Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

They all nodded. “Rufia.”

Rufia’s story had reached even women who were too young to have known her.

“It must have been before your time, but have you heard anything about her? Why I am asking is because everyone calls Rufia a barmaid, but I am starting to wonder. I certainly have the impression most people were in awe of her, and she kept the Hesperides running her own way. I know there are women who organize and control other working girls. They tend to be powerful characters. I am trying to find out if she ran things.”

The Macedonians listened. They considered. They said they had never heard of Rufia being that kind of barmaid, although of course it was possible.

Then I asked, “There is another woman now, once connected with her. Do any of you know Menendra?”

Brighter than I expected, the one with the oddly placed mole on her cheek asked, “Do you think she does that?”

“Organizes girls?”

“So you think she runs a racket.”

“Am I wrong then?”

Several of them shrugged. If Menendra did control a vice ring, it did not include these young women. They had a pimp. They admitted as much, pointing him out. He was a lean dandy with a slick hairdo, sitting outside the Romulus with one knee elegantly crossed over the other, holding a small cup between three fingers, enjoying a tisane. Watching whatever they did.

I loathed him on sight, but he was theirs. In a grim way they accepted him. I daresay they knew worse men.

I had a cold feeling that later that vermin over there would batter every one of them because they had been talking to me. They were risking it. Maybe he would have battered them all anyway. I wanted to hope our conversation was an act of defiance on their part, but I did not wish it to cause them harm.

“So how do you girls know Menendra?”

A glance passed among them, which I could not interpret. “She lives in the White Chickens.”

“In a brothel?”

They sniggered. In their world any house might be used for sexual commerce, any room was a potential location for trade. If it had a bed, that clinched it.

Menendra rented a place of her own over a cookshop. They had never seen her take men there-or women, giggled the one with the uncombed goat-girl curls. But that meant little. There were plenty of nooks for assignations. What they seemed sure of was that Menendra did not have other prostitutes using her own premises.

I believed that. Any woman of business needs her private place for after work. So Menendra kept a room that was her personal retreat, just as I had my apartment.

I asked where exactly hers was. They told me an address. I asked where they themselves lived. They were cagier. I did not press them.

With a decent meal inside them, the girls were reluctant to resume working. As we sat there at the Brown Toad, out of habit one or two made desultory attempts to lure men off the street, but they were half-hearted. Their pimp had left the Romulus. Speculating among themselves, they reckoned he had gone off to a dice game. They were obliged to work that evening, but decided to take time off this afternoon, behind his back.

We drew our conversation to a close. I thanked them, and that was when I told them I came from Britain. We laughed; it made them feel they were the high and mighty ones. Well, I was used to that.

On the verge of parting, the one with the wild curls gave me a narrow look. “What we’ve been talking about didn’t seem to surprise you.”

Another backed her up. “Is it from personal experience?”

I gave them a wan smile. “Close.” I took a deep breath. “I escaped. But I do know what it feels like to be fourteen, hungry and worthless in your own eyes, then some filthy brute picks you up, calls himself your friend, promises kindness-but curses and kicks are all you get as he grooms you. You soon become too scared to refuse to work for him.”

“And all the time he’s telling you, this is what you deserve,” said the one with the mole.

I nodded.

“So what happened to you, Albia?” asked the curly one, in a hard voice.

“Luck. Some rich people saw me and thought I would make a cheap nurse for their babies.” Better to put it that way. “I just want to tell you-if I could get out, you can too.”

The Macedonian sex slaves knew it wasn’t true for them. That was the worst aspect of the life that had been imposed on them. They had absolutely no hope.

As I left I ventured to ask whether they were afraid of ending up like Rufia. I was surprised that they showed no fear of sharing her fate. Any one of them was vulnerable to being beaten up, all of them risked death on a daily basis. Presumably they had to blank that.

I left them and went back to the Hesperides. The workmen were still hard at it, with Tiberius in charge. He broke off when he saw me returning.

I sat down and told him some of what I had learned. I said that increasingly I thought this bar might once have been the center of a prostitution racket, with Rufia strongly implicated.

“All bars are brothels, officially,” he answered.

“Well this one has only three rooms upstairs. I am wondering if Rufia carved out a wider empire.” That would fit with what witnesses had told me, how everyone in the neighborhood knew her.

“So who would the five dead men have been? Clients? Someone who decided not to pay?”

“I don’t know.”

If a whore’s customer refused to hand over her fee, he had to expect a violent reaction-though killing five would seem extreme, and the neat, organized burial at the Hesperides surely argued for advance planning. As a general rule in business, if somebody fails to honor a bill, you don’t kill them-you want them alive to pay up. Mind you, there had probably been plenty of Roman executors who were asked to settle debts for sexual favors procured by the deceased. I expect favorite prostitutes were sometimes even passed on as bequests.

“If Thales was a brothel-keeper, wouldn’t it be recorded somewhere?” I asked Tiberius.

“Brothel-keeping is not illegal. Prostitution neither. If Old Thales profited from vice, so long as he declared his income at the census, and duly paid his taxes, that was his only responsibility. The state’s interest is not moral, merely fiscal.”

I laughed gently. “The government never minds the source, so long as cash clinks into the Treasury! But I thought prostitutes counted as outlawed noncitizens, along with actors, gladiators and the like?”

“Whores only. Their masters not. Perfectly ‘respectable’ people fund their lives by the sex trade. You would be surprised how many society people have fortunes that come from brothels.” I could see Tiberius thought as I did, that this was hypocrisy. He added, “The Emperor Caligula levied a direct tax too; each prostitute has to pay a one-off to the Treasury, whatever she charges per man. It was an unheard-of measure when he introduced it-but quickly became accepted, given how lucrative it is.”

I kept niggling. “I know you have records. Aediles keep them. So who does have to be registered?”

“Any woman acting as a prostitute.”

Again, Tiberius saw my disapproval: I thought it typical that only the women were monitored so closely. That was in addition to their being tied to pimps and brothel-keepers. Everyone had power but them. Meanwhile, those who organized the game escaped censure. “I want to understand the rules. Tell me?”

Tiberius shifted uncomfortably. “This has not been my favorite aspect of the job…”

“All right, I’m not accusing you.”

“Every prostitute has to register with the aediles. She must present herself, give her correct name, her age, her place of birth, and the pseudonym under which she intends to practice. If a girl turns up who looks young and respectable, we try to persuade her to change her mind.”