David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

‘Jupiter! Just because you’re missing your doctor pal-’

‘That has nothing whatever to do with it, and is sheer nonsense into the bargain.’

‘Right. Right.’

‘Besides, he’ll be here for several days yet, until arrangements can be made for his onward journey to Moguntiacum. And if you’re busy, which you will be, it’ll be nice to have someone to visit the sites with, and who is genuinely interested.’ Hell! ‘I won’t tell you again; you’re just being silly. Now I’m hungry. Carry on down, please, and we’ll go in to dinner.’

It was a big place, the residence, which was only to be expected because it doubled for the palace when there were any imperials in town. Fortunately, as we reached the foot of our staircase, one of the bought help was just coming along the corridor.

‘Excuse me, pal,’ I said, ‘but where’s the dining room?’

‘Along here, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ve just gone through. If you’d like to follow me?’

We did. As we went in four pairs of eyes turned towards us.

‘Valerius Corvinus! Delighted to see you!’ Gabinius – obviously Gabinius, because he was in the host’s place – patted the couch to his right. ‘Down here, my dear chap. Make yourself comfortable. And Rufia Perilla. Pleased to meet you. You’re next to Caninia, if you would.’

‘I’m sorry we’re late, governor,’ I said, lying down and holding out my hands for the slave with the basin and towel.

‘Nonsense, we’re only just here ourselves. And you’ll have needed the time to settle in after your journey. How was it? Reasonably painless, I hope?’

‘Yeah, it wasn’t bad.’

‘That’s excellent.’

The wine slave bent forwards to fill my wine-cup. Perilla gave a meaningful cough.

Fuck.

‘Uh … just make it a half, pal,’ I said. ‘And top it up with water.’

Gabinius gave me a curious glance. ‘Not a drinker, Corvinus? Well, good for you! I could do with cutting down myself.’ He tapped his own wine-cup, and the wine slave filled it to the brim. Double fuck. ‘Now. Introductions. We’re a small party, as you see, but I thought we’d keep things informal. I’ll be away on tour myself from tomorrow, unfortunately, but the young shaver next to you is my aide, Licinius Nerva. He’ll be looking after you in my absence.’ I half-turned and nodded to the guy: competent-looking, early twenties, purple stripe on his mantle. Top Five Hundred high-flyer written all over him. Ah, well, that was par for the course; you couldn’t expect anything else, really, in the Diplomatic. ‘Caninia there’s his wife. She’s been in post for all of six months, so if you’re agreeable, my dear’ – to Perilla – ‘she can show you around the place, introduce you to a few people.’

‘Thank you,’ Perilla said; not that she looked too grateful, mind. Yeah, well, that should cramp Smarmer’s style a bit. I gave the girl my best smile.

‘My pleasure,’ Caninia said. Not a beauty by any means, young Caninia, with a nose like the prow of a trireme and a build that wouldn’t’ve disgraced a professional wrestler, but anyone who’d be chaperoning our brace of culture-vultures around town and so inadvertently making sure that their conversation didn’t stray down the primrose path of dalliance was on a winner with me from the start.

‘Last but not least,’ Gabinius said, ‘our procurator, Graecinius Laco.’

Interesting; judging by the colour of his hair and eyes, the other narrow-striper was a local. Or a Gaul, at any rate. And the imperial procurator, no less; a real one, which meant that he was in charge of the province’s financial side. High-powered company was right.

‘Valerius Corvinus.’ He nodded: stick-thin and dry accountant’s voice, like it’d been pickled in vinegar for a year.

‘So tell me,’ Gabinius said while the slaves set out the starters. ‘How are things in Rome?’

‘OK,’ I said, reaching for a pickled quail’s egg. ‘At least, the place was still standing when I left. Going pretty well, in fact.’

Gabinius grunted. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. Makes a pleasant change. Not that I’m surprised, mind, not in the slightest; he’s a good man, Claudius Caesar, and he’ll do a good job. Plus of course, being an honorary local, as it were, he’s popular here, which makes our own jobs that much easier.’ Turning to the procurator: ‘You’d agree, Laco?’

‘I would, governor. Absolutely. Certainly much better than his predecessor managed.’ Laco frowned at a plate of chickpea rissoles as if he suspected they might contain henbane, before picking one up and dipping it in the fish sauce. ‘If you’ll forgive me saying so, Gaius was a monster, a disgrace to the family. And where money was concerned he’d no more sense than a flea.’

He made the second charge sound far more serious than the first, which I supposed was to be expected in a guy for whom money and its correct management were the be-all and end-all of life.

‘He was here in person, wasn’t he?’ I dipped the egg in the sauce. ‘A couple of years back.’

‘He was indeed, on his way north.’ Gabinius took one of the little vegetable pastries. ‘Setting things up with the Rhine legions for his own British campaign. That came to nothing in the end, of course, although it was sound enough in principle. But I didn’t meet him myself; that was before my time.’

‘The man was a complete mountebank,’ Laco said.

Gabinius chuckled. ‘Now there, Corvinus, is your typical Gaul speaking,’ he said. ‘Unlike the average Roman, they don’t mince their words in company. But I quite agree with you, Laco; we’re well rid of the beggar.’

‘Actually, I thought he sounded rather fun,’ Caninia said.

‘Fun, my dear?’ Laco stared at her, rissole poised. ‘In what way?’

‘That auction, for a start. I mean, it did have its amusing side, didn’t it?’

‘What auction was this?’ Perilla asked.

‘You didn’t hear about it back in Rome?’ Gabinius said. ‘Yes, well, perhaps you wouldn’t; it hardly showed Gaius in a very favourable light, and it was an absolute disgrace from beginning to end. Fellow put together a load of old tat, worn-out sandals, cracked wine-cups, that sort of thing, and auctioned it off in the town square. He did, in person, I mean, if you can damn well believe it. Forced the more well-to-do locals to pay through the nose, what’s more. That caused a lot of bad feeling, you can be sure.’

I had to stop myself from grinning; yeah, that was our Gaius, all right, to a T. And I could see Caninia’s point: Gaius might’ve been a monster – gods, I knew that from personal experience, didn’t I just! – but he’d had a quirky, tongue-in-cheek style about him that made up for a lot. Me, I don’t have much time for po-faced, social-climbing fat-cats, and I’d bet the great and good of Lugdunum fitted the bill just as well as their equivalents in Rome would’ve done. Bent over backwards to outbid each other, what’s more, even if they did grizzle about it later. Gaius would’ve enjoyed himself no end.

‘The money didn’t even go towards the campaign.’ Laco re-dipped the rissole. ‘For which, of course, they’d already paid extra in tax. “Bad feeling” is putting it mildly. As far as the local community was concerned, it set relations with the imperial family back fifty years.’

‘Oh, come on!’ I said. ‘It can’t’ve been as bad as that, surely? Back in Rome, Gaius was pulling stunts like that all the time.’

Laco set the rissole down again, carefully. ‘Gaul is not Italy, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Let alone Rome. However Romanized we Gauls seem on the surface, we’re a completely different people, even to your own Italians. Money – actual money, specie – is in comparatively short supply here, and almost unknown in the country districts, where people use barter. On the other hand, Rome insists that her taxes are paid in cash. For the ordinary Gaul, this is difficult; where do the coins come from? And the situation isn’t much better for what you’d call the upper classes, particularly when, as they do, they try to match themselves with their Roman equivalents. They may be rich enough in land and produce, yes, but by Roman standards they have very little actual money, as such.’