Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

“Highly regarded. Much sought after.”

“And highly priced? But might few people in Rome want to cough up? Could lentil-suppliers make a killing, or would they need to supplement their income?”

“You are right, Flavia Albia. Upmarket lentils have a limited take-up. Suppliers would need to diversify. Either into other pulses, or some quite different business.”

“Thank you. Genius, you are a genius.”

“So people frequently tell me,” he answered modestly.

Before I placed myself back beside my husband, I inspected the buffet tables. Some of the feast dishes did not come from the sophisticated skills of fashionable foodistas, but were brought by guests. Aunt Junia had given us her famous meatballs, inedible spheres that belonged in a military arsenal. However, one better cauldron was being scraped by eager people fighting to get at what I thought I recognized as one of Prisca’s peasant hot pots. There was such a queue, Genius came and requested the recipe.

Katutis, Father’s secretary, who was still sober enough to look at his list, said this cauldron had been delivered to me as a wedding present. He retrieved a note from a bundle he was diligently saving, ready for my thank-yous.

The note wished us long life and happiness. When I turned it over, there was intriguing news. Gavius is dead. He opened the door because it was his cousin. I can’t have that but mustn’t say who. From a heartbroken Gran. PS Rufia will meet you at Temple of the Flavians an hour after midday. Told her about wedding, but she’s going home today.

What?

That was no use to me. Obviously I could not attend this meeting. Rufia was on the Viminal and I was on the Aventine. It is all very well to be professional, as I always was-but this was the one day in my informing life when work had to stop. I must remain on my woolly-rugged chair, beside my adoring new husband, smiling …

No. I did it. The appointed time was long past but I took a chance. I, Flavia Albia, the bride, left a message that no one would discover for a while, then I abandoned my own wedding.

Whatever had made me do this? I realized now I had been enjoying myself. At one with Tiberius. Seeing people who were close to me, all gathered for us. Being the center of attention, even though I had felt oddly isolated from our guests.

It was steadily raining. I would soon be soaked through. Before leaving, I had dumped my saffron veil, changed my wedding shoes for a sturdier pair, even shed my long white tunic for a more robust one. I stole someone’s waterproofed cloak. It was hooded like that of a Celtic god, so probably belonged to Uncle Petro, who, like Falco, reckoned himself an expert on all things northern. I had glimpsed him earlier with my brother Postumus, tending the altar flames: men’s work.

Leaving our family home low on the Embankment, I scurried, head down, through the monumental buildings below the Capitol, then was soon skirting the fora to head up the Argiletum. Because of the weather, few people were about. Streets were navigable, though in the main Forum, even its fine Etruscan drains had too much water to take away, so I had to leap over large puddles. The Argiletum and Vicus Longus were upward slopes, where I struggled against flowing torrents even on the raised pavements.

As I walked, I mentally reran my list of questions. Preparation is the key to a good meeting.

The Temple of the Flavians had been built by Domitian as a mausoleum and a shrine to his family. Previously undistinguished, the Flavian clan needed validation. However, they did now own two deified emperors, along with various nonentity relatives awarded godheads on Domitian’s say-so, plus his niece Julia, whom he was rumored to have bullied into sexual acts with him. Poor Julia’s ashes were here, along with the urns of his father and brother and an infant son who had been lucky enough to predecease his paranoid sire. If this imp had lived, Domitian would probably have turned against him.

The weather was too atrocious to admire the place as intended. Relieved to spot a waiting chair, which could mean Rufia was still here, I hurried across a large square enclosure and through an arch to another, containing a beautiful grandiose temple in white Pentelic marble amidst dotted cypress trees. It was extremely tall. An enormous statue of the late Emperor Titus tried to belie Domitian’s paranoid jealousy of him. Ditto Vespasian, whose house had once occupied this spot, close to that of his brother Sabinus, in whose home Domitian had been born in a back bedroom when Vespasian was just a poor relation. Ultimately, the purpose of the Temple of the Flavian Gens was to glorify Domitian’s own birthplace.

All I cared about was that you could go inside to shelter.

Now I was here, the rain suddenly stopped. Thank you, Jupiter Pluvius and the benign Tempestates!

There were no attendants; any temple slaves must be hiding from the storm. I shook myself on the threshold just as Rufia was about to make her way out.

“You’re late!”

“I am here now! Be grateful. I left my wedding for you.” As I pushed back the hood of my borrowed cloak, the six coiled ringlets, still tied in their ridiculous topknot with their now bedraggled ribbons, proved that.

“That’s why I waited. Get on with it then.”

Her manner was as gruff as I expected, though she quickly settled. From all I had heard, I was not surprised that Rufia felt a grudging respect when people stood up to her. There would have been so few. She was elderly, badly crippled, her heavy body difficult to support with her two sticks. Her face had never been beautiful and now showed all her years. Thin gray hair was fastened with bone pins like the one I remembered from her old room; she wore the silver bangle Annina had said she put on every day; she had small feet.

I did not take notes. She would never have stood for it. Wasting no time on pleasantries, I began by crisply summing up what I wanted: what had happened on that deadly night at the Hesperides, who did it, and why? And why had Rufia herself disappeared, leaving the world to believe she was murdered?

“I’ll tell you what went on, so you can back off and stop prying.”

So that was why she agreed to talk to me. But I would decide for myself whether to stop. I wanted to find the killers.

We both stood in the gracious vault of the Flavian Mausoleum, watched by huge busts of that ambitious family. Rufia had settled her back against a wall for support. I stayed on the opposite side, aware that she could use her walking sticks as weapons. If she lashed out, I was too wet and cold, and too abstracted by my guilt about the wedding, to put up much of a fight.

“Rufia, I know the six corpses found are Rhodina and some Egyptian traders. I also know, and have a witness to support it, that Old Thales organized the murders.”

“He couldn’t organize a pissing contest.”

“But he could run bets on it!” I snapped back. “So did he do this?”

“All the blame for the killings is on him.”

“I thought you would say that. What happened? Tell me about the Egyptians.”

“You don’t know it’s them,” she attempted.

“Yes I do. They came from Alexandria; they sold lentils: Julius Ptolemais, their leader who had a damaged leg, then Pylades, Isidorianus, Hermogenes and Sesarion.”

Rufia scoffed. “You’re good! That’s more than I ever knew.”

“What got them killed? Surely not pulses?”

The old woman shrugged. “Partly. I ran a little lupin round, sold beans and grains to all the bars. I trained up Menendra; she’s doing it now. There’s money in it. Old Thales never realized-he was too lost in his own grimy concerns.”

“Was Ptolemais trying to move in on your patch? Those men sold a very expensive product, for which the market is limited. Did they want to branch out into ordinary bar supplies?”