Family: Born AD41, Rome, Italy, to M. Didius Favonius (aka Geminus) and Junilla Tacita. Plebian rank, father an auctioneer. Brother M. Didius Festus, legio XV Apollinaris, killed AD68, Bethel, Judaea; awarded Palisaded Crown.
Marriage: Helena Justina, d of D. Camillus Verus, senator, and Julia Justa. d Julia Junilla Laeitana, b AD73 Barcino, Hispania Tarraconensis; d Sosia Favonia, b AD75.
Career: cAD59, legio II Augusta, service in Britain (legion disgraced, cAD60); subsequently a speculator, location unknown; discharged on ? medical grounds, cAD66. Active as an informer (delator) in Rome; few details survive. Recorded engagements as imperial agent: Britain, AD71/2 and AD75 (conjectural sightings at Fishbourne Palace and Londinium); Magna Graecia/Campania, AD71; Germania/Germania Libera, AD71; Nabataea/Syria AD72; Baetica/Tarraconensis, AD73; Tripolitania/Cyrenaïca, AD74. Sightings in Greece, AD76, and Egypt, AD77, now thought to have been private visits.
Ascendancy believed to date from AD74, possibly after work on the Great Census, ? due to influence of Antonia Caenis, though she is known to have died in that period. Recorded as holding a procuratorial position at Temple of Juno Moneta, conjecturally identified as associated with the Sacred Geese and Augurs’ Chickens (though this is contested on grounds of improbability). A period of relative prosperity almost certainly followed, when he may have dabbled in literary pursuits and the law. Took up with the Camillus brothers, relatives of his wife; they were subsequently notorious for political intrigue.
Connections: Vespasian and Titus thought well of Falco and used him for missions requiring discretion; Domitian loathed him, reason unknown. Camillus Verus was a supporter, but had awkward family background. Falco formed friendships with influential members of the Flavian court, notably Julius Frontinus (for whom he worked under cover in Britain) and Rutilius Gallicus with whom he shared an interest in poetry (putative joint recital, AD74 and murky link, ? related to captured Veleda, in late AD76). There are recently identified links with élite informers Paccius Africanus and Silius Italicus, against whom he spoke in the Basilica Julia, in AD76 or 77.
Publications: (Fragments only) The Spook Who Spoke, a Plautine comedy, tentatively identified as the prototype for Hamlet; known to have been performed in Palmyra in AD72 and recorded in the pinakes of the Great Library at Alexandria. Love poems (the Aglaia sequence) have not survived. Contemporaries deemed his Satires his best work, the favourite being a contemplation on parrots addressed to his personal friend L. Petronius Longus. Speech against Paccius Africanus, In re Calpurnia, appears to have been suppressed for political reasons.
Lindsey Davis has written over twenty historical novels, beginning with The Course of Honour. Her bestselling mystery series features laid-back First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina, plus friends, relations, pets and bitter enemy the Chief Spy.
After an English degree at Oxford University Lindsey joined the Civil Service, but became a professional author in 1989. Her books are translated into many languages and have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her many prizes include the Premio Colosseo, awarded by the Mayor of Rome ‘for enhancing the image of Rome’, the Sherlock award for Falco as Best Comic Detective and the Crimewriters’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. She was born in Birmingham but now lives in Greenwich, London.
‘To find a drowned man head-first down a well was slightly unusual, exciting maybe.’
For Falco, a relaxed visit to Helena’s relatives in Britain turns serious at the scene of a downtown murder. The renegade henchman of Rome’s vital ally King Togidubnus has been stuffed head-first down a barroom well – leading to a tricky diplomatic situation which Falco must defuse. One murder leads to others. Londinium now has a forum and an amphitheatre; the town is a magnet for legitimate traders – and for criminals from Rome.
With his vigiles pal Petronius, Falco leads the hunt for gangsters who are intent on taking over. This will bring unwelcome encounters with faces from the past and grave threats to their present relationships. Danger and death lurk throughout their pursuit, all the way from the brand new wharves beside the River Thames to the familiar old haunts of organised crime back home in Italy.
Fiction
The Course of Honour
The Falco Series
The Silver Pigs
Shadows in Bronze
Venus in Copper
The Iron Hand of Mars
Poseidon’s Gold
Last Act in Palmyra
Time to Depart
A Dying Light in Corduba
Three Hands in the Fountain
Two for the Lions
One Virgin Too Many
Ode to a Banker
A Body in the Bath House
The Accusers
Scandal Takes a Holiday
See Delphi and Die
Saturnalia
Alexandria
Nemesis
Falco: The Official Companion
Rebels and Traitors
Didius Falco has never been a text-based ’tec. It wouldn’t suit him, and to be honest it wouldn’t suit me. I struggled with the classics. When I started writing fiction about the ancient world, I did seek inspiration back with the Latin authors – Martial and Juvenal, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, with Tacitus and Josephus for period history, especially the lives of Caenis and Vespasian in ‘The Course of Honour’. But instinctively I look first to archaeology.
This goes right back to a school Archaeological Society. Ah, the thrill of sitting in darkened rooms – with boys! – as we scrutinised slideshows of excavated post-holes; post-holes that were often rather hard to discern, I fear. I diced with travel-sickness as we went by coach on field trips to the Roman cities of Chester, Lincoln and York. My home town of Birmingham never featured, and nor at that time did London. Although something has always been known of Londinium, there were serious gaps, some of which are now being filled in most exciting ways. Changes in legislation during my lifetime have encouraged big developers to report archaeological finds, and allow them to be excavated; much of Roman London lies under the ‘City’ – the modern financial quarter, where expensive offices are constantly being rebuilt – to the benefit of archaeology. The very existence of an arena was unknown, until a recent dig at Guildhall Yard exposed curiously curved stretches masonry which were recognised as the classic ovoid of an amphitheatre.
Discoveries like this prompted me to set ‘The Jupiter Myth’ in London. I could take advantage of the fact that many of my characters were in Britain at the end of my previous book ‘A Body in the Bath House’. Historically, Julius Frontinus, who had played a key role in ‘Three Hands in the Fountain’ would now be the provincial governor, backed up by my own invention, and old favourite, Flavius Hilaris, the good civil servant. The arena would have been newly constructed (its timbers have been dated, fortunately, so we know this) and I could also explore another intriguing find of recent years. Many of us In England had seen press reports of the ‘bustum’ burial in Southwark, just south of the Thames. It contained the bones of a fit young woman and rich finds, some associated with the arena, leading to claims that this was ‘Britain’s first female gladiator’. Well, local archaeologists think that is unlikely, but it was too sexy, in every sense, to ignore completely. I see no point in bending the facts as we know them, but an author of fiction can explore the idea. Who my ‘Amazonia’ is you must discover from the book – but she goes right back to ‘The Silver Pigs’ – and she’s trouble!
As for Milo’s waterwheel, that was discovered right at the point when I was writing that chapter – the Museum of London archaeologists were amazed that I had managed to put it in. They are now preparing a technical book about the waterwheels on that site, which are unprecedented finds – and they have asked permission to quote my description of how a treadmill version may have worked!
Archaeology has given me a few headaches over the years. I survived the sheer terror of descending into the still active Great Sewer under the Forum of Nerva in Rome, wearing a plastic mac, wellies, and Marigold washing-up gloves to fend off Weil’s Disease (which is born in rats’ pee and is frequently fatal). I have choked on a grain of rice in Libya, while my companions, unaware of the gravity of my plight (or so I tell myself), light-heartedly discussed how Agatha Christie’s booksales went up immediately she died... I have bitten back frustration, looking at the fine stone theatres in Syria, knowing they were too late for me, and that because they are so fine, nobody has ever explored what earlier versions might have been on the spot. I have eaten Roman food (and not choked). I have been greeted by knobby-kneed centurions in cardboard armour and spectacles, and have not fled but have taken the opportunity to research the fact that the ear-protectors on their helmets made them a bit deaf.
London had its own awkwardness. Key Roman features like the fort and the bridge still have tantalising question marks. There was simply not space in my story to include Greenwich, where I live, despite a recent TV programme about its temple complex and the route of Watling Street. Then to describe a city vividly in a novel involves more than just positioning its buildings on a map. Archaeology tells me from their relics what kind of people were present: the governor, the army, the customs service, then potters and glass-makers, bar-keepers and wine-importers, sellers of fresh food and fast food. Historians vouch for the trade in hunting dogs and the Vespasianic influx of those supposedly civilising lawyers. Poets applaud Rutupiae oysters.
It would be a plodding old novel that simply stated these people were here. My task is to imagine the colour of their lives and how they felt about the province of Britain, which was new in the Empire and ripe for exploitation, yet where the Boudiccan Revolt had shown Rome’s presence to be both tenuous and perhaps pointless. For this, the spirit of the place, my inspiration came not from archaeology but a very unlikely source. I had been invited to be guest of honour at a mystery convention in Anchorage, Alaska. Now I shall never be able to put Falco in a frozen landscape, face to face with a large moose (such a pity!) But Anchorage is perceived to be, and I think perceives itself to be, what local folk call ‘the end of the road’ – the place where all the people who are travelling to ‘find’ themselves finally come to a stop because there is nowhere else to go. I recognised at once that this could be my starting point for Londinium. The conversation between Falco and Silvanus in Caesar’s Bar grew directly from that idea: it gave me the city based on archaeological fact but with a human context. It is a city of both drifters and entrepreneurs, far-flung but up-and-coming, attracting not just worthy pioneers but the crazy and feckless – and all sorts of exploiters and extortionists.
Archaeology rarely gives us pointers to crimelords and their gangs. But then, really successful gangsters don’t leave evidence of their crimes...
WHEN I DECIDED to bring Falco and Helena to Roman London, it was partly because they were already in Britain after their previous adventure, and the problems of ancient world travel would not permit them to return too soon. This timing was good, however. There have been spectacular finds in recent years, greatly improving our knowledge of the Roman town. Sometimes it has seemed that the Museum of London Archaeology Service and the Museum’s exhibition curators have been working flat out to find background material for a Falco plot. I am grateful particularly to Nick Bateman and Jenny Hall for their help, especially where dates and building locations are uncertain.
But my portrait of Londinium is personal. Fiction authors are allowed to invent. (Yes we are!) So, the wine-cask well is inspired by one found near the Decumanus, which featured in the exhibition ‘High Street, Londinium’, but mine is in a different location. The Shower of Gold, and all the other bars named in this story, are my creations.
Likewise, the burial in the final chapter is not the ‘bus-tum’ burial in Southwark which caused much media excitement as the possible discovery of a female gladiator (a conclusion which is probably wrong); my burial takes place at the known Roman cemetery around Warwick Square, the area where the famous monument to Julius Classicianus may originally have stood before its stones were re-used near the Tower. Had my lass existed, she would lie under the Central Criminal Courts (the Old Bailey). Don’t expect her to be found!
The stone-built Roman fort by the Barbican dates to the AD 80s. Evidence for earlier defences with turf ramparts, perhaps hastily thrown up in the aftermath of the Boudiccan Rebellion, has been found at Fenchurch Street but it seems most likely that at this date the soldiery occupied the western hill in a haphazard way (waiting perhaps for some government agent to suggest building them a decent fort …) The amphitheatre, identified only recently, is under Guildhall Yard. There was a military-style baths nearby in Cheapside, and Myron’s waterworks were recently discovered on a corner of Gresham Street.
The forum lay above what is now Gracechurch Street, north of Lombard Street. The Decumanus Maximus ran across town there, following the modern Cheapside and Newgate Street. Another major road lay under Cannon Street and the road from the forum to the river was aligned with Fish Street Hill.
The Thames in this period was much wider than now. It was bridged from an island in Southwark, just downstream of the present London Bridge, and what evidence we have suggests that several versions existed between the Invasion and the second century, developing from wooden ones to the permanent stone one, which did come ashore at an extensive wharf system. There may have been a ferry landing to one side, and on the other there is evidence of a grand stone building, possibly with a colonnade, which has been identified as a possible customs house for the port.
The governor’s palace, built in the last decades of the century, lies partly under Cannon Street Station. Who knows where the procurator lived? Somewhere decent, given that he ran the works budget!
Southwark did have a mansio, which would have been new, and a Temple of Isis.
Greenwich Park had a Vespasianic temple complex, re-investigated by ‘The Time Team’, which would just have been visible on its hilltop from the house where I finished this novel … I do not believe Roman villa developers failed to exploit Greenwich, but the ‘love nest’ with the landing-stage is invented.
Lindsey Davis
London, 2002
‘IT DEPENDS WHAT we mean by civilisation,’ the procurator mused.
Staring at the corpse, I was in no mood to discuss philosophy. We were in Britain, where the rule of law was administered by the army. Justice operated in a rough and ready fashion so far away from Rome, but special circumstances meant this killing would be difficult to brush aside.
We had been called out by a centurion from the small local troop detachment. The military presence in Londinium was mainly to protect the governor, Julius Frontinus, and his deputy, the procurator Hilaris, but since the provinces are not manned by the vigiles, soldiers carry out basic community policing. So the centurion attended the death scene, where he became a worried man. On investigation, an apparently routine local slaying acquired ‘developments’.
The centurion told us he had come to the bar, expecting just a normal drunken stabbing or battering. To find a drowned man head-first down a well was slightly unusual, exciting maybe. The ‘well’ was a deep hole in a corner of the bar’s tiny back yard. Hilaris and I bent double and peered in. The hole was lined with the waterproof wooden staves of what must be a massive German wine container; water came nearly to the top. Hilaris had told me these imported barrels were taller than a man, and after being emptied of wine they were often re-used in this way.
When we arrived of course, the body had already been removed. The centurion had pulled up the victim by his boots, planning to heave the cadaver into a corner until the local dung cart carried it off. He himself had intended to sit down with a free drink while he eyed up the attractions of the serving girl.
Her attractions were not up to much. Not by Aventine standards. It depends what we mean by attractive, as Hilaris might muse, if he were the type to comment on waitresses. Myself, I was that type, and immediately we entered the dim establishment I had noticed she was four feet high with a laughable leer and smelt like old boot-liners. She was too stout, too ugly, and too slow on the uptake for me. But I’m from Rome. I have high standards. This was Britain, I reminded myself.
There was certainly no chance of anyone getting free drinks now Hilaris and I were here. We were official. I mean really official. One of us held a damned high rank. It wasn’t me. I was just a new middle-class upstart. Anyone of taste and style would be able to sniff out my slum background instantly.
‘I’ll avoid the bar,’ I joked quietly. ‘If their water is full of dead men, their wine is bound to be tainted!’
‘No, I’ll not try a tasting,’ agreed Hilaris, in a tactful undertone. ‘We don’t know what they may stuff in their amphorae …’
The centurion stared at us, showing his contempt for our attempts at humour.
This event was even more inconvenient for me than it was for the soldier. All he had to worry about was whether to mention the awkward ‘developments’ on his report. I had to decide whether to tell Flavius Hilaris – my wife’s Uncle Gaius – that I knew who the dead man was. Before that, I had to evaluate the chances that Hilaris himself had known the casked corpse.
Hilaris was the important one here. He was procurator of finance in Britain. To put it in perspective, I was a procurator myself but my role – which involved theoretical oversight of the Sacred Geese of Juno – was one of a hundred thousand meaningless honours handed out by the Emperor when he owed someone a favour and was too mean to pay in cash. Vespasian reckoned my services had cost enough, so he settled up remaining debts with a joke. That was me: Marcus Didius Falco, the imperial clown. Whereas the estimable Gaius Flavius Hilaris, who had known Vespasian many years ago in the army, was now second only to the provincial governor. Since he did know Vespasian personally, then (as the governor would be aware) dear Gaius was the Emperor’s eyes and ears, assessing how the new governor ran the province.
He did not need to assess me. He had done that five years ago when we first met. I think I came out well. I wanted to look good. That was even before I fell for his wife’s elegant, clever, superior niece. Alone in the Empire, Hilaris had always thought Helena might end up with me. Anyway, he and his own wife had received me back now as a nephew by marriage as if it were natural and even a pleasure.
Hilaris looked a quiet, clerkish, slightly innocent fellow, but I wouldn’t take him on at draughts – well, not unless I could play with my brother Festus’ weighted dice. He was dealing with the situation in his usual way: curious, thorough, and unexpectedly assertive. ‘Here’s one Briton who has not acquired much benefit from Roman civilisation,’ he had said on being shown the corpse. That was when he added drily, ‘I suppose it depends what you mean by civilisation, though.’
‘He took in water with his wine, you mean?’ I grinned.
‘Better not jest.’ Hilaris was no prude and it was not a reproof.
He was a lean, neat man, still active and alert – yet greyer and more haggard than I had remembered him. He had always given a slight impression of ill health. His wife, Aelia Camilla, seemed little changed since my last visit, but Flavius Hilaris looked much older and I felt glad I had brought my own wife and youngsters to see him while I could.
Trying not to show that I was watching him, I decided he did know the dead man at his feet. As a career diplomat, he would also be aware of why this death would cause us problems. But, so far, he was not mentioning his knowledge to me.
That was interesting.
‘I’M SORRY TO drag you out, sirs,’ murmured the centurion. He must be wishing he had kept quiet. He was totting up how much additional documentation he had let himself in for, and had realised belatedly that his commander would give him all Hades for involving the civil powers.
‘You did the right thing.’ I had never seen Hilaris back off from trouble. Strange to think that this man had served in the army (Second Augusta, my own legion, twenty years before me). He was part of the Invasion force, too, at a time for pragmatic dealings with the locals. But three decades of civic bureaucracy had turned him into that rare high-flying wonder, a public servant who followed the rules. Even rarer, instead of stagnating uselessly out here, he had mastered the art of making the rules work. Hilaris was good. Everyone said so.
By contrast the centurion covered his ineptitude by moving slowly, saying little, and doing even less. He was wide-bodied and short-necked. He stood with his feet planted wide apart, his arms hanging loose. His neckerchief was tucked into his armour with just enough untidiness to express contempt for authority, yet his boots were buffed and his sword and dagger looked sharp. He would be the type who sat around, obsessively honing his weapons and complaining about higher officers. I doubted he grumbled at the Emperor. Vespasian was a soldiers’ general.
Vespasian would know that the army is stuffed with such characters: not as good as those in charge would like, but sound enough to coast along in a far-off province where the frontiers were fairly quiet and open rebellion was no longer an issue. The legions in Britain carried no dead wood. In a real crisis, something could be made of this centurion.
We had a crisis here. Correctly, the centurion had sensed it. And to be fair, he responded properly. He had noticed the white circle around the dead man’s neck where a torque had habitually sat, and he saw the grazes where the heavy twisted metal must have been wrenched off by a thief or thieves. He realised this was serious. It was not the theft itself that made for trouble, but in tribal Britain heavy gold and electrum neck torques were worn only by the rich and well-born. That torque, now missing, was a mark of rank. Persons of status do not usually die shabby deaths alone in taverns, whatever their culture. Something was up. So the centurion had sent a runner to the governor.
Julius Frontinus was in his first year of office here. When the message came, he was eating breakfast during an early morning meeting with his right hand man. We all shared the official residence so I was there too. ‘Gaius, go and see if you recognise the victim,’ Frontinus told Hilaris, who had been in Britain all those decades and so knew absolutely everyone. Since the governor had previously worked with me on a murder hunt in Rome, he then added: ‘Sounds your sort of thing, Falco. You should trot along there too.’
So here I was. I had been dispatched to the crime scene as an expert in unnatural death. But I was a thousand miles from my own patch. How would I know the motive for a local British murder, or where to start looking for the killer? I was on holiday, intending to claim that I had nothing to contribute. My own official mission in Britain was finished; afterwards I had brought Helena to Londinium to see her relatives, but we were pretty well en route for home now.
Then when the centurion presented the sodden body, Hilaris went quiet and I too felt queasy. I knew at once that I might have had a direct involvement in how the victim came to be here.
So far, only I knew that.
‘WONDER WHO HE is?’ The centurion nudged the corpse with the side of his boot – avoiding the tip, where he might have touched dead flesh with his big bare toes. ‘Who he was!’ he laughed sardonically.
The dead man had been tall and well fed. The straggles of long hair that clung to his head and neck, tangling in the edges of his woollen tunic, were once wild and red-gold. The eyes, now closed, had been bright with curiosity and used to delight in dangerous mischief. I supposed they were blue, though I could not remember. His skin was pallid and swollen after drowning, but he had always been light-complexioned, with the gingery eyebrows and lashes that go with such colouring. Along his bare forearms fine hairs began to dry. He wore dark blue trousers, expensive boots, a belt with hole-punched patterns into which the plaid tunic was gathered in thick clumps. No weapon was present. Every time I saw him alive, he had worn a long British sword.
He had been always on the go. He dashed around; was full of vigour and crude humour; always accosted me in a loud voice; regularly leered at women. It seemed odd to find him quite so still.
I stooped, picking up the cloth on a sleeve to inspect a hand for finger-rings. One sturdy item in rope-twisted gold remained, perhaps too tight to drag off in a hurry. As I straightened, my gaze briefly caught that of Hilaris. Clearly he could see that I too knew the man’s identity. Well, if he thought about it, I had just come up from Noviomagus Regnensis so I would.
‘It is Verovolcus,’ he told the centurion without drama. I kept quiet. ‘I met him officially once or twice. He was a courtier, and possibly a relative, of the Great King – Togidubnus of the Atrebates tribe, down on the south coast.’
‘Important?’ demanded the centurion, with a half-eager sideways look. Hilaris did not answer. The soldier drew his own conclusions. He pulled a face, impressed.
King Togidubnus was a long-time friend and ally of Vespasian. He had been lavishly rewarded for years of support. In this province he could probably pull rank even on the governor. He could get Flavius Hilaris recalled to Rome and stripped of his hard-earned honours. He could have me knocked over the head and dumped in a ditch, with no questions asked.
‘So what was Verovolcus doing in Londinium?’ Hilaris mused. It seemed a general question, though I felt he aimed it at me.
‘More official business?’ asked the centurion meekly.
‘No. I would know of it. And even if he came to Londinium for private purposes,’ continued the procurator levelly, ‘why would he visit an establishment as grim as this?’ He now glanced directly at me. ‘A British aristocrat laden with expensive jewels is as much at risk of robbery in a hole like this as a lone Roman would be. This place is for locals – and even they have to be brave!’
I refused to be drawn, but left the yard, ducked inside the bar and looked around. As wine bars go this lacked charm and distinction. We had found it halfway down a short, narrow alley on the sloping hill just above the wharves. A few crude shelves held flagons. A couple of windows with iron grilles let in some light. From its filthy straw-strewn floor to its low shadowy rafters the bar was as lousy as bars can get. And I had seen some.
I tackled the woman who kept the place.
‘I know nothing,’ she spouted immediately, before I could ask her anything.
‘Are you the owner?’
‘No, I just wait at table.’
‘Did you summon the centurion?’
‘Of course!’ There was no of course about it. I didn’t have to live in Britain to know that if she could have hidden this crime, she would have done so. Instead, she had worked out that Verovolcus was bound to be missed. There would be trouble and unless she made it look good today, the trouble would be worse for her. ‘We found him this morning.’
‘You never noticed him last night?’
‘We were busy. Lot of trade in.’
I gazed at her calmly. ‘What sort of trade was that?’
‘The sort we get.’
‘Can you be more specific? I mean –’
‘I know what you mean!’ she scoffed.
‘Sinful girls, after sailors and traders?’ I threw at her anyway.
‘Nice people. Businessmen!’ Nasty forms of business, I bet.
‘Had this man been drinking here last night?’
‘Nobody can remember him, though he could have been.’ They should remember. He must have been of a higher class than any regulars, even the nice businessmen. ‘We just found him left here with his feet waggling –’
‘Excuse me! Why were his feet waggling? Was the poor sap still alive?’
She blushed. ‘Just a manner of speaking.’
‘So was he dead or not?’
‘He was dead. Of course he was.’
‘How did you know?’
‘What?’
‘If only his feet were visible, how did anyone know his condition? Could you have revived him? You might at least have tried. I know you didn’t bother; the centurion had to pull him out.’
She looked thrown, but carried on gamely, ‘He was a goner. It was obvious.’
‘Especially if you already knew that he was crammed down the well last evening.’
‘I never! We were all surprised!’
‘Not as surprised as he must have been,’ I said.
There was nothing more to be gained here. We left the centurion to shift the body for safe keeping until the Great King was informed. Gaius and I emerged into the alley, which was used as an open drain. We picked our way past the daily rubbish and empties to what passed for a street. That was dingy enough. We were on terraced ground below the two low gravel hills on which Londinium stood. The area was right down near the river. In any city that can be bad news. The procurator’s two bodyguards followed us discreetly, frontline soldiers on detached duty, fingering daggers. They provided reassurance – partially.
From the badly cobbled lane that connected this enclave to larger, perhaps less unfriendly vicinities, we could hear the creak of cranes on the wharves that lined the Thamesis. There were pungent smells of leather, a staple trade. Some towns have regulations that tanneries have to be out in the country because they reek so badly, but Londinium was either not that fussy or not so well organised. Attracted by the river’s proximity, we walked there.
We came out among new warehouses with narrow fronts at the river’s edge, running back from their tight-packed unloading berths in long secure storage tunnels. The river embankment was fringed with these, as if it had been planned. A great wooden platform, of recent construction, provided a landing stage and a bulwark against the spreading tide.
I stared at the river gloomily. The Thamesis was much wider than the Tiber at home, its high tide width more than a thousand strides, though at low water it shrank to a third of that. Opposite our wharf were reeded islands, which would become almost submerged at high tide, when for miles all up the estuary the Thamesis marshes would flood. Roads from the southern ports arrived over there on the south bank, conjoining at a spot where ferries had always crossed the river. There was a wooden bridge coming across from the main island, at a slightly odd angle.
Standing beside me, the procurator clearly shared my melancholy mood. Death and misty grey riverbanks produce the same effect. We were men of the world, yet our hearts ached.
Oppressed by our surroundings, I felt unready yet to address the Verovolcus death. ‘You mended the bridge, I see.’
‘Yes. Boudicca used it to get at the settlement on the south bank – then her troops made a good attempt to put it out of action.’ Hilaris sounded dry. ‘If this one seems rather strangely aligned, that’s because it isn’t permanent.’ Clearly the bridge issue amused him. ‘Falco, I remember the post-Invasion bridge, which was intended to be for purely military purposes. It was just decking on pontoons. Later the supports were made permanent – but it was still wood, and we pulled it down. It was decided a decent stone bridge would signify permanence in the province, so this one was built.’
I joined in the satire. ‘You said this isn’t permanent either?’
‘No. The permanent bridge will come straight across to link up with the forum; people arriving will have a splendid view, directly across the river and up the hill.’
‘So when is the permanent bridge planned for?’ I asked, smiling.
‘About ten years’ time, I’d say,’ he told me gloomily. ‘Meanwhile we have this one, which you could call the permanent temporary bridge – or the temporary permanent bridge.’
‘It’s off-set so while you build the final version alongside, you can maintain a crossing point?’
‘Correct! If you want to cross now, my advice is, use the ferry.’
I quirked up an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘The bridge is temporary; we don’t maintain it.’
I laughed.
Hilaris then fell into a reflective mood. He enjoyed giving history lessons. ‘I remember when there was nothing here. Just a few round huts, most of them across the water. Orchards and coppices this side. By Jove it felt desolate! A civilian settlement struggled into existence after Rome invaded. But we were then away out at Camulodunum, the Britons’ own chief centre. It was bloody inconvenient, I can tell you. Our presence caused bad feeling too; in the Rebellion that was the first place lost.’
‘Londinium had enough by Nero’s day to attract Boudicca’s energy,’ I reminisced bitterly. ‘I saw it … Well, I saw what was left afterwards.’
Hilaris paused. He had forgotten that I was here in the Icenian Rebellion – a youngster, marked for life by that grim experience. Evidence of the firestorm remained to this day. Memories of corpses and severed heads churning in the local waterways would never die. The whole atmosphere of this place still upset me. I would be glad when I could leave.
Hilaris was in Britain then too. I was a ranker, and in a disgraced legion; he a junior official among the governor’s élite staff. Our paths would not have crossed.
After a moment he went on, ‘You’re right; the bridge will change things. The river used to form a natural boundary. The Atrebates and Cantii roamed to the south, the Trinovantes and Catuvellauni to the north. The floodplain was no man’s land.’
‘We Romans were the first to deploy the corridor, making the river a highway?’
‘Before we put in decent roads it was the best way to move around supplies, Marcus. The estuary is navigable way up to here – and in the early days ships were more secure than trundling goods across country. They can float up on one tide, then back on the next. After the Rebellion we made this the provincial capital and now it’s a major import base.’
‘New city, new formal administrative centre –’
‘And new problems!’ said Hilaris, with unexpected feeling.
What problems? Did he already know what we were dealing with? It seemed a cue to discuss the Briton’s death.
‘Verovolcus,’ I admitted, ‘might have been in that district close to the river because he was trying to arrange transport to Gaul.’
I made no overt link to the problems. Whatever that was about could wait.
Hilaris turned his neat head and considered me. ‘You knew Verovolcus’ movements? Why was he going to Gaul?’
‘Exile. He was in disgrace.’
‘Exile!’ Some people would at once have asked me why. Ever the pedantic administrator, Hilaris demanded, ‘Have you told the governor that?’
‘Not yet.’ I had no option now. ‘Oh, I like Frontinus. I’ve worked with him before, Gaius, and on confidential matters too. But you’re the old lag in this province. I was more likely to tell you.’ I smiled, and the procurator acknowledged the compliment. ‘It’s a stupid story. Verovolcus killed an official. His motives were misguided, he expected royal protection – but he had misjudged Togidubnus.’
‘You exposed him.’ A statement, not a question. Hilaris knew how I worked. ‘And you did tell the King!’
‘I had to.’ That had been far from easy. Verovolcus had been the King’s close confidant. ‘It was tense. The King is virtually independent, and we were in his tribal centre. Imposing a Roman solution was not easy. Fortunately Togi wants amicable relations, so in the end he agreed that his man had to disappear. Murder’s a capital crime but that seemed the best I could ask for. From our angle, I felt I could sanction exile rather than a public trial and an execution. Sending Verovolcus to Gaul was my bargain for us all keeping the affair quiet.’
‘Neat,’ Hilaris agreed, ever pragmatic. Britain was a sensitive province since the Rebellion. Tribal feeling might not tolerate a respected king’s henchman being punished for murdering a Roman official. Verovolcus did it (I was confident of that) but the governor would have hated having to dole out a death sentence to the King’s right-hand man and if Frontinus was publicly lenient he would look weak, both here and back in Rome.
‘Verovolcus agreed on Gaul?’
‘He wasn’t keen.’
‘Londinium was not allowed as an alternative?’
‘Nowhere in Britain. I would have made Londinium formally off-limits if I had ever thought Verovolcus would turn up here.’
‘And the King?’
‘He knew Gaul was better than the standard desert island.’
‘But with Verovolcus killed in a Londinium bar instead, the King may well turn rough,’ Hilaris observed glumly.
‘Bound to,’ I said.
He cleared his throat, as if diffident. ‘Will he suspect that you arranged this death?’
I shrugged.
No stranger to the ways of undercover agents, Flavius Hilaris turned to stare at me. He was blunt: ‘Did you?’
‘No.’
He did not ask whether I would have done so, if I had thought of it. I chewed a fingernail, wondering that myself.
‘You said Verovolcus killed someone,’ suggested Hilaris. ‘Could his drowning be some form of retribution, Marcus?’
‘Unlikely.’ I was fairly sure. ‘There is nobody with an interest. He killed the architect, the project manager for the King’s new palace.’
‘What? Pomponius?’ As financial procurator, Hilaris ultimately signed off the bills for the King’s palace. He would know who the architect was – and that he had died. He would also have seen my situation-review afterwards. ‘But your report said –’
‘All it had to.’ I sensed a slight awkwardness, as if Hilaris and I answered to different masters over this. ‘I was on site to clear up problems. I put down the architect’s death as a “tragic accident”. There was no need to start a scandal by saying Togi’s man had killed him. The King will rein in his people and the crime won’t recur. A substitute is running the site, and running it well.’
Hilaris had let me talk him through it, but he remained unhappy. The report we were discussing had been addressed to the governor, but I sent my own copy to Vespasian. I had always intended to give a more accurate statement to the Emperor later – if he wanted to know. Killing the story might help him preserve good relations with his friend the King. I did not care. I was paid on results.
The results Vespasian wanted were to stop a glut of wild expenditure on a very expensive building site. He had sent me, nominally a private informer, because I was a first rate auditor. I had discovered a feud between the King as client and his officially appointed architect. When it flared up, with fatal results, we found ourselves left with nobody in charge of a multimillion-sesterces scheme – and chaos. Verovolcus, who had caused this mess, was not my favourite Briton. He was damned lucky that Gaul was the worst punishment I devised for him.
‘Did Pomponius have relatives?’ Hilaris was still fretting away at his retribution theory.
‘In Italy. He had a boyfriend in Britain who was rather cut up, but he’s working on the site. We beefed up his responsibilities; that should keep him quiet. I can check he has not left the area.’
‘I’ll send a messenger.’ If Hilaris was overruling me it was tactful – so far. ‘What is his name?’
‘Plancus.’
‘Did Verovolcus act alone?’
‘No. He had a crony. A site supervisor. We arrested him.’
‘Present location?’
Thank the gods I had been conscientious about tying up ends: ‘Noviomagus. The King’s responsibility.’
‘Punishment?’
‘That I don’t know –’ Now I felt like a schoolboy who had neglected his homework. Flavius Hilaris might be my wife’s uncle but if I had bungled, I would be slated. ‘Mandumerus had had only a secondary role and he was a local, so I let Togidubnus deal with him.’
‘Mandumerus, you say.’ Hilaris picked me up at once. ‘I’ll find out.’
I let him run with the line. In the long term, I could bunk off to Rome. Rome might give me a grilling, but I was up to it. Hilaris would live with the legacy of this tavern slaughter as long as he stayed in Britain. The royal connection was awkward enough. In addition, one of the Hilaris family’s private homes stood in Noviomagus, just a mile from the King. Poor Uncle Gaius had been handed a personal ‘bad neighbour’ quarrel, if nothing else.
‘Marcus, you don’t think Togidubnus himself has punished Verovolcus in this way?’
‘What a terrible thought!’ I grinned. I liked Hilaris, but the devious minds of bureaucrats never cease to amaze me. ‘The King was annoyed at the man’s hot-headed action – but more annoyed with me for finding out.’
‘Well, we are a step ahead of him so far.’
‘I hope you are not suggesting a cover-up!’ I offered satirically.
At that, Flavius Hilaris looked genuinely shocked. ‘Dear gods, no. But we do have some grace to find out what happened – before the King starts slamming us with ballista bolts.’ The use of a trooper’s term from this quiet, cultured man reminded me there was more to nice, stylus-pushing Uncle Gaius than most people noticed.
I foresaw what was coming. ‘You mean, I have time to do it?’
‘Of course.’ He beamed at me.
I sighed. ‘Well, thanks.’
‘Didius Falco, we are exceptionally lucky to have you here!’
Oh yes. This was a very familiar situation, one that clients had exploited in the past: I was implicated. I had made the victim leave his home ground, and though I told myself it was not my fault he ended up dead in a strange bar, I felt guilty. So I was stuck.
‘OH JUNO! I 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.