David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

‘“Walkabout”?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. The judicial circuit. It’s that time of year, I’m afraid.’ He turned to Crinas, and the smile slipped down a notch. ‘Domitius Crinas, isn’t it? The doctor fellow.’

‘Indeed,’ Crinas said drily. ‘The doctor fellow.’

‘Jolly good. I’m glad to meet you as well. Now. Not to worry, gentlemen, we have everything in hand. You won’t be leaving for Lugdunum until the day after tomorrow, and of course we have apartments prepared for you at the governor’s residence. I’ve a carriage waiting, if you’d like to follow me. Don’t worry about your slaves and luggage.’ He snapped his fingers at the leader of the bought help standing behind him and pointed him to the gang-plank. ‘Those will follow on.’

He turned to go.

‘Ah … and this is my wife, pal,’ I said. ‘Rufia Perilla.’

‘Mmm?’ He turned back. ‘Oh, I do apologize. I’m very pleased to meet you, madam.’

So; not one of Rome’s foremost egalitarians, evidently, either where women or freedmen doctors were concerned. Not surprising, mind, because if he was one of the Curtii – which, as the governor’s aide, he probably was – then he was from one of the oldest aristocratic families in Rome. And you don’t get anyone more poker-arsed double-dyed, antediluvian conservative than that shower.

Perilla gave him a brittle smile. Yeah, well; fortunately, we’d only be here a couple of days, because any longer and I could see Curtius all-teeth-and-hair-oil Bassus taking the first-mentioned commodities home in a bag.

Crinas wasn’t looking too chuffed either, which didn’t come as any surprise. Much as I disliked the guy, my sympathies were all on his side.

By the time we reached the carriage – it was parked at the edge of the harbour area itself – I had my land-legs back, more or less. I handed Perilla in and clambered aboard, then with Bassus and Crinas in and facing us we were off.

The governor’s residence, it seemed, was in the centre of town behind the market square, so we had a chance to see a bit of the place on the way. Not bad; not bad at all: broad streets in the Greek fashion with tidy-looking buildings, and although it was on the warm side the breeze from the sea meant it was cooler than in Rome. Quieter, too, and more laid back. Yeah; temples and statues aside – and it looked, unfortunately, as if there were plenty of those on offer – I reckoned I could spend a very pleasant couple of days here. I hadn’t forgotten what Claudius had said about the wine, either; that I was looking forward to trying. Or at least to the extent that Domitius sodding Crinas’s sadistic four-cups-a-day allowance enforced by the threat of being seriously Perilla’d if I didn’t keep to it would let me.

The residence was in its own grounds, probably originally the private house of one of the leading families. The gatekeeper opened the wrought-iron gates, and we drove through, up a gravelled drive past clumps of boxwood shaped like animals and birds, trees that looked like they’d been there for centuries, which they probably had, a stretch of eye-hurtingly-green lawn, ditto, over which five or six peacocks dragged their tails, and a riot of bronze and marble statuary that I’d bet was half as old as Massilia itself.

So we were still getting the five-star treatment, then. Not that I was complaining.

‘Here we are,’ Bassus said brightly.

There was an oldish guy with a slave’s haircut and natty yellow tunic standing outside the open door, obviously waiting for us. Bassus and Crinas got out, and Perilla and I followed.

‘This is Bion,’ Bassus said. ‘The major-domo. He’ll be looking after you while you’re here.’

The guy bowed. ‘Welcome, sirs. Madam.’

‘Hi, Bion,’ I said, making a mental note to warn Bathyllus that I’d dock the touchy bugger’s perquisites at the first sniff of a demarcation dispute with the locals. We were guests, after all.

‘And now I’m sorry, but I must get back to work.’ Bassus gave us another smile. ‘Things do pile up, you know, especially with the governor away. We’ll meet up again for dinner, naturally; I’m sure the governor would want me to see that you’re kept fully entertained during the short time you’re with us, and I’ve arranged things accordingly.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. Hell’s teeth; I didn’t entirely relish the thought of what would obviously turn out to be an all-stops-pulled-out formal dinner party, but then if you’re a travelling VIP, however temporary, you have to take the rough with the smooth. ‘That’ll be great.’

‘At sunset, then. I’ll leave you to get settled in. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

He got back into the coach and closed the door. The coach moved away.

‘If you’d like to follow me, sirs and madam,’ Bion said, ‘I’ll show you to your apartments.’

The dinner was as bad as I’d thought it would be. Worse. Not the food, mind: Governor Catellus’s chef would’ve given even Meton a run for his money. If Massilia is famous for anything it’s seafood, and the huge platter of assorted lobsters, crabs, prawns and shellfish with its selection of dipping sauces that formed the centre-point of the main course would’ve had Meton crying his little eyes out. Still, when your fellow dinner guests are a pukkah snob like Bassus, a pair of middle-aged local worthies whose main topics of conversation are, respectively, commercial snail-breeding and collecting unusual cloak pins, partnered by their vulture-faced, over-jewelleried, fashion-fixated wives, an Apollo look-alike who picks at his food when he isn’t chatting up your wife or giving you disapproving looks when you call the wine slave over for a top-up, and a nondescript little guy sporting what I was sure was a ginger wig, who eats like a horse and doesn’t say a word all evening barring ‘Pass me the fish sauce, please’, by dessert time you’re about ready to slit your wrists.

‘Well, that was quite nice, wasn’t it, Marcus?’ Perilla said after we’d finally said our goodnights and retreated back upstairs to our room. Suite of rooms; this was the governorate, after all, and the Roman admin system doesn’t stint itself.

‘Maybe for you, lady, with Smarmer there all over you from start to finish.’ I stripped off the party mantle. ‘Personally, given the choice of a rerun or having my back molars removed I’d go for the teeth every time.’

‘Come on, dear! It wasn’t nearly that unpleasant! And Crinas was only being polite. He’s very knowledgeable about Massilia, too, despite the fact that he’s never been here before. Did you know that the original founder was given the land by the local king as a wedding present because at a banquet to choose a husband for the king’s daughter she took a fancy to him and rejected all the official suitors?’

‘No, actually that little gem has slipped past me, somehow. And I’m not altogether sure that under the circumstances it’s the sort of story a young unmarried man should be telling a respectable married woman in private at dinner.’

‘Listen to yourself! You prig! You complete prig!’

‘Even so.’

‘Just be grateful that he was distracting me from counting how many refills you had.’

Bugger. ‘Two. It was two.’

‘Four. I lied; I was counting, after all. That’s one cup over our agreed limit.’

‘“Agreed”?’

‘Tacitly agreed, then.’ She reached up and kissed me. ‘It’s for your own good, dear, honestly. And it’s only until Lugdunum. For the present, at least. Truce?’

‘I suppose so.’ Shit! That for the present sounded ominous! ‘But-’

‘Fine. Now, we have a lot of sightseeing to cram into two days. Phryne should be in shortly to unpin my hair, and then I think we should get straight off to bed.’