Lindsey Davis - A dying light in Corduba

I wanted to ask him about his old landlord Attractus, but I was not sure how to tackle it. Last night, with supper and wine inside him, he had shown his feelings more freely, but this morning he had clammed up. I am the first to respect a man's privacy – except when I need to extract what he knows.

In fact he saved me the trouble of opening the discussion.

'You want me to tell you about the Quinctii!' he announced grimly.

'I'm not harassing you.'

'Oh no!' He was working himself up well. 'You want me to tell you how the father did me down, how I suffered, and how the son gloated!'

'Is that how it was?'

Optatus took a deep breath. My quiet attitude had relaxed him too. 'Of course not.'

'I didn't think so,' I remarked. 'If we had been talking about an obviously corrupt action you wouldn't have stood for it, and other people would have come out on your side. Whatever pressure the Quinctii applied to make you leave, you must have felt that technically, at least, they had the law on their side.'

'I'm not the man to judge what happened,' Marius Optatus said. 'I only know I was helpless. It was all achieved very subtly. I felt, and still feel, a deep sense of injustice – but I cannot prove any wrongdoing.'

'The Quinctii had definitely decided that they wanted you out?'

'They wanted to expand their own estate. The easiest way, and the cheapest, of course, was to kick me off the land that my family had been improving for several generations and take it over themselves. It saved them buying more ground. It saved them clearing and planting. I couldn't complain. I was a tenant; if I gave them cause, ending the contract was their right.'

'But it was harsh, and it was done badly?'

'The father was in Rome. His son dealt with me. He doesn't know.' Optatus shrugged, still almost with disbelief. 'Young Quinctius Quadratus watched me leave with my bed, and my tools, and my saltbox – and he really did not understand what he had done to me.'

'You call him young,' I rasped. 'He has been given charge of all the financial affairs of this province. He's not a child.'

'He is twenty-five,' Optatus said tersely.

'Oh yes! In his year.' Quadratus had achieved the quaestorship at the earliest possible date. 'We're in circles where golden youths don't expect to hang about. They want their honours now – so they can go on to grab more!'

'He's a shooting star, Falco!'

'Maybe somebody somewhere has a sharp arrow and a long enough reach to bring him down.'

Optatus did not waste effort on such dreams. 'My family were tenants,' he repeated, 'but that had been our choice. We were people of standing. I was not destitute when I left the farm. In fact,' he added, becoming quite animated, 'it could have been worse. My grandfather and father had always understood what the situation was, so every last wooden hayfork that belonged to us was inventoried on a list. Every yoke, millstone and plough. Every basket for straining cheese. That gave me some satisfaction.'

Did Quadratus try to haggle about what you could take with you?'

'He wanted to. I wanted him to try it -'

'That would be theft. It would have destroyed his public face.'

'Yes, Falco. He was too clever for that.'

'He is intelligent?'

'Of course.'

They always are, those golden boys who spend their lives destroying other people.

We strolled to the nursery where I inspected the tiny sprouts, each standing in a hollow to conserve moisture and with a windbreak made from an esparto sack for protection. Optatus was carrying out this task himself, though of course he had workers on the estate including slaves of his own. While we were there he puddled in his precious nurselings with water from a barrel, stroking their leaves and tutting over any that looked limp. Seeing him fuss, I gained some sense of his grief at losing the farm where he grew up. It did not improve my opinion of the Quinctius family.

I could tell he wanted to be rid of me. He had been polite, but I had had my ration. He walked me back to the house formally, as if ensuring I was off the scene.

We stopped on the way to look into some outbuildings, including one where olives that were stored for domestic consumption were kept in amphorae, packed in various preparations to preserve them through winter. While we were engrossed, disaster struck. We arrived at the small garden area in front of the main building just as Helena was trying to catch Nux. The dog rushed towards us ecstatically, with what appeared to be a twig in her mouth.

Optatus and I both immediately knew what it really was. I cursed. Optatus let out a wild cry. He seized a broom and began trying to smash it down on the dog. Helena squealed and stepped back. Loosing off a smothered protest, I managed to grab the culprit, picking up Nux by the scruff of her neck. We jumped out of reach of Optatus. With a hard tap on the nose I prised the trophy from Nux, who compounded her crime by scrabbling free again and leaping about yapping and pleading with me to throw the thing for her. No chance!

Optatus was white. His thin frame went rigid. He could hardly speak for anger – but he forced the words out:

'Falco! Your dog has torn up the cuttings in my nursery bed!'

Just my luck.

Helena captured Nux and carried her off to be scolded, well out of sight. I strode back to the churned-up plant nursery, with Optatus stalking at my heels. Nux had torn up only one tree, in fact, and knocked a few others over. 'I'm sorry; the dog likes chasing things, big things mainly. At home she's been known to frighten vintners delivering wine amphorae. She has simply never been trained to be loose on a farm…'

Scuffing earth flat quickly with the side of my boot, I found the damage much less than it could have been. Nux had been digging, but most of the holes had missed the little trees. Without asking, I found where the rescued cutting belonged and replaced it myself. Optatus stood by in fury. Part of me expected him to snatch the twiglet from me; part knew he was shrinking from it as if the dog had contaminated his treasure.

I picked off the damaged leaves, checked the stem for bruising, redug the planting hole, found the support stake, and firmed in the little tree in the way my grandfather and great-uncle had taught me when I was a small boy. If Optatus was surprised that a street-pounding Roman knew how to do this, he showed nothing. His silence was as bleak as his expression. Still ignoring him, I walked quietly to the water barrel and fetched the jug I had seen him use earlier. Carefully I soaked the plant back into its old position.

'It's gone limp, but I think it's just sulking.' I arranged its sackcloth windbreak, then I stood up and looked straight at him. 'I apologise for the accident. Let's look on the bright side. Last night we were strangers. Now everything's changed. You can think me an inconsiderate, wantonly destructive townee. I can call you an oversensitive, agitated foreigner who is, moreover, cruel to dogs.' His chin came up, but I wasn't having it. 'So now we can stop sidestepping: I'll tell you the unpleasant political nature of the work

I'm really sent here to do. And you,' I said clearly, 'can give me a true assessment of what's wrong in the local community.'

He started to tell me which plot in Hades I could go and sink my roots in. 'Perhaps first of all,' I continued pleasantly, 'I should warn you that I came to Corduba to investigate two matters: one involves a scandal in the oil market – and the other is murder.'

I had managed to strike Optatus dumb, which was no mean feat. When normally silent types do decide they are bursting with indignant exclamations, they tend to be unstoppable. But on a quiet sunlit slope among the timeless dignity of olive trees, murder sounds a powerful word.