Foreign Bodies Read online

  Crinas wasn’t looking too chuffed either, which didn’t come as any surprise. Much as I disliked the guy, my sympathies were all on his side.

  By the time we reached the carriage – it was parked at the edge of the harbour area itself – I had my land-legs back, more or less. I handed Perilla in and clambered aboard, then with Bassus and Crinas in and facing us we were off.

  The governor’s residence, it seemed, was in the centre of town behind the market square, so we had a chance to see a bit of the place on the way. Not bad; not bad at all: broad streets in the Greek fashion with tidy-looking buildings, and although it was on the warm side the breeze from the sea meant it was cooler than in Rome. Quieter, too, and more laid back. Yeah; temples and statues aside – and it looked, unfortunately, as if there were plenty of those on offer – I reckoned I could spend a very pleasant couple of days here. I hadn’t forgotten what Claudius had said about the wine, either; that I was looking forward to trying. Or at least to the extent that Domitius sodding Crinas’s sadistic four-cups-a-day allowance enforced by the threat of being seriously Perilla’d if I didn’t keep to it would let me.

  The residence was in its own grounds, probably originally the private house of one of the leading families. The gatekeeper opened the wrought-iron gates, and we drove through, up a gravelled drive past clumps of boxwood shaped like animals and birds, trees that looked like they’d been there for centuries, which they probably had, a stretch of eye-hurtingly-green lawn, ditto, over which five or six peacocks dragged their tails, and a riot of bronze and marble statuary that I’d bet was half as old as Massilia itself.

  So we were still getting the five-star treatment, then. Not that I was complaining.

  ‘Here we are,’ Bassus said brightly.

  There was an oldish guy with a slave’s haircut and natty yellow tunic standing outside the open door, obviously waiting for us. Bassus and Crinas got out, and Perilla and I followed.

  ‘This is Bion,’ Bassus said. ‘The major-domo. He’ll be looking after you while you’re here.’

  The guy bowed. ‘Welcome, sirs. Madam.’

  ‘Hi, Bion,’ I said, making a mental note to warn Bathyllus that I’d dock the touchy bugger’s perquisites at the first sniff of a demarcation dispute with the locals. We were guests, after all.

  ‘And now I’m sorry, but I must get back to work.’ Bassus gave us another smile. ‘Things do pile up, you know, especially with the governor away. We’ll meet up again for dinner, naturally; I’m sure the governor would want me to see that you’re kept fully entertained during the short time you’re with us, and I’ve arranged things accordingly.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. Hell’s teeth; I didn’t entirely relish the thought of what would obviously turn out to be an all-stops-pulled-out formal dinner party, but then if you’re a travelling VIP, however temporary, you have to take the rough with the smooth. ‘That’ll be great.’

  ‘At sunset, then. I’ll leave you to get settled in. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

  He got back into the coach and closed the door. The coach moved away.

  ‘If you’d like to follow me, sirs and madam,’ Bion said, ‘I’ll show you to your apartments.’

  The dinner was as bad as I’d thought it would be. Worse. Not the food, mind: Governor Catellus’s chef would’ve given even Meton a run for his money. If Massilia is famous for anything it’s seafood, and the huge platter of assorted lobsters, crabs, prawns and shellfish with its selection of dipping sauces that formed the centre-point of the main course would’ve had Meton crying his little eyes out. Still, when your fellow dinner guests are a pukkah snob like Bassus, a pair of middle-aged local worthies whose main topics of conversation are, respectively, commercial snail-breeding and collecting unusual cloak pins, partnered by their vulture-faced, over-jewelleried, fashion-fixated wives, an Apollo look-alike who picks at his food when he isn’t chatting up your wife or giving you disapproving looks when you call the wine slave over for a top-up, and a nondescript little guy sporting what I was sure was a ginger wig, who eats like a horse and doesn’t say a word all evening barring ‘Pass me the fish sauce, please’, by dessert time you’re about ready to slit your wrists.

  ‘Well, that was quite nice, wasn’t it, Marcus?’ Perilla said after we’d finally said our goodnights and retreated back upstairs to our room. Suite of rooms; this was the governorate, after all, and the Roman admin system doesn’t stint itself.

  ‘Maybe for you, lady, with Smarmer there all over you from start to finish.’ I stripped off the party mantle. ‘Personally, given the choice of a rerun or having my back molars removed I’d go for the teeth every time.’

  ‘Come on, dear! It wasn’t nearly that unpleasant! And Crinas was only being polite. He’s very knowledgeable about Massilia, too, despite the fact that he’s never been here before. Did you know that the original founder was given the land by the local king as a wedding present because at a banquet to choose a husband for the king’s daughter she took a fancy to him and rejected all the official suitors?’

  ‘No, actually that little gem has slipped past me, somehow. And I’m not altogether sure that under the circumstances it’s the sort of story a young unmarried man should be telling a respectable married woman in private at dinner.’

  ‘Listen to yourself! You prig! You complete prig!’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘Just be grateful that he was distracting me from counting how many refills you had.’

  Bugger. ‘Two. It was two.’

  ‘Four. I lied; I was counting, after all. That’s one cup over our agreed limit.’

  ‘“Agreed”?’

  ‘Tacitly agreed, then.’ She reached up and kissed me. ‘It’s for your own good, dear, honestly. And it’s only until Lugdunum. For the present, at least. Truce?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Shit! That for the present sounded ominous! ‘But—’

  ‘Fine. Now, we have a lot of sightseeing to cram into two days. Phryne should be in shortly to unpin my hair, and then I think we should get straight off to bed.’

  Uh-huh. Well, I’d heard worse suggestions.

  I wasn’t looking forward to the sightseeing, mind.

  That was scheduled for right after breakfast. We’d arranged to meet Crinas in the entrance lobby at the beginning of the second hour; I suspected that by that time he’d not only have wolfed down his spelt porridge but done a couple of hundred press-ups, jogged the circuit of the city’s walls, and finished the thing off with a bracing half-mile swim in Massilia Bay. Sickening.

  He was already there and waiting for us. Sure enough, he looked bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, glowing with health and just bursting with enthusiasm to get to grips with those temples.

  Like I say, sickening.

  ‘Good morning, Valerius Corvinus. Lady Rufia.’ He smiled. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, Domitius Crinas.’ Perilla dimpled. ‘And you must call me Perilla, please. I insist.’

  ‘Then I’m simply Crinas.’

  Oh, gods! I suppressed the urge to put a finger down my throat and bring up my breakfast all over the guy’s size-twelve sandals. ‘OK, pal,’ I said. ‘We’d best be off, then. What’s the plan?’

  Perilla turned to me. ‘Now you’re absolutely sure you want to come, dear? You really don’t have to if you’d rather not.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Wouldn’t miss it for worlds.’

  ‘I thought the Temple of Apollo and Artemis first, naturally,’ Crinas said. ‘It’s on the high ground overlooking the Lacydon.’ That was the long inlet that we’d come in by on the way to the harbour the day before. ‘Then down to the market square to see the Pytheas statue, and if we have time carry on to the theatre, which I’m told is a particularly fine one. If you’re up for the walk, of course, Perilla. It’s a lovely day outside, and not too hot.’

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ Perilla said.

  ‘You’re all right with that as well, Corvinus? Not too strenuous for you? It migh
t be quite a climb up to the temple.’

  ‘I think I can manage it.’ I gritted my teeth. ‘You may have to stop a few times on the way, mind, while I get my breath back and adjust my hernia support.’

  ‘Marcus …’ Perilla murmured.

  ‘We’ll take it slowly. No real hurry.’

  ‘Thanks. Much appreciated.’

  We set off.

  He hadn’t been kidding about the climb, although Massilia being the city it was we had paved streets most of the way. It wasn’t exactly cool, either, now the sun was properly up; when we finally got to the temple the tunic was sticking to my back, and Perilla, who while she’s a decent enough hoofer when the need arises doesn’t do a lot of walking, was distinctly puffed. Not that the lady would lose face in front of Pheidippides here by admitting it, mind.

  ‘Impressive,’ she said, looking up at the pediment with its Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ Crinas was doing the same; I noticed that the bastard was as cool and relaxed as he’d been when we’d started out. ‘Primitive, of course, it’s more than six hundred years old, but it does have a certain raw power. I’m not sure who the architect was, but the sculptures are by Dipoenus of Crete. They say he was taught by Daedalus himself, although I can’t believe that, personally. I suspect that the choice of subject matter involved a bit of pawky humour on the part of the Massilians at the expense of their less civilized neighbours. Those centaurs do have a certain Gaulish cast to their faces, don’t they?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Perilla said.

  ‘And of course the matching pediment on the western side shows the Cyclops forging Artemis’s bow and arrows. I’d say that strengthened the theory, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Now that is extremely interesting. Yes, I would.’

  The lady was positively purring. Shit.

  ‘Yeah, well, it also strengthens the theory that most Greeks are smug supercilious bastards who can’t resist showing themselves how clever they are, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’

  Crinas turned to me. ‘You think so, Corvinus?’ he said. ‘Well, you may have a point.’

  Not a blink; water off a duck’s back. You can add ‘thick-skinned and impervious to sarcasm’ to that list.

  ‘Shall we go round and see it now?’ Perilla said. ‘The west pediment, I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps best to have a look inside first. Pay our respects to the gods.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Like there always is in those places, there was the usual gaggle of assorted purveyors of small domestic animals and birds destined for the ecclesiastical chop, incense-sellers, amulet-hawkers and food-and-drink vendors camped out on the temple steps. Crinas went up to one of the incense guys and bought a few pinches wrapped in a twist of parchment.

  ‘The cult statues are supposed to be something else,’ he said to Perilla, handing her the package. ‘But I’d be glad to have your expert opinion on that score.’

  Simper, simper, pat, pat.

  ‘Something else other than what, pal?’ I said.

  Perilla turned on me. ‘Marcus, will you behave, please!’ she snapped. ‘I told you, you didn’t have to come with us. If all you can do is grizzle and snipe then—’

  I held up my hands, palm out. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK! But you two carry on. I’ll just stay out here and commune with nature. Go ahead and enjoy. Take as long as you like.’ Yeah, well, if Smarty-pants had attempted seduction on his mind – which he very well might – then Massilia’s most-frequented temple at its busiest time probably wasn’t the ideal place for it. She should be safe enough.

  They went up the steps, and I settled down next to a cage of white doves to watch the scenery.

  It was certainly something. We were high enough up to see right across the city to the countryside beyond. Which, of course, was the reason why the Massilians had built their patron gods’ temple there in the first place, so it could be seen clearly from all directions. Mind you, if it’d been me I’d’ve factored in a decent-sized wineshop, preferably one with an arboured terrace attached; my tongue was practically scraping the marble, and my throat was as dry as a camel’s scrotum. Not that I even thought about buying a cup of wine from one of the booths, mark you: I’ve got certain standards, and the rot-gut those places sell would take the lining off your stomach. Besides, there was this four-cups-a-day deal. I wasn’t going to waste one of those on rot-gut.

  They rolled back some half-hour later, in great good humour. Evidently the cult statues had been Something Else indeed.

  ‘Ready to push on, Marcus?’ Perilla said.

  ‘As ever was.’ I stood up.

  ‘We’ll just walk all the way round the peristyle, have a look at the Artemis pediment on the way, and then go on down to the market square and the Pytheas statue,’ Crinas said.

  Which we did. I glazed over while the pair of them discussed the relative sizes of triglyphs and metopes, the possible reasons for the lack of a frieze, and the proportional relationship of side- to front-and-rear column numbers in comparison with that of later Doric and Ionic temples. Believe me, you do not want to know.

  We got to the market square at last; busy, but not heaving. The statue was on a large plinth to one side, decorated with dolphins, tritons blowing their conch-shells, and a band of frolicking Nereids. Yeah, well: if Perilla was right, and he’d done his exploring in seas with floating cliffs of ice, then given what little they were wearing it was surprising the whole gang of them weren’t down with frostbite.

  ‘There he is,’ Crinas said. ‘Pytheas the explorer.’ He didn’t look much to me, and if the sculptor had known his subject personally it wasn’t surprising that his wife, given that he had one, had been glad to get shot of him for a couple of years, or however long the exploring took. ‘You’ve read his book, Concerning Ocean, Perilla?’

  ‘Of course I have. Fascinating.’

  ‘And extremely relevant, currently.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘And why would that be, now?’

  ‘Oh, Marcus!’ Perilla groaned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘But naturally it is, Corvinus.’ Crinas smiled. ‘Pytheas was the first and only man to sail round Britain. Admittedly, that was almost four hundred years ago, but the topography and geography of the island won’t have changed, and since the emperor is planning to add it to the empire, the material contained in the work will be invaluable.’

  Fair enough. Maybe the old guy deserved a statue after all. If you could believe what he wrote, given the aforementioned midnight sun and ice-cliffs guff.

  ‘So.’ Crinas looked up at the sun; it was a smidgeon past noon. ‘Are you up for the theatre, Perilla? We have plenty of time, assuming you’re not tired.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine. Marcus?’

  ‘No, actually,’ I said. ‘I’m just about sightseeinged out for the day. You go ahead. We’ll meet up back at the Residence.’

  Perilla gave me a suspicious look. ‘You’re not planning to slope off to a wineshop, dear, are you?’ she said. ‘Because if you are—’

  ‘Come on, lady! Give me a break, OK? It’ll only be for the one cup.’

  ‘You’re sure? That’s a promise?’

  ‘Absolutely. Word of honour. I’ll spin it out. Sit there, watch the world go by, like I usually do.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She was torn, and the suspicious look was still there, but finally the prospect of furthering her culture binge with Mister Perfect Know-it-all squiring her around devoid of grizzling and sniping won out. ‘Very well. We’ll see you later.’

  I glanced up at the sun: still well shy of the seventh hour. We’d passed a very promising little wineshop on the way to the temple with a vine-trellised yard open on the street side, fitted out with tables and comfortable-looking Gallic-style wickerwork chairs. A good few wines on the board, as well, and mostly, from their names, local vintages. Perfect. And, as I’d promised Perilla, I’d only have the one cup, and spin it out while I watched the
world go by.

  Maybe life wasn’t all that bad after all.

  FOUR

  In the event, it was another two days before we started out for Lugdunum; a hitch, it transpired, with our transport, which turned out to be one of these big, well-cushioned travelling carriages that at a pinch you can bed down in if nothing better offers. Which, Bassus assured us when he turned up the next day to give us the news and apologize, almost certainly wouldn’t happen: the road between Massilia and Lugdunum is a main artery linking the former with the German frontier forts, and there are regular government rest houses for official travellers, plus a number of fair-sized towns en route where no doubt the local gentry would be delighted to feed us and put us up for the night. Or at least would be in serious schtuck with the Roman authorities if they tried to weasel out of it.

  So off we duly went, fast as an arthritic tortoise. Lugdunum is over two hundred miles from Massilia as the sleeping carriage trundles, which meant seven or eight days’ travel, even allowing for good roads and a regular change of horses at the posting stations because these monsters, last word in comfort though they are, are the slowest things on wheels.

  Me, I’ve never been one for travelling in carriages, even with a wine flask to keep me company, which naturally this time there wasn’t. Oh, sure, the countryside we were passing through was pleasant enough – a bit boskier and less intensely cultivated than Italy – but you can get pretty tired of constant bosk, especially moving at a pace where you’re being overtaken by everything going including the snails. And I wasn’t going to get out and walk on occasion, either, which is what I usually do on long road journeys by coach, because it would’ve meant leaving Smarmer alone with the lady to work his wicked way. There’s always Robbers to while away the hours, of course, but playing board games with Perilla is no fun, because the lady is shit-hot, and you’re on to a hiding to nothing before you start. Taking on Crinas, I discovered, was just as bad: he’d creamed me in three straight games before I decided enough was enough and jacked it in in favour of thumb-twiddling.

  I won’t bore you with the blow-by-blow account, but in note form the journey went something like this.