David Wishart - White Murder

Rome’s port is foreign ground. I don’t have much to do with the town at all, nor do most city-Romans unless they’ve got connections with ships or the grain trade; and where the Ostians and Rome are concerned to a lesser extent it’s the same. Sure, there’s any amount of coming and going between the two places, but that’s mostly on the business side. When it comes to mixing socially, the fourteen miles of Ostian Road’s enough to keep city and port largely different worlds. You don’t even get the gang fights that flare up regularly between, say, the Eleventh District boys and the Transtibbies from across the Sublician Bridge, although it does happen occasionally on race days when the bargees come into town by the cartload wined up and looking for aggro. Think ships, trade and grain and you’ve got the place in one. Sure, it isn’t exactly run-down, particularly around the theatre where Augustus did a bit of fancy building, but what with the old harbour silting up and most of the heavy stuff barring corn going from Puteoli it’s not exactly thriving, either.

Agron’s place was in a street of high-rises on the edge of town just shy of the Sullan Wall. He’d done pretty well for himself since I’d first met him years before when he’d been Varus’s sister’s gopher, and although he still lived in a first-floor flat he owned the whole tenement, plus the boat-building yard he’d inherited from his Alexandrian father-in-law. I’d met his wife Cass a few times: a big-boned, handsome woman very much into housework, cooking and kids. The last count, there were five of these, but Cass seemed to run a permanent crèche for the other tenement mothers, so I was never quite sure which ones were the little Illyrian-Greeks.

I slipped one of the streetwise kids you always get hanging around tenements a couple of copper pieces to mind the horse and climbed the stairs to the first floor. Forget the usual breathe-through-your-mouth trick; there were no nasty smells, the walls were graffiti-free and the steps had been scrubbed until they shone. I’d bet the stairways further up were the same, too, because Cass believed in the direct approach where slovenly tenants were concerned, and any poor bugger who didn’t measure up to her standards’d be out on his ear so fast his head would spin. Cass was a lady you didn’t cross.

It was noisy, though. Whatever was going on on the first-floor landing made a free-for-all cat and dog fight sound like a slack afternoon in the Pollio Library.

I turned the corner of the stair just as a screaming midget hurtled round it and threw herself at the space beneath my bottom rib. I doubled up, but she didn’t slacken speed, just pulled her head out of my breadbasket and carried on past me like nothing had happened.

‘Hey, Corvinus!’ I looked up gasping. Agron was shaking off half a dozen five-year-olds like they were puppies. ‘Good to see you, boy! How’s the lad?’

‘I may never play the double-flute again.’

‘Shame. You were getting good, too.’

I propped myself against the door jamb and waited for the pain to ease. ‘You and Cass opened the junior branch of the Ostian gladiators’ training school, pal?’

‘It’s a birthday party for a neighbour’s eldest. That was her you just met, by the way.’

‘Fine. Tell the kid from me she has a great future with the legions knocking holes in city walls.’

He laughed. ‘You want to split that jug before we go and see your friend?’

‘Inside or out?’

‘I wouldn’t do that to you, Corvinus. There’s a new wine-shop just opened round the corner that serves a fair Massic. Oh, and they’ve got a nice smoked Caedician, if you’re interested.’

With me it’s wine, with Agron it’s cheese. Which reminded me. I took out the straw-wrapped parcel I’d picked up on a quick detour past the fancy food shops in the Velabrum and stowed away carefully in the horse’s saddlebag. The birthday girl had dented it a bit, but that just served the bastard right for throwing wild parties. ‘Forget the Caedician,’ I said. ‘Here. Enjoy.’

He opened the parcel like it was made of gossamer, looked in and sniffed.

‘Sweet gods! That’s a Lesoran! A whole Lesoran!’

‘Yeah.’

‘A whole fresh Lesoran!’

‘Congratulations. You win the nuts.’ The guy knew his cheeses, I’d give him that. And he had an expression on his face like mine would be with a thirty-year-old Caecuban.

‘But you can’t get fresh Lesoran in Rome!’

‘The guy in the shop swore he’d had it brought over from Gaul by trireme. Now how about that Massic?’

‘Sure.’ He was holding the straw-wrapped cheese like it was spun glass. ‘You’ve got it.’

‘Just remember to bring him back sober, Corvinus.’ I looked up. Cass was standing in the doorway like a Praxitelean Juno, with a one-year-old in the crook of her arm. Probably sprog number five, but I wasn’t taking bets. ‘Otherwise you’re both in trouble.’

Ouch. Like I said, that is one lady you just do not mess with, if you know what’s good for you. Not more than once, anyway. The last time we’d come back plastered I’d got my head to play with and Agron had slept on the living room couch for a month. ‘Uh, right, Cass.Yeah. No problem.’ I glanced at Agron. He grinned weakly and shrugged. Time for the master-stroke peace offering. ‘Ah…I’ve got something for you too. Or for the kids, rather.’ I produced the second parcel from my cloak-pouch. Or what had been a parcel. The human battering-ram had scored a direct hit, and the pastries and candied fruit inside had got seriously bent. ‘Oh, sh-…bother. They’re, uh, a little shop-soiled.’

Cass took the papyrus-wrapped bundle, looked inside and made a face. ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘Never mind. Off you go and enjoy yourselves. Late lunch when you get back. Pigeon pie.’

Agron glanced at me. ‘That okay with you, Corvinus?’

‘Yeah. Great.’ I meant it, too: Cassiopeia’s pigeon-and-egg pie with cinnamon would’ve had the gods passing up on their ambrosia. She’d given Meton the recipe, but the result just wasn’t the same, and with Meton rolling the pastry that’s high praise. Agron might be seriously under his wife’s thumb, but there were definite compensations.

‘Oh.’ The lady paused in the doorway to the flat. ‘Before you do go, Alexis didn’t mention if you’d be staying the night. It’s no problem, you can bunk down in the living-room with the kids.’

I looked at the specimen she was holding. It had a look of terrible concentration on its face and it was making a horribly familiar grunting noise.

‘Uh, no,’ I said, edging away from the danger zone. ‘That’s okay. I have to be getting back.’

‘You’re sure?’ Agron said.

‘Oh, I’m sure. Thanks for the offer, though.’

The atmosphere on the landing was growing thicker by the second. I made it to the safety of the stairwell just in time.

We had the jug, and Agron made inroads on his cheese. Then we set off for the harbour.

I was glad I’d asked the big Illyrian to track down Sopilys for me. Ostia may’ve lost quite a bit of trade these past fifty years, but it’s still the main port of the capital of the world, and that means a hell of a lot of wharves and a hell of a lot of shipping. Which in turn means a small army of stevedores. If I’d tried it cold, finding the guy wouldn’t’ve been easy.

‘That’s him over there.’ Agron pointed to a little runt in an oversize tunic leaning against a pile of hides and chewing a hunk of bread. We’d timed it well: the Ostian stevedore gangs work in shifts and we’d obviously hit the guy’s lunch break. ‘You won’t want me butting in, Corvinus, so I’ll leave you to it. See you back at the gates, okay?’