Lindsey Davis - JUPITER MYTH

Togidubnus finished his egg and wiped his scrawny old fingers on a napkin. "So what do you really think, Marcus Didius?"

I noted the more informal nomenclature. I chewed up an olive, dumped it's stone in a dish, and told him. "I am still puzzled why Verovolcus went to that place. I have noticed an organized racket in the vicinity, though I have not been able to show any link, I admit."

"Are you saying that officials deny that this 'racket' exists?" demanded the King.

"No." They had managed to avoid admitting it, but they were diplomats. "Civilization brings much good, but you know it brings bad as well. I have no idea what criminal activities occurred when the tribes ran Britain from hillforts, but every society has its bandits. We bring you the city and we bring city vices. More complicated, perhaps, but all based on fear and greed." Togidubnus made no comment. If he really had been brought up in Rome and had ever walked the Golden City's teeming streets, he had seen at first hand the worst of organized grief and extortion. "Did Verovolcus hate Rome?" I asked.

"Not particularly."

"But you said you 'knew' him. You meant something by that."

"He liked to be in the thick of any action, Falco. Being my liaison officer never quite suited him, but nor was he the type to sit on a farm watching cattle graze."

"Meaning?"

"He would not go into exile meekly."

The King rose, went to the side table, inspected a flat bowl of cold fishes, tried one, decided against, and took another roll with some ready-sliced venison. That kept him busy, chewing bravely, for some time. I sat and waited.

"So what do you want to tell me, sir?" I asked, when I was fairly sure he could get his words out again.

He screwed up his lips, his tongue struggling with a shred of trapped venison in his back teeth. I pecked at breadcrumbs on my tunic. "He was not going to Gaul, Falco."

Togidubnus had spoken in a low tone, which I matched: "He meant to stay here in Londinium? Did he have friends here?"

"No."

"Any means to live?"

"I gave him some money." That came out fast: conscience money. Whatever Verovolcus had done, his regal master had felt responsible for him.

"Did he say anything, sir, about coming here?"

"Enough." The King set aside his empty watercup. "He spoke to you?"

"No, he knew I would have had to stop him."

I filled in the story myself: "Verovolcus told his friends he was sneaking off to Londinium, not going to Gaul. He knew there was an expanding crime scene and he boasted that he would be part of it?" The King went so far as to nod. The rest was inevitable: "If there are rackets, and he tried to muscle in-then whoever runs the show here must have refused him an entry ticket."

They had done it in the classic style too: a striking death, which would attract public notice. A death that would serve as a warning to any other hopefuls who might consider invading the racketeers' turf.

Seeing Hilaris at one end of the corridor as I emerged, I bunked off the other way. I wanted space; I had to reach decisions. Did I take this further in person, or hand the whole packet over to the authorities?

I knew what was making me hesitate. Acknowledging there were rackets, and in a province where the Emperor had once served with distinction, was politically inconvenient. I thought they were likely to drop the case.

Music and the sound of voices drew me to a salon. The womenfolk were listening politely to a blind harpist. He was ill-shaven and expressionless, with a sullen, even pugnacious, young boy crouched at his feet, presumably to lead him around. He could play. I wouldn't have walked far to hear him, but his technique passed. It was background music. Bland, melodious pattering that allowed people to talk over it. After a while you could forget the harpist was there. Maybe that was the point.

I nudged up against Helena on a couch. "What's this? Are we auditioning him for an orgy tonight, or taking culture a bit far?"

"Hush! Norbanus Murena has sent him on loan to Maia. Such a kind thought."

"What prompted that?" I sounded like an ungracious brute. "I remember us talking to him last night about music."

"Maia was?" I managed not to laugh.

Helena biffed me gently with the back of her wrist. "No, I think it was me, but you can't expect a man to remember things properly."

I frowned. "Did you like Norbanus?" I trusted her instincts with people.

Helena paused, almost undetectably. She may not even have known that she did so. "He seemed straight, decent, and ordinary. A nice man."

I sucked my teeth. "You don't care for nice men."

Helena suddenly smiled at me, her eyes soft. I swallowed. One of the things I had always loved about her was her brutal self-awareness. She was eccentric; she knew it; she did not want to change. Nor did I want her to be a conventional matron with narrow vision and appalling friends. "No," she agreed. "But I'm a grouse, aren't I?"

The harpist twiddled to the end of a tune. We clapped demurely. "How long have we got him for?"

"I think as long as Maia likes."

"Olympus! That's a cheat. Making up to a women by giving her a necklace, at least she gets to keep the jewels. This way, Norbanus takes his harpist back at the end of his flirtation, and meanwhile Hilaris has to feed the swine. I don't suppose Maia suggested she must ask her head of household for permission?" I saw myself as Maia's head of household-not that she ever did.

"No, Marcus." Helena looked pained, though not at the joke about my status; she thought my suggestion was rude. "Are you insisting she send him straight back? That would be an unkind rebuff. It's just a loan. No one but you would see any harm in it."

Exactly.

"We are pushed into accepting the loan," said a quiet voice. "That is why Marcus hates it."

I looked back over my shoulder. Hilaris must have followed me here. He was now standing behind us and listening. I consulted him in an undertone: "Norbanus. One of your visitors last night. In property. Likes women, apparently. Gets his wicked way using flashy loans and gifts."

"I met him; I found him intelligent and well-mannered." Hilaris

paused. I could not tell whether he approved of those qualities or of property speculators generally. Perhaps not. "Uneasy?" he murmured in a low tone.

I was, for some reason. "Why do I feel pressured, Gaius?"

He dropped his hand on my shoulder for a moment and muttered, "I'm sure you are overreacting."

"My sister can look after herself," I said, as if that was it.

"Then let's keep the musician for a while, if Maia wants to do so." The choice was his; it was his house. "Do you have a moment, Mar-cusr

He wanted to discuss my meeting with the King. Well, it was his province too. And if there was a problem, it was his problem.

Walking down a painted corridor, vaguely heading for an office, we held a short, efficient discussion. Hilaris now acknowledged that Londinium had been targeted by extortionists. He said it happened everywhere, and that the provincial staff would address it as a normal law-and-order issue. I would continue to work on the Verovolcus death.

He was a brilliant bureaucrat. It felt as if we had just devised a communique on major issues. Nothing substantial had changed, however.

"I'm glad we are of one mind," said Flavius Hilaris, in his diplomatic mode.

"I'm glad you think so," I replied, an informer still.

"We shall beat this menace," he maintained.

He smiled and I did not. As I say, nothing had changed.

The establishment might convince itself that social corruption was a force it could combat in practical ways, denouncing it with edicts. That baker, Epaphroditus, who made a stand but then fled in the face of certain retribution, knew the truth.