Germanicus

9

I found the place without any trouble, and the shutters were off. Capax had been right, it was one of the biggest shops in the street with a proper painted sign and two or three customers waiting to be served. I parked myself behind an old woman with a basket of onions and watercress and waited my turn.

The guy behind the counter was German: a mean looking six footer with red hair and a wart on his nose that wouldn't've disgraced the emperor and put me off chickpeas for a month. He swung a neat cleaver, too, and I promised myself I'd think twice before going up any dark alleyways in his company. At least this time around no one had decided yet that Corvinus would look better with his belly ventilated. That was something to be thankful for. I just hoped it would last.

The woman in front of me left with her half pound of chitterlings. I moved up to the counter.

'Yeah?' Customer relations obviously weren't the guy's strong point.

'Your name Carillus?' I asked.

He jerked his head at the sign. 'How's your reading, friend?'

'There somewhere we can talk?'

'That thing says "Butcher". Butchers sell meat. So what can I get you?'

Fair enough. 'How are your collops this morning?' I said.

'Pound?'

'Make it two.' I held up a gold piece. 'And ten minutes of your valuable time.'

He gave me a long measuring look; me, not the coin. Then he set down his cleaver and wiped his hands on a scrap of bloody rag.

'Scaurus!' A thin lad with bad skin who was filleting a leg of lamb on the back bench looked round. 'Take over until I get back. Right?'

The thin lad nodded. Obviously, from the facial resemblance, the son and heir. Carillus came out through the gap in the counter.

'Ten minutes,' he said. 'You drink beer?'

Oh, hell. 'When I have to. Yeah. Sure.'

He grunted and led the way across the street to a wooden shack that leaned against the side wall of a horsemeat seller's. The inside was bare and empty except for a counter, a couple of trestle tables and an old woman sitting in the corner. Carillus growled out a word or two in German and the woman poured us two foaming beakers from the barrel beside her.

'Right.' He tossed a handful of small change onto the counter and sat down at one of the tables. 'So what do you want that's worth a gold piece to you, friend?'

I took the bench facing him. 'You're a freedman of Calpurnius Piso's.'

'Was. The guy's dead. Or hadn't you heard?'

'I need to know about a certain letter he wrote the night he died.'

'Is that right, now?'

Jupiter! When he'd made that crack about butchers selling meat he hadn't been kidding. This guy had his mouth sewn up tighter than a gnat's arse. 'According to my information he gave it to you.'

'Your informant being?'

There was no reason not to tell him. 'A guy called Livineius Regulus. One of Piso's lawyers.'

'Uh-huh.' He eyed me speculatively. 'Yeah, okay. Piso gave me a letter that night. So what?'

Well, that was one question answered. At least Letter B existed. 'You mind telling me who it was addressed to and what happened to it?' I said.

He took a long pull at his beer and set the beaker down three quarters empty.

'What the fuck business is it of yours?' he said softly.

'Call it curiosity.'

That long measuring look again. Then, suddenly, he laughed.

'Okay, pal. I'll make a deal with you. What's your name, by the way?'

'Corvinus. Valerius Corvinus.'

'Okay, Corvinus. Here's the deal. Forget your money, I don't need it. You say you drink beer. Prove it. Finish that pot at one go, without taking a breath, and I'll tell you what you want to know for free. Leave enough inside to wet the table, or spill so much as a drop down your chin, and you can go and lose yourself. Bet?'

Hell. I was no beer drinker, and these buggers held two pints at least.

'Bet,' I said.

'Go for it, then.'

I picked up the beaker and took a deep breath. The stuff smelt like stale yeasty horse piss, and it had a head on it that sat and sneered. The taste was worse. Half way down I knew I wasn't going to make it. Then my eyes met his over the rim of the beaker and suddenly twenty generations of cross-grained, bloody-minded Valerii were in my head and yelling 'Screw you, pal!' So I finished it.

Carefully, my eyes still on his, I lowered the beaker and set it back on the table, topside down. Not a drip.

He clapped me on the shoulder. I belched.

'Not bad for a Roman,' he said. 'Maybe you can drink beer after all. You want another?'

No way. I wasn't doing that again, not even in exchange for a signed statement witnessed by the Wart himself. 'We had a bet,' I said. 'Remember?'

'Yeah.' He reached inside his tunic, brought out a letter and handed it over. 'This what you want?'

The seal had been broken, so I opened it. I didn't know what Piso's handwriting looked like, but it had his signature at the bottom and there was no reason why it shouldn't be genuine. The letter was the deed to a slaughterhouse near Tannery Row, made out to Gnaeus Calpurnius Carillus.

So we were stymied, I thought as I walked back through the Subura towards town. Letter B had turned out to be a red herring: a transfer of property from patron to client paid for fair and square out of the profits of the big German's butcher-meat business. Sure, it had been a coincidence that the deal was finalised the day Piso had died, but coincidences happen. Carillus was just lucky he'd got his deed before Piso was beyond signing it. There was only one thing that still bugged me, and that was why Regulus had lied when he'd said the freedman had brought the suicide note. Maybe I should have another word with the smoothie bastard, somewhere people wouldn't come running if the furniture got a little disarranged.

I found myself within two streets of the Shrine of Libera. I hadn't seen Agron in six months, not since the wedding when he'd hit me a smacker in the ear with a celebration walnut, so maybe a quick courtesy call wouldn't go amiss. Besides, after that German beer I needed a drink.

Agron was the big Illyrian who'd saved my life over on the Janiculum after pushing my face into a Suburan dinner service. He'd severed his connection with the bastard Asprenas, of course, but he still had his metalsmith's business near the Libera shrine. I suppose you could call him a kind of client of mine. Just. Real patrons have real clients. I'm stuck with stubborn, independent minded buggers like Scylax and Agron.

He was in, luckily, but he put up the shutters and we went round to a local wineshop and split a jug of half decent Massic with a dish of good cheese and olives on the side: Agron's got a weakness for cheese. We talked about this and that for a while — he's no bonehead, for all his barley-bread accent, and he can handle a conversation — and then he said: 'So what are you doing these days, Corvinus?'

Maybe it was the fact that I was on a downer after seeing Carillus. Maybe because I had a certain respect for the guy. Whatever the reason, I told him. Not everything, not about Livia, although he knew all about my past relations with that bitch. Just that I was interested in the Piso case, and in how Germanicus died.

'You ever serve under him?' I asked. Agron was ex-army. He'd been one of the few survivors of the Eighteenth Legion when it was massacred in the Teutoburg.

'No. He was after my time.'

'Know anyone who did?'

He grinned. 'Sure. Dozens. You can't talk to a Rhine squaddie for more than two minutes before he starts boasting how he served under Germanicus. Whether he did or not.'

'The guy was that good, eh?'

Agron spat out an olive pip into his palm. 'To the Rhine legions Germanicus is god, Corvinus. As far as they're concerned there's only ever been one General — capital G — between the Belgian border and the Elbe. And that's Germanicus.'

'Not the Wart?'

'Not the Wart. Sure, Tiberius was good, better in some ways, but he still isn't the General. Not to most squaddies, anyhow.'

'Better in what ways?' I speared a piece of cheese.

Agron's eyes narrowed. 'You got a reason for asking?'

'No. Not especially.' I didn't, but now the Carillus angle seemed to have fizzled out I was groping around for a new one. And if the Wart was involved then I needed to know more about the relationship between father and adopted son. 'Just curious.'

'Yeah.' The suspicious look changed back to a grin. 'That I'd believe. Your curiosity'll be the death of you one of these days. Okay. So maybe better's the wrong word. Germanicus and Tiberius were different characters, heart and head, with Germanicus being the heart. And heart'll win over head with squaddies every time.'

That made sense of a sort, although I didn't completely agree with his views. The Wart's campaigns in Germany had been slow and steady, while Germanicus's were flashier and covered more ground but in the end they got us nowhere. Still, like he'd said, it wasn't totally fair to compare the two as generals. Agron wasn't stupid, he just thought direct like the soldier he was…

Something tugged at my brain. I reached for it, but it wasn't there any longer. Never mind, it would come in its own time.

Agron was saying something. I switched my attention back to him.

'Of course the guy had a lot of points with the squaddies from the way he handled the mutiny after Augustus died. Agrippina too. That's some woman, Corvinus. Iron hard, army to the bone and with more sheer guts than a dozen first centurions. You ever meet her?'

'Agrippina? No. No, never.'

'Pity.' Not the word I would've used. 'If Germanicus is the General then Agrippina's his second. That kid of theirs is going to be a red-hot soldier, too. Young Gaius. Caligula.'

'That right?' I drank my wine. I could feel the faint prickling at the back of my neck that was telling me that something was important here if I could only put my finger on it.

'Yeah. It was a shame the poor guy died,' Agron shared the last of the Massic between our two cups. 'He'd've made an emperor. Drusus is okay, but he's no Germanicus. He's like his father, all head.' He pushed over the plate. 'Hey, you want some of this cheese before I finish it?'

'No. No thanks, you have it. I'm going…Shit!'

'You okay, boy?'

'No.' The thought hadn't anything to do with the Germanicus business. It was much more serious. 'I just remembered. We're going out to a birthday dinner tonight. Perilla and me. At my mother's.' Gods alive, Perilla would kill me! 'I shouldn't be here, friend.'

'Relax! It's hardly two hours past noon yet. You've got lots of time. Anyway, it's my shout.'

I shook my head. 'Helvius Priscus is old fashioned. He eats early. And I promised Perilla I'd look for an Etruscan relic for him in the Saepta.' Priscus is my mother's husband. He has this thing about tombs. 'Sorry, Agron. Some other time, okay?'

'If this is what marriage does to you then you can keep it.' Agron grinned. 'Yeah, okay. I'll see you around, maybe.'

I tossed the waiter a silver piece and took off at a run. I hadn't been kidding. Less than four hours to get all the way to the Saepta, find a second hand Etruscan tooth-mug for Priscus, then hoof it back to the Palatine in time for a bath and a change of mantle. And I'd better do it, too, or Perilla would kill me slowly with sarcasm. Nevertheless, I felt a lot happier for having seen the big Illyrian guy.

You see, I knew now why the Wart had wanted to murder his son.