Lindsey Davis - Ode to a Banker

'So you've lost her,' I said. 'Life stinks.' I sniffed the sordid air. 'And life is not the only thing that stinks around here. This, I gather, is the start of the long decline into financial ruin and personal debauchery?'

'I see you take the hard line with the bereaved in their grief,' he whined.

I had already heard from Gomia, his faithful and long-serving chief porter, that the business had suffered since Flora's unexpected demise, which had happened in her sleep a week ago. Now there were distraught buyers going hairless at non-deliveries and huffy sellers taking their custom elsewhere. The warehouse hands had not been paid. Pa had lit a fire with three months' invoices, badly singeing a batch of ivories during this gesture against life's futility. Gornia had appeared with a water-skin just in time. The ivories were damaged beyond the skill of even the most creative faker Pa employed. Gornia now looked tired; he had been loyal, but might not put up with too much more of this pathos.

'Go to the baths and the barber, Pa.'

'Sod off,' he said again, not moving. But he then roused himself to a minor flight of rhetoric: 'And don't tell me that was what Flora would have wanted, because Flora had one great advantage – she left me alone!'

'Liked to keep her hands clean, I expect. I see you're rallying,' I commented. 'That's wise, because if you don't pull yourself together I shall apply for a writ of custodial care on the grounds of your financial profligacy.'

'Will you? Hades! You'll never get a magistrate to say I need a guardian.'

'Stuff you – it's the business I'll be pious about. Roman law has always taken a strict line on leaving fortunes unsupervised.' My father did have more money nowadays than I liked to contemplate. He was either a damned good auctioneer, or a complete scheming dog. The two are perfectly compatible.

It was up to him if he threw his wealth away, but a threat to take it off him was the best way to encourage more fight.

'If you are abdicating as head of the family,' I offered pleasantly, 'that puts me in charge. I could call a domestic conference in the traditional Roman way. All your affectionate descendants could flock here and discuss ways to keep you, our poor darling father, out of harm's way – Pa swung his feet to the floor.

'Atha and Galla would welcome some cash…' My eldest sisters were useless women with large families, both hitched to parasitic men. 'They both love to pry; the sensitive darlings have been perched ready to pounce on you for years. Dear sanctimonious Junia and her dry stick husband, Gaius Baebius, will be in here like ferrets down a pipe. Maia has no time for you, of course, but she can be a vengeful sort -'

'Sod off, and this time I mean it!' roared Pa.

I scowled and left him, telling Gornia to give it another day before abandoning hope. 'Hide his amphora. Now he knows that we know what is going on, you may see a sudden difference.'

I was on my way out when I remembered why I came. 'Gornia, have you had any dealings with a scroll-seller called Aurelius Chrysippus?'

'Ask the chief. He handles the dealers.'

'He's not feeling responsive to me. I just threatened to put his daughters on to him.'

Gornia shrugged. Apparently, this cruel tactic seemed fair. He did not know my sisters as I did. There ought to be a statute against letting that kind of woman loose. 'Well, Chrysippus has sold a few ex-library collections through us,' Gornia said. 'Geminus sneers at him.'

'He sneers at everyone who might be trickier than himself '

'He hates Greek business methods.'

'What – too close to his own dirty ways?'

'Who knows? They always share the best bargains with their own people. They glue themselves together. They go off into corners to eat pastries, and it's anyone's guess if they are conspiring or just talking about their families. Geminus can cope with honest crooks, but you can't tell with Chrysippus whether he's a crook or not. Why are you interested, Falco?'

'He offered to publish some work of mine.'

'Watch your back,' advised Gornia. It was how I felt myself On the other hand, I might have felt the same about all scroll-sellers. 'So how come he got his claws into you, Falco?'

'Heard me reading my stuff in public.'

'Oh, bullock's balls!' I was astonished by the porter's fury. 'There's too much of that,' he ranted. I stepped back nervously. 'You can't move these days without some oaf unravelling a scroll at you – under the arches with some rehashed legal speech or grabbing a crowd while they are queuing for the public convenience. I was having a quiet drink the other day and a literary halfwit started disturbing the peace, reciting a crappy eulogy he had read at his grandmother's funeral as if it were high art -'

'My recital was invitation only, and Domitian Caesar attended it,' I answered in a huff.

Then I left.

Pa's disarray was something I needed to think about. The most satisfactory solution was to forget it by doing something else.

I decided after all that I would present myself at the Chrysippus scriptorium and size up the outfit. From Pa's place at Saepta Julia back to the Aventine could easily involve a short detour through the Forum. I could pop in at the select gymnasium I patronised and be battered in a workout with my trainer; then when Glaucus had finished toughening up my body, I could follow through with intellectual pursuits.

Afterwards, since Glaucus' gym was at the back of the Temple of Castor, I walked past the famous old establishment of the brothers Sosii, who had sold the works of Horace, to see what a decent scroll-seller looked like.

Lucky old Horace. Maecenas for patron; free gift of a Sabine farin (I owned one, but I had paid through the nose for it); reputation and readership. And when the Sosii promised Horace to sell his works from a prime position, they were talking about a corner of the Vicus Tuscus on the edge of the Forum Romanum. Abutted by the Basilica, at the heart of public life, it was a famous street packed with expensive shops, down which paraded regular festival processions as they moved from the Capitol to the Games. Their passing trade must have been real, unlike the markets that Aurelius Chrysippus was allegedly wooing on the wrong side of the Circus. The faded sign showed that the scroll-shop of the Sosii had been a fixture for generations, and a dip in the doorstep evidenced just how many buyers' feet had passed that way.

When I finally ventured on a recce to the Clivus Publicius, the only pedestrians who passed me there were an old lady struggling home with a heavy shopping basket and a group of teenage boys who were loitering on the lookout for some doddery victim they could rush, knock down, and steal from. When I appeared they vanished surreptitiously. The decrepit grandma had no idea I had saved her from a mugging; she muttered with hostility and set off again, wobbling up the street.

The Clivus Publicius starts as a tough slope leading at an angle up the north flank of the Aventine from near the end of the Circus. As it climbs and flattens out, it hooks round a couple of corners, before losing itself at a quiet summit piazza. It has always been a secluded neighbourhood – too far from the Forum to attract outsiders' interest. From one side of the street are little-known but fabulous views over the valley of the Circus Maximus. When I looked around there were a few lock-up shops, whose trade must be desultory, and beyond them I glimpsed trees in the gardens of what must be carefully discreet big houses. It was a backwater. The Clivus was a public road, yet possessed a sense of isolation that was rare.

If you live on the Aventine, the long valley of the Circus Maximus obstructs you almost every time you set out walking to some other part of Rome. I must have walked down the Clivus Publicius hundreds of times. I had passed the Chrysippus scroll-shop, but never thought it worth my notice, although I loved reading. I knew the neat, quiet frontage of old, but the staff tended to lurk on the doorstep. Fake off-putting waiters at harbourside cauponas where the fish has been casseroling far too long. Preferring to browse at dealers (and to sneak free reads on the days when I had no money) I had only ever glanced inside this shop to where the scrolls for sale were visible in uneven piles on solid old shelves. Now when I did venture in, I found there were also boxes, presumably of better works, stored on the floor beneath the shelves. There was a tall stool and a counter on which to lean your elbows while you sampled the wares.