Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

I took his hand. He squeezed mine back automatically. But we relaxed. Late-morning sun beamed down on us, unfiltered by foliage or awnings; in due course we would have to move into a shadier position but until then we let lethargy seep into us.

We sat on our bench in silence, thinking. No, I do not mean canoodling. We were practical inquirers, simply reflecting on what we had learned, or not learned, and considering where, therefore, we could look next.

The courtyard hardly seemed like a murder scene; it was peaceful. Out here, you could barely hear the teeming Vicus Longus. Most people who used to have lunch or a drink here probably failed to notice how muffled the street hubbub was; they would have their own concerns, the society of their friends, their irritation at the serving faults of Nipius and Natalis …

We were so still and silent you might suppose no one was here.

Scuffling noises on the staircase made us glance at one another. Someone was coming down. “All quiet down there now; the interfering bitch must have scarpered.”

Tiberius lifted an eyebrow, amused. I flashed back a smile. We stopped holding hands but otherwise stayed motionless.

Into the garden came a couple of no-hope, high-trussed bust-band, barefoot sluts, sneakily creeping downstairs.

“Hello, girls!” I greeted them cheerily. They wondered whether to run for it. “Come on down, my dearies, don’t be shy.”

They came down. From the start, these Hesperides honeypots were not in the least shy.

“I was wondering when you would deign to show your faces. Do come and join us. Now that you are ready to socialize, I have a few questions.”

“Oh, shitty shit!” observed the first one, immediately identifiable as a whore who cost less on a tavern bill than donkey fodder.

“You said the nosy cow had gone!” groused her disheveled friend. She was refined (she thought); she had a snake bracelet with red glass eyes. She wore it on her ankle.

“Don’t be like that,” answered Faustus in a mildly reproachful tone. “Flavia Albia only wants to know what you know about Rufia. Where is the harm-unless you were the killers?”

This produced indignant denials. Faustus made a soothing gesture, palms spread. I just gazed at the couple thoughtfully. The first one noticed my coolness. She believed she could bamboozle men, but grasped that I would be more difficult.

We established their names, Artemisia and Orchivia, and that they were not from Italy. They said their homeland was Dardania.

“What shitty place is that?” I asked, deciding on a Dardanian adjective in the hope we could communicate. She looked blank.

“Part of Moesia,” Faustus told me. Moesia is one of the eastern provinces, bordering on barbarian Dacia, where our Emperor was currently at war with a ferocious king who cut off the heads of Roman officials and merrily slaughtered our armies. This king, Decebalus, had made several attempts to expand his territory into Moesia. A troubled mix of Thracians, Dacians and Illyrians, which made a curious slurry at the best of times, Moesia clung on as a Roman province by bloodied fingertips. We sent tough legions and not very renowned governors, men who could be spared if they should happen to be decapitated.

Apparently Moesia’s chief export was bar girls. Artemisia was short, wide-faced, grubby and stroppy. She wore a slouched tunic that showed off her big bust and sturdy legs, and she was topped by a high-piled, tangled mop of black hair. No bathhouse coiffeuse had ever attempted to tame it. Orchivia was squinty, with even stragglier, browner hair. She had at some point asked a stylist to tackle it, but the results were hopeless.

The girls told me in their high-minded way that Rome was shitty, Roman men were shitty shits and Roman women shittier. I decided to wait before asking what they thought of Rufia.

They were not slaves. They had been lured here by professional traffickers of sex-trade workers, who promised them a better life than anything available to young women of poor background (that is, all of them) in Moesia. So, compared with slaves, they came of their own free will. Using a rough and ready business plan, before that they had learned their craft by servicing the legionaries who defended their home province from its annexation by whooping head-loppers. These noble men with money to lavish in the shanty towns that clustered outside their forts had spoken of Rome-a city, I knew, many soldiers in the legions had never actually seen in their lives. Nevertheless, they eulogized its monuments, palaces, theaters-and its golden opportunities. Artemisia and Orchivia had listened to the squaddies then joined a mule train to Italy.

Now they worked here, taking customers upstairs. They did not mind telling us. They said someone had to do it, though the job was disgusting, the old landlord wanted horrible favors and the new one was a shitty nobody, while both then and now their earnings stank. No need to ask of what.

Faustus questioned them about their hopes for the future. They responded to him better than I expected, saying they would go home, but they still owed fare money to the man who brought them here, a toothless drover in a hairy cloak who had told them he knew their parents. Everything he said was shit. However, they were scared of him and what he could do to their families. Besides, in their hearts they still hankered to find those golden opportunities the legionaries had promised, which they still believed existed somewhere.

While they were answering Faustus, I tried to gauge how old they were. They pretended to be nymphs but had the faces of hags. This was a common result of poverty, let alone the work they did. Bad diet and degradation had left both with poor skin, dull eyes, bruises, pocks and a washed-out, gray appearance under whatever poisonous potions they painted on. I could see a lot of that; they would die before their time. But they were too young to have known Rufia.

They were too young to die too, though I concede that was irrelevant to my inquiry.

They confirmed they never met the missing woman. However, they knew people who had. Well, for one thing, they screwed Nipius and Natalis. From the waiters, if from no one else, they had heard the rumors about their luckless predecessor’s fate.

“Was she Dardanian, or any other kind of foreigner?”

“Who knows?” said Artemisia.

“I do!” boasted Orchivia. “She was a shitty Illyrian.”

“Who the buggery told you that?” demanded her colleague scornfully.

“Menendra.”

“What does she know?”

“She knew Rufia.”

“Shit!”

“Is there,” I interposed quickly, “any way I can speak to this Menendra?”

A shadow came over Artemisia and Orchivia, as if they regretted mentioning her.

“She’s around,” Orchivia muttered. “Off and on.”

“Well, if you see her, will you please push her my way?”

Orchivia said she might do, though Artemisia looked as if she did not like the idea that this other woman might find out they had been talking about Rufia with me.

“Is Menendra another scary one, like Rufia?” I asked, on the off chance. They laughed. They were pretending to dismiss that suggestion-while obviously agreeing with it.

“Does she also serve drinks at the Hesperides?”

“No.”

“Where then?”

“Nowhere special.”

“So how does she earn a living-assuming she doesn’t own a fancy man?” Few waitresses had pimps; in general their custom was straightforwardly controlled by the bar owners, who saw no reason to let others muscle in.

“She supplies the bars,” said Artemisia.

“Supplies what?” asked Faustus, butting in. He so much adored finicky detail.