Two For The Lions (14 page)

XXV

ONCE WE REACHED the road, Anacrites expected me to tell him what was on my mind and began annoying me with his usual questions. I said he could do something useful by finding out about the house Calliopus had bought for his mistress. I would meet him later at our office in the Saepta. First, it would do no harm for me to visit the Granary of the Galbae. I only had to cross the Tiber and I was there.

He looked suspicious, thinking that was the last he would see of me. It had not escaped him that the Granary of the Galbae lay at the back of the Emporium and the Porticus Aemilia, just below the Lavernal Gate. From there it was just a short, steep hike up to the crest of the Aventine--and a long lunch at home with Helena. I reassured him that since I was going out to dinner I would not be needing lunch. Feeling evil, I made it sound as unconvincing as I could.

The
Horrea Galbana
was a whole palace of commerce. By the time I had struggled from the river wharf through the battling crush of stevedores and porters who were unloading barges and boats for the Emporium I was in no mood to be lightly impressed. It grated to enter this monstrous establishment, built by a rich family as the short cut to even greater wealth. The rental potential had always been enormous, even though the Sulpicii Galbae were probably unwilling to come down here themselves and haggle over grain prices. They had been persons of great status since Republican times; one of them became Emperor. He only stuck it for six months, but that must have been long enough to bring the Granary under state control.

I had to admit this was an astonishing place. It contained several great courtyards, each with hundreds of rooms on more than one floor, run by military-style cohorts of staff At least that gave me half a chance of finding out what I was after. There was bound to be documentation for everything, if I could find the relevant scribe before he bunked off for the local caupona. Anacrites was right; it was mid-morning: dangerously near the time when skivers had their lunch.

Not only grain was stored and sold here Space was rented out for everything from wine cellars to strongrooms. Some of the single booths were leased to working tradesmen: woven goods, expensive architectural stoneware, even fish. But mostly the buildings were specially constructed corn stores. They had raised tiled floors, set on dwarf wall... with ventilated thresholds to allow good air circulation through the tunnels underneath. They were plaster-lined, with only a louvred vent at the back for light. The great quadrangles were lined with rows of these dim, cool rooms, sealed with tight doors against dampness, vermin and theft, the triple enemies of stored grain. Most of the staircases turned into ramps after a few steps, to facilitate life for the porters as they struggled around with the heavy sacks on their backs; many of them were permanently bent in the spine and bow-legged. Cats were allowed to run everywhere as a countermeasure to rats and mice. Fire buckets stood at frequent intervals. Maybe it was my cold, but to me that day the air seemed thick with annoying dust.

I found the administrative office easily. An hour later I had wormed my way up the queue to see a slinky-hipped clerk with long eyelashes. He might eventually spare time from telling coarse jokes to his neighbour, the rent-clerk, and might discuss the dockets I needed to know about.

Once I reached him, he buffed his nails on the shoulder of his tunic and prepared to fob me off

We had a long wrangle about whether he was empowered to let me see despatching details, followed by a fierce set-to over his claim that there was no customer called Calliopus.

I borrowed a tablet from the rent-clerk, who had been observing my problems with a supercilious smirk. On it I wrote clearly: "ARX: ANS.'

"Mean anything?"

"Oh that!" mouthed the beauteous king of the dockets.

"Well, that's not a private customer."

"So who is this public one?"

"Confidential." I had thought it would be. "SPQR."

I stood on his foot, letting my boot studs press between his sandal straps, grabbed handfuls of his pristine tunic, and pushed his chest until he was squealing and leaning backwards.

"Spare me the secret passwords," I growled. "You may be the prettiest scribe at the snootiest old granary on the Embankment, but any tough nut with an ounce of good sweetbreads in his cranium can decipher that logo once he associates the words "grain" and "once a week". Adding "s' and "P" and "Q" and "R" just shows you know some of the alphabet. Now listen to me, petal. The corn you supplied this week is poisoning birds' Think about that very carefully. Then consider how you will explain to the Senate and People of Rome why you refused to help me find who tampered with the corn."

I stepped back suddenly, loosening my grip on his tunic. "It goes to the Arx," confessed the scribe in a terrified whisper.

"And the rest stands for "
Anseres Sacri
." I told him, though he knew it well enough.

He was right to be anxious. The sack of corn that had poisoned the ostrich had been intended for the famous Sacred Geese.

XXVI

"DOWN, NUXIE!"

For a moment there seemed a good chance my scruff would end up in custody for goose-worrying. A priest of the Temple of Juno Moneta peered out from the sanctum suspiciously. Casual visitors were discouraged up here; the Citadel was no place to walk your dog.

Juno Moneta had in ancient times assumed responsibility for the Mint and for the patronage of Roman commerce--an early instance of the female sex taking over the housekeeping purse. Jupiter might be the Best and Greatest, but his celestial wife had grabbed the cash I sympathised. Still, as Helena said so sensibly, it was useful for one person to control the home budget.

"Oh please, don't set them of!!" The custodian of Juno's sacred guard-birds seemed cheerful and relaxed. If Nux retrieved one of his charges for my cooking pot it would simply pose awkward problems of bureaucracy. "I have to call out the Praetorians if they decide to have a honk--not to mention filing an incident report as long as your arm. You're no marauding Gaul, I hope?"

"Certainly not. Even my dog has Roman citizenship."

"What a relief."

Ever since a monstrous army of Celts once raided Italy and actually sacked Rome, a permanent gaggle of geese had been given privileged status on the Arx, in honour of their feathered forebears who had raised the alarm and saved the Capitol. I had imagined that the big white birds led a pampered life. This lot looked a bit wormy, to tell the truth.

The geese were taking an aggressive interest in Nux. She barked once, then shrank back against my legs. I wasn't too confident I could save the little coward. As I bent to pat her reassuringly, I noticed I had stepped in some of the slimy green droppings that lay in wait all over the hillside at the top of the steps past the Mamertine.

Across the dip on the Capitol, the twin peak to the Arx, the restored Temple of Jupiter had begun to rise slowly. Destroyed by a catastrophic fire at the end of the civil war that brought Vespasian to power, the Temple was now being rebuilt in due magnificence as a sign of the Flavian Emperors' triumph over their rivals. Or as they would no doubt put it, as a gesture of piety and the renewal of Rome. Fine white dust drifted towards us on the misty rain, through which there was no diminution in the sound of stonemasons chipping at marble; they were, of course, secure in the knowledge that the Census property tax would be paying for their materials and labour at top rates.

Once they had built the new Temple of Capitoline Jove, they would be moving on profitably to the Flavian Amphitheatre, the new stage for the Theatre of Marcellus, restoring the Temple of the Divine Claudius, then creating the Forum of Vespasian, complete with two libraries and a Temple of Peace"

An area near Juno's outdoor altar had been turned into a tiny garden for the Sacred Geese. They had a fine view over the roof of the Mamertine prison to the Forum, though their enclosure was rather rocky and inhospitable.

The custodian was a slight, elderly public slave with a whispy beard and bandy legs, clearly not chosen for his love of winged creatures. Every time a goose wandered too close to him he jeered, "Foxes!"

"It's a terrible place for them," he confirmed, noticing my polite concern. He sheltered in a hut under a stunted pine tree. For a man with easy access to goose egg omelettes, not to mention the occasional roast drumstick no doubt, he was oddly underweight. He matched his thin charges, though. "They ought to have a pond or a stream, with growing herbage to tear up. If I take my eyes off them, they wander off in search of better pasture. I go down and round them up with my stave--" He shook it in a listless manner. It was a splintered stick I wouldn't throw for the dog. "Sometimes they come home with a few feathers plucked, but normally nobody bothers them."

"Out of respect for their sanctity?" "No. They can peck very nastily."

I noticed that although there was loose corn sprinkled on a bare patch of ground, the geese were foraging in a heap of faded grass clippings. Interesting. I cleaned my boot on some of the greenery that had been supplied to the hissing guard-poultry" "I have to talk to you about your corn supply."

The custodian groaned. "Nothing to do with me!"

"The weekly sacks of grain?"

"I keep telling them we don't want so much."

"Who do you tell?"

"The drivers."

"And what do they do with the surplus?"

"Take it back to the granary, I guess."

"The geese don't eat corn?"

"Oh if I scatter some for them they toss it about a bit"

But they prefer greens."

"Where do you get their green feed then?"

"The men at Caesar's Gardens; they bring me their clippings. It eases the load, given that they have to cart their rubbish outside the city. And some of the herbalists who have market stalls bring me unsold bundles when they're getting limp, rather than carry them home again."

This was classic bureaucracy. Some clerk believed that the Sacred Geese required a large supply of grain because his predecessors had left him a brief saying so. Nobody ever asked the keeper of the poultry yard to confirm what was needed. He probably did complain to the drivers, but the drivers didn't want to know. No chance they would report back to the suppliers at the Granary of the Galbae. The suppliers were being paid by the Treasury so they kept on posting out the sacks. If you could find the original order clerk it could be put right; but nobody ever did find him.

"What's the rationale for the corn then?"

"If the poor can have a corn dole, so can Juno's geese. They saved Rome. The city shows its gratitude."

"What; a hundred thousand skivers receive their vouchers for free corn--and one of the dockets is routinely made out to the Sacred Honkers? I suppose they get best white loaf wheat too?"

"No, no," soothed their elderly gooseboy, who was slow to appreciate irony.

"This has been going on for five hundred years?"

"All my time," nodded the custodian self-righteously.

"Is it possible," I asked, wearily because my cold was getting the better of me now, "That the drivers take your rejects away and sell off the sacks cheap?"

"Oh gods, don't ask me," scoffed the custodian. "I'm just stuck here talking to birds all day."

I told him I did not want to worry him, but he really ought to think about it seriously since today's sacks must have been tampered with. He could have ended up in charge of a pile of pillow feathers. When I mentioned the dead ostrich, he did finally react.

"Ostriches!" It had brought forth real contempt. "Those bastards will eat anything, you know. They like to swallow stones." He seemed fonder of his geese now, by comparison.

"The ostriches don't object to corn, and it looks as if they get it," I said shortly. "Look, this is serious. First we had better collect up what you've put down today, and then don't give the geese any more unless you've tested that sack on some bird who's not sacred."

It took a bit of persuasion, but the threat of losing his charges worked in the end" I tied Nux to a tree--where the geese came and pretended to mob her--then the custodian and I spent half an hour on our knees, carefully picking up every speck of corn we could see.

"So what's this about?" he asked me when we finally stood up and stretched our aching backs.

"It's part of a war to the death between the keepers of the wild beast menageries that supply the arena. If their stupidity has brought them too close to the Sacred Geese, it needs to be stopped right now. I have to find out how and when the sack that did for the ostrich found its way off the granary cart--"

"Oh I can tell you that."

"How come?"

"The drivers always stop at the caupona at the bottom of the hill and have a warming drink before they toddle off again. In winter they have their beaker indoors. Anyone who knows their habits could come and have a quiet word about any spare sacks on the cart. Of course it would be risky--the sacks are labelled for the geese. What's just happened must have been a one-off."

"Reckon so?"

I thought Calliopus' ostriches had probably been fed cheaply on the sacred grain for longer than the custodian wanted me to think. It was possible--and indeed it was the most plausible solution--that this cheery old fellow took a cut from the grainsack scam. Doing so was probably the traditional perk of his job. I could land him in big trouble if I reported it--but I wasn't after him.

"Thanks for your help."

"I'll have to put in a report about my geese being nearly poisoned today."

"Oh don't do that, or we'll all have to waste a great deal of time over it."

"What's your name?" he insisted.

"Didius Falco. I work for the Palace. Trust me; I'll deal with this. I'm intending to interrogate the man behind the poisoning. It shouldn't happen again--but take my advice: if you don't want all the corn sacks, ask your superiors to reduce the official order. Otherwise, one day some interfering auditor with less good manners than me is going to raise a stink."

There must have been unwanted corn coming up to the Capitol since records began. I could have just ended one of the Empire's most historic supply rackets. Vespasian would be proud of me. On the other hand, there were going to be some pretty skinny ostriches entertaining the crowds. Our new Emperor wanted to be popular; he might prefer me to ignore the stolen sacks and keep the exotics big and fit.

I picked up Nux for her own safely. As I left, the custodian was still muttering about his duly to inform various official... that disaster had been leveled at the precious geese. I reckoned it was all for show. He must know it was best to keep quiet.

Once he realised that I had stopped listening, he returned to his normal tasks. Walking down the hill towards the corner of the Forum, I heard him teasing the sacred birds with an affectionate cry of "Roasted in Green Sauce!"

It was about then I realised that while I had taken my eyes off her, Nux must have been rolling in the unpleasant goose droppings.