'Nix Juno thought we had left all that nonsense behind,' my sister Maia complained. All my sisters were renowned for despising my work. Maia might be a thousand miles from home, but she kept up Aventine traditions. 'Marcus! Britain may be a small province in the rump of the Empire, but does everything that happens here have to be related to everything else?'
'It is rather unusual to be drowned in a wine barrel,' said Aelia Camilla mildly.
'What barrel?' scoffed Maia. 'I thought the man was shoved down a well?'
'Same thing. Wine is a hugely popular import. From the River Rhenus area in Germany it often comes in enormous wooden casks which then make good well-linings at a small cost.'
Aelia Camilla, the procurator's wife, was a calm, intelligent woman, the unflappable mother to a bunch of fearsomely bright children. Like her husband, she was both more competent and much more approachable than she appeared. The self-sacrificing pair had been born to represent the Empire abroad. They were wise; they were fair. They embodied noble Roman qualities.
That did not make them popular with colleagues. It never does. They did not seem to notice, and never complained. Expertise in the British situation buoyed them up. Under a different emperor they might well have dwindled into oblivion. Under Vespasian they flourished surprisingly.
The slight friction between Aelia Camilla and my favourite sister Maia was a sadness to Helena and me. Being mothers several times over was not enough in common to create warmth. Maia – fashionable, pert, angry and outspoken – was a different type. In fact, Maia shone in a different sky from most people. That was her problem.
This scene was taking place after lunch. Everyone official lived at the procurator's residence since the governor's palace was not yet built. Life abroad is communal. Diplomats are used to that. Lunch occurred without the governor; Frontinus took a tray in his office. (Whereas he hosted dinner, which was always formal, and rather a trial.) So now the procurator and his wife were eating gritty bread and travel-weary olives with just the four adults of my party. The couple were hospitable. When they first insisted that I bring Helena Justina to visit, they knew we were with our two baby daughters – although not that I was also accompanied by my moody sister, her four lively children, two excitable pet dogs, and my grumpy friend Petronius. Luckily Helena's two squabbling brothers and a loud nephew of mine had stayed behind in the south to go hunting and drinking. They could turn up any minute, but I had not mentioned that.
Hilaris, to whom I had promised more details (while hoping to avoid it), lay on a reading couch apart, apparently absorbed in scrolls. I knew he was listening. His wife was speaking for him, just as Helena would often question my own visitors – whether I was present or not. The procurator and his lady shared their thoughts, as we did. He and I were parties to true Roman marriage: confiding to our serious, sensitive womenfolk things we never even told our masculine friends. It could have made the women domineering – but females in the Camillus family were strong-willed in any case. That was why I liked mine. Don't ask me about Hilaris and his.
Petronius Longus, my best friend, did not approve. Still, he was a misery these days. Having come out to Britain, either to see me or my sister, he had travelled to Londinium with us but apparently just wanted to go home. At present he was hunched on a stool looking bored. He was starting to embarrass me. He had never been anti-social or awkward in company before. Helena thought he was in love. Fat chance. At one point he had been after Maia, but they now rarely spoke.
'So, Marcus, Verovolcus was in trouble. Tell us about what happened to the architect,' Aelia Camilla prompted me. She behaved informally for a diplomat's wife, but she was personally shy and I had yet to deduce even which of her two names she preferred in private use.
'Confidential, I'm afraid.'
'Hushed up?' Helena's aunt leapt in again. Her great dark eyes were impossible to avoid. I had always found it difficult to play the hard man in her presence. While seeming gentle and bashful, she screwed all sorts of answers out of me. 'Well, we are all in government service, Marcus. We know how things work.'
'Oh – it was daft.' As I gave in, I sensed Helena smiling. She loved to see her aunt get the better of me. 'A clash of ideas. The King and his architect were daggers drawn and Verovolcus took it upon himself to defend his royal master's taste in an extreme way.'
'I met Pomponius,' Aelia Camilla said. 'A typical designer. He knew exactly what the client should want.'
'Quite. But King Togidubnus is now on his third major refit to the palace; he has strong opinions and is very knowledgeable about architecture.'
'Were his demands too expensive? Or did he keep making changes?' Aelia Camilla knew all the pitfalls of public works.
'No, he just refused to accept any design features he hated. Verovolcus bore the brunt; he was supposed to liaise between them, but Pomponius despised him. Verovolcus became just a cipher. He did away with Pomponius so a more amenable architect could take over. It sounds stupid, but I think it was the only way he could reassert his own control.'
'It casts interesting light on the British situation.' Helena was seated in a wicker chair, her favourite type. With her hands folded over her woven belt and her feet on a small footstool, she could have been modelling memorials for submissive wives. I knew better. Tall, graceful and grave, Helena Justina read widely and kept up with world affairs. Born to bear and educate senatorial children, she was giving culture and good sense to mine. And she kept me in hand.
'Representing progress we had the Great King: an ideal provincial monarch – civilised, keen to be part of the Empire, utterly go-ahead. Then there was Verovolcus, his closest aide, still at heart a tribal warrior. Murdering the Roman project manager was repugnant to the King, but Verovolcus honoured darker gods.'
'I never dwelt on his motives,' I admitted. 'So was it really just an artistic feud that blew up out of proportion – or more political? Was Verovolcus expressing barbarian hatred for Rome?'
'How did he react when you confronted him with the crime?' asked Aelia Camilla.
'Spat fury. Denied it. Swore he'd get me.'
'Just like any cornered suspect,' Helena observed. Our eyes met. Communal discussions made me ill at ease I would much have preferred a private boudoir exchange.
'So, Marcus, let me understand you,' her aunt pressed on intensely. She moved against the embroidered cushion at her back, so her bangles shivered and gold flickers freckled the ornately coffered ceiling. 'You told Verovolcus he would not be tried for the murder, but must go into exile. The punishment for a Roman would be exclusion from the Empire.'
'But for him I suggested Gaul.'
We all smiled. Gaul had been part of the Empire for longer than Britain, but we were Romans and for us even Gaul was backwoods territory.
'He could have sailed straight to Gaul from Novio.' From his couch, Gaius' thoughtful voice proved me right: he had been listening in.
'True. I assumed he would.'
'Would riding off to Londinium seem less obvious to his friends? Less shameful, say?' Maia enjoyed a puzzle.
'Or was he heading somewhere else?' Helena tried. 'No, if you pick up transport in Londinium it always goes across to Gaul. He gained nothing by coming here.'
Petronius spoke, dour as a bad-tempered oracle: 'There is nowhere beyond Britain. The only way is back!' He hated Britain.
So did I. I played it down while I was the procurator's guest. Hilaris had been in Britain so long he had lost his nostalgia for the real world. Tragic.
'If Verovolcus came to Londinium,' mused Aelia Camilla, 'would he have had to hide?'
'From me?' I laughed. So did rather too many of my friends and relatives.
'He thought he was a fugitive, though in fact,' Aelia Camilla said demurely, 'you had not told the governor!' I tried not to feel guilty. 'Verovolcus didn't know that. So he might have skulked in that bad district to lie low?'
'What's the bad locale, Falco?' asked Petronius. A professional question. At home, he was a member of the vigiles.
'A bar.'
'What bar?' At least he had revived and taken an interest. Petro was a big, active man, who seemed cramped in smart indoor locations. He could have relaxed on a padded couch with lion's head feet as I did, but he preferred to ignore what passed for comfort here, hugging his knees uncomfortably and scuffing the striped woollen rugs with his sturdy paramilitary boots.
I felt an odd reluctance to tell him about the crime scene. 'A black little hutment at the back of the wharves.'
'Whereabouts, Falco?' His brown eyes quizzed me. Petronius knew when I was stalling for some reason. 'How did you get there?'
'You don't mean you want to take a look?'
'Take the road down from the forum, bear left, and go into the worst alleys you see,' explained Hilaris. 'It was called the Shower of Gold – incongruously. There was a dim painting on the outside wall. Did you notice that, Falco?' I had not. The hovel had hardly been the kind of place where Jupiter would flash in through a window disguised as a shower of gold – or anything else – to reach the arms of a lady friend. The waitress we met would surely repel divinities. 'What's your interest, Lucius Petronius?' Hilaris then asked. He spoke politely, but I reckoned he regarded Petro as an unknown quantity who should be watched.
'Nothing at all.' Petro lost any interest he had had. Apparently.
'Out of your jurisdiction.' I said it sympathetically. Petro was missing Rome.
He gave me a bitter, rather ambiguous, smile. He even missed his work, it seemed. Maybe his conscience was pricking. I had still not extracted how he managed to bunk off on leave for a couple of months. I knew he was between postings, but his very request for a transfer off the Aventine would have used up any goodwill from his old vigiles tribune. The new one, presumably, just wanted Petro on the squadron-house bench as soon as possible.
'Any bar is a good haven for Lucius Petronius!' My rude sister was scathing. They had been bickering since Petro had reached us, bringing her children to rejoin her. He had done her a favour – not that Maia thought so.
'Good idea,' Petronius smacked back, jumping up and sauntering to the door. Once I would have headed after him, but I was a good husband and father these days. (Well, in public, I mostly managed to look like one.) Helena sucked her teeth anxiously. Maia shot Petro a superior look. By accident or on purpose, he slammed the door as he left.
The procurator and his wife tried to avoid showing how weary they were of their visitors' guests squabbling.
I closed my eyes and pretended to doze off. It fooled no one.