David Wishart - Solid Citizens

‘That happens often, does it?’ I was pushing, sure, but the old guy didn’t seem to notice. He chuckled and shook his head.

‘Gods bless you! It happens all the time! Proper sideshow sometimes — you’d pay good money to see it.’

‘Anything, uh, particularly recent?’

‘Not particularly so, sir. The last was a couple of months back, at a sale of effects belonging to old Plautius Silvanus. Did you know him at all, yourself? A Roman gentleman. He had the big villa down the Appian Road a few miles outside town.’

‘Ah … no. No, I didn’t.’ I’d given up the pretended examination of the horseman. No need for subterfuge here, evidently: if I wanted to shut the old guy up I might be able to do it with a right hook to the chin, but I reckoned that’s what it would take.

‘A real aristocrat, Plautius Silvanus — well, you can tell by the name, can’t you — but not stuck-up for all that. Lovely man when he was alive, very courteous and soft-spoken. He’d been a governor out east somewhere, Asia or such, brought some pieces back with him. When he died the heir sold up, lock, stock and barrel. There was a bronze figurine of a runner, beautiful thing, over two and a half centuries old, and perfect as the day it was made. You should’ve seen the detail, sir, every fingernail and curl clear as clear. The master’d set his heart on it, so along we went.’ He chuckled. ‘Only when the auction came up it wasn’t there, was it, because old Caesius’d slipped in early and bought it off the heir direct for cash money down.’

‘Is that right, now?’

‘He saved the man the auctioneer’s fee, you see, and that wouldn’t’ve been nothing, so he wasn’t crying. The master was livid, sir, simply livid. Cursed Caesius root and branch all the way home, and threatened he’d do I don’t know what to him.’ He was still chuckling and shaking his head. ‘I laughed about it for days. Not in the master’s presence, mind, that wouldn’t’ve been right, and I didn’t mean anything by it. Present, was it, sir?’

I blinked. ‘What? Oh, the plaque. Yeah. For my stepfather. A birthday present.’

‘I hope he likes it, then. And if he’s in the neighbourhood perhaps you’ll suggest he steps in and has a look round for himself. No obligation to buy, none at all. We’re always open, I don’t see many people as a rule, and I enjoy a bit of a chat.’

So much was obvious, given that the chat all went the one way; still, I wasn’t complaining, because it had added another name to my list. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Thanks, pal. See you around.’

‘Give Quintus Caesius my regards, sir, when next you talk to him. I’ve got every respect for the gentleman, professionally, whatever the master may think of him. It’s nothing personal, on my side.’

‘I’ll do that, too,’ I said. ‘If I see him again.’

I left.

The wine shop was quietly busy. I nodded to the other barflies, parked myself on a stool at the counter, and ordered a cup of Alban. Just a cup: if you’re going to a funeral, even as a bystander, it’s not quite the done thing to turn up smashed. Still, because the owner knew his wine, we at least had quality here: the Alban was pretty good — not the best stuff, of course, from one of the top vineyards; that all goes to well-heeled buyers in Rome, and it’d be far too pricey even in small amounts for the local punters — but a decent-enough deuxième cru which some of my more weak-chinned acquaintances would say amused by its brash pushiness.

‘You want anything to go with it, sir?’ Scaptius, the barman-owner, asked. ‘A bit of garlic sausage and pickle, maybe?’

‘Yeah, OK.’ I took out my purse.

He put the plate, plus the filled cup, in front of me. ‘Down here from Rome again, then, are you?’

Like I say, this was my local on the rare occasions I came through to Bovillae while we were at the villa. I couldn’t be called a regular, mind — as I would be at Pontius’s in Castrimoenium — but you don’t see many Roman purple-stripers in a provincial wine shop, and they tend to get noticed. Besides, I took it for the conversational opener that it was.

‘Well, obviously,’ I said.

Scaptius grinned. ‘Going to the big funeral?’

‘That’s the idea.’ I sipped my wine.

‘I hear the senate’s asked you to look into the death. That true?’

‘Did you, now?’ Well, I shouldn’t’ve been surprised, really. Gossip in a wine shop goes both ways, and in a small town like Bovillae most secrets don’t stay secret for long. Not that there was anything to hide in this instance. And it made asking straight questions easier. ‘Yeah, it’s true enough. Popular man, was he, old Caesius?’

‘He was OK. For a politician. Straighter than some.’

‘Straighter than fucking Manlius, for a start,’ said one of the other punters further along the counter to my left. ‘Him and his mate the fucking quaestor, they’re a right pair of chancers.’

Par for the course: slagging off the local politicians over a jug of wine is the national pastime wherever you go. It’s done on principle. Me, I don’t pay much attention, normally: if the guys weren’t crooked in some way, or at least on the make, then they wouldn’t be in politics in the first place. Ipso facto.

Why state the obvious?

There were a few chuckles, and I noticed one or two heads nodding. Scaptius grunted.

‘Manlius?’ I said to him. ‘Who’s he?’

‘One of the aediles,’ he said. ‘Quaestor’s Sextus Canidius.’ The aediles were the two top magistrates in a normal year; the quaestor was the guy in charge of the town’s finances. ‘Manlius ran against Caesius for censor. He’s big in the wool business.’

‘Big in the wool burning business,’ the guy along the row said. Chuckles again, and a ‘Too bloody right, mate’ from someone else in the line.

‘Well now, Battus, my boy,’ Scaptius said equably, turning round to face him, ‘we’ll never know the truth of that, will we?’

‘Yeah, that’s for fucking sure.’

‘Indeed it is. So just shut it, please. And watch the language.’

I took a bit of the garlic sausage. Strong stuff — more garlic than sausage by the taste of it. I’d be pretty unpopular when I got back home. Maybe I’d stick with the pickles.

‘Wool burning?’ I said.

Scaptius turned back to me and shrugged. ‘The town farms out the right to broker the sale of wool from the public herds every season to a private dealer,’ he said. ‘This year the guy’s business folded just after the contract was signed, and Canidius got the senate to transfer it over to Manlius. The bales were stored in a warehouse that caught fire and burned down-’

‘ Mysteriously and unaccountably caught fire and burned down.’

Scaptius sighed, but this time he didn’t turn. ‘Sod off, Battus,’ he said. ‘I’m telling this, right? Anyway, it burned down, June, that’d be, just after the shearing, with a year’s worth of wool in it, and-’

‘What Manlius claimed was a year’s worth of fucking wool.’

Scaptius’s hand slammed down on the counter and he glared along the line. ‘Battus, you bastard,’ he said, ‘one more word — just one — and you’re barred until the festival, right? And I’ve already told you: less of the sodding language, OK?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

He turned back to me. ‘Anyway, when Caesius ran for censor he promised that if he won there’d be a full investigation. That’s not going to happen now, is it? Not with Manlius himself practically dead cert to replace him.’

I tried a pickle and spat it out. Jupiter! The gods knew where Scaptius bought them from, but I was surprised they hadn’t burned a hole in the jar. When he was crossing the Alps, Hannibal was supposed to have broken up the boulders from avalanches by heating them and pouring on vinegar. This must’ve been the stuff. Come to that, it could’ve done the job on its own. ‘There’ll be a new election, surely,’ I said when I’d stopped coughing. ‘From scratch.’