David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

Doirus it was, then. With his farm, according to Biracus, out beyond the Western Gate. At least, starting from Diligenta’s, I was on the right side of town: the Gate lay at the west end of Boundary Marker Street, just down the road, in other words. I’d have to find the farm itself, of course, but there’d be enough locals around to direct me.

There were plenty of farms on offer, mostly growing a selection of vegetables or grain: neither grapes nor olives were a viable crop here, as they would be as a matter of course on farms around a town in Italy, although I suspected that that might be more a result of cultural differences than of weather. Maybe things would change in the future. What you did get a lot of, and wouldn’t to the same extent back home, was livestock, particularly sheep and cows. Which was fair enough: wool is a major industry in Gaul, and they use far more dairy products than we do.

I’d covered a scant quarter-mile when I spotted a guy hoeing a field of beans next to the road. I went over.

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you can help me? I’m looking for Doirus’s place.’ He just looked at me blankly. Shit, of course; the language barrier. ‘Uh … I don’t speak Gallic. You speak Latin?’ Not a flicker. Hell. ‘Doirus? Farm?’ I put my hand palm down under my brows and mimed searching.

He pointed further down the road. ‘Bridge. After-’ He tapped his right arm.

‘Got you.’ Well, evidently we’d reached the limits of his linguistic abilities; not that I could sneer, mind, because my command of Gallic was zilch. ‘Thanks, friend.’

‘Welcome.’

I carried on. Bugger; now that was something I hadn’t thought of. So far, I hadn’t had anything to do with the local population, at least the ones outside the towns. Oh, sure, we’d passed through a fair stretch of rural Gaul on our way here, but that had been in a government-owned coach, with government-owned bought help to do the talking where talking had been needed, and stopping, between towns, at government-owned posting stations. We’d been effectively screened, all the way. I was assuming this Doirus guy – and, indeed, his daughter – spoke good Latin. Good enough to communicate in, anyway. If I was wrong then I was in complete schtuck.

There was a bridge ahead, a small wooden one over a rush of stream-water, and, sure enough, a track leading off immediately to the right. I took it.

The track ended in a farmyard: a wattle-and-daub cottage with outbuildings either side, a fenced-off area of tussocky grass with a few goats and a tethered cow, five or six geese, and a small flock of chickens running free about the yard. There was an oldish guy in a short tunic and trousers plus serious Gallic moustache and braids, forking dung-heavy straw out of one of the outbuildings into a wheelbarrow. He laid down the fork, wiped his forehead on his sleeve, and watched me in silence as I came closer.

‘Uh … you speak Latin, pal?’ I said.

‘Sure. Why shouldn’t I?’ A long way from friendly – I was getting a look that was suspicious, at best – but at least we were communicating. That was a relief, at any rate.

‘No offence,’ I said. ‘It’s just that the guy hoeing beans that I asked directions from half a mile up the road hardly had a word.’

He snorted. ‘That’d be Iccavus. He was putting you on. A real joker, is Iccavus.’

‘Right. Right.’ Oh, ha! Well, Nerva had said that Gallic humour could be pretty gross. And no doubt the locals viewed any likely Roman as fair game. ‘You Doirus?’

‘I am.’ Still no smile, and the suspicion was there in spades. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘The name’s Corvinus. I’m looking into the death of Claudius Cabirus.’

He spat to one side. ‘So?’

‘Your daughter Aia’s friendly with his son. Titus.’

That got me a long, slow look. ‘Is she, indeed? That’s news to me.’

Damn; now there was a complication I hadn’t thought of! ‘You mean you didn’t know?’

‘Too right I didn’t. I’d’ve had words with the little trollop otherwise. And I will, too, now that I do, the next time I see her.’

Oh, hell; I’d really screwed that one up, hadn’t I? That was twice in one day I’d put someone’s back up. And Titus wasn’t going to be a very happy bunny when he found out, either; him and the lady both. Nice going, Corvinus.

‘You mean she doesn’t live here?’ I said.

‘No. She’s in service in town, has been for the past year. She lives in, naturally.’

‘Whereabouts? Just out of interest?’

‘“Just out of interest”, eh?’ He picked up the fork again. ‘What’s your game?’

‘Nothing, pal, nothing.’ I held up my hands. ‘I said: I’m looking into Claudius Cabirus’s murder. On behalf of the emperor.’

‘The emperor, is it? Fancy!’ But he’d lowered the fork. ‘All right. She works for the Valentus family. They’ve a house near the Ocean Gate.’ Interesting; not far from the Cabirus place itself. The two families would be practically neighbours. Maybe that’s how the two had met. ‘Now if that’s all you came for you can push off. I’ve work to do.’

‘I understand you had a brush with Cabirus yourself some time back.’

Another long, slow look. ‘Who told you that?’

‘The joint senior magistrate. Julius Biracus.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He sucked on a tooth. ‘Well, then.’ He laid the fork aside, pulled the tunic over his head and turned round. His back was a mass of healed scars. ‘There you are. That was my “brush” with Cabirus. Satisfied?’ He turned to face me again and put the tunic back on. ‘I’d’ve thought the girl would’ve had more pride than to take up with any relation of that bastard. She’s a good lass, Aia, at root, always has been. It hit her hard enough at the time, and with her mother dead of the fever when she was five, and her being the only one we had living, we were pretty close.’

‘So what was it for? The flogging? You mind telling me?’

‘We were behind with our taxes. The procurator sent his men to take most of the season’s grain in their place. We’d had a piss-poor harvest that year, and it would’ve meant either that there was damn all seed corn left for the next season or that we’d have a slim winter of it. I tried to stop them and one got hit. I broke the bastard’s nose for him.’ He shrugged. ‘I should’ve saved myself the effort. They took the corn anyway, and I got twenty lashes at the next assize. Courtesy of Claudius fucking Cabirus. So don’t ask me to be sorry someone stuck a knife into him, because you won’t get any tears from me.’

Yeah, well; I supposed that that was understandable, under the circumstances. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll be getting back. Thanks for your help.’

‘What help?’ He picked up the fork again. ‘You see Aia, you tell her from me to drop that sod like a hot brick, find someone decent, or she’ll have me to reckon with. She’ll listen; like I say, she isn’t a bad girl at heart. But you know kids that age, they’ve no sense, particularly the girls. Think they know best, and to hell with everything else.’

‘Yeah. Way of the world, pal. Way of the world.’

‘It certainly is.’ He turned back to his work, and I started walking back up the track.

Food for thought.

I got back to the residence in the middle of the afternoon. No sign of Perilla yet – she’d still be out on her culture jag with Caninia and, doubtless, Domitius bloody Crinas, over in Condate – so I settled down for a much-needed think in the conservatory with a cup of Bathyllus’s doctored-but-don’t-ask-too-many-questions wine.

She rolled in – alone, this time – just short of the dinner hour.