David Wishart - Last Rites

Yeah. Fair point. I stood up. ‘Okay. Thanks, sister. If you get something Celer knows where to find me.’

She shook her head. ‘Uh-uh. I don’t want to bring Celer into this. The boys and girls are safe, but I wouldn’t put it past that bastard to split.’

Fair enough; and I didn’t trust Celer more than half myself. I gave her my address. Then I went back home to wait.

I waited for three full days. Which isn’t to say, of course, that I stayed in twiddling my thumbs or washing my hair. There wasn’t much I could do as far as the case was concerned, sure, except to check with Lippillus whether he’d got any change out of the other residents of Thalia’s tenement (he hadn’t), but with all this murder and mayhem my private life had taken a back seat and there was plenty to do that didn’t involve sleuthing. For a start, I called in at the city judges’ offices with a dinner invite for Gaius Secundus and his wife. I felt guilty as hell about Secundus. Like I said, we’d been close friends as kids and the Murena favour was the second time I’d traded on the friendship without giving anything back, which isn’t the Roman way. The least I owed Gaius was a good dinner.

Then there was the Winter Festival shopping. Jupiter, I hate that, but with less than ten days to go it had to be done. I gritted my teeth and did the rounds of the markets, the Saepta and the chichi shops on Broad Street, the Argiletum and Iugarius. The Winter Festival, of course, is really for the slaves – it’s the only holiday the poor buggers get, barring a day for the Festival of the Matrons and another in August for the inauguration of Diana’s temple – but everyone gets a present nowadays, and I knew Perilla had already stashed mine (a sharp new mantle; that lady’s nothing if not an improver, and she gives me one every year) at the bottom of a spare-room clothes chest. For Perilla I got a couple of rolls of Carneades’s philosophical lectures (don’t ask) which she’d go into ecstasies over and, as an afterthought, a cut-price edition of Meleager’s Menippean Satires for Aegle. Mother got perfume, like I give her every year, and I already had Priscus’s little goody: a ring I’d picked up in Athens with the head of one of the Seleucid kings on it. Meton was easy: he’d been dropping heavy hints about a new omelette pan ever since we’d got back. So was Lysias: the guy’s belt-mad, and I found him a Spanish one with gilded studs. Alexis was more difficult, but I had a sneaking suspicion the kid was blossoming in the romance department so he netted a snappy tunic and a flask of good hair-oil. Bathyllus…

I spent a lot of time and thought over Bathyllus’s present. The little guy isn’t easy to buy for; he’s got enough hernia supports already to equip a legion’s artillery division, and as for patent hair-growing remedies he’s tried them all without so much as a sprouting follicle. Finally, on a Gallic stall in Cattlemarket Square, I found the very thing: a pair of woollen long johns à la the Divine Augustus that would’ve stopped anything short of a direct hit from a siege bolt. When he was out of a January dawn buffing up the paving stones outside our front door Bathyllus would just love these to bits.

I’d just stowed them away in the study with the other presents – it was just short of lunch-time – when the little bald-head himself shimmered in.

‘You have a visitor, sir,’ he said. ‘A woman.’ Sniff.

‘Yeah?’ I closed the lid of the chest before he caught a pre-Festival glimpse of the winter woollies. ‘Merciful gods! One of them, eh? She got her castanets and a rose between her teeth or has she left them at home?’

Not a flicker. Maybe the woollies were a mistake after all: that guy’s impervious to everything the world can throw at him, sarcasm especially.

‘That I couldn’t say, sir,’ he said. ‘However, she is waiting outside. In the lobby.’

And he’d probably checked the floor mosaic in case she scuffed it with her plebeian sandals while he was gone, too. I’d noticed the terminology: woman , not lady . Where maintaining the social distances is concerned Bathyllus could give a dowager lessons. I sighed.

‘Okay, little guy. Wheel her through.’

It was Aegle, of course, complete with flute-case. ‘Hi, Purple-striper,’ she said as she took her cloak off. ‘Nice place.’

Bathyllus made a sort of strangled choking noise. Yeah, well, he couldn’t see many visitors in just a gilded G-string and bra. ‘I’ll leave you in private, then, shall I, sir?’ he said.

‘You do that.’ I kept my face straight. ‘Go and adjust your truss, sunshine.’

He sniffed and left.

Aegle had laid the flute-case against the wall and settled herself on the couch.

I grinned and poured us each a cup of wine. ‘You want me to tell the slaves to beef up the hypocaust, lady?’ I said.

She laughed. ‘Hey, I’m sorry. I had an all-night slot at a house on Caelimontan Road and it wasn’t worth going home to change. You mind?’

‘I don’t. My head slave might need major corrective surgery, but at least he’ll go into it happy.’

‘That wasn’t how it looked from here.’ She sipped her wine. ‘I’ve found your fluteboy for you.’

Hey! ‘No kidding?’ I took the stool next to the desk.

‘His name’s Scorpus. It was like I thought, the guy’s one of Galba’s freedmen. Got his discharge about a year ago. He runs a second-hand furniture business in the Remuria, just up from the Naevian Gate.’

My skin prickled. ‘He does what? ’

‘Runs a furniture business. Galba bought him into it. He must’ve given hell of a satisfaction in his tootling days, because it’s a proper going concern and that bastard’s close enough to skin a flint.’

‘Hang on, Aegle,’ I said. ‘This is important. You’re telling me this Scorpus is a used furniture dealer?’

‘Sure. Like I said, fluteplaying’s a closed shop. And it doesn’t exactly pay. Used furniture’s big business, especially in the Aventine district where people can’t afford fancy prices for new. He’s coining it hand over fist, my informant tells me.’

Shit; Alexis’s pal Melissa had said that Aemilia’s bit of rough was a second-hand furniture salesman. Added that this guy had family connections with the Galbas, that didn’t leave any room for coincidence. I’d been chasing the wrong hare. ‘You seen him?’

‘No. I thought if you’re not busy we could do that together.’

‘Sure we could.’ I sank my wine in one and stood up. ‘We’ll go round there now.’

‘You mind if I have something to eat first? I haven’t had anything today and I’m starved.’

‘Uh, yeah. Right.’ I crossed over to the door and yelled, ‘Hey, Bathyllus!’

He was there in two shakes of a G-string tassel, radiating prime disapproval. ‘Yes, sir. At your orders, sir.’

‘Cut the crap and bring the lady some lunch, sunshine.’ I looked at Aegle. ‘Ah…’

‘Just bread will do fine. And some greens if you’ve got them,’ she said.

‘Greens, madam.’ You could’ve used the guy’s tone to ice fruit juice. ‘Yes, madam. Certainly, madam.’

‘Get Meton to make up a tray,’ I said. ‘That cold pork and cumin from yesterday and the bean stew. Plus anything else he’s got going.’

‘Yes, sir. Cold pork, sir.’ He glanced at Aegle’s legs, stretched out and visible in their full lovely length. She grinned back at him and winked. ‘At once, sir.’ He left with a final sniff.

‘Your major-domo doesn’t like me,’ Aegle said when he’d gone.

‘Oh, Bathyllus is okay. He just isn’t human, that’s all.’ I opened the presents chest and brought out the Meleager. ‘By the way, I got this for you. It was for the Festival but you may as well have it now.’