Lindsey Davis: Scandal Takes a Holiday

Ahead of me were steps, as she had said. a short flight down which they must have struggled with the girl as they tried to force her to enter the dark, arched mouth of the tauroboleum pit. Initiations must be rare. On days when this shrine was out of use, its remote tauroboleum, a kind of ghastly drain or culvert, would have made a perfect hideaway. Any cries from victims would go unheard. And afterwards, the women who had been imprisoned here would be utterly traumatised, their future silence assured.

I was standing inside the dimly lit shrine when I thought I heard someone outside. I was torn, but the tauroboleum pit was nearer than the exit, so I moved that way.

Descending the steps, I had to crouch low to peer inside; it was too dark down there to see anything, though a faint glow from the lamps behind would have outlined me.

Outside the shrine a voice called 'Who's there?' I nipped down the steps.

Too late, I heard movement, then hands reached up to grab my garments, pulling me down and underground. Someone dug me painfully in the ribs and shushed me. We were squashed too tight for me to draw my sword. Not that I wanted to. My companion was not threatening me. Well, not in the usual way. Somehow I knew who was in here with me. It was Fulvius.

I was coping well with this development, until someone up above us in the shrine suddenly slammed shut a metal door on the pit and locked us in.

'Marcus, you damn fool!' muttered Fulvius. 'That was bloody careless, we're really stuck now.' I refused to see this as my fault, but what he said was true. Our prison was damp, musty, and not built for two. We could stand up, but this pit was constructed for one man alone.

I could not help remembering that when I was small, people had told me to avoid Uncle Fulvius because he disliked children. Many years later I had realised that that was the family way of saying he liked little boys too much.

Now I was trapped in a pit in the dark with him. O Mother!

'We can't see much, but light is getting in through the grid and so is air.'

To my surprise, my uncle seemed to be taking charge. Now he began calculating odds. I was the ex-soldier; that was my job.

'There's one of him, and two of us.'

'I have a sword, though no room to use it.' We were packed in very tight. Fulvius could not avoid knowing that I had come armed.

'We are safe enough down here.' My uncle was a complaisant swine.

'That's nice,' I said sarcastically. 'Some maniac has locked us in and we're stuck until they come with the quaking initiate tomorrow morning.'

'Scared, Marcus?'

'Only of what I am about to find out, I really want to know,' I said, as patiently as possible, 'what your position is in this. I was told by Caninus that you are the Illyrian.'

'You were told wrong.'

'So put me right.'

'Did you believe him?'

'How should I know, Uncle?'

'There is an alternative.' I got it in first.

'The Illyrian could be Caninus himself?'

'Oh smart boy!'

'So the navy is not investigating the ransom scam.'

'Maybe they are,' said Fulvius. 'What do you think I am doing here?' My uncle was an agent?

'Can you prove this statement?'

'I don't have to prove it.' When I said nothing, Uncle Fulvius insisted, 'You have never seen me damned well dressed like a woman.'

'Face paint and slippers are just not your style? Such a relief for the family! All I know is, you were going to Pessinus but you got on the wrong boat.'

Fulvius chuckled. 'I got the boat I wanted. Did you meet Cassius?'

Now… I remembered the beggar behind the Temple of Rome and Augustus.

'Cassius?… Of course, I thought the grime looked self-applied.'

'He likes to throw himself into things,' Fulvius boasted. An innuendo I preferred to ignore hovered crudely.

'Cassius and I have been together for a quarter of a century.' Well, that answered one question. They were a stable couple.

'Mother will be so pleased you have settled down! Cassius was on the boat, I take it. The boat you decided was the right one?'

'He was on the boat.'

'I am happy for you, Uncle. But we're wasting time. We need to get out of this.'

'We have to stay put.'

'Sorry, Uncle, I'd prefer not to make Cassius jealous by lingering.

I tried shoving the door. Uncle Fulvius allowed me to exhaust myself, grunting in protest as I crushed him.

'Shut up and sit tight. The shrine above is the meeting place. Zeno told me. When the money is handed over, we can listen and collect the evidence.'

'Zeno was the boy runner?' I was getting my breath back. 'You befriended him? So where is Zeno now?'

'A priest of Attis is feeding him hot milk and sesame cakes.' That did not reassure me. Still, the child could be extracted later. Extricating us might be more difficult.

'Will your Cassius bring help?'

'Of course' That was reassuring, but I still did not like being trapped underground in the dark. Waves of panic swept over me.

There must be drainage, but caverns that have been drenched in gore acquire a horrendous smell. I fought claustrophobia. If initiates could stand this in isolation, I could live through the fear… Possibly.

'Whatever did you have for lunch?' demanded my uncle pompously. I was breathing in his face; there was no alternative.

'Funeral fare.'

'Onions.' Oh, Fulvius was fastidious. Now I wanted to laugh.

While we waited for something to happen, I nagged my uncle to tell me about his role in this fiasco. He said he worked for the navy, as a corn factor; Pa had told me that. And I knew that the army, so presumably the navy too, often made use of their corn factors to gather intelligence. Fulvius had been involved with supplying troops for years. From Salonae, where he lived, his contacts were with the Ravenna Fleet.

'He was at Ravenna.'

'Caninus?'

'Got it!'

'I am an informer, Uncle. Whatever you've heard from the family, I happen to be good at it. I find this unlikely… I found it appalling – but are you saying you do similar work to me?'

'Maybe.'

'No need to be secretive. I was an army scout. Now I take on imperial missions.'

'Good for you, boy!' Fulvius changed the subject, without admitting anything. 'Our paths never directly crossed until now.'

'Well, I'm glad that this business has not ripped up old friendships. So he tells me you are the Illyrian, and you say it's him.'

'You just listen to me,' ordered Fulvius.

'Perhaps I will… Or perhaps not. How did Caninus go bad?'

'He made the wrong friends when he was supposed to be monitoring the Illyrian seaboard.'

'Wrong friends? When we talked at that bar with Geminus, you were defending the coastal folk yourself.'

'I was explaining what has happened to the dispossessed,' argued Fulvius. 'The men you call pirates come from poverty-stricken communities, where the options are few. Young lads off the land are sent to sea because it is the only option.'

'Cotys and the others, the Cilician community, seem happy with their lot.'

'Don't despise them as riff-raff,' said Fulvius. 'There was a long tradition of coastal groups giving shelter to men fleeing poverty, often seamen of talent who simply found they could not get a ship. What you call pirate ships were high class vessels, manned by the best quality mariners.' I had picked up a nuance.

'One of those communities gave refuge to you and Cassius?'

'Oh, Salonae is perfectly civilised!' Fulvius cried angrily. 'But I know people in Illyria. I know the good and the bad. I had been to Dyrrhachium. So I was asked to keep an eye on Cotys unofficially, when he seemed to have been lured into new, unacceptable ventures. I soon spotted that he was being protected by a bad apple in the Ravenna Fleet. When Caninus got himself transferred here, ostensibly to shadow Cotys, then I was asked to shadow him.'