Lindsey Davis - The Ides of April

He was scowling so much, I thought he would clam up. "This is confidential, Albia."

"Do you want me to ask madame herself? What was it-did she sleep with charioteers? Or was it actors and their understudies?"

"Don't say that to her!" He seemed horrified.

"She's too prudish to have it suggested?"

"She is a respectable woman."

"Oh I see! So it was him at fault?" Tiberius remained silent. "Something happened. Even my friend Andronicus, who likes to know everything, seems not to know the story. But I can tell he senses that there was a story. He wonders, so I wonder too… Do you know?" Tiberius nodded slightly. I settled back. I wondered why he came to be favoured with the privileged information. "How is that? What's your own background, Tiberius? Did you grow up in the uncle's household?"

"No."

I took a guess. "You arrived there along with Faustus? From his parents' home after they died?" That was a difference between Tiberius and Andronicus, who seemed to have been a slave belonging to Tullius. "When Faustus married, did you move out with him then too?"

"Where he goes, I go." Tiberius suddenly took a breath as if cutting me off from that line of enquiry, then launched into the briefing I had requested. "Faustus was married when he was twenty-five, the age for a man to take his place in society. His uncle arranged it, for business and social reasons-"

I chortled. "I know how that works: 'Young man, it's time you spawned an heir. Couple up with this woman you have never met, but we owe her father money; she's a nice sheltered virgin, only twelve years old -' Wonderful beings, the important classes!"

"Laia Gratiana was at least eighteen."

"Then I take back that detail. But the rest holds good!" Tiberius did not deny it. "So Faustus and the imperious Laia were heaved into a union by the puppeteer uncle. What next?"

"The marriage progressed for some years in a polite fashion."

"I note how you phrase that! Children?"

"No."

"Did they share a bedroom? Or have a room each, like the stately rich?"

"Separate," said Tiberius, giving me a look; I ignored the reprimand. "But everything that was supposed to happen happened."

"Not very spontaneously! When intercourse was wanted, one of them had to make an appointment. I bet I know which one expected to do it. Demanding his rights would be the man's prerogative… So, which of them looked elsewhere for passion? Who broke the marriage?"

Having posed that critical question, I just sat and let Tiberius struggle with his conscience. He spoke, eventually, as if I had dragged it out of him using the vigiles' torturer. "What happened was entirely the fault of Manlius Faustus."

He was terse, yet he gave me all I needed. It was an unedifying story. Faustus not only had his uncle looking out for him, but in those days he had attracted the interest of a distinguished man, a decade and a half his senior, who had had a connection with Faustus' late father and who offered him friendship and patronage. As Tiberius told it, the older man was childless and influential, the younger attractive, talented, a social asset. It was the kind of situation where formal adoption might have been considered. There was even talk of sponsoring Faustus to enter the Senate.

The patron had a much younger, very beautiful wife.

"Voluptuous?"

"Free-spirited."

"That was what I meant-spilling over the front of provocative frocks."

"Not shy," conceded Tiberius, in his dour way.

Sometimes, when his patron was away on business, Faustus was entertained at their house by the beautiful wife alone. On the surface, his relationship in his patron's home was that of a favoured relative, a young cousin or nephew, say, who might come and go without question-though of course such freedom is dangerous. Although his own wife was always made welcome, she did not generally accompany him. Throughout their marriage, she spent much time with her own friends. Too much time, probably. "You can guess the rest," said Tiberius, his voice dry. "One evening when they were alone together, the atmosphere became intense. The beautiful young woman felt unsatisfied by her ageing husband. He loved and admired her-"

"But rarely made demands in bed?"

"Who knows?… A younger man had obvious attractions, and maybe the tempted couple even convinced themselves the older man had left them together on purpose."

"Who made the move, do you know?"

"She offered. Faustus took."

"So they enjoyed a wild conjunction, during which these two bored, spoiled people were thrilled by the risks involved… And what happened next?" I asked quietly.

"Naturally, the liaison was discovered-very soon; barely a week passed from first to last. A slave reported on Faustus to Laia Gratiana. She left him and went back to her father's house within an hour. Uncle Tullius had to rush in and salvage the situation, at some cost. This was when we had Vespasian as emperor, when affairs were regarded more indulgently than Domitian treats them now; if it happened now, the straying wife and her lover would be prosecuted, lose everything and be exiled. Even at that time, the situation was horrible. A wronged husband is compelled to divorce his wife, as you know."

"And once slaves start piping up about adultery, situations get ugly."

"As you say. Faustus had wasted his own potential, hurt people terribly, and destroyed two marriages. Worse, he had betrayed a most deserving man, who had given him great friendship."

"He did it for love?"

"No."

The runner was harsh. He swallowed water, looking as if he had bellyache.

"I bet she had done it before," I mused.

Tiberius seemed intrigued. "Possibly. . She died. She died in childbirth."

"Was Faustus the father?"

"No. Absolutely not. He never saw her again. It happened a couple of years later."

"Some other robust lover! So, Tiberius, what then? Faustus returned to Uncle Tullius in disgrace, having to endure a barrage of blame, I'm sure-especially since the scandal had cost money. He kept his head down. Did what he was told. Knew that any promise or ambition he once possessed had been aborted by his own stupidity.. If he's an aedile he has to be thirty-six now, according to the rules. Has he ever remarried?"

Tiberius shook his head. "The man lives with guilt."

I thought ten years of guilt was no use to anyone. I also realised that even if those events had hit the scandal column of the Daily Gazette , that most disreputable noticeboard in the Forum for the doings of celebrities, I would not have noticed at the time. But it sounded as if everything had been covered up successfully.

Tiberius and I had become downcast. All we had done was discuss this sordid little tale of a young man's idiocy, a decade ago, but the effect on us was gloomy enough to bring Junillus over, anxious that some worse tragedy had affected us. I reassured him, then got up to go and take Laia Gratiana's statement. I left Tiberius at the Stargazer; last I saw, Junillus had brought him the draughtboard.

He was not playing. I knew Junillus would have given him a game, or he could have played solitaire. Perhaps the draughtboard was his standard cover when he was on observation.

The runner had told me the address. Laia Gratiana had remarried after her furious split from Faustus, but her next husband died, then her father. She had since moved from what had no doubt been an enormous family home to a lesser, but still large, apartment owned by a brother. It too was on the Street of the Plane Trees, where her friend Marcia lived. Yet more splendid views. Yet more heavy marble tables with gilded capricorn legs. The statuettes were better than at Marcia Balbilla's house, the frescos not so good. The same fashionable designer had sold both women their wobbly bronze hanging lamps. So that was two homes where oil got spilled on the mosaic below every time the slaves tried filling the reservoirs.