THALIA HAD ALWAYS lurked outside the city, near the Circus of Nero. When I first knew her she was a down-at-heel exotic dancer. Now she had become a manager-of slinky banquet dancing girls, lovable donkeys who could perform feats of memory, extremely expensive musicians, one legged fortune-tellers who had been born with eagles' beaks, and dwarves who could stand on their heads on a pile of ten vertical amphorae. Her own act featured close contact with a python, an electric combination with the kind of pornographic sleaze you normally don't see outside of the nightmare bordellos dreamed up by high life villains.
Her business had been inherited from an entrepreneur (of whom she spoke disparagingly, as she did of most men); he had experienced a fatal mishap with a panther (of whom she still seemed rather fond). Under Thalia's new strong management things appeared to be flourishing, though she still lived in a tattered tent. Inside it were new silken cushions and oriental metalwork. They vied for space with battered old baskets, some of which I knew probably housed untrustworthy snakes.
“Here's Jason! Say hello to him, Falco.” He was never stuffed in a basket. Jason was not her dancing partner, just a smaller pet, the fast-expanding python whom Thalia had always tried to persuade me was a son touch who loved company. She knew he despised me and I was scared to death of him. That just made her try harder to throw us together; a typical matchmaker. “He looks a bit rough at the moment and he's feeling low. You're sloughing another skin, aren't you, darling?”
“Better leave him in peace then,” I countered, feeling feeble for saying it. “So how long have you been back in Rome, Thalia?”
“Since last summer.” She handed me a cup of water and waited while I drank deeply. I knew how to be a good patient if the nurse was truly forceful. “I looked you up; you and Helena were in Spain. More spying on innocent businessmen?”
“Family trip.” I never liked to make too much of the work I had done for the Emperor. I finished my drink. When I put down the beaker on an ivory tray, Jason wove his way to it and licked the dregs. “How are things, Thalia? Davos still with you?”
“Oh he's around somewhere.”
Davos was an actor whom Thalia had plucked from his peaceful life playing moth-eaten stage gods by persuading him he should revitalise his existence yoked to her. Their relationship was presumably personal, though I avoided asking. Davos was a private man; I respected that. Thalia herself was likely to make me blush with ribald details, stressing measurements.
She was busying herself in a carved wooden chest, from which she extracted a small leather bag where I knew she kept medicaments. She had saved Helena's life once with an exquisite Parthian pick-me-up called mithridatium. Our eyes met, both remembering. I owed her a lot. No need to mention it. Under no circumstances would Thalia be audited by the Falco partnership, and if anyone else bothered her they would have to deal with me. “Did you bring home the little water-organist and her boyfriend as well?”
“I shed the doe-eyed lad.” She had found what she wanted and applied a big dollop of waxy, strong smelling ointment to my hot arm.
“Oh I thougHt you would-Ow!”
“Sophrona's here. She plays nicely and she looks good; I make a mint with her. But she's still a dopey little cow, always mooning after unsuitable men instead of thinking about her career.”
“You owe me a finder's fee.” It was a joke.
“Better send me a bill then.” Even more frivolous.
“And you're also still importing exotic beasts?”
Thalia said nothing, eyeing me. If she thought the question was official, this could be where our friendship ended. Only what was good for her business would ever really count. Her life had been too hard. She had no room to lower her standards; she would never grow some.
“Thalia, I've no quarrel with you. I'll ensure the Census takes no interest in your outfit, if you'll tell me about the men on my enquiry list.”
“Better be quick,” Thalia then agreed quite readily. She relaxed, fixing the lid back on her pot of salve and then wiping her finger clean on her few inches of tassled skirt.
“You don't want Saturninus to walk in while we're dissecting him.”
“Will he come? He didn't look too keen when you mentioned salvage money.”
“Oh he'll be here. He knows what's good for him. How's your burn?”
I waggled my arm. “Cooling Thanks.' Saturninus had already seen me with Thalia but if I could leave before he showed up here, he might not remember that. I was undecided how I intended to tackle him, and preferred not to let him see I had Circus friends.
Enquiry soon ascertained that Thalia's own purchasing contacts were still mainly in the East. That let me exclude her from my audit on geographical grounds. “Don't worry. Falco Partner are heroes with an abacus but we can't do everything. We're working on Tripolitania.”
“Good. You hammer those bastards so they leave some room for me!”
“Rivalry? I thought your field was speciality acts, not the venatio?”
“Why should I stand back when there are good times coming?” So here was yet another entrepreneur who saw the opening of the new Flavian Amphitheatre as a date with destiny. Well, I would rather Thalia made her fortune out of it than anyone else. She had a heart and she was a lively character. Whatever she offered the crowds would be good quality.
I grinned at her. “I take it you don't stoop to any funny business to annoy the other managers?” Thalia gave me a hilarious round-eyed stare. If she trifled with them, she was not saying. I did not expect her to. In fact, I preferred not to know. “But is there serious trouble among the lanistae?”
“Plenty. Look at today, Falco.”
“Today?”
“Why, I could have sworn I met you entertaining a leopardess in the Agrippan Baths earlier, Marcus Didius is that an everyday occurrence?”
“I assumed she had just escaped.”
“Maybe she did.” Thalia screwed up her mouth. “Maybe she had help. Nobody will ever prove it-but I saw a whole bunch of Calliopus' bestiarii up by the Portico of Octavia, all leaning on statues laughing their little heads off while Saturninus ran rings around himself looking for his lost animal.”
“Bestiarii? Weren't they training back at the barracks? How could they have known there was a rumpus here? Calliopus has his place way out past the Transtiberina-”
Thalia shrugged. “It looked peculiar. That doesn't mean I was surprised. Saturninus saw them too-so that's bad news. If he thinks Calliopus freed the leopardess to stir up trouble, he'll do something really evil in return.”
“A dirty tricks war? Has this been going on long?”
“Never quite so serious.”
“There's bad feeling, though? Can you tell me about it?”
“They're vying for the same contracts all the time,” Thalia commented matter-of-factly. “Both for gladiatorial combats and for the hunts. Then they are men. You can't expect them to be civilised. Oh, and I heard once that they come from rival towns that have some frightful feud.”
“In Tripolitania?”
“Wherever.”
“Calliopus is from Oea. What about Saturninus?”
“Is there a town called Lepcis?”
“Believe so.”
“Right. You know what these potty little neighbourhoods are like in the provinces, Falco. Any excuse for an annual punch-up, if possible with one or two killed. That gives them all a reason to keep the fight going. If they can tie it to a festival, they can drag religion into it and blame the gods-”
“Is this real?”
“The principle's right.”
I asked her if she had heard about the time when, according to the records that I'd seen, Calliopus and Saturninus briefly went into partnership. “Yes, they were trying to gang up and squeeze out anyone else from Tripolitania. Not that it worked-the other main player's Hannobalus; he's far too big to take on.” She was of my opinion that when two men shared a business it was doomed to end in a squabble. “Well, you should know, Falco-I heard you've been playing a disastrous game of soldiers with that mate of yours.”
I tried to make light of it. “Lucius Petronius was merely going through a bad patch in his personal life-”
“So you two old pals were struck by the thought you would love to work together. I suppose that turned out to be a nasty surprise when it failed?”
“Close.”
Thalia roared with raucous laughter. “Grow up, Falco. More friendships have died that way than I've had fools in bed. You're lucky Petronius didn't seduce your best clients and embezzle all your funds. You'd stand more chance working with a sworn enemy!”
I smiled bravely. “I'm trying that now.”
She calmed down. “You never know when to give up.”
“Doggedness is part of my charm.”
“Helena may think that.”
“Helena just thinks I'm wonderful.”
“Olympus! How'd you swing that? She can't be after your money. You must be a nippy performer-at something, eh, Jason?”
I drew myself up sternly and decided it was time to leave. It meant stepping over the python, unfortunately. Jason liked to curl up right in the exit to the tent where he could look up people's tunic skirts. He wasn't even pretending to be asleep. He was staring right at me, daring me to approach “Helena Justina is a fine judge. I'm a sensitive poet, a dedicated father, and I cook a mean chicken wing.”
“Oh that explains it,” simpered Thalia.
I took a big step, nervously. Astride Jason, I remembered something. “this feud between Saturninus and Calliopus-it's already well warmed-up. Calliopus had a lion-”
“Big new Libyan called Draco,” Thalia reported unperturbedly. “I was after him myself; Calliopus beat me by going to Puteoli and nabbing him straight off the boat. And I heard he also owns a trained executioner.”
“He did. Leonidas. Saturninus had sold it to him under false colours.”
“Cheeky sod.”
“Worse than that. Leonidas has just been found dead, in very suspicious circumstances.”
“Jupiter!” The lion's murder aroused her fiercest feelings. Other wild beasts were brought to Rome purely to be hunted in the arena, but Leonidas had had work to do in the Circus. He ranked with her own animals and reptiles: a professional. “That's terrible. Who would do that? And why, Falco?”
“I presume he had enemies-though everyone claims he was the sweetest lion you could meet. A benefactor even to the convicts he tore to pieces and ate, apparently. I'm working on the usual theories for a murder case: that the corpse probably slept around, amassed huge debts, caused fights when drunk, owned a slave with a grudge, was rude to his mother, and had been heard insulting the Emperor. One of those always turns out right-” I finally plucked up the nerve to finish stepping over the python.
“Anyway,” said Thalia, “Calliopus and bloody Saturninus may make all the noise, but they aren't the only people chasing after the beast contracts.”
“You mentioned one other big supplier? Also from Tripolitania?”
“Hannobalus. He thinks he'll clean up.”
“Any other names?”
“Oh go on, Falco! Don't tell me you haven't got a list on a nice official scroll.”
“I can make my own list. What about this other Tripolitanian gilthead, Hannobalus?”
“You don't miss much, Falco.”
“We've got one from Oea, one from Lepcis-I suppose there had to be a Third Man, from the Third Town.”
“Neat,” Thalia agreed noncommittally, like a woman who thought nothing involving the male sex was ever tidy.
“Sabratha, isn't it? Very Punic, so I'm told.”
“They can keep that then.”
Thalia's opinion suited me too. I was a Roman. As the poet said, my mission was bringing civilised pursuits to the known world. In the face of tenacious opposition, I believed you whacked them, taxed them, absorbed them, patronised them, then proscribed human sacrifice, dressed them in togas and discouraged them from openly insulting Rome. That done, you put in a strong governor, and left them to get on with it.
We beat Hannibal, didn't we? We razed the city and sowed the fields with salt. We had nothing to prove. That would explain why my hackles rose at the mention of anything Carthaginian.
“Is the man from Sabratha Punic, Thalia?”
“Don't ask me. Who are you going to hammer over that poor lion?”
“A certain Rumex did it, according to my sources.”
Thalia shook her head sadly “He's an idiot. Calliopus will fix him good.”
“Calliopus is trying to cover it up”
“Keeping it in the family.”
“He denies even knowing Rumex.”
“Pizzle.”
“Oh?”
Thalia must finally have realised I had no trace on the fingered Rumex and that I was hoping she could give me a lead. She eyed me askance. I looked shamefaced; she roared with mocking laughter, but then while I wriggled with embarrassment she explained who the great Rumex was.
I must have been the only man in Rome who had never heard of him.
Well, me and Anacrites. That only made it worse.