Lindsey Davis - Two For The Lions

"Whether it seems relevant or not," added Anacrites, pleasantly aiming to strike fear into the interviewee. He was a good civil servant after all.

Calliopus shot us a filthy look and bustled off.

I seated myself quietly and began making memos for myself about the lion's death. I held my tablet up at an angle so Anacrites had to guess what my scratchings were about.

He had worked alone for too long. He had been a man who kept his own council with perverted secrecy. Once he joined me he had braced himself to be companionable, but he then found it unbearable to share an office with someone who refused to talk to him. "Are you intending to carry on with the Censor's enquiry, Falco?" It was like doing your school homework with a fidgety younger brother. "Or are you giving up our paid assignment for this silly Circus interlude?"

"May as well do both."

I kept my eyes down. When I finished the notes that I actually wanted, I fooled him by drawing stickmen with busy scratches of my stylus. I completed three different sets of gladiators in combat, together with gesticulating lanistae urging on their efforts. My thinking time ended. I drew a sharp breath, as if I had reached some great conclusion. Then I squashed out the doodles with the flat end of my stylus, which was a shame because some had artistic merit.

I spun around to a pile of scrolls we were supposed to have scrutinized already, and spent the whole afternoon unwinding and rewinding them though never taking notes. Anacrites managed to stop himself asking what I was up to. Without even trying I managed to keep it to myself.

In fact I was re-examining the dockets and price lists for the animals Calliopus imported. We had previously looked at what he paid for them individually, and his overall cashflow for the menagerie account. All that had been aimed at deciding his true personal worth. Now I wanted to acquire a more general understanding of how the importation business worked. Where the beasts came from. In what numbers and what condition. And what it might mean to Calliopus first to buy a lion with the wrong pedigree for the venatio-and then to have him mysteriously killed.

Most of his animals came via his home town of Oea in the province of Tripolitania. They were delivered by one regular shipper, who was probably his third cousin All the shipments were put together over there at the menagerie which Anacrites and I had doubts about, the one which allegedly belonged to Calliopus' "brother", the "brother" whose existence we thought might be faked. We had certainly failed to find any scribbled notes from him saying, "What are the women like in Rome?" or "mother had another bad turn last week"-let alone that old family favourite "Please send more money". If he was real, he seemed strangely unfraternal in making a nuisance of himself.

Occasional entries recorded other purchases Calliopus had bought a bear, five leopards and a rhinoceros (who promptly died on him) from a senator whose private collection was being broken up. Iddibal was right; he rarely acquired big cats, although two years ago he had shared with a fellow lanista called Saturninus a huge purchase from a defunct arena supplier's estate. Going solo again, Calliopus then made a rare acquisition of crocodiles direct from Egypt, but they suffered badly on the voyage and proved unsatisfactory in the arena, where audiences had come to regard exotics from the Nile as less than spectacular unless they had a provenance all the way from Cleopatra's own fishpools. He had accepted a stray python that had been captured in a market by the vigiles.

After a long search I finally turned up the records for Leonidas. Calliopus had bought him last year, through a factor in Puteoli named as Cotys. The original entry merged almost boringly into a hundred others, neatly lettered by Calliopus' accountant, who had been taught enough calligraphy to write a hand so tidy it was illegible; luckily his figures were cruder and easier to read. I was immediately intrigued by what looked like a later note, added alongside the original entry with blotchier ink in a wilder hand. After "bought from Cotys' someone had scrawled angrily" Acting for Saturninus, that bastard!"

Well. Whatever the man's legal parentage, I had just unearthed the third reference to this Saturninus today. First Iddibal had told me that when Calliopus discovered he had bought a trained man-eater by mistake, he had tried to sell Leonidas to another lanista who bore that name. Now it transpired that Saturninus had been the seller all along-so presumably Calliopus was really trying to make the agent take the lion back to the man who had tricked him. This followed a partnership they had joined in the previous year-which in my experience of partnerships was likely to have ended in at least an awkward parting, if not a blazing row.

Rivalry, eh?

At leaving time I managed to shed Anacrites. We walked out through the barracks portico together and started up the road, then I lost him with a simple lie about having left my stylus behind. While he when on to cross the Tiber alone, I wasted time at the Temple of Hercules, trying to squeeze some gossip out of a slightly tipsy priest. He had no idea who his neighbours were. He had not even noticed lions constantly roaring just down the highway, and if any of the bestiarii ever came to the sanctuary to make offerings for favourable treatment from the gods, they had wasted their sacrifices. This charlatan was only interested in scrutinizing entrails if they came in a bowl with bacon and celery, nicely doused in a wine sauce.

I left the temple. Anacrites had safely vanished. By the time I returned to Calliopus establishment, the exercise grounds had both emptied. All gladiators love the feeding trough.

I walked in looking innocent, then since on one was about I managed to station myself in the shadow at the base of the rough and ready statue of Mercury. Huddling in my cloak against the chill, I prepared to wait, With the short winter hours the light had faded already. I could hear the hum of the fighters at their meal indoors. Occasionally a slave brought a bucket to or from the menagerie. Then someone came out from one of the rooms below the office.

Whoever was that?

It proved to be two people. Hanging back a bit was a sturdy fellow who looked like Iddibal, the most helpful of the fighters I had talked to that morning. He was trailing after a woman. She looked distinctly classy-in the confident, expensive sense. Well, that's another thing all gladiators are supposed to like.

It was too dark to make out her face, though I could see the flash of jewellery on her well-padded chest. She was lurking in a veil, probably with good reason; rich women are renowned for hanging around gladiators' schools-but we still all pretend it's a scandal when they do. There was a flounce on her gown and another in her gait. She carried herself like one of those heavy, extremely senior Greek goddesses who bear on their heads walled cities instead of topknots and ribbons. Although neither was speaking, I gained the impression strong word, had been exchanged between Iddibal and this personage before they made their exit, and that there was still much to be said, on her side at least.

Just then Calliopus came out from his office, which was on an upper storey. He looked down over the balcony without comment. The woman saw him, then stalked away out of the complex with immense dignity-a complete phoney if she had just been here for the illicit thrill of throwing herself at a young stud. I glimpsed a slave waiting for her just beyond the main gate.

No lanista encourages sordid goings-on. Well, not openly. Pragmatists will appreciate that presents from rich women help keep their fighters optimistic, though they don't actually hold the door open. For one thing, the wealthy dames love a hint of secrecy. Whatever the rules were here officially, Iddibal (if he it was) ducked his head without acknowledging his master, then quickly scuttled across to the main building where his cronies were scoffing their meal.