David Wishart: Ovid

Point two. Ovid hadn't done any of the things that usually get you exile. Or at least claimed he hadn't. Not treason, not murder, forgery or fraud. And that, like I'd said to Perilla, didn't leave much. Sure, he could've been lying but I didn't think so. After all why take the trouble to deny what no-one was accusing him of unless he'd got a genuine axe to grind? Also Perilla had said that she and her mother still kept up the villa to the north of Rome, which meant that the emperor hadn't confiscated Ovid's property. If the crime was really serious then that didn't make sense either.

Which brought me to the last point. Not only had Ovid not been charged with any of the crimes he'd listed, he hadn't been charged at all. No charge, no trial, no nothing, just a summons to a private interview with the emperor and a one way ticket by imperial decree. That sort of thing just didn't happen with a run-of-the-mill crime. More, Augustus had made it clear that whatever the guy had done to put his imperial nose out of joint the subject was closed. No questions answered, no explanations given. Stranger still, when the Wart came to power and some of the biggest men in Rome begged him to cancel the edict or at least move the poor bastard to somewhere the locals didn't trail their knuckles while they walked, Tiberius had refused. No pardon, no explanation, just that straight, bald refusal. And now the guy was dead the emperor wouldn't even make space in Italy for his bones.

Big league stuff. And weird by any standards.

I crossed over at the junction of Pullian with Orbian and took in a family of street musicians. They were good; grampa on finger cymbals, dad on hand drum and mum on the double flute, with a kid in a dirty brown tunic standing behind them picking his nose for light relief. The daughter — no kid by any standards — was collecting coppers. She wore a short girdle with bells, a leather bra, and an expression of total headbanging boredom. In that weather she must've been freezing. When she came round to me I slipped a silver piece under each bra cup, patted her rump and left quickly before Pa caught on to why she was grinning. Spread a little sunshine, that's my motto. Besides, she had marvellous tits. Then I cut down the first of the little alleyways that would take me through the heart of the district and, eventually, to Suburan Street itself.

So what had Ovid done? All I had to go on was his own weird, coy statement that he'd seen something he shouldn't have and hadn't told anyone about it. Not exactly earthshaking stuff, and not the sort of thing to get you permanent exile in a godforsaken hole like Tomi. Let alone stop your kin from bringing back your ashes, which was something completely off the wall. Sure, the State might take a chunk or two out of the guy's kin if his crime had been bad enough, but that was a different thing to stopping them bury his bones when he coughed it. Whatever Ovid had been guilty of, this sustained knee-jerk reaction was unique, totally savage and just plain inexplicable.

Okay, so where did that leave us? With some sort of scandal, obviously, that Augustus wanted buried deep and fast and permanent. A scandal was the only thing that would explain the secrecy and the lack of formal charges, and it could be private or political or both. My money was on the private. Ovid was no politician and like I said he'd had the moral reputation of an alley-cat. Also once he'd packed him off to Tomi Augustus had pulled his poems off the shelves of the city's public libraries. I knew that from personal experience. I remember a few years later as a spotty kid trying to get my lecherous hands on his Art of Love — a step-by-step guide to seduction- and being sent off with a flea in my ear and a moth-eaten copy of Cato's Farming Is Fun . So. A social scandal involving sex, close enough to home for Augustus to take it as a personal insult, serious enough to get the guy exile and a strict warning to keep his mouth shut even where his wife and daughter were concerned. And it must've happened about ten years ago, about the time when…

When…

I stopped so suddenly that the stout woman a step or two behind me behind me piled into my back. The pole she was carrying with two chickens dangling upside down from it caught me a stinger on the side of the head.

'You want to watch where you're going, sonny?' she said; or words to that effect. The Subura's no place to pick up refined diction.

'Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry.' I was still dazed; and not because of the pole. The old girl gave me a funny look and moved off. The chickens weren't too pleased either.

Julia! The Julia scandal!

I couldn't remember all the details — I'd only been a kid at the time, hardly into double figures — but I knew the gist. It'd happened that same year, I was sure of that. Augustus's granddaughter Julia had been convicted of adultery and exiled to some flyspeck of an island out in the sticks. And Julia, when she hadn't been humping half of Rome, had been one of Ovid's literary patrons…

I carried on walking, my head still buzzing like a beehive. I had to be right. It couldn't be a coincidence, not the two exiles coming so close together. If Ovid had been screwing Julia and the emperor had found out then Augustus had good reason to blow his toupe. The only problem was that I was sure some other guy had been named as having his hand down the lady's pants. Named and charged, publicly. And if Julia had been two-timing him with Ovid then why not say so? Why not charge Ovid as well and forget all this cloak-and-dagger crap? And if there was no cover-up involved, and Ovid simply knew Julia was on the job and didn't tell, then why not charge him publicly with that and be done with it?

Sure, I know. None of this made enough sense to fry an anchovy in. But at least it was a start; whatever Ovid's crime was it had to be connected with the Julia affair. Had to be! It was only a question of fitting things together. More information would help, sure. The name of the adulterer for a start and what had happened to him. If I could just find someone who knew the facts and was willing to tell me then maybe I could take it from there. The first part was easy. The second…

Yeah. The second part was the killer. The way people had been avoiding me recently had me sniffing down my tunic for body odour. If I was right about the Julia connection and started asking questions that involved embarrassing answers then things could get worse.

I felt the first drops of rain as I reached Suburan Street. The Saepta was still a long way off, I was beginning to regret my detour and the clouds were heaping up like a herd of elephants mating. Maybe, I thought, it might be a good idea to make a dash for Augustus Square. There were always plenty of litters touting for business there, but if the rain came on in earnest they'd all be snapped up. The streets around the Square itself were always packed and I wasn't the only pedestrian without a hat or a raincoat with money in my purse. There was just a chance, though, that I might catch a litter-team before that. Suburan Street's a main thoroughfare and although it's still far from being a high class area you sometimes strike lucky. I turned round and looked behind me to check for anything heading in my direction.

Fifty yards back a man was crossing over to my side of the road. He was the sort of guy you can't help but notice, half the size of Augustus's mausoleum and twice as ugly, but without the gorilla-like shamble some really big men have. A professional sword-fighter, maybe. Or an ex-soldier. Someone, anyway, who knew his size was the other guy's problem. I saw what was going to happen before it did; in that part of town you can't make any sudden changes of direction if you want to stay popular, and even crossing the street takes time. The big guy went slap into an oil-seller, knocking him flying and drenching half a dozen peaceful citizens with lamp oil. If I'd had time I would've stuck around to broaden my vocabulary but the rain was getting heavier and the sky directly above me was as black as a Nubian's backside.