Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

I like detail myself; I prefer to work up to it my own way. “Supplies what?” I echoed, putting my own stamp on the question.

“Anything they need,” Orchivia replied dismissively.

“That’s nice and vague.”

Both women gave high-shouldered shrugs, as if my insistence was unreasonable. What passed for expressive in Dardania meant nothing in Rome. Faustus and I stared.

“Fruit,” explained Artemisia glibly. “Menendra is a fruit-seller.”

That, I felt certain, was a barefaced Dardanian lie.

Getting nowhere, and hoping I could track down Menendra myself, I went back to Rufia. Did the women have any idea of when she disappeared? Surprisingly, they put a date on it. Someone had told them it happened in the first year of the Emperor Titus. Titus only reigned for two years, which was sad for him, but helpful here.

I joked with Faustus, “I remember his inauguration, plus all the festivities when he opened the Flavian Amphitheater, made it necessary for bars to obtain a great deal of fruit!”

“Happy hour,” he returned lightheartedly. “Raining pomegranates. Cornucopia with every wine cup. Can you two remember anything else about when Rufia disappeared?”

Artemisia and Orchivia reminded him they had not been in Rome then; it was even before they left their mountainous birthplace and went north to sell their valuable young virginities to the Fifth Macedonica and other fine legions in the Danube forts.

“Despite the pleas of your weeping relatives?” Faustus suggested, being wicked as he went back to probing their lives.

“Oh, they couldn’t see us off fast enough.”

“They were heartbroken but they knew none of us had anything else to sell; for everyone’s benefit we had to sacrifice our little cherries. We were young. We looked as if we could be real virgins.”

“And how many times did you manage to peddle those precious commodities before the randy soldiers twigged?”

“About six or seven.”

Orchivia claimed she could still sell hers if she put her mind to it, on a good night in winter when the lamps weren’t lit.

Artemisia laughed hysterically at that. Then she mused, “One trumpeter bought mine twice.”

“Why was that?” inquired Faustus. “Because he enjoyed it so much the first time?” For a serious man, he could come out with comments that were very funny. But only I saw the joke.

These were hard, untrustworthy, filthy, foreign working girls, yet Tiberius and I were in danger of feeling sorry for them. They, on the other hand, would lie, dodge, and diddle us at every opportunity. I saw no likelihood of squeezing anything more useful out of Artemisia and Orchivia today, so I said they could be off to wait at tables in the Four Limpets or wherever they had employment.

“The Brown Toad.”

“Juno! You don’t care what dump you work in … I expect you know the old phrase, don’t leave town.”

They looked puzzled.

As they were leaving, their paths crossed with those of two very different damsels. Strangely, both pairs nodded as they passed, each without being at all affronted by the other.

Artemisia and Orchivia sashayed off, while we were joined by a dainty couple of young girls who shrieked, “Ooh what a horrible place!” They were thrilled.

The Dardanians called back over their saucily bare shoulders that the Hesperides was indeed shitty. I would get the blame at home for this: my little sisters had learned a new catchphrase. “Just so shitty!”

Orchivia popped back. “If you two think you’re going to work here, don’t even try it. We own the franchise!”

I could feel Tiberius shaking with laughter.

Julia Junilla Laeitana had been given a third name because she was born in Spain where our father had had to deliver the baby himself and save our mother from near death-as he boringly reminded us on occasions. After these horrors, he badly needed to swig the local Laeitana wine and named his firstborn after it.

Sosia Favonia was birthed at home by our two sober grandmothers, so only had two names, but that suited her because she was traditional; a private, austere girl, she regarded her sister as frivolous, not least for her excess of names. She was called Sosia for a long-dead cousin. There was some tragedy involved, so nobody used it. Don’t ask me to explain: some long-ago family business.

Julia was sixteen, tall and slim, desperately bright. Favonia was fourteen, sturdy and gruff, with deep-grained, practical intelligence. I was old enough for us never to have squabbled; I had lived elsewhere for much of their childhood. When I visited home, they often did my hair, or altered my clothes and jewelry, as if I were a big doll in their toy collection. I loved them to bits.

These were my daft, spoiled, innocent, lovely young sisters, who were ecstatic to be roped in by Faustus for our wedding. No one had entrusted anything important to them before. They were arranging things better than I ever would, though with no regard for my wishes, my father’s willingness to pay or my mother’s good taste in social matters. It was the best fun they had ever had-and now they had capped that by coming to a shitty bar where they were hoping to see dead people.

“How did you get here?” I nagged. “Don’t tell me you walked, not down the Argiletum?”

They had seen we had a bench, so were busy sorting out another for themselves. Soon the building site looked like a picnic spot. Julia took charge. “We did walk. Good heavens, that’s an interesting street. Wigs and false teeth!”

Along the Argiletum, they would have tripped past barbers and slave-sellers, butchers, linen merchants, makers of iron goods and suppliers of all kinds of food. The teeth and wigs were certainly exotic, but oh dear gods, not as colorful as the whores, bumboys and people who called themselves actors and were openly bisexual. I hoped the girls would not go home to our concerned parents all full of it. But I knew they would.

“Who were those fascinating women who left just now?” demanded Favonia. “What is the job they warned us off?”

“Prostitutes. You couldn’t do it. You don’t have the application and you’re both too squeamish.”

“But it is steady work,” suggested Faustus. I was really discovering his provocative side today. “They were telling us just now how their speciality is selling their virginity.”

“Oh, that’s so neat! How much could we make with ours?” asked Julia, apparently a serious question.

I growled. “Not enough to buy you dress pins.”

The girls sat down side by side on their bench (having thoroughly dusted it) and smiled at us. Neither had yet realized how beautiful they were, not even Favonia, who was the more observant; thank goodness for the murkiness of mirrors. They had dark hair, dark eyes, strappy sandals, fluttery stoles, complicated girdles they had created themselves from streamers of ribbon, and so much jewelry I knew they must have sneaked out of the house without Mother spotting them. The whiffs of peculiar perfume were ripe. Flies were dropping dead all over the courtyard.

“Who brought you? Please don’t tell me you came unescorted.”

“No, no, don’t fuss, Albia. We have Katutis.”

“ Where is he? ” Favonia mouthed, anticipating my next demand. “Outside, talking to Dromo.” Father’s Egyptian secretary and Faustus’ awkward slave had struck up an unlikely alliance while Dromo was guarding some scrolls Faustus had “borrowed” from his uncle and Katutis was transcribing the transaction history of Faustus’ inheritance.

“Tiberius is such a nice man,” said Julia, apparently to me, though she was aiming the compliment at him. “But have you noticed him slyly getting people to do things for him? He is very clever, Albia!”