See Delphi And Die (9 page)

XIX

Only the promise of information made Helena agree to the appointment. She was furious that the interfering Council of Sixteen had put a stop to our visit. The fact that they were women seemed to make her even more angry.

She took up a position in a colonnade, looking intellectual amidst a bunch of scrolls. I put a stool in the next bay and sat there deliberately idle, with my sandals tossed aside and my bare feet on a column pedestal. I was picking my teeth with a twig. On the Aventine that is understood to be an insult.

Somewhat later than she had promised, Megiste marched up, steaming ahead of her female attendant, and introduced herself to Helena, who - since she was receiving someone of such renowned respectability - had made Albia sit with her as a chaperon. I received a disapproving look from the new arrival, but was then ignored by all of them. The attendant in the colourful chiton had her back to me so I could not even flirt.

Helena intended to take charge. 'How pleasant to meet you, Megiste. I have been told how much you are involved in the community. Elis is to be congratulated. Few cities can summon up sixteen respectable women.'

'We are a tight little band,' Megiste confirmed.

'The same ones run the Council every year?'

'We try to attract new blood. It's never easy finding volunteers, and experience counts. It usually ends up with the same old group of us.'

'I had imagined all Greek women are still confined in their quarters at home, while their men go out and enjoy themselves.' This was meant to be offensive. Helena Justina hated the Greek system of penning up women in separate quarters in the house, unseen by visitors.

'My members are very traditional,' Megiste said. 'We believe in the old ways.'

I had never seen Helena smirk so much. 'Weaving and looking after the children - or booking the comely courtesan for your husband's next manly symposium?'

Megiste declined to take offence. 'Yes, I do like to hire the hetaera myself.'

Helena chose to take her literally. 'Marvellous. Do you pick them for big busts or intelligent conversation?'

'Decent flute-playing!' snapped Megiste.

'Of course; far better to keep their wandering hands occupied!' Having done her worst, Helena whipped back to business. 'Now - since we are being shipped out of Olympia so very unexpectedly, Megiste my dear, I do have urgent packing. Will you tell me what you came to say about Valeria Ventidia?' Megiste must have glanced over at me. 'Oh let him stay. I honour the Roman tradition,' boasted Helena. 'My husband and I have no secrets.'

'How very tiresome for you!' chipped in Megiste, evening the score.

Since she did want to obtain all possible information, Helena capitulated. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. 'Well, he tells me everything, like a good boy - while I just confide what I want him to know... Marcus, darling, you are hanging around like a dandelion seed. Why don't you take your dog out for a walk?'

I was a traditional Roman. As a man, I was king, chief priest, and all the gods in my own household. On the other hand, when my woman spoke, I took the hint. I whistled Nux to fetch my sandals, and we set off to explore the Hill of Cronus.

Helena Justina was indeed a traditional Roman wife. Later, she shared with me not just Megiste's information, but her own thoughts on it. At the sanctuary, the death of a young woman had been considered a matter for the Council of Sixteen. When Valeria Ventidia was killed, the stalwart ladies had investigated. They discovered the young bride had developed an unwise 'friendship' with a man. He was an athlete, a champion pankration exponent from a previous Olympiad, who was hanging around in the hope of attracting sponsorship. He had been given permission to erect a statue of himself among the hundreds which adorned the site, but he could not afford it. His home town failed to come up with the money, so he hoped to raise cash from admiring sports fans. The Seven Sights party - rich Roman travellers, all in love with the Greek ideal - had looked like possible patrons. He attracted Valeria's attention somehow and was working on her to persuade her husband, and possibly others, to sponsor him.

Curiously, the Fates had arranged that the champion in question was none other than Milo of Dodona. His attack on Cornelius, Megiste said, indicated his propensity for unprovoked violence.

The ladies were inclined to exonerate the athlete from sordid motives in befriending Valeria. They accepted, however, that the relationship could have turned nasty without him at first intending it. Valeria herself had been reckless and stupid. The ladies suspected it was the athlete who killed her - but they could not prove it.

This was a new turn of events. I was eager to interrogate Milo. Curiously again, another Greek quirk of fate had ruled it right out. Megiste regretfully told Helena that, although he had been in the best of hands, that afternoon while he was being tended at the Temple of Hera, Milo had died. He had been given a soothing sleeping draught - one of proven, traditional origin - which had seemed to help. But he never woke up.

This was doubly unfortunate for us. It looked as if Milo must have died from the injuries Young Glaucus caused with the discus. Concussion can work in peculiar ways. As Megiste pointed out to Helena, it was now even more in our interests to leave Olympia fast.

Spectators had been killed on occasion when hit with a flying discus; usually they died instantly. But Milo of Dodona was strong and healthy. When we saw him carried off from the swimming pool, he was groaning, but he had come round and should have had nothing worse than a headache. In my opinion all he had needed was a long drink of water and a few hours' rest.

'I am amazed, Helena, that in the expert care of a matron of Elis, Milo failed to make a recovery.'

'Never tangle with a townswomen's guild,' warned Helena darkly. 'Forget them pottering with their beehives, Marcus. We are in the land of Medea, the child-murdering mother; Clytemnestra, the husband-slayer; big strong girls like the fighting Amazons, who sliced off their own breasts to prevent them tangling in their bowstrings... Listen; after you left and Megiste removed her veil, I saw she had a black eye. I asked if she had been beaten by her husband. She said that it happened at the Temple of Hera.'

'I suppose she walked into a cellar door?'

'Yes, and how appropriate. 'Walking into a door: is a very traditional lie!'

'I get the impression, Helena, that the Council of Sixteen is called in to be the fixers when this sanctuary has some scandal. I'm none too certain that Milo of Dodona killed Valeria - Valeria was covered with yellow athletics dust; I noticed that Milo used the grey. Not proof, perhaps, but indicative.'

'So, Valeria was not killed by Milo?'

'And Milo was not killed by Young Glaucus. But it may be convenient for some people if it looks as if he was.'

Helena Justina said softly, 'Imagine Milo of Dodona, half pacified with a sleeping draught. It would be tricky to get the dosage correct for a man of his enormous size. Then he would be difficult to handle if he thrashed about - as he would do, if the dose was too low and he revived enough to realise he was being smothered with a pillow, say. Anybody holding down the pillow might well end up with bruises.'

'This is hypothetical.'

'It's right, Marcus!' Helena was rarely so prejudiced. She must have really loathed Megiste.

'So why would Milo need to be silenced?' I mused. 'Well, if he really had been involved with Valeria, then after she died, he must have become a frightened man. To anyone who found out that he had known her, he would look guilty. So he had a spectacular body but a small brain, a brain that had taken a few batterings in his career...'

Helena helped me work it out. The Council of Sixteen may originally have promised him protection. He was Greek; he was possibly innocent; and even if Valeria had behaved badly with him, respectable women with traditional values may have felt that a man is always in the right. To the Council, Valeria deserved her fate.'

'Cobnuts. Respectable women with traditional values. are deadly!' I had made Helena smile. 'Then along comes Didius Falco. Even the Council of Sixteen had failed to make the scandal go away. The women, with or without the priests of Zeus, were forced to come up with new tactics. Someone persuaded Milo to attack me.'

'When that failed, thanks to Glaucus, maybe they feared it would rebound. I expect the priests set him on you,' Helena suggested, 'while the women thought that was a stupid idea. It meant you knew that Milo existed. You were about to discover his link with Valeria. Following the discus incident, you might have gone to talk to him.

'Yes, when a gigantic bastard attacks me, I always have a few kind words with him afterwards!'

Helena had her own dark anger. 'It is possible that the priests or the Council of Sixteen or both decided Milo needed to be punished now, either for his stupid involvement with the girl, or for actually killing her, if he did so. Anyway, Marcus, Milo may have genuinely liked Valeria. If you had probed, perhaps he would have told you something he knew about her death.'

Utter frustration gripped me. 'And what was it? What could Milo have told me? Was he the real killer? If not, did he know who was?'

Helena and I were now certain of one thing. Milo of Dodona had been silenced. He had been put out of contention by the redoubtable dame from the Elian Council of Sixteen.

As for my trip up the Hill of Cronus, as I expected, that had been a waste of time. My turn for confiding. I described it to Helena. I had walked up, looked around at the scenery, found nothing, and walked back down again feeling very tired. Now we had to sail away from Olympia with no real new evidence, either in the murder of Valeria Ventidia or the mystery of Marcella Caesia three years before.

I warned my party to be packed and ready as soon as the tireless Olympia cockerel sounded his first note next day. They were all subdued, especially Young Glaucus. As if he wanted to atone for his part in the death of Milo, he came to me with an object that we would carry away with us, our one piece of tangible evidence. it was a jumping weight.

'I persuaded Myron, the flute-player, to steal this from the superintendent's office. It was kept in a cupboard, after Valeria was killed.'

As weights go, it was striking. Unlike the much plainer styles that Glaucus had shown me, this was made of bronze, in the form of a charging wild boar, full of character. A plain bar formed the handgrip. In use, the boar's curved body would extend over the knuckles. His sharp spinal crest would make the weight doubly dangerous if used to bludgeon someone.

'Is this the one they found covered with blood?'

'We think so, though it's been cleaned up. There were two on the wall. The other one has not been seen since the attack.'

'I wonder if the killer took that. Some of them want a trophy...' Running my finger along the wild boar's crest, I did not go on.

Glaucus shuddered. I wrapped the boar weight in a spare cloak and put it away with the rest of my luggage.

I refused to be hijacked. I would not meekly accept the ship Megiste had arranged and then go where she sent me - probably straight back to Rome. Instead, we would saddle up our own donkeys, and head for Pyrgos, thence overland to Patrae on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, where we would take a ship of my choice up to see the provincial governor.

Stuff the respectable ladies. This was my brief from Claudius Laeta at the palace. Normally I ignored official instructions. For once I would stick to them.

Our independence presumably annoyed the sanctuary authorities. I hope so. It certainly upset almighty Zeus. That evening, we noticed flashes of light intermittently, as if there was a storm far out on the Ionian Sea. These gradually increased. As darkness fell, all the hills around us were lit by ever more intense bursts of sheet and forked lightning. The pine-scented air grew heavy. We ate a frugal evening meal, sweating and argumentative, amidst wild and eerie flickers of light. It became all too clear why this remote place had inspired the ancients to say Zeus ruled the area. Closer and closer came the storm, until a slight skirl of rain preceded sudden huge drops. A long, heavy rainfall then lasted all night while Olympia resounded with thunder for hours, until any among us who believed in divinities must have believed that our presence had angered the all-knowing gods.

PART THREE 

CORINTH

Up on top of Acrocorinth is a shrine of Aphrodite. They say the spring behind the Temple is the bribe Asopos gave to Sisyphos. I have heard this was Peirene and the water in the city runs down from it...

PAUSANIUS, Guide to Greece

XX

Corinthus. Rome had governed Greece, our province of Achaea, for over two hundred years now, so we had stamped our own style on the capital. First, the Consul Mummius robustly subdued ancient Corinth after it failed to support him. Standing no nonsense, he burned it down, levelled the walls, and buried the foundations. Architects like to start a rebuild on a cleared site. For added cleansing, Mummius had killed all the men, sold the women and children into slavery, and auctioned the city's art treasure in the marketplace in Rome. To call him thorough was rhetorical understatement. Still, those were the bad old days. We, for our part, hoped the Greeks understood that point.

For a hundred years the once rich and famous city of Corinth remained a wasteland. Then Julius Caesar rebuilt it with heavy grandeur. Corinth, full of shops, temples, and administrative buildings, was settled anew with freedmen and foreigners. Nowadays it was a haunt of traders, sailors, and good time girls, its houses and markets peopled by Italians, Judaeans, Syrians, and immigrant Greeks from other locations.

The famous Isthmus was only about eight Roman miles across. There were two harbours, Lechaion looking west down the Gulf (where we landed) and Kenchreai facing east. Many people landed at one, then crossed on foot and took a new ship from the other harbour. Alternatively, a paved tow-road, the diolkos, allowed empty ships to be transported on wheeled carriers right across the land bridge, to save them having to sail all the way around the Peloponnese. At the narrowest point of the Isthmus we saw two partly dug immensely deep channels for a canal - one of Nero's spectacular ideas, ended by his death. I reckoned it would never happen now.

Corinth had a ground-level settlement and a steep, rocky acropolis, which was included in a great loop of the city walls. Corinth town was low by anybody's standards, because of its shifting commercial population; we heard the acropolis was not much better, though emptier because rioters and drunks hate climbing hills. Both the low and the high towns had temples to Apollo and Aphrodite, and both had fountain outlets for the famous Peirene Spring. Gaius and Cornelius had convinced themselves that one of the Temples of Aphrodite was famous for its thousand official slave prostitutes. Don't ask me who had told them that. I swear it was not me.

I had a mandate from Claudius Laeta to report progress to the governor. I would make that useful. I had in mind to insist that the governor provide me with a pass for a repeat visit to Olympia, backed up this time by an armed guard.

He might have done it, had he been there. But naturally, in a world where all Romans who could afford it were busying themselves sightseeing, the governor was away that month. When I turned up at his palace, I was told the bad news. He had disappeared on a long summer break - or as his official engagement diary put it, he was up country, 'inspecting milestones'.

Well, I never expected a governor to work. As in so many similar situations, I was stuck with the substitute. Even he was said to be locked in a meeting, but a few jokes with the petitions clerk got me in anyway. And just my luck. While the governor was swanning off on the milestone count, his deputy looking after Roman rule in Corinth was. Aquillius Macer. That's right. Still wet behind the stuck-out ears, he was the quaestor who had bungled the original investigation into the murder of Valeria Ventidia.

I had no hope that Aquillius would help me identify a killer he himself had failed to find.

'I say, Falco; I've never seen one of these things before.' A man of twenty-five or six, he had a big Roman nose, heavy jowls, fleshy lips, and luxuriant floppy hair. He had, however, taken some trouble to supply me with refreshments. In a better mood, I might have found his unflappable attitude endearing. He was now looking at my letter of introduction from Laeta as if it was a poisoned arrow stuck in his foot. 'What am I supposed to do?'

'Treat it as top priority and give me every assistance.'

'Right! What do you need from us?'

I tried it on. 'Decent accommodation, a scribe who can write ciphers and a string of steady mules. Most urgently, a fast line of communication back to Rome.'

'Weekly reports to the Emperor?'

Weekly trinket-dispatch to my children. Best not worry a quaestor with these facts of life. He had enough impending anxiety. 'First, I need to sit down with you, Aquillius. You must give me a detailed debrief on this unholy balls-up on the Valeria Ventidia case.'

The quaestor went pale. I turned the screw. 'Can you put a stop on travel for the group involved, please? I want to grill these people. I can go to them, or they can be brought here, whichever is easier logistically.'

I had thought logistics would be a new concept. Aquillius surprised me. 'We've got them ready for you in Corinth,' he announced at once. 'I've dumped them in a lodging house; they don't like it; they are constantly complaining. They were due to bugger off to Rhodes and Troy, but I told them they are all suspects. I said a top-flight special investigator was coming out.'

Dealing with the Palace was normally a trial. But sometimes it could work in my favour. Claudius Laeta had made Aquillius believe I was Vespasian's best agent.

Having my suspects penned up was a luxury. The only thing that did cause me concern was that when I asked about Camillus Aelianus, Aquillius seemed never to have heard of him. Still, Aulus would not have wanted to be caught up in a house arrest. He must have seen the posse coming, so vanished smartly. I could hardly complain; it was the way I had taught him to act.

'Thanks for rounding them up. Can I take it that the governor positively wants the case sorted?'

'No,' replied Aquillius, unapologetically. 'He wants to ship them right back to Italy. Prove one of them did the murder, please, so we can be rid of the lot. We hate these culture tourists, Falco. Amateurs bumbling about, causing trouble abroad.

'Causing you work?' I suggested mildly.

'You have no idea how much!'

It seemed best to pin Aquillius down. Otherwise, whenever I tried to discuss anything, he would be 'in an important meeting'. So I stuck him with an immediate case review.

'Just a few quick details,' I promised insincerely. 'No need to call for a note-taker... You were there at Olympia when Valeria Ventidia was killed?'

'Perils of the job!' He grinned. He was probably not on the take, yet eager to slack. The chance to visit the Olympic Games next year would be the best perk in his tour of duty. 'Working party. I had gone on an advance site visit. We like to show the standard. Let people know that Rome is in charge.' Have five days of sport and believe they were working...

'The governor will attend the Games?'

'Yes, he takes on a lot of official duties.' That would be: handing over bribes to the priests, munching cinnamon cakes with the respectable ladies of the Council of Sixteen, maybe exerting himself at the palaestra (where a free pass and a personal coach would materialise) or with his mistress, if he had one. They would stay at the Leonidaion; they would be provided with a prime suite, free of charge.

'It's a hard life, representing Rome abroad.'

'It is, Falco!'

'So you had gone on a recce, but you found yourself stuck with the trouble?'

'I think I handled it.'

I made no comment. 'What were your findings? I know the girl was discovered by slaves in the skamma very early in the morning, then carried to the party's tent by her hysterical husband.'

'They had marital problems. They were known to have quarrelled the previous day.

'Was that a one-off, or routine?'

'It had happened throughout the trip. Their relationship was volatile; they often had heated exchanges.'

'Was the last quarrel special?'

'Who knows?'

'Subject?'

'People told me it was all about sex. Mind you,' said Aquillius, playing the man of the world, 'sex is what most tourists have on their minds most of the time.' I raised my eyebrows in gentle enquiry. 'They have all read up on the love lives of the gods. Then they start looking for personal experience. We have a terrible time at temples,' he informed me bitterly.

'Ah, the legendary Corinth temple prostitutes!'

'No, no; the pros are never any trouble. Well, they've been at it for centuries.'

'So what's the problem?' Informers have heard most things, but I felt wary.

'Travellers want thrills. We've caught them bribing priests to let them lurk in sanctuaries after dark, so they can breathlessly wait for a sensual experience with a god, - it's usually the priest himself, of course. Priests will screw anything... We regularly have to peel masturbating male visitors off cult statues, especially if it's a beautiful sculpture.'

'Appalling!'

'You said it.' Aquillius looked genuinely disgusted. 'Maintaining good relations with the locals is bloody hard when Roman visitors have no sense of shame. Still, none of the drooling here is quite as bad as they get with the Aphrodite of Cnidus -' The Aphrodite of Cnidus, a masterpiece by Praxiteles, had been the first fully nude statue of a goddess ever made and was still revered as sculptural perfection; I had seen Nero's copy in Rome and agreed with that. Aquillius was still ranting. 'Mind you, from what I've heard, the Cnidians ask for all they get, not least by charging extra to go through a special gate for a viewing of their Aphrodite's exquisite backside...'

The worldliness was a veneer. Aquillius seemed uncomfortable with his own salacious stories. He would not be the first virgin sent abroad for his country, who then grew up fast.

'So, quaestor - has Seven Sights Travel been accused of lewd midnight love trysts and temple desecration?'

'Not on this trip,' said Aquillius.

'Then let's get back to basics - What were your conclusions about the Valeria Ventidia murder?'

'I told you that: the husband did it.'

I gazed at him. 'Any proof?'

'Most likely candidate.'

I gazed at him some more.

'Falco, look, most of the others liked the girl. None of them stood to gain from bashing her head in with a discus.

'A jumping weight.'

'What's the difference?' Not much if you were the victim, dead. But her friends and family, wanting answers, deserved accuracy. 'The husband denied it, naturally.'

'You interviewed the others?'

'A sample.' That would be a small sample. It would not surprise me if Aquillius just asked the tour leader, Phineus. Phineus would have passed him off with whatever story suited Seven Sights.

'When was she missed?'

'When people settled down for the night. Then the husband went out, ostensibly to look for her.' I saw no reason for 'ostensibly'; looking for her seemed a good reaction, quarrel or no quarrel. Aquillius took a harder line. 'I reckon he found her - maybe in the arms of her lover - and that was when he killed her.'

'What was his answer to that charge?'

'Oh he claimed he never saw her.'

'And you were unable to find anyone who saw them together at the palaestra the night Valeria died?'

'Right.'

'The first real witnesses were next morning, when he found her dead?'

'Yes, that was tough. We had to let him go. This is a Roman province, Falco. We do have standards!'

Not high enough standards for me, however.

'What was your take on Milo of Dodona?' I asked, giving nothing away.

'Who's he?'

'A friend of the girl, apparently.'

'Silly cow! Milo was never mentioned.'

'Maybe nobody knew. Maybe Milo was Valeria's special little secret.' I left Aquillius to work out any relevance. 'Now tell me about the other dead girl - Marcella Caesia.'

'The one with the bloody awful father?' The quaestor groaned. Caesius must have really made a nuisance of himself, though Aquillius had only heard about it. 'Before I came to Greece.'

'Can I see the file? The father was given a banning order. He presumably had a lot of contact with your office, if he managed to annoy the governor that much.'

'Oh, I can't show the file to you, Falco. Security.' This probably meant the governor had given vent to his feelings too rudely - or more likely Aquillius knew the scroll had been put in their dead archive and re-used for packaging souvenirs the governor was sending home. 'Our view is that the girl either went up the Hill of Cronus to meet with a lover, or-' He lowered his voice in hollow sympathy. 'Or she did away with herself.'

I gave him the silent treatment again. Aquillius took it with his normal good nature. 'No, we don't really go for the lover story. By all accounts she was a quiet little scrap. No looks and no personality.'

I told him her father had mentioned that before her trip there had been 'trouble with a young man'. Aquillius blanked it and stuck with his own version. 'We think she got carried away by the mystique of Greece, and had a breakdown of some sort.'

'So officially it was suicide?'

'Yes, but the governor is a soft old cove. He just could not bring himself to say that to the father. When Caesius kept on agitating, the best solution was to expel him.'

I was tired. I had had a long sea journey; now I faced a week of irritation with bureaucracy. I gave up.

I asked for and was given the name of a reputable lodging house.

'Will Claudius Laeta foot your bill, Falco?'

'As the crime occurred out here, he'll suggest you fund me against your petty cash.'

Aquillius Macer accepted it. He was the province's finance officer but had no clue how to fiddle costings. He could have passed this expense straight back to Rome and saved the money for entertaining influential locals. He was a hopeless overseas ambassador - and I was keen to preserve my meagre funds from Laeta, so I let him subsidise me.

Aquillius then supplied the address where the Seven Sights group were staying, in some fleapit called the Helios. 'Well, all except the escort.'

A new surprise. 'Phineus! What's happened to him?'

'Oh nothing. But we all know Phineus, he's no problem. He has other groups to look after. He's been set loose on parole.' That almost sounded as if Phineus was given a governmental travel pass and free hay for his donkey.