Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

Cradling my beaker, I sat deep in thought, letting my jadedness show. “How is it going?” asked Lepida sympathetically. I pulled a face. “You’re trying to find out what happened at that bar, aren’t you?” she asked. I agreed, deliberately leaving her to take the initiative. I remembered how yesterday, with her daughter present, she had held back.

“Working as an informer,” I said, when she stalled, “isn’t always easy.”

“What are you stuck over?”

“Oh pretty well everything!” I sipped my drink, gazing vacantly across the street. “Who died? Who killed them? Why? Five men and a woman vanished from their daily lives, yet nobody seems to have missed them. I know a few people who admit being in the Hesperides that night, but they are all keeping mum. I’m sensing fear-which is understandable. And now an innocent couple, who merely happened to be Rufia’s landlords, have been attacked in their own home.”

“That’s terrible!” breathed Lepida, wide-eyed.

“It’s connected. Has to be. Digging up those sad old bones from the bar is starting to have repercussions.”

We sat in silence for a while. I knew when not to apply pressure.

The street lay bathed in August sunshine. At noon, this was an ordinary-looking thoroughfare. Sounds and scents of people having lunch at home in apartments all around us. Mothers nagging children to eat their bread nicely. Men whose work involved late shifts rousing from sleep, starting to make their presence felt in a world that had managed without them for the past few hours; wives resisting as they tried throwing their weight about. Dogs standing up and stretching their long backs. Dogs lying down again in diminishing patches of shade. Shops closing up for a lengthy siesta.

“I never knew that Rufia.” Lepida was opening up. “I never spoke to her.”

“You knew who she was, though?”

“I had seen her. If you pointed her out, I could have told you her name. I was young then. But I never mingled with women of that sort.”

“Barmaids?”

She pursed her lips and didn’t answer. We drank our juice.

* * *

After a while she suddenly came out with, “Things are not the same around here.” She paused, reflectively. “It’s all got very rough.”

Although I was surprised, I merely said some people would think the whole Subura had always been a rough area.

“Oh, it wasn’t too bad,” answered Lepida, who had presumably never lived anywhere else. She seemed unaware her local district was historically notorious. “All the usual things went on, but it was … oh, I don’t know. In a bar like the Garden of the Hesperides, yes, if a man wanted to go upstairs, the landlord probably had a daughter or a cousin who would oblige for a copper. But it was casual, you know what I mean. More of a favor than a business. Now it’s all much more … professional.”

I absorbed this. “Was Rufia like somebody’s daughter or cousin?”

“Yes, I think she was one of those types to start with.”

“She changed?”

“Oh I would think so!” Lepida exclaimed, though I could not see why she was so exercised. “Don’t you, Flavia Albia?”

“You mean she worked here a long time and acquired some respect?” I remembered I had been told Rufia was not native-born. “Somebody told me she came from overseas; Illyria was mentioned.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“So why do you think she changed?”

“Maybe she got used to running things.”

“The bar?”

“Anything that needed sorting.”

I started to doubt that Lepida knew anything useful. This conversation was meant to steer my investigation in a friendly way, yet her attempt to help was pretty vague.

“So is it your impression, Lepida, that what happened at the bar was connected to the rougher elements who have come in?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying what I think.”

No, she was not saying much, and perhaps not even thinking. But that’s witnesses.

Sometimes when you are looking for someone, they come looking for you. This is generally bad news.

I had finished my juice and said friendly farewells to Lepida. Tiberius and I would be back for more breakfast another day. With no clear plan for taking things forward, I had wandered back toward the Garden of the Hesperides. I reached the bar, but hesitated, because there was no reason for me to go in. I could hear our workmen inside, talking in low voices, chipping with spades. From where I stood I could not actually see them, nor they me.

“Here, you!”

A hoarse female voice accosted me. I knew it was me she wanted. There was nobody else around. It was Menendra. As Lepida had said, like so many in Rome she had a heavy foreign accent. Earlier she had avoided me. Now, from her stance, feet apart and arms folded, she had sought me out deliberately. Her attitude was not friendly.

Behind her stood two large men. They never directly threatened me. Their presence was enough. Everyone understands a pair of heavies like that.

Instinctively I glanced back to the bar, but we all knew that by the time I could attract attention, it would be too late. I had better cooperate.

I felt as distrustful as when I had seen her earlier with the Dardanians. Close to, she was around fifty, with the air of an angry matriarch even if in fact she was not a mother. She was at least as old as Lepida, and much unhappier in her spirit.

She carried a powerful aura, full of confidence. She looked like someone who would matter-of-factly drown unwanted kittens. She might also drown me, if I happened to offend her and there was a handy barrel.

From time to time, people passed in the street, though nobody gave us a second glance. That could mean that once they identified Menendra, they were careful to look away.

“You!” Her voice was throaty. Either she made a habit of yelling at people or she had spent too much time amid the smoky oil of late-night lamps.

“Me?” I queried demurely, stalling.

“Yes, you! The magistrate’s bint.” Faustus would smile at that. I gave her my I am my own woman stare. My attempt was as much use as trying to wash a dog that’s rolled in dung without getting dirty yourself.

She came nearer. I would have stepped back but I was already against the bar counter. Menendra was a hard-faced ratchet who could not be called attractive, though she looked as if she had never been held back by that. She wore a dark green gown with a fierce belt, but she had let her body run to seed so her belly flopped over it. The necklace hanging heavily from her dry, creased neck must have cost plenty, though if she had money she did not waste it on skin lotions. She also wore large metal earrings of an exotic ethnic type. Taking those together with her accent, wherever she originated was a long way from Rome.

I never despised anyone for that.

“You want to speak to me?”

“Yes, I do, if you can find me a moment, dearie.” I could see this woman forcing herself to sound milder. She wanted something, or she wanted to make me do something; it would be bad policy for her to start out too rough. I was equally uncomfortable. Everything about her, including the lurking heavies, made me feel too dainty. The urge to simper and tuck in locks of hair felt strong, though I have never been a hair-twiddler, thank you, Juno.

“Well, I am Flavia Albia, as you seem to know. And you are…?”

“Menendra.” I gave no sign of having heard the name, but asked what she did. She ignored that, so I asked what she wanted. “Just a word to the wise, dearie.” This is the usual euphemism when somebody is warning you to back off. I played innocent. She kept pressing. “You don’t want to get yourself in any trouble, do you?”