Deadly Election

9

Talking to your own banker is hard, but it’s nothing like trying to squeeze information from somebody else’s. Juno, you might almost imagine that bankers are bound by confidentiality rules. This cannot be true. My father has many tales of ravenous creditors learning exactly when he had a few denarii – information only his banker could provide.

Yet they are picky who they speak to. Do you, an ordinary person, desire to check whether someone is creditworthy? Ask their tailor or their fishmonger. Their banker will never help, not even if the person in question owns vast unmortgaged estates and squillions in a strongbox in the Forum – no, not even if he wants you to believe he is sound so has himself given you his banker’s name as a guarantee.

To tell the truth, if someone offers his banker as a reference, all the investigators in my family assume he has prepaid the banker to lie.

Nothokleptes and Nothokleptes certainly counted fake credit ratings as a service they provided. Rates were in their business prospectus. It came in cheaper than them sending bail money to get you out of prison. If you pleaded for that, the bastards charged a sky-high fee. Best of all for the Nothos was producing a witness statement in a claim for divorce − which they did pro bono because if they saved your dowry from a grasping spouse it enhanced your value to them.

How do I know these things? Because I am the one person in Rome who always scans notices and price lists. If words are written, I read them. Helena Justina brought me up that way.

Perhaps I should have clarified earlier that Notho and Son were not my bankers. They believed they were. Even my darling papa presumed it, although my mother was more astute. So the Nothos continued to suppose that if I ever had money to save I would tuck the coins into my father’s strongbox, as an unmarried or widowed daughter ought to do − while (surprise!) no funds of that sort ever materialised.

My work rarely produced large sums. Such as it was, I needed my income right away for essentials, like laundry bills and food. Not to mention new earrings to cheer myself up. I had a secret place in Fountain Court where I stashed any spare cash – which was what most ordinary people in Rome did. It was the easiest way to please your neighbours in the burglary profession.

But years ago, when Lentullus and I first took up together, we had been given money by both Father and Quintus Camillus, for whom Lentullus worked. Once the family stopped viewing us as a ludicrously incongruous couple, they surprised us with a dowry. It was more cash than either of us had ever conceived of owning, and we regarded it as magic gold. We felt it wasn’t really ours. We lived rent-free at Fountain Court and our outgoings were so modest that when my husband died only two years later, with us both still young, we had never touched the dowry money. Nobody wanted it back. I asked Uncle Quintus, who said that it remained mine. He was a lawyer, so he should know. I left it where I had put it.

That was, in a bank owned by a quiet Greek widow who had inherited this business from her own husband, a man who had died of apparently natural causes on a trip he made to Sardinia for reasons that were never explained. His will had left everything to Arsinoë, with instructions that she should marry one of their freedmen. That was traditional. Greek bankers did not want their widows to be left undefended. And I am assured there are Greek widows who do see being alone with large sums of money as a curse.

Amazingly, tragedy struck twice. As if poor Claudia Arsinoë had not enough to contend with, only four days after she heard her husband was dead the freedman she was promised to went out to buy a mullet for a nice Greek dinner and mysteriously disappeared. Ever since, Arsinoë had borne her sadness bravely; she ran everything herself and, like Penelope, fended off other suitors with pleas that she could not commit herself to them, sweet as they were, in case her missing fiancé one day reappeared.

She was cheerful despite being left in the lurch and I found her an excellent businesswoman. My dowry had trebled in the past ten years, thanks to her investment skills. I left it with her, accumulating. On the rare occasions when I had a love-life, I always forgot to mention that I possessed this money.

My love-life since Lentullus had died on me had been pitiful. I could not boast about it. Men who were attracted to the idea of a rich auctioneer’s daughter soon fled once they met Falco. Even I could see this saved a lot of heartache. Father always kindly explained the situation to me. He was a thoughtful man and good with words. Words like ‘A complete wastrel arse. Just dump the bugger, Albia.’ In most cases dumping was either pre-empted by the wastrel having fled of his own accord after a chat with Falco, or I had seen through him anyway and already told him to get lost.

I intended to visit Claudia Arsinoë to pick her brains, which I knew were of fine quality. But first I went through the normal process. I tried the men with whom the candidates banked. It had to be done, though the results felt like waking in the middle of the night with unbearable heartburn.

Trebonius Fulvo and Arulenus Crescens both used the same firm. It was one of those money tables in the Clivus Argentarius where the proprietor never puts in an appearance; the slippery owner is always off somewhere, having mint tea and sticky Greek sweetmeats with equally sticky cronies, leaving peculiar underlings to run his bank. For him, that is the point of prosperity: he no longer has to engage in the dirty trade that established him.

The business was traditionally Athenian. The workers were completely unhelpful to a Roman woman. The banker had them trained to deflect questions. I dare say plenty of gossip was exchanged elsewhere over the pastries, because bankers need to do that, but not here. And even if I tracked him down, the best I could hope for was a ferocious Athenian grope, getting honey and crumbs on my dress. I skipped that.

What the flash banking table did tell me of its own accord was that the hard men, Trebonius and Arulenus, must be rich. Only people with serious assets can interest that kind of bank, or afford its rates.

They imported wine and oil. Nothokleptes had told me. Say no more.

Dillius Surus, the candidate with the drinking habit, banked with a fellow from Antioch, who also wasn’t there. Maybe they drank together. Maybe the Syrian was sleeping it off.

The rich wife of this Dillius, his real financial backer, invested her large fortune with a scruffy-looking Gaul called Balonius, who favoured tunics with huge sleeveless armholes. These gaping spaces demonstrated that Notho had not lied. The broker had extremely hairy armpits, where his hirsute arms met hideous knobbly shoulders. He smelt as foul as he looked. He had extremely ugly feet too, clothed in the shabbiest sandals I had ever seen on a professional man. One had a broken strap so it hung off his instep.

He lolled in the shade of a statue of Scipio Africanus, that heavily togate hero with his firm mouth and a big nose. Men with expensive belts and women in tightly sealed carrying chairs visited Balonius to massage their healthy portfolios. A child would be sent to fetch them refreshments. I received a dish of olives and a fruit cordial, even though I admitted I was there on spec.

It slipped by me at the time, as it was meant to, but I realised afterwards that Balonius never said a word about his client, the wealthy wife of Dillius. He might look disgraceful, but he was efficient. On Dillius Surus himself, Balonius was more forthcoming. First he told me Forum gossip was wrong: it wasn’t Dillius who was suing a dying grandfather. Balonius first thought that was Arulenus Crescens, the one who had recently abandoned a mistress and who had previously left his first wife when she was pregnant, but on reflection he decided the family litigant was Salvius Gratus, Laia’s brother.

Balonius then happily gossiped that Dillius was impotent, had tapeworms, had been sued by a man to whom he owed thirty thousand sesterces (for an apple orchard where the trees had been felled by a jealous neighbour) and apparently it was also Dillius who owned the uncontrollable dog that had bitten the Temple of Isis priestess.

‘Oh, this fine specimen will get elected!’ I murmured.

‘He will. Done deal. His wife gave Domitian a troupe of performing dwarfs whose act is deemed the most indecent ever seen outside an Alexandrian brothel.’

‘That will be very useful information for my clients.’

Or not. There was no way the pious Manlius Faustus would encourage his friend Vibius to compete in gift-giving lewd performers. Faustus had the tenacity to find out where you could buy rude little men, and the guile to get them for a good price, but he would disapprove too much to do it.

‘Now, what can you tell me about Trebonius or Arulenus?’

‘Nix. More than my life’s worth.’

‘Do they frighten you?’

‘Don’t they frighten you?’

‘I hope I am beneath their notice.’

‘Don’t be too sure. If you are asking questions, they will soon know.’

I gulped. To some extent it was for show. Not entirely. ‘Well, never mind them. What about Vibius Marinus and Salvius Gratus?’

‘I thought you were working for them?’

‘Indeed I am – which is why I need to know exactly what libellous gossip is attaching to their glorious names.’

‘You are a sly one!’ Balonius scrutinised me with new respect. ‘Marinus seems to keep his head down. Seems to be relying on the “good family man” posture. Fathering babies is a talent, so who needs moral stamina? Gratus is so invisible I’ve never even heard of him.’

‘He won’t like that! He bounces around like someone who wants to be famous.’ And his sister thought herself wonderful too.

‘So what does your man Vibius want to be known for?’ asked the smelly broker, looking at me sideways.

I gave him a mysterious smile and said that remained to be seen.

Which was the truth. He was the friend of my most admirable friend, yet I had no idea.