David Wishart - Old Bones

Hell. Purple stripers don't do manual work; it's in the Twelve Tables. Still, I was being called, and I knew it. Also that if I backed off I could kiss whatever co-operation the old bugger was willing to give me goodbye. 'Sure,' I said, going over to the mattock and picking it up. 'Deal.'

He grunted: I got the impression he hadn't expected me to take him up on the offer, or maybe with a lot more bad grace. 'Good. You break, I'll shovel.'

I jumped down into the ditch and started hacking away. The guy had a point about the rains: this time of year, late summer early autumn, the weather turned pretty unchancy, with sudden thunderstorms sweeping down from the hills and dumping their load on the lower slopes. After the long drought the earth was powder-dry and the result could be a flash-flood that swept away the topsoil and everything growing in it. If the ditches at the edges of the fields weren't cleared out good and deep a farmer could be in real trouble.

He watched me for a minute, then grunted again and bent down to clear the earth I'd dislodged.

'Navius was a smart-mouthed pup,' he said, 'but he'd the makings of a good farmer. He's done a lot for the property since he took it over. Cleared new land, dug drain-shafts above the hill terraces. Done it himself, too, with his own hands. One thing about Attus Navius, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Not like his poser of a father or your two Roman friends.'

'Uh-huh.' I shifted my grip on the mattock. Hell, this was no joke. I could feel the blisters rising already, and the tunic was sticking to my back. 'Nepos said the guy had some fancy ideas where farming was concerned.'

Arruns threw another shovelful of earth onto the field. 'He put a few noses out of joint.'

'Such as?'

'The ones you'd expect. Larth Papatius's and Gnaeus Vipena's.'

'Yeah?' I was careful not to stop digging. 'Why theirs in particular?'

'They're the big commercial vine-growers. The rest of us don't sell our wine, or not enough of it to make any odds. We grow mainly grain and pulses.'

I dislodged a stone and rolled it towards him with the blade of the mattock. 'These fancy ideas, now,' I said. 'What exactly are we talking about?'

'Vennunculans for Apians. And compluviate trussing.'

'You care to run that past me again, pal?' I leaned on the mattock and grinned at him. 'In Latin this time?'

Arruns grinned back as he hefted my stone up and over the edge: he had about a quarter of Mamilius's teeth, and they weren't in too good shape, either. 'If you want to fit in at Vetuliscum, Corvinus,' he said, 'you'll have to broaden your vocabulary. Vennunculan and Apian are vine varieties. Most of the vines you'll see here are Apians. You get Vennunculans a lot on the big estates in Campania, round about Pompeii. And compluviate trussing means the vines are grown up a four-sided frame instead of along a yoked line.'

'So?'

'It's the old argument, quality against quantity.' Arruns leaned on his spade; Jupiter, the guy wasn't even sweating! 'You can't have both. Vine-growers around here have always gone for the first, like the big boys further south in the Falernian and Caecuban areas. Apians aren't high- croppers but the grapes're top quality, and grown in a yoked line they ripen evenly and all together. Vennunculans give you twice the yield, maybe three times with compluviate trussing. With Apians and yoke-training you can press maybe twenty, twenty-five jars the acre, say a hundred and twenty gallons of prime juice. Vennunculans'll give you twice that, maybe three hundred in a good year, but the grapes're rubbish and the wine's piss. Good enough for the mass market but no more. You understand now?'

I shook my head. 'Uh-uh. Oh, sure, I can see that Navius might've been breaking with tradition in going for a wider market but that was his business. He could plant whatever vines he wanted on his own property and grow them how he liked.'

Arruns laughed. 'You're no vine-grower, that's certain. Vines take five years to mature. Five years from now Navius would've been selling his wine as Caeretan, and it would've been junk. Worse, he'd've had three times as much as any other vine-grower in the region. He'd've made a killing for the first four, maybe five years when he sold to the wholesalers and the jars were kept in bulk storage, but how long do you think the price of Caeretan would've held once it started to reach the customers and the market woke up? Then there's the knock-on effect. Vine-growing's a chancy business to start with. Who's going to take the risk of producing a low- yield quality wine if they might end up having to sell it at mass-market prices? So they plant Vennunculans themselves or give up and grow beans. The local quality wine industry'd be dead inside ten years. And for the commercial growers like Vipena and Papatius that's no joke.'

I saw what the guy was getting at now, and consciously or not he'd opened up a completely new can of worms. The wine business gave Papatius another reason for killing Navius that had nothing to do with Thupeltha. And it started up another hare: the Gruesomes' brother Vipena. Complicated was right.

I hacked out another few feet of ditch. I was getting blisters now for certain, but I knew better than to complain. The old bugger was turning almost friendly, and he was keeping up his end of the bargain. Maybe I could risk something closer to the bone.

'Nepos said you had a family feud going with Navius,' I said carefully.

Uh-oh; silence. Arruns started shovelling again. The scowl was back.

'Is that right, now?' he said finally.

I put my head down and didn't answer.

Arruns grunted. 'You're talking about the terraces on the slopes north east of here,' he said.

'Yeah?'

'Fifty years ago the boy's grandfather claimed he'd bought them from my father. The bastard was lying.'

Fifty years! Shit! They certainly had long memories in the country. I risked a glance at him.

'Your father denied the purchase?'

That got me a glare. 'My father was dead, Corvinus. The month after he died old Velthur Navius – that was the grandfather – produced a forged bill of sale.'

'It'd have to be witnessed, surely.'

'It was witnessed.' Arruns stabbed at the pile of earth. 'The witness was lying too. My father never sold anything. That's our land still, and if you want to call wanting it back a feud then you go ahead. It's none of your business, anyway. Or that plummy bastard Nepos's.'

Ouch. I'd obviously touched a nerve and it was time to back off. 'One more question. Quintus Mamilius.'

'Yes?' Arruns straightened. 'What about him?'

'He had a granddaughter, died a while back. You know what of?'

'She died in childbirth. The baby as well.'

Yeah. That's what I thought the answer would be. Still, it was good to have it confirmed. 'Who was the father? Attus Navius?'

That got me a long look, and not a friendly one either. 'Now that really isn't your business,' Arruns said quietly.

'Uh, right.' I put down the mattock and got out of the ditch. 'Thanks for your help.'

He grunted and went back to his shovelling. As I walked away he called over:

'Corvinus!'

I turned. 'Yeah?'

'Put some oil on these blisters.'

I grinned and waved, then set off up the track towards the high ground.

I found the hill track easily. It ran behind Arruns's farmhouse through high, broken countryside cut by ravines screened by ilex and holm-oaks and littered with huge rocks of red tufa covered with bright yellow and orange lichen. Pretty wild stuff, and nice if you like that sort of thing. Me, I prefer concrete and paving slabs where the only wildlife around is the muggers and hookers.

I carried on back along the track towards Navius's property. I could see now, with my newly-acquired farmer's eyes, what Arruns had meant: most of the ground from the hill slopes to across the Caere road was planted with vines, but they were being grown against supports more like scaffolding tunnels than the linked lines of crosses I'd seen elsewhere. In another five years there'd be a hell of a lot of grapes down there, and at triple the yield they'd make a hell of a lot of wine. Navius would've sold it, too: the wine market in Rome is growing year by year, and although a lot of cheap stuff is starting to come in from the big commercial vineyards in Spain and Gaul supply and demand have a long way to go before they balance. Also there's the question of transport. Having to hire space on cargo boats and carts can raise your operating costs sky-high, and there's always the danger you'll have nothing to show for it in the end but slops: cheap wines don't keep, they don't travel well, and even Suburan punters won't pay good money for vinegar. If Navius could've produced even a half- decent swigging wine in bulk this close to Rome he'd've been laughing.