I let a brief silence fall. Any moment now, somebody would mention the Carthaginians. Maia, whose husband had been executed for cursing Hannibal in his home region and then blaspheming the Punic G.o.ds, looked up from her work briefly as if she sensed what I was thinking.
"So which company do you bank with?" Helena asked my father, with rather wicked insistence.
He indulged her, though not much. "This and that. Depends."
"On what?"
"What I want."
"Pa never keeps much on deposit," I told her. "He prefers to have his capital in saleable goods - artworks and fine furniture."
"Why pay somebody to keep my currency secure?" Pa explained. "Or allow a halfwit who couldn"t spot a good investment in a goldmine to gamble with my cash? When I want a loan to make a big unplanned purchase, I can get it. My credit"s good."
"That proves how stupid bankers are!" I joked.
"How do they know they can trust you, Geminus?" Helena asked, more reasonably.
Pa told her about the Columnia Maena, where credit merchants posted up details of clients who were looking for loans. It was the same story Nothokleptes had given me. "Apart from that, it"s all word of mouth. They consult one another; it"s a big family party. Once you acquire a good reputation, you are in."
Helena Justina turned to me. "You could do that kind of work, Marcus - checking that people are solvent."
"I have done, on occasion."
"Then you ought to advertise it as a regular service. You could even specialise."
"Make a change from being hired by the vigiles to solve cases they cannot be bothered to investigate."
I knew why Helena was interested. I was supposed to be going into partnership with one of her brothers - Justinus, if he ever deigned to come home from Spain. Both brothers, if we could build up a large enough client base. Regular customers, such as bankers checking whether clients were creditworthy, could be useful to our agency. I pretended to be dismissive - but then winked to let her know I had heard the suggestion.
"Looking into the backgrounds of people who have not actually bludgeoned their relatives would be less dangerous too," said Helena. I did not share her view of the business world.
"I could start with my own father"s background, I suppose."
"Get stuffed," said Pa predictably.
This time we all laughed together.
The conversation reminded me about discovering who had poked Chrysippus with the scroll rod. I said I was going back to his house; Helena decided that first, while we were over at the Saepta Julia, it made sense to hire a litter, cross the Tiber, and visit our own new house on the Janiculan. She would come there with me. She could shout at Gloccus and Cotta, the bathhouse contractors.
By reminding him about his terrible recommendation of these two home-destruction specialists, Helena persuaded Pa to look after Julia. Maia offered to bring the baby home for us at least as far as her house. We then were able to stroll out into Rome like lovers in the midafternoon.
We spent a long time trying to advance things at the new house. Gloccus and Cotta packed up, rather than hear any more of our complaints. At least this time they had a good reason for leaving early. Usually it was because they could not work out how to rectify whatever had gone wrong with that morning"s labour.
Even after they vanished, we did not go straight back across to the Clivus Publicius. I"m not stupid. It was far too hot to flog all the way back to the city, and during the siesta there was no hope of finding any witnesses. Besides, this was a rare chance of solitude with my girl.
XXV.
THE STUPID b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were still working their way one at a time in order down the visitors" list. The epic poet had his turn with me next.
I rather liked him. Euschemon had called him dull. Maybe his work was, but luckily I was not obliged to read it. One of life"s odd quirks: authors you warm to as people somehow cannot see where their strength lies, but will insist on pouring out scroll after lifeless scroll of tedium.
It was early evening. Rome shimmering after a long hot day. People coming alive after feeling utterly drained. Smoke from the bathhouse furnaces creating a haze that mingled with scented oven fumes. Flautists practising. Men in shop doorways greeting each other with a grin that meant they had been up to no good - or were planning it for later. Women shrieking at children in upper rooms. Really old women, who no longer had children to keep in order, now standing at their windows to spy on the men who were up to no good.
I had reached the dogleg of the Clivus Publicius alone. Helena had gone to Maia"s house to fetch Julia. We had been close for long enough not to want to part. But work had called.
Now I was in a quiet mood. After loving the same woman for a period of years I had gone past both the panic that she might reject me and the cra.s.s exultancy of conquest. Helena Justina was the woman whose love could still move me. Afterwards, I bathed at an establishment where I was not known, unwilling to engage in conversation. Communicating with the Chrysippus writing circle held no real charm for me either. Still, it had to be done.
It was a welcome surprise, therefore, to discover that the next of the hacks bothered to turn up for an interview, and that I took to him.
Constrictus was older than the previous group, in his late fifties at least. Still, he looked spry and bright-eyed - more so than I expected since he had been accused by Scrutator of draining too many amphorae.
Of course the flamboyant Scrutator, with his fund of off-colour stories, had carried his own traces of debauchery.
"Come in." I decided not to complain that he should have turned up this morning. "I"m Falco, as I"m sure you know." If Turius and the other two had warned Constrictus that I was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d to deal with, he hid his terror bravely. "You"re the epic poet?"
"Oh not only epic. I"ll try anything."
"Promiscuous, eh?"
"To earn a living by writing you have to sell whatever you can."
"What happened to write from your own experience?"
"Pure self-indulgence."
"Well, I was told that the big historical pageant is your natural genre."
"Too hackneyed. No untapped source material left," he groaned. I had already observed this as a problem with Rutilius Gallicus and his heroic ba.n.a.lities. "And, frankly," confided Constrictus, "throw up when I"m constantly trumpeting that our ancestors were perfect pigs in an immaculate sty. They were idle s.h.i.ts like us." He looked earnest. I really want to produce love poetry."
"Source of contention with Chrysippus?"
"Not really. He would have loved to discover the new Catullus. The problem is, Falco, finding a suitable woman to address. It"s either a prost.i.tute - and who wants to be afflicted with helpless infatuation for any of those these days? Prost.i.tutes are not what they were. You"ll never find a modern version of sweet Ipsiphyle."
"The wh.o.r.es have deteriorated just like the heroes?" I sympathised. "Sounds a good lament!"
"Or the alternative is to fall obsessively for a highly-placed, beautiful amoral b.i.t.c.h who attracts scandal and has dangerous, powerful relatives."
"Clodia"s long gone." Catullus" famous high-born hag with the dead pet sparrow was another generation"s scandal. "For the best, some would say. With special thanks that Rome is free of her brother, that rich gangster thug. Are today"s senatorial families too refined to produce such a bad girl?"
"Jupiter, yes!" the poet lamented. "Even good-time girls are not what they were And if you do strike it lucky, the b.l.o.o.d.y women won"t co-operate. I found a playmate, Melpomene by name, lovely creature; I could have devoted my all to her. We were magic in bed. Then, when I explained that she needed to dump me or it was no good for my work, she burst out wailing. What does she come out with - listen to this, Falco! She said she really loved me, and couldn"t bear to lose me, and why was I being so cruel to her?"
I nodded, more or less with sympathy, though I a.s.sumed he was being humorous. "Hard to work up a metaphorical sweat over honest loyalty."
Constrictus exploded with actual disgust. "Jove, imagine it: an eclogue to a nymph who wants you, an ode about sharing your life."
For a moment, I found myself thinking about Helena. It took me far from this hard-edged, unhappy lyricist.
"You could turn it into satire," I suggested, trying to cheer him up "How"s this for an epigram - Melpomene, astonishing joy of my heart, I want to say "Don"t go", but if I do, you"ll die from lack of nourishment and the landlord"s heavies will carve me up in the gutter for my unpaid rent. Poetry relies on misery. Leave me, please, and be quick about it - or my work won"t sell."
He looked impressed. "Was that extempore? You have a gift."
"At this rate," I said frankly, "I"ll be using my creative powers to invent a prosecution case. Would you mind giving me a motive so I can arrest you for battering your publisher? A full confession would be helpful, if you can run to it. I get a bonus fee for that."
Constrictus became glum again. "I did not do it. I wish I had thought of it. I freely admit that. Then I could have written a series of tragic dialogues, full of autobiographical sleaze - it always sells. Urban Georgics. Not a lament for those dispossessed of country land, but for those struggling against city indifference and brutality."
He was off in the kind of speculative dream that could take all afternoon. When authors start imagining what they could have written, it is time to make a break for it.
"Look," I said, knowing I had sounded too friendly earlier. "I have to ask you the rubric. You came to see Chrysippus yesterday. I presume he was alive when you arrived here; can you a.s.sure me the same applied when you left?"
"If you regard being a parasitic bloodsucker as "life". If that is accepted terminology in your trade, Falco."
I grinned. "Informers are famous for loose definitions. Half my "clients" are walking ghosts. My "fees" tend to be insubstantial by most people"s standards too. Cough up. Would a physician have diagnosed health in the man?"
"Unfortunately yes."
"Thanks. From this I deduce you did not kill him. Mine, you see, is a simplistic art. Now! Personnel details at the scene, please: did you see anyone else here?"
"No." He could be sensible. A pity. I really had liked him before that. If he had been a complete maniac, we might even have become friends.
"This is boring, Constrictus. So all you have to report is an amicable meeting, after which you quietly returned home?" He nodded. "And you were subsequently shocked and amazed to learn what had transpired here?"
"Cheered," he admitted breezily. "Enormously encouraged to discover that someone had broken free of the chains and taken action. It was so unexpected. I saw it as revenge for all of us."
"You are refreshingly honest," I told him. "So now be honest about the conditions in which you were a client of this patron, please."
"Unendurable duress," Constrictus boasted. "Survival makes all of us heroes."
"I am happy to hearyou can use your suffering as research material."
"He paid us too little; he worked us too hard," Constrictus went on. "The work was demeaning - it involved flattering him. I had a rule: get his name into the first line with at least three commendatory adjectives, then hope he would not bother to read on. Want more? I despised my colleagues. I hated the scriptorium staff. I was sick of waiting year after year for my so-called patron to give me the proverbial Sabine farm where I could eat lettuce, screw the farmer"s wife, and write."
I looked him straight in the eye. "And you drink."
There was a short silence. He was not intending to answer.
"I always find," I said, trying not to sound unpleasantly pious, "the stuff that I have written with a beaker beside me reads like rubbish once I sober up."
"There"s a simple cure for that," Constrictus replied hoa.r.s.ely. "Never sober up!"
I said nothing. At thirty-three, I had long ago learned not to remonstrate with men who like to have their elbows always leaning on a bar. This was a very angry poet. Perhaps they all were, but Constrictus showed it. He was the oldest I had met so far; that might have something to do with it. Did he feel time was running out on him? Was he desperate to put substance into an otherwise wasted life? But often drink is an acknowledgement that nothing will ever change. A man in that mood probably would not kill - though anybody can be pushed too far by unexpected extra indignities.
I changed the subject. "You told me you despise your colleagues. Elaborate."
"Upstarts and mediocrities."
"Yes, this is all confidential." I smiled retrospectively.
"Who cares? They all know what I think."
"I must say, the ones I have met all have potential to be dropped as no-hopers."
"There you"re wrong, Falco. Being a no-hoper is the essential criterion for getting your work copied and sold."
"You are very bitter. Maybe you should have been the satirist."
"Maybe I should," Constrictus agreed shortly. "But in this scriptorium, that bilious p.r.i.c.k Scrutator holds sway -" He broke off.
"Oh, do go on," I encouraged him genially. "It"s your turn now. Each man I interview betrays the previous suspect. You get to spear the satirist. What"s the dirt on Scrutator?"
Constrictus could not bear to waste a good suspenseful moment: "He had a blazing row with our dear patron - surely the old bore mentioned that?"
"He was too busy confiding that Turius is not as insipid as he looks, but has insulted Chrysippus rather notably."
"Turius had nothing to lose," moaned Constrictus. "He wasn"t going anywhere in any case."
"If Turius said everything Pacuvius alleges, Chrysippus had good reason to attack him, not the other way round. But what about Scrutator"s personal beef?"
"Chrysippus had made arrangements to send him to Praeneste."
"Punishment? What"s there - a grand Oracle of Fortune and the ghastly priests who tend it?"
"Sn.o.bs" summer villas. Chrysippus was ingratiating himself with a friend by offering to lend out the talker and his endless droll stories as a house poet for the holiday period. We were all thrilled to be rid of him - but dear b.l.o.o.d.y Scrutator came over all sensitive about being pa.s.sed around like a slave. He refused to go."
"Chrysippus, having promised him, was then furious?"
"It made him look a fool. A fool who could not control his own clients."
"Who was the friend he wanted to impress?"
"Someone in shipping."
"From the old country? A Greek tyc.o.o.n?"
"I think so. Ask Lucrio."
"The connection is through the bank?"
"You are getting the hang of this," Constrictus said. Now he was being cheeky to me; well, I could handle that.
"I can follow a plot. I wonder which of the others I shall have to prod to be told the dirt on you? Or would you rather give me your own version?"
"It"s no secret." Once again, the poet"s voice had a raw note. Despite having previously claimed that their meeting had been amicable, he now told me the truth: "I was too old. Chrysippus wants new blood, he told me yesterday. Unless I came up with something special very quickly, he was intending to cease supporting me."