Foreign Bodies Page 5

  Day One, to Aquae Sextiae. Veteran colony, hot springs, so Crinas happy as a pig in muck; ditto Perilla (ancient temple to the local goddess Dexsia. Don’t ask). Put up for the night with stone-deaf ex-legionary First Spear who looked old enough to have fought at Cannae.

  Day Two, to Arelate. Veteran colony again. Serious monuments, but Perilla banned from sightseeing on pain of instant divorce. Crinas went swimming in the Rhone River but unfortunately failed to drown.

  Day Three, to Arausio, P. grizzling re missed sightseeing all the way. Yet another colony; Jupiter, how many of those things are there? Time out for hot bath; v. welcome because smelled like monkey’s armpit. Hosted this time by sententious hypochondriac; C. prescribed powerful purgative to be taken with next day’s breakfast and which (he told us later) should kick in an hour or two after we’d gone. Perhaps he has sense of humour after all.

  Day Four, to Acunum (no, I’d never heard of it either). Government rest-house, at river crossing out in the sticks. Food terrible (cook possibly serial poisoner related to Mother’s chef Phormio, or just incompetent bastard) so broke into Meton’s picnic hamper – too late, in event, because harm already done; P. up and down all night, and not a happy bunny by morning. See next entry.

  Day Five, to Valentia. Sudden and frequent stops in order for P. to disappear into undergrowth; possibly some evil-minded deity’s cheap revenge for C’s parting prescription. Luckily, Valentia major town so C. able to get wherewithal for anti-runs mixture. Lady unwilling to move outside sprinting distance from privy, so stayed an extra day with OK host who knew his wines. Wineshop – unmonitored! Bliss!

  Day Seven, to Vienne; another colony, major crossing of the Rhone, and biggest city in the province. C’s mixture pretty effective, because P. now bright-eyed and bouncy. Extra day’s guilt-driven stopover for further recuperation, sightseeing (temples to Mother Goddesses, Sucellus, Epona, Mars, Juno, etc., etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseam), plus serious shopping binge; personally, glad to get shot of the place.

  Day nine, mid-afternoon; Lugdunum at last, and about bloody time, in my view.

  Thumb-twiddling over. Now for the easy part.

  We wouldn’t be slumming it, mind, because again, like in Massilia, we were staying at the governor’s residence. Sans, it fortunately transpired, Domitius Crinas: one of the reception committee standing waiting for us was a doctor who was more than happy to put him up for the duration and talk enemas while they shared a convivial raw turnip dinner. Goodbye, Crinas; let’s hear it for the medical fraternity’s Old Boy network. While Bathyllus superintended the transfer of luggage to our private suite on the first floor, Perilla and I went for a relaxing steam in the bath-house before changing into our best togs – it wasn’t every day you ate with a provincial governor – and setting off downstairs to tie on the nose-bag.

  ‘You will remember to go easy on the wine, Marcus,’ Perilla murmured. ‘You’ve already had two cups since we arrived. I was watching.’

  I stopped dead. ‘Come on, lady! The agreement was only until Lugdunum. This is Lugdunum. Ipso facto—’

  ‘Yes, I know, dear. But even so, I do think you’ve been a lot better for it these last few days.’

  ‘Jupiter! Just because you’re missing your doctor pal—’

  ‘That has nothing whatever to do with it, and is sheer nonsense into the bargain.’

  ‘Right. Right.’

  ‘Besides, he’ll be here for several days yet, until arrangements can be made for his onward journey to Moguntiacum. And if you’re busy, which you will be, it’ll be nice to have someone to visit the sites with, and who is genuinely interested.’ Hell! ‘I won’t tell you again; you’re just being silly. Now I’m hungry. Carry on down, please, and we’ll go in to dinner.’

  It was a big place, the residence, which was only to be expected because it doubled for the palace when there were any imperials in town. Fortunately, as we reached the foot of our staircase, one of the bought help was just coming along the corridor.

  ‘Excuse me, pal,’ I said, ‘but where’s the dining room?’

  ‘Along here, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ve just gone through. If you’d like to follow me?’

  We did. As we went in four pairs of eyes turned towards us.

  ‘Valerius Corvinus! Delighted to see you!’ Gabinius – obviously Gabinius, because he was in the host’s place – patted the couch to his right. ‘Down here, my dear chap. Make yourself comfortable. And Rufia Perilla. Pleased to meet you. You’re next to Caninia, if you would.’

  ‘I’m sorry we’re late, governor,’ I said, lying down and holding out my hands for the slave with the basin and towel.

  ‘Nonsense, we’re only just here ourselves. And you’ll have needed the time to settle in after your journey. How was it? Reasonably painless, I hope?’

  ‘Yeah, it wasn’t bad.’

  ‘That’s excellent.’

  The wine slave bent forwards to fill my wine-cup. Perilla gave a meaningful cough.

  Fuck.

  ‘Uh … just make it a half, pal,’ I said. ‘And top it up with water.’

  Gabinius gave me a curious glance. ‘Not a drinker, Corvinus? Well, good for you! I could do with cutting down myself.’ He tapped his own wine-cup, and the wine slave filled it to the brim. Double fuck. ‘Now. Introductions. We’re a small party, as you see, but I thought we’d keep things informal. I’ll be away on tour myself from tomorrow, unfortunately, but the young shaver next to you is my aide, Licinius Nerva. He’ll be looking after you in my absence.’ I half-turned and nodded to the guy: competent-looking, early twenties, purple stripe on his mantle. Top Five Hundred high-flyer written all over him. Ah, well, that was par for the course; you couldn’t expect anything else, really, in the Diplomatic. ‘Caninia there’s his wife. She’s been in post for all of six months, so if you’re agreeable, my dear’ – to Perilla – ‘she can show you around the place, introduce you to a few people.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Perilla said; not that she looked too grateful, mind. Yeah, well, that should cramp Smarmer’s style a bit. I gave the girl my best smile.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Caninia said. Not a beauty by any means, young Caninia, with a nose like the prow of a trireme and a build that wouldn’t’ve disgraced a professional wrestler, but anyone who’d be chaperoning our brace of culture-vultures around town and so inadvertently making sure that their conversation didn’t stray down the primrose path of dalliance was on a winner with me from the start.

  ‘Last but not least,’ Gabinius said, ‘our procurator, Graecinius Laco.’

  Interesting; judging by the colour of his hair and eyes, the other narrow-striper was a local. Or a Gaul, at any rate. And the imperial procurator, no less; a real one, which meant that he was in charge of the province’s financial side. High-powered company was right.

  ‘Valerius Corvinus.’ He nodded: stick-thin and dry accountant’s voice, like it’d been pickled in vinegar for a year.

  ‘So tell me,’ Gabinius said while the slaves set out the starters. ‘How are things in Rome?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, reaching for a pickled quail’s egg. ‘At least, the place was still standing when I left. Going pretty well, in fact.’

  Gabinius grunted. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. Makes a pleasant change. Not that I’m surprised, mind, not in the slightest; he’s a good man, Claudius Caesar, and he’ll do a good job. Plus of course, being an honorary local, as it were, he’s popular here, which makes our own jobs that much easier.’ Turning to the procurator: ‘You’d agree, Laco?’

  ‘I would, governor. Absolutely. Certainly much better than his predecessor managed.’ Laco frowned at a plate of chickpea rissoles as if he suspected they might contain henbane, before picking one up and dipping it in the fish sauce. ‘If you’ll forgive me saying so, Gaius was a monster, a disgrace to the family. And where money was concerned he’d no more sense than a flea.’

  He made the second charge sound far more serious than the first, which I supposed was to be expecte
d in a guy for whom money and its correct management were the be-all and end-all of life.

  ‘He was here in person, wasn’t he?’ I dipped the egg in the sauce. ‘A couple of years back.’

  ‘He was indeed, on his way north.’ Gabinius took one of the little vegetable pastries. ‘Setting things up with the Rhine legions for his own British campaign. That came to nothing in the end, of course, although it was sound enough in principle. But I didn’t meet him myself; that was before my time.’

  ‘The man was a complete mountebank,’ Laco said.

  Gabinius chuckled. ‘Now there, Corvinus, is your typical Gaul speaking,’ he said. ‘Unlike the average Roman, they don’t mince their words in company. But I quite agree with you, Laco; we’re well rid of the beggar.’

  ‘Actually, I thought he sounded rather fun,’ Caninia said.

  ‘Fun, my dear?’ Laco stared at her, rissole poised. ‘In what way?’

  ‘That auction, for a start. I mean, it did have its amusing side, didn’t it?’

  ‘What auction was this?’ Perilla asked.

  ‘You didn’t hear about it back in Rome?’ Gabinius said. ‘Yes, well, perhaps you wouldn’t; it hardly showed Gaius in a very favourable light, and it was an absolute disgrace from beginning to end. Fellow put together a load of old tat, worn-out sandals, cracked wine-cups, that sort of thing, and auctioned it off in the town square. He did, in person, I mean, if you can damn well believe it. Forced the more well-to-do locals to pay through the nose, what’s more. That caused a lot of bad feeling, you can be sure.’

  I had to stop myself from grinning; yeah, that was our Gaius, all right, to a T. And I could see Caninia’s point: Gaius might’ve been a monster – gods, I knew that from personal experience, didn’t I just! – but he’d had a quirky, tongue-in-cheek style about him that made up for a lot. Me, I don’t have much time for po-faced, social-climbing fat-cats, and I’d bet the great and good of Lugdunum fitted the bill just as well as their equivalents in Rome would’ve done. Bent over backwards to outbid each other, what’s more, even if they did grizzle about it later. Gaius would’ve enjoyed himself no end.

  ‘The money didn’t even go towards the campaign.’ Laco re-dipped the rissole. ‘For which, of course, they’d already paid extra in tax. “Bad feeling” is putting it mildly. As far as the local community was concerned, it set relations with the imperial family back fifty years.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ I said. ‘It can’t’ve been as bad as that, surely? Back in Rome, Gaius was pulling stunts like that all the time.’

  Laco set the rissole down again, carefully. ‘Gaul is not Italy, Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Let alone Rome. However Romanized we Gauls seem on the surface, we’re a completely different people, even to your own Italians. Money – actual money, specie – is in comparatively short supply here, and almost unknown in the country districts, where people use barter. On the other hand, Rome insists that her taxes are paid in cash. For the ordinary Gaul, this is difficult; where do the coins come from? And the situation isn’t much better for what you’d call the upper classes, particularly when, as they do, they try to match themselves with their Roman equivalents. They may be rich enough in land and produce, yes, but by Roman standards they have very little actual money, as such.’

  Gabinius held his cup up to the wine slave, who was still standing behind him. Hell, that hadn’t lasted him long! Although maybe presently I was just hypersensitive to those little details. ‘Laco’s right,’ he said. ‘The thing’s a perennial problem, especially when there’s something big going on and taxes have to be increased. Like the emperor’s British campaign. Oh, we can keep the Gauls happy most of the time by pointing out that a large slice of what they pay in taxes is spent on improving things – more and better roads, amenities, services and so on – but they don’t always see it that way. Even after almost a century, a lot of them view taxes as a levy on a defeated people. And, as Laco says, the margin’s very narrow, even for what you’d call the rich. Especially for them, sometimes. If you have to find the extra cash at short notice all you can do is go to a Roman moneylender, and these bastards’ – he glanced at Perilla and Caninia – ‘forgive me, ladies, charge a fortune in interest. So you’re in an even deeper hole than before, possibly one you can’t get out of. Multiply that on a province-wide scale – three provinces, in Gaul’s case – and you’re dealing with a lot of unhappy people.’

  ‘You’re saying there’s a chance of rebellion?’ I said.

  ‘Great gods, no!’ Gabinius frowned. ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t put it nearly as strongly as that. As far as taxes are concerned, at least, the Gauls are no different from any other provincials; they’ll moan like hell about having to pay them, but when it comes down to it all they want is to get on with their lives in peace, so fortunately for us when push comes to shove then pay them they do, however hard that is. What you have to remember is that unlike some native peoples they’ve stayed tribesmen at heart, and that affects things considerably. Which works largely in our favour. I’m correct, Laco, am I not?’

  The procurator nodded. ‘Certainly you are.’

  ‘How do you mean, governor?’ Perilla selected a baton of celery and dipped it in the bean purée.

  ‘He’s no urbanite by nature, your average Gaul. Towns – never mind cities like Lugdunum, ordinary towns – are a Roman idea. For most locals the town may be their tribal centre, but that’s all it is, a market-place or somewhere to meet for festivals. Not many of them actually live there, comparatively speaking; the bulk of the tribe is scattered throughout its territory, in farms or small villages. Which is why I and the other governors have to go on regular walkabout. The tribes each have their tribal leaders, descendants of the families who held the actual power before old Julius took it from them, and they still wield a huge amount of influence. Although naturally by now most are completely Romanized and part of the establishment: local magistrates, auxiliary commanders, even top imperial officials like Laco here.’ He raised his wine-cup to the procurator, who grunted agreement. ‘Conscious policy on our part, of course: because they’re on our side, as it were, it means they make sure that their dependants – the tribe, in other words – toe the party line.’

  ‘So what happens when they don’t?’

  ‘Then, my dear lady, we have trouble. Oh, nothing we can’t handle, but sometimes it goes very close to the wire. Usually, as I say, when we have to lean rather more heavily on them financially.’ He reached forward and took an olive from the dish. ‘You’ll recall twenty or so years back in Belgica, perhaps, Corvinus? The Florus and Sacrovir affair?’

  Uh-huh; I did, at that: Julius Florus and Julius Sacrovir, both upper-class Gauls serving in the Roman army, had tried to start a revolt in their respective tribes. It’d been put down pretty smartly, sure, but while it lasted it had scared the wollocks off imperial admin.

  ‘Indeed. And the cause was exactly that. Germanicus Caesar needed money and supplies for his German campaign, so he raised the local taxes. Then the money-lenders moved in, and the result for a lot of people was bankruptcy. It took the tribes involved years to recover.’ He took a swallow of wine. ‘Not the happiest of situations, as you can imagine. So now we’re being just a little more careful over mounting the British business. As I said, unlike Gaius the emperor can command a great deal of goodwill in Gaul, and he has a lot more sense than his brother had, thank goodness. I always thought Germanicus was overrated, myself, though it’s heresy to say so.’ Yeah, I’d agree, although ‘overrated’ was putting it mildly: if he hadn’t been a full-blown traitor in himself, the bastard had been the next thing to it. ‘Still, I expect my Belgic colleague is keeping a watching brief, as I am.’

  ‘To change the subject, Governor,’ Caninia said, ‘what about this murder that Valerius Corvinus is here to solve?’

  ‘Caninia!’ Nerva snapped.

  ‘Come, now, young lady,’ Laco said drily. ‘I hardly think that that’s a matter for the dinner table, is it? Now isn’t the t
ime. You’d agree with me, governor?’

  ‘But please!’ Caninia said. ‘It’s the one exciting thing that’s happened ever since I got here. I’ve been looking forward to hearing the details all day, and I’m sure Valerius Corvinus would like them straight away too. After all, it’s why he’s come, isn’t it?’

  I noticed that Perilla, lying next to her, had stiffened: Nerva’s wife couldn’t’ve been any older than our adopted daughter Marilla, probably not even that, and the two of them were evidently a pair. Up for the gory details every time, whatever the circumstances. Not an attitude that the lady approved of. Nor, by the look on his face, did Licinius Nerva.

  I grinned to myself: young Caninia might be fun, after all. She was certainly no shrinking violet, and I suspected that, like our Clarus, Nerva had his hands full.

  ‘In any case,’ Laco went on, ‘surely your husband has told you all about it already?’

  ‘No, Publius claimed it was sub judice, or some such nonsense,’ Caninia said. ‘I only know what I’ve heard from other people, and that’s probably all wrong. Governor, please!’

  Gabinius hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I’ve no particular objections,’ he said, ‘if Corvinus has none.’ I shook my head. ‘Or, of course, Rufia Perilla?’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ I said quickly. ‘My wife’s used to discussing murders over dinner.’ That got me a glare, which I ignored.

  ‘Very well, then. Just this once.’ The governor smiled. ‘At least, I hope it’s just this once. Unlike in Rome, murders aren’t too common in Lugdunum. Publius, my dear fellow, I think this is your department. And if we’re all finished with the starters?’ He signalled to the hovering major-domo. ‘Trupho. The main course, if you would.’

  ‘As you like, sir.’ Nerva cleared his throat, and glanced at his wife: no doubt there would be Words later, in private. I knew the feeling. ‘To put you in the picture, then, Corvinus. Claudius Cabirus was one of our most prominent locals, senior magistrate twice, leading member of the city council. He was going to represent Lugdunum as officiating priest at the Condate Altar ceremony on the first of next month.’