Lindsey Davis - Enemies at Home

There was time before I was needed at the Esquiline. I decided I had to see it.

I could not find Dromo. None of the Camillus slaves would agree to wake up and take me, especially after all the excitement yesterday. Luckily it was early enough to hope no one dangerous was out on the streets. Never mind safety precautions, I could move faster on my own.

First I dropped in to check on Uncle Quintus. He seemed to be drowsing, though the poppy juice had worn off so there were fitful movements and groans. Claudia must have gone to bed; she would want to be rested to cope with today. One of their sons had crept downstairs and lay curled up beside his father.

‘Looking after him?’ The child — I think it was the one called Constans — nodded. He was afraid I was going to send him back to his own room, but I ruffled his hair and left him. He looked about seven, worried and tear-stained. Uncle Quintus would not want this young soul sent off on his own in a state of such anxiety. ‘Good boy. Try not to worry; he’s getting better. I have to go out. Will you tell your mother I went to see Uncle Aulus?’

After another nod, Constans said suddenly, ‘That boy left.’

‘Who?’ Surely not Dromo?

‘The lamp boy who came with you. He went home to see his dog.’

‘Right. I hope he can find the way all by himself …’

‘I don’t like him.’

I paused, on my way out. ‘The lantern holder? Why not, Constans?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s just a slave. Did he do something to you?’ A headshake.

My nephew lost interest. He put his thin arm around his father and buried his face against Quintus’ side. I went over and gently placed a light rug over both of them before I slipped away.

I can be a sickroom attendant. I just had no time to hang about right then.

The streets were quiet, apart from stallholders unrolling their awnings and setting out their stock. At one bar someone was doling out hot broth to market workers, but most places still had their shutters closed. Occasionally I passed a sleepy public slave sweeping up the sad remains of last night’s parties, which were best not examined closely. The air felt thin and chilly as if the city had not yet properly opened its lungs. Overhead was cloudless, though washed out, in the waiting period before the sun burned the mist off the river and turned the sky to its hot summer blue.

The Fourth Cohort’s station house stood at low level on the lesser of the Aventine’s two heights, beside the Clivus Triarius. The troops at the end of a long shift should have been too tired to call indecent suggestions after me but, well done those boys, they bravely managed it. I looked straight ahead and kept going. The catcalls had nothing to do with me being unchaperoned. Dromo would have been no help.

The Fourth Cohort had held the prisoner in special custody all night. By the time I arrived, inevitably he had talked. I did not ask what persuaded him to speak. I had lived long enough around investigators to be sure I preferred not to know. I never saw him, nor even knew his name.

The aedile and my uncle were in the tribune’s office, looking tight-lipped, while Scaurus, a loud-voiced, long-in-the-tooth ex-centurion, bragged about what his men’s brilliant interrogation had achieved. As Faustus muttered under his breath to me, there was no guarantee anything their now blood-spattered prisoner had told them was true. I agreed, but pulling limbs out of sockets and cutting off fingers is what makes the vigiles feel comfortably professional. Scaurus was a caring commander, who liked to think his men were happy in their work.

Fairly early on in what the vigiles shyly called ‘processing’, the prisoner had claimed that to his certain knowledge nobody from the Rabirius gang (to whom he had admitted he belonged) had broken into the Aviola house. No one of theirs took the silver. No one murdered the householders. That was all Faustus and I wanted to know, though for Aulus and the tribune there were bigger questions.

The man had agreed — wisely, given the circumstances of his capture − that he took part in battering Camillus Justinus but he would not name who gave him orders. Whoever despatched him must be more frightening than the vigiles. Cassius Scaurus said dolefully, ‘My lads could put more pressure on — but the pathetic lump would only go and die on us. I’m not going to tolerate do-gooders asking how a prisoner came to expire in custody before the praetor even knew we had him, when I can wait for the parts we toasted to heal over, then have him nicely executed as a treat for the public — well, am I?’

No, we answered.

The praetor, holding a post second only to consul, was Rome’s chief law officer. His role was to examine suspects that the vigiles said should be sent for trial. In public order cases, outside their remit of imposing set fines for basic misdemeanours, this gave their victims a tier of appeal − not that most praetors troubled to look closely at pleas of innocence. Well, not without strong inducements of a kind I won’t mention.

This prisoner expected to avoid seeing the praetor. He thought he would be rescued. It seemed he was right. Just then the man I talked to at the Galatea, Gallo, paid the Fourth Cohort a visitation, full of swagger and hung about with an expensive-looking legal team: a couple of shiny lawyers wearing togas with a fancy nap. They must have earned a lot of fees to pay for those outsize signet rings. The entire party was belching after what must have been a good breakfast.

Gallo was so blunt and straightforward he could have just come from reading a tract on republican values. What happened to criminal deviousness? The direct furrow he ploughed here from the Esquiline would have impressed Romulus. Why muck about? He came to pick up their man. When Gallo arrived at a vigiles barracks, his aim was to walk away with what he wanted, plus a sack of compensation money. His lawyers were mouthing that dire speech about ‘loss of reputation’ and ‘mental distress’. They hadn’t even seen the physical damage yet. As soon as they did, they would be charging double for consulting their lexicon of indignant adjectives.

Aelianus, Faustus and I stood back in silence to watch how Scaurus dealt with this. Doubts must have been running through all our minds. I was sure the useless slob of a tribune would either cave in just to save himself bother, or he would be influenced by gain. When Gallo asked ‘How much?’ that seemed to be the clincher.

But Gallo was about to be caught out by a technicality. The Rabirii did not extend their criminal reach to the Aventine, so they had never bought off Cassius Scaurus, tribune of the Fourth. As a result, he could pretend to a high-mindedness that was, for those of us who knew him, a revolting spectacle.

‘Gallo, when I want to have a sweetener slipped into the contingency fund, I can get it from my own despicable crooks — if I let them. The Second may like you all cosied up under one blanket, but the Second are stupid bastards and I don’t run their kind of show. Shove off, Gallo!’

This was the way Rome kept a degree of control over chaos, with no single group of villains able to take over the whole city. Each criminal gang would have to buy off not only its own local cohort, but six others. It would be too expensive and not worth the bother.

The fancy lawyers spoke up again, earning their keep in front of Gallo. I could not bear to listen. I knew Scaurus would happily let them bleat all day without him getting a sweat on. Camillus Aelianus, being a lawyer himself, stubbornly wanted an argument, so I tipped the wink to the aedile to stay with him and ensure my uncle did not resort to libel, or even to thumping the opposition. Aulus was chunky, more muscular than his brother, and what happened to Quintus had made him genuinely angry.