Lindsey Davis - Scandal Takes a Holiday

SCANDAL TAKES A HOLIDAY

Marcus Didius Falco

A Novel

XX

I shall omit what was said in my household next morning.

' Your choice, then.' The vigiles who had brought us immediately did what they were trained to do: they moved back the gawpers. The salt workers were gnarled little men with particular features and little to say. Their ancestors had stared at Aeneas in the same way these were staring at us now; their ancestors' ancestors knew old Father Tiber when he was an adolescent lad. Others in the audience were contract drivers who had noticed the crowd and left their carts up on the road. The men stood about with their thumbs in their belts, giving out opinions. Carters always know what's what... and they are usually wrong. I walked up to Petronius. We clasped hands briefly. Helena had gone straight to the chariot, but it was empty.

'We had to hunt for the body.' Petro muttered, but ever alert, she heard him. ' Come and see.' He walked with us across the marsh, away from the cluster of people. When we had gone beyond earshot and our feet were soaking wet, we saw something lying up ahead. Helena ran forward, but stopped in shocked surprise.

' It is not the girl!' A sudden rush of tears caught her. I stood at her side, bemused. There was some relief not to be looking at Rhodope, but at the body of a man instead. Petronius watched us both.

' This is Theopompus.'

' Thought so.' Petro and I were now back on old terms. Helena had crouched to look at his face. It was not pretty. Theopompus was lying on his side, curled slightly. He must have been dead here half the night; what remained of his clothing was sodden. He had been beaten and then robbed of his finery. Troubling discolorations covered what we could see of him, though at least there was little blood. It looked as if he had been finished off with strangulation.

' Not easy to see what the girl saw in him!' Petro commented. Theopompus must have been twice Rhodope's age. He was short limbed and sturdy, deeply tanned even where his braided crimson tunic was drawn high up one thigh; the fine material was now filthy and stained. If it had stayed clean, we would probably have found him naked; his belt, his boots, and all his jewellery had been taken. Some of the gold at least had been worn a long time so it had left white skin on removal. a tight arm bracelet, finger rings, even ear-rings probably, because a trickle of blood had dried on his neck. I was not convinced the killers stripped the corpse. Those salt workers would have had a good look this morning; that could even explain how Theopompus came to be so far from his vehicle. The salt workers might have dragged the corpse away before they lost their nerve and sent for the vigiles. But he may have been alive when the chariot crashed, then ran for his life until he was brought down and finished off. Though none too handsome by classical standards, he had had more or less even features, before someone broke his nose for him last night. His dark, triangular face was slightly hook nosed. I supposed he was attractive, to a young woman who was ready for adventure.

' I don't imagine the girl did this.' Petronius was in the dry, brutal mood that often afflicted him when faced with a vicious death. ' Well, not unless she was built like a barracks, and she had just found out he was a love rat...'

' Her name is Rhodope,' said Helena, in a tight voice. ' She is timid and slight, aged seventeen. I hope she never saw him like this.' She gazed around anxiously.

' I hope she is not out here!' Petronius shrugged. For him, the girl had tangled with the wrong people and her fate was her own fault. If anything, he blamed her for making him and his men have to come out here and deal with this.

' So where in Hades is she?' I mused.

' We don't know if she was with him. If she was, and could walk after the crash, she may have wandered off,' said Petronius.

' Fusculus has gone to the river to look.' We could see remote figures, moving slowly along a line of vegetation that marked what must be the course of the Tiber. It took a long loop away from the road and right around the marsh.

' Was Theopompus brought here dead or killed here?'

' Can't tell. I suppose it's just as bad being beaten to pulp in a tavern - but there's something about this place...' Petro tailed off. He was a townsman. He hated the thought of murder taking place in isolated country spots.

' Did the salt workers see or hear anything last night, Petro?'

' What do you think? Not a thing.'

' They huddle in their huts and if late-night marauders come out from Ostia in crazy vehicles, they bolt the doors?'

' They don't want trouble.' Petro sounded restless and irritable. He might pretend a scene like this left him untouched, but he was wrong. ' Drunks come out here for crazy fun. They see the people on the salt marshes as weird sprites, just waiting to be knocked on the head by town sophisticates. And revellers looking for trouble suppose they will get away with it.'

' The killers of Theopompus probably will.' We started to walk back towards the crashed chariot.

'We have nothing to pin this on anyone,' Petronius grumbled. ' I wouldn't want to go to court with it. A defender could argue that those bruises were acquired when the chariot went off the road...'

' Hard work explaining the slit throats on the horses,' I reminded him.

' True. But unless we come across someone who actually saw Theopompus with his killers, they may be in the clear.'

' Rhodope may have seen something,' Helena interrupted. Neither Petro nor I pointed out that Rhodope was perhaps also dead. Even if not, if she saw the killers, that put her straight back in the kind of danger that had made me earlier suppose it was her body we would find lying here. Petronius looked at me.