Lindsey Davis - The Jupiter Myth

Frontinus would do well. He was both active and conciliatory. But the last thing he needed while he found his feet was a tricky situation with a dead British notable. 'This has the potential to turn bad, Falco.'

'I know, sir.' I used my frank and trustworthy gaze. That was a look I had once kept for women, and still employed with creditors. Frontinus may well have noticed I was a devious double-dealing toad, but he tolerated that. My next question was a fair one: 'Flavius Hilaris mentioned some administrative problems. Any chance I can be told what's up?'

'Better ask him. He has it all at his fingertips.' The governor took the classic way out. It was impossible to tell whether he even knew about these problems.

I asked Hilaris. He now seemed unable to remember having mentioned them.

Right. Thanks, lads! You mighty legates of Augustus sit tight in your frescoed headquarters dealing with dispatches, while I barge off into the mire.

Why did I always opt for clients who tried to conceal dirty situations? I spent more time investigating the people who hired me, than dealing with whatever they had asked me to investigate.

As usual I refused to let my secretive employers have their way. If there was mud on the marble, I was perfectly able to step in it by myself. Then everyone would have to endure the mess.

First I tried the centurion. I thought I would pick him up at the fort. Easier said than done. First I had to find it. I remembered a wood and turf enclosure, hurriedly thrown up after the Rebellion, just east of the forum. We had used it to protect survivors as much as anything. When I found the site, it had clearly been abandoned years before.

There had never been legions permanently stationed in the capital; they were always needed forward, to guard the frontiers. Thirty years after its conquest by Rome, Britain still kept four active legions – more than any other province. It was out of proportion and stupidly expensive. It showed Rome's fears, after our near-overthrow by Boudicca.

If there were five hundred soldiers in Londinium, that was pushing it, but they ought to be decent quality. The legions took turns to send men back to the capital on detached duty. In a frontier province even the walking wounded and duffers who had annoyed their legate should be capable of guarding the governor and his staff, impressing visitors, flashing swords in the forum, and patrolling the docks. They had to live somewhere. Information from a passer-by took me right the other side of the forum, across the stream that divided the town, and down the Decumanus, the main street. I ended up on some remote thoroughfare, way out by the amphitheatre, a tedious hike.

There I found a mess. The western hill had been taken over by whatever units were stationed here to guard the governor, and since the governor rarely stopped in the capital long, they lived in chaos. It was worse than a marching camp – no proper defences and individual groups of barrack blocks all over the show.

I found my man. He was annoyed at being rooted out but agreed to come and play. I took him for a drink. He could pretend to his mates that I needed specialist advice in private. And in private, I might seduce him into revealing more than he should.

He insisted on taking me to a bar the soldiers liked. By the time we arrived I knew his name was Silvanus. I offered wine, but he preferred beer. 'That Celtic muck is fermenting in your belly, Silvanus!' I joshed. Pretending to be friends with a man I despised was a strain. 'You'll end up like some fat pink Celt.'

'I can handle it.' They always say that. He would never look pink, in fact. My banqueting guest was a swan southerner; he had arms clothed in dark hairs like a goatskin rug and was so coarsely stubbled he could have removed paint from woodwork with his chin.

'I've drawn the short straw on that barrel killing,' I said gloomily. That made him laugh, the lazy bastard. It meant he would not have to bestir himself; he liked seeing me suffer too. The laugh was openly unpleasant. I was glad I did not have to work with him.

I kept the beer flowing his way. I stuck with wine, surreptitiously diluting it with extra water when Silvanus wasn't looking.

It took half a bucketful of beer to soften him up enough to start talking, then another half to slow him down on how he hated the climate, the remoteness, the women, the men, and the piss-poor gladiatorial games.

'So Londinium's acquired its own dinky amphitheatre? If I may say so, it's a bit cut off out here – and aren't arenas usually near the fort? Mind you, I wouldn't say you had anything that I would call a fort!'

'There's to be a new fort, to stop fraternising.'

'As if anyone would! So how do the lads like the arena?'

'It's rubbish, Falco. We get puppy fights and pretty girls in armour.'

'Saucy stuff! Sex and swords… How lucky you are!' We drank. 'Tell me what the mood is around here nowadays.'

'What mood?'

'Well, I was last in Londinium when Boudicca had done her worst.'

'Fine old times!' Silvanus gloated. What a moron. He cannot have been here then. Even a man as dense as this would have had sorrow etched into his soul.

If he asked me what legion I served in, I would lie. I could not face it if this lightweight learned I had been in the Second Augusta. My tragic legion, led at the time by a criminal idiot, abandoned their colleagues to face the tribal onslaught. Best not to think what a currently serving centurion would make of that.

Nor was I intending to ask Silvanus which outfit he graced. The Twentieth or Ninth, perhaps; both did fight Boudicca and neither would be friends of mine. These days Britain also had one of the patched-together new Flavian units, the Second Adiutrix. I ruled it out. Silvanus did not strike me as a man from a new legion; he had old lag written all over him from his scuffed boots to his scabbard, which he had customised with tassels that looked like bits of dead rat. At least I knew he did not belong to the dire, gloating Fourteenth Gemina. They had been relocated to Germany to reform their habits, were that possible. I had met them there – still pushing people around and pointlessly bragging.

'This place should never have been rebuilt.' Silvanus wanted to carp about the town; it stopped me brooding about the army anyway.

'Disaster has that effect, man. Volcanoes, floods, avalanches – bloody massacres. They bury the dead, then rush to reconstruct in the danger area… Londinium never had any character.'

'Traders,' Silvanus grumbled. 'Wine, hides, grain, slaves. Bloody traders. Ruin a place.'

'Can't expect high art and culture.' I spoke slowly and slurred my words like him. It was coming quite easily. "This is just a road junction. A huddle of industries on the south bank, a couple of cranky ferries coming across. North side, a few low-rise stinking warehouses… everything about it tells you it's nothing.'

'The end of the road!' exclaimed Silvanus. Slurred by a drunken centurion, it sounded even more unappealing than when Petronius had complained.

'Does that give you problems?'

'It's a bugger to police.'

'Why's that? The natives seem docile.'

'When not dropping each other down wells?' His voice cracked with mirth and I felt my hackles rise. I had known Verovolcus, even if I had not liked him. Silvanus failed to notice my expression. He was enlarging his theories. I told myself that was what I wanted. 'This place is a draw to scum, Falco.'

'How come?'

'Every chancer who has lost himself or wants to find himself.'

'Surely it's too remote for dreamy-eyed tourists?'

'Not for inadequates. Every tosspot with a warped personality. When they've tried all the other dead-end provinces, they sniff the wind and waft up here. No money, no likelihood of work, no sense.'