could apply to the guy sitting behind the desk. Titus Minicius Natalis, the faction-master of the Greens, was a fat, balding, pint-sized runt with a stubbly chin and ‘ex-slave’ written all over him in block capitals. He wasn’t thick, mark you, far from it: you didn’t get all the way up from nothing to being the head of Rome’s top Colour without brains. Not without a streak of ruthlessness a yard wide, either. I didn’t know if Natalis actually had a white-haired old grandmother squirrelled away somewhere, but if he did I’d bet the old biddy had to check herself regularly for price tags.

‘Nice to see you again, Corvinus,’ he said. Yeah, well, I couldn’t exactly say it was reciprocal, but there you go, you can’t have everything. And he was only being polite. ‘Sit down, please. That’s all, Socrates.’

The troll grunted and exited, closing the door behind him. I pulled up a chair and sat. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then he leaned back, almost disappearing behind the model chariot and horses on his desk.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You got my letter.’

‘Sure.’ I folded my arms. ‘For what it was worth.’ We’d never liked one another from the first, and I didn’t see any reason not to carry on playing it that way. Still, the bare request to talk to me about something important had had me hooked, and knowing the bastard knew it would do just that irked me. ‘What’s this about, Natalis? Some more grubby faction business?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with the faction. Or even with racing.’

‘All right.’ I leaned back myself, unfolded my arms and crossed my legs while he fiddled with a pen and set it down. The guy was nervous. Odd. ‘So what, then?’

‘A favour.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s a jug of wine on that table over there. Massic, and good stuff. Pour us both a cup, okay?’

Well, he had his priorities right, anyway, and it’d been a long dry hike from the Caelian. I got up, walked over to the tray and poured. The jug and cups were solid silver, chased with — surprise! — a frieze of running horses. I set a full cup on the desk beside him, sipped at my own, and sat down again.

‘I don’t think, pal,’ I said carefully, ‘that I owe you any favours at all. The reverse if anything. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘You impressed me, Corvinus.’ He took a long swallow from his cup and set it down. ‘I don’t impress easy, and when it happens I don’t forget. Oh, sure, I admit it: if there is a debt then it goes the other way, and you got up my nose then just as much as I got up yours, so I can’t even claim the benefit of past acquaintance. Truth to tell, you still do.’ Well, that was frank, at least. He’d never been one to mince his words, Titus Natalis. ‘Even so, you’re a digger with a brain in your head, which is what I need at present, and that’s not common.’

‘Never mind the smarm, friend,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what you want, okay? Then I can turn you down flat and we can both get on with our lives.’

Instead of answering, he opened a drawer in the desk, took out a sheet of paper and slid it towards me. I reached over, picked it up and glanced at it.

It was a money order made out in my name. For five thousand sesterces.

I stared at it, then at him.