Lindsey Davis - Time to Depart

The basket-weaver occupied a lockup two along from Cassius the baker. He shared his frontage with a cereal-seller – another quiet trade, and fairly free of smelly nuisances. Above them rose a typical tenement, similar to ours and with the same kind of underpaid, overworked occupants. There was no letting sign, but the shutters on the first-floor apartment were closed, as they always had been to my knowledge. I had never seen anybody going in.

'Well spotted!' I murmured thoughtfully.

Right there, opposite Lenia's laundry, we could have found our next home.

The basket-weaver, a wiry gent in a tawny tunic whom I knew by sight, told us the apartment above him belonged to his shop. He had never occupied the upstairs because he only bunked temporarily in Fountain Court. He lived on the Campagna, kept his family there, and intended to retire to the country when he remembered to stop coming to town every week. The rooms above were in fact impossible to live in, being filled up with rubble and junk. Smaractus was too mean to clear them out. Instead, the idle bastard had negotiated a reduced rent. It suited the basket-weaver. Now it suited me.

Helena and I peered in warily. It was very dark. After living on the sixth floor, anywhere near ground level was bound to be. No balcony; no view; no garden, of course; no cooking facilities. Water from a fountain a street away. A public latrine at the end of our own street. Baths and temples on the Aventine. Street markets in any direction. My existing office within shouting range across the lane. It had three rooms -a gain of one on what we were used to – and a whole array of little cubbyholes.

'Pot stores!' cried Helena. 'I love it!'

'Cradle space!' I grinned.

Smaractus, my landlord, was a person I avoided. I lost my temper just thinking about that fungus. I had intended to discuss matters peacefully with Lenia, but I foolishly chose a time when her insalubrious betrothed had dropped in with a wine flagon.

I refused to drink with him. I'll take a free tipple from most people, but I'm a civilised man; I do discriminate. Below the line I drew in those days lay unrepentant murderers, corrupt tax-gathers, rapists, and Smaractus.

Luckily I knew I made him nervous. There had been a time he always brought two gladiators from the gym he ran whenever he risked his neck in Fountain Court; with Lenia to defend him from aggrieved tenants he had taken to dispensing with the muscle. A good idea; poor Asiacus and Rodan were so badly nourished they needed to conserve their strength. The big daft darlings would never stagger into the arena after a day fighting me. For Smaractus I was a difficult proposition. I was lean and hard, and I hated his guts. As I crossed the threshold I heard his voice, so I had time to apply what Helena called my Milo of Croton look.

'Falco is going to read the sheep's liver at the wedding for us!' Lenia simpered, incongruously playing the eager young bride. He couldn't have been there for more than a few minutes but she was well into the wine. Who could blame her?

'Better watch out!' I warned him. He realised that if I took the augury this might be a double-edged favour. A bad omen could ruin his happiness. A really bad omen, and Lenia might back out before he got the ring on her, depriving him of her well-filled strong-boxes. Being sick on his mother as Lenia had asked me was nothing to the fun I could have with a cooperative ewe.

'He's nice and cheap,' said Lenia to him, as if explaining why I seemed a good idea. I was on her side too, though we refrained from mentioning that. 'I see the little dog's found you, Falco. We call it Nux.'

'I'm not taking in a stray.'

'Oh no? So when did you change your attitude?'

Smaractus muttered that I lacked experience as a priest, and I retorted that I knew quite enough to pontificate on his marriage. Lenia shoved a winecup into my hand. I shoved it back.

With the business formalities over, we could get down to cheating each other.

I knew Smaractus would try to swing some fiddle if he heard we were the basket-weaver's subtenants. One way out was to avoid telling him. Unfortunately, now he was betrothed to Lenia he was always littering up the neighbourhood; he was bound to spot us going in and out. This needed care – or blatant blackmail. To start with I ranted at him about the dilapidated rooms above Cassius. 'Somebody's going to tell the aediles that place is a danger to passers-by, and you'll be ordered to demolish the lot before it falls in the street!' Smaractus would do anything to avoid pulling down a property because by law he would have to replace it with something equal or better. (The idea of making more money from higher rents afterwards was too sophisticated for his mouldy old sponge of a brain.)

'Who would stir up trouble like that?' he sneered. I smiled courteously, while Lenia kicked his foot to explain what I was getting at. He would be limping for a week.

'Wasn't it you I saw talking to the trug-seller?' Lenia asked me. You couldn't squeeze a pimple in Fountain Court without three people telling you to leave yourself alone. 'I'm going to help him clear out his upper floor.' 'Why's that?' demanded Smaractus suspiciously. 'Because I'm a kind-hearted fellow.'

I waited until he was about to explode with curiosity, then I told him what I had just agreed with the cane-weaver. I would clear out the apartment and in return live there rent-free. Once we moved in I would keep an eye on the lockup when it was closed, allowing the weaver greater freedom to buzz off to his family.

Smaractus was nonplussed by this news. The word 'rent- free' was not in a landlord's vocabulary. I explained what it meant. He then used some phrases that proved what I had always suspected: he had been brought up by runaway trireme slaves in an unlicensed abattoir.

'I'm glad you approve,' I told him. Then I left, while he was still choking on his wine.

Next morning I presented myself at the Aventine Watch. The Fourth Cohort had its tribunal headquarters in the Twelfth region, the Piscina Publics, which most people deemed more salubrious. Alongside the HQ was a station house for the foot patrols, where their fire-fighting equipment was stored. To cover their other patch, the Thirteenth region, they had a second station house, to which Petronius bunked off whenever possible. That was where he kept an office staffed by his casework team of plain-clothes enquiry agents and scribes. They had a lockup for people who were caught in the act by the foot patrols or who sensibly chose to confess as soon as challenged, plus a room for more detailed questioning. It was small, but had interesting iron devices hung on all the walls. And there was just space to get a good swing with a boot.

Fusculus was outside the office, helping an old woman compose a petition. They had a bench in the portico for local people who came with complaints. The duty clerk, a lanky youth who never said much, leaned down and worked grit out of his left sandal while Fusculus very patiently went through the procedure for the crone: 'I can't write it for you. Only you know the facts. You want to start off: To Lucius Petronius Longus, chief enquirer of the Thirteenth region… Don't worry. The scribes will put that bit automatically. From… Then say who you are, and tell us details of your loss. On St Ides of October, or whenever it was -'

'Yesterday.'

Fusculus kicked the clerk into action. 'The day after the Ides, there was stolen from me.

'A bedcover.' The woman had caught on rapidly, as they do when they have persuaded some handsome young fellow to work for them. '..a street gang who removed it from my balcony. In Conch Court, off Armilustrum Street.'

'Worth?' Fusculus managed to squeeze in.

'A denarius!' She was probably guessing.