Lindsey Davis - A dying light in Corduba

'Oh, you've been reading up!' Helena scoffed. Her teasing eyes were bright. 'Trust us to come at the wrong time of year.'

I laughed too – though it was exactly the right time for some things: in spring the labour-intensive work of tending the olive trees was at its least demanding. That could be when the olive-owners found the time to scheme and plot.

The closer we got to the great oil-producing estates south of the River Baetis, the more my unease grew.

There is a fine tradition that when landowners arrive unexpectedly on their lush estates they find the floors unswept for the past six months, the goats roaming free in the vineyard eating the new young fruits, and grooms asleep with unwashed women in the master's bed. Some senators stop in the next village for a week, sending messages of their imminent arrival so the cobwebs can be sponged down, the floosies persuaded to go home to their aunties, and the livestock rounded up. Others are less polite. On the premise that having their names on a five per cent mortgage from the Syrian lender in the Forum gives them right of possession, they turn up at dinnertime expecting hot baths, a full banquet and clean apartments with the coverlets already folded down for their accompanying forty friends. They at least get to publish fine literary letters full of satirical complaints about country life.

We had no one to send ahead as a messenger and we were sick of inns, so we pressed on and turned up unannounced, quite late in the day. Our appearance caused no visible panic. The new tenant had passed the first test of his efficiency. Marius Optatus didn't exactly welcome us with fresh roses in blue glass bud vases, but he found us seats in the garden and summoned a passable julep jug, while he ordered curious servants to prepare our rooms. Nux scampered off after them to choose a good bed to sleep on.

'The name's Falco. You may have heard Aelianus railing about me.'

'How do you do,' he answered, omitting to confirm whether or not he had been told I was a reprobate.

I introduced Helena, then we all sat around being polite and trying not to show that we were people with nothing in common who had been thrown together unavoidably.

Helena's father had bought himself a traditionally built Baetican farmhouse almost alongside the nearest road. It had mud-brick foundations below wooden panels; the arrangement was one long corridor with reception rooms at the front and more private accommodation behind them. The tenant lived in rooms along one side of the corridor, with views over the estate. The other rooms, which flanked a private garden, were supposed to beset aside for the Camilli if ever any of them visited. This part had been left unused. Either the tenant was scrupulous – or he had been warned to expect visitors.

'You're being extremely gracious!' I was cheering up now I had been told that the amenities included a small but functioning bath suite, slightly separate from the house. 'With young Aelianus barely off the premises you must have imagined you were safe from further inspection for at least twenty years.'

Optatus smiled. For a Spaniard he was tall, very thin, rather pale, with a foxy face and bright eyes. Among the Balearic mix of curly Iberians and even more shaggy Celts, all of whom were stocky and short, he stood out like a thistle spike in a cornfield. He looked a few years older than me, mature enough to run a workforce yet young enough to have some hopes in life. A man of few words. Silent men can be simply bad news at a party – or dangerous characters Before we even fetched the baggage in I felt there was something about him I needed to investigate.

Supper was a simple affair of salt tuna and vegetables, shared with the house slaves and our driver Marmarides, in the old family tradition. We all ate in a long, low kitchen at the back of the house. There was local wine, which seemed good enough if you were tired, and if you added enough water to make the old woman who prepared meals and the lamp boy (who were staring fixedly) think you vaguely respectable. But afterwards Helena suggested I invite Optatus to share a glass of a more refined Campanian I had brought with me. She declined the wine, but sat with us. Then while I, with my fine sense of masculine decorum, tried to keep the conversation neutral, Helena recovered from her weariness enough to start interviewing her father's tenant.

'My brother Aelianus says we had great good fortune in finding you to take on the estate.' Marius Optatus gave us one of his reserved smiles. 'He mentioned something about you having had some bad luck – I hope you don't mind me asking?' she added innocently.

Optatus had presumably met people of senatorial rank (not including Helena's brother, who was too juvenile to count), but he would rarely have dealt with the women. 'I had been rather ill,' he hedged reluctantly.

'Oh, that I didn't know! I'm so sorry – was that why you had to find a new estate? You were farming hereabouts before, weren't you?'

'Don't be grilled if you don't want to be,' I grinned, helping the man to a modest top-up of wine.

He saluted me with his cup and said nothing.

'I'm just making polite conversation, Marcus,' Helena protested mildly. Optatus wouldn't know she had never been the kind of girl who bothered with idle chat. 'I'm a long way from home, and in my condition I need to make friends as quickly as possible!'

'Are you intending to have the baby here?' Optatus asked, rather warily. He was probably wondering whether we had been dispatched abroad to have it in secret and hide our disgrace.

'Certainly not,' I retorted. 'There is a battery of antique nursemaids at the Camillus house all anxiously awaiting our return to Rome – not to mention the crabby but very cheap old witch who once delivered me, the highly exclusive midwife Helena's mother places her faith in, my younger sister, Helena's second cousin the Vestal Virgin, and phalanxes of interfering neighbours on all sides. It will cause a social scandal if we fail to use the birthing chair which helped Helena's noble mama produce Helena and her brothers, and which has been purposely sent to Rome from the Camillus country estate -'

'But you'll gather most of Rome disapproves of us,' Helena quietly inserted into my satire.

'How true,' I said. 'But then I find myself increasingly disapproving of most of Rome… Optatus, in case you're wondering, you should treat Helena Justina as the noble daughter of your illustrious landlord, though you may pray to the gods that I whisk her away before her lying-in. You can treat me how you like. I'm here on some urgent official business, and Helena was too spirited to be left behind.'

'Official business!' Optatus had found a sense of humour. 'You mean my new landlord Camillus Verus has not sent you out in a hurry to see whether his youthful son has unwisely signed a lease with me? I was intending to rush out at dawn to make sure the cabbage rows are straight.'

'Aelianus was satisfied you know how to farm,' said Helena.

I backed her up: 'He said you had informed him his father was being cheated.'

A shadow briefly crossed the tenant's face. 'Camillus Verus was losing a lot of the profits from his olive trees.' 'How was that?'

Optatus' face darkened even more. 'Several ways. The muleteers who take the skins of oil to the Baetis were stealing from him outright; they needed to be supervised. The bargemen on the river were also somehow miscounting when they stowed his amphorae – though they try to do that to everyone. Worst was the lie he was being told about how much oil his trees were yielding.'

'Who was lying?'

'The men who pressed his olives.'

'How can you be sure?'

'I knew them. They are from my ex-landlord's personal estate. Camillus Verus does not own his own press here. Millstones are very expensive and the number of trees does not justify it. Better if a neighbour contracts to do the work. My ex-landlord's family used to do it, on an amiable basis – but when your father bought his estate the good relationship was abandoned.'