Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 123, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 751 & 752, March/April 2004

Something Fishy in Pompeii by Steven Saylor

Steven Saylor’s mysteries featuring Gordianus the Finder form one of the best of the several Ancient Roman series currently in print. The latest book-length case for the finder (a “finder” being roughly the counterpart to a modern private eye), which will be published in June 2004 by St. Martin’s Press, is The Judgment of Caesar. In it, Gordianus finally goes to Egypt for a fateful (and for someone, fatal) encounter with Cleopatra.

“Taste it,” said Lucius Claudius. “Go on — taste it!”

I wrinkled my nose. Strange as it may sound, I was not particularly fond of garum. Never mind that ninety-nine of a hundred Romans adore it, and add it to ninety-nine of a hundred dishes, spooning it over everything from sausages to egg custard, from asparagus to honey cakes. “Garum goes with everything,” goes the popular saying.

We sat in the garden of Lucius’s opulent house on the Palatine Hill. A slave stood before me — a rather beautiful young slave, for in all things Lucius was used to having the best — holding a small silver dish in each hand. In each dish was a dark, glistening dollop of garum.

“Taste it!” insisted Lucius.

I dabbed a finger into the thick, oily sauce in the dish to my left. I smelled it first, breathing in the sharp odor of pickled fish; reluctantly, I popped my finger into my mouth. The taste was powerful: salty and slightly tangy, the spices playing with remarkable complexity upon my tongue.

I smiled. “Actually, that’s not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Of course it’s not bad!” said Lucius, his fair, chubby cheeks blushing as red as the curls on his head. “That’s the finest garum on the market, made exclusively at my manufactory outside Pompeii. The only reason you claim not to be fond of garum, Gordianus, is because you’re used to the awful stuff that’s passed off as garum — smelly pots of fermented fish entrails with a few crushed olives and a sprig of rosemary thrown in for seasoning. Foul stuff! This is the real thing, made from farm-fattened sardines macerated in salt and seasoned with my own secret recipe of spices and herbs, aged for a full month before it’s scooped into amphorae for shipment — not the mere twenty days that some of my competitors try to get away with.”

I dabbed my finger into the garum and took another taste. “It’s really quite delicious. This would be very good on meats. Or vegetables. Or you could simply eat it on a piece of flatbread. Or straight out of the jar! Yes, I could get used to eating this. I suppose it’s expensive?”

“Very! But help me with my problem, Gordianus, and you shall have a lifetime supply, free of charge.”

“And what would that problem be?”

“Taste the other sample.”

I took a sip of wine to clear my palate, then dipped my finger into the dollop of garum to my right. I smelled it; popped my finger between my lips; closed my eyes to savor the heady aftertaste that suffused my entire mouth; then dipped my finger to try a second helping.

Lucius leaned toward me. “And?”

“Obviously, I’m no expert on garum, but...”

“Yes, yes?”

“I would say that these two samples are... identical. The same robust yet subtle taste; the same sublimely slippery texture. No difference whatsoever.”

Lucius nodded gravely. “And that’s the problem! The first sample you tasted is my own brand of garum. The second is from my competitor, that blasted Marcus Fabricius.”

“Fabricius?”

“His little garum manufactory is just a stone’s throw from my own, down in Pompeii. I ship all over the world, while Fabricius sells most of his product out of a little shop here in Rome. Every so often I purchase some of his garum, just to remind myself what an inferior recipe tastes like. I bought this batch today. Imagine my shock when I tasted it!”

“It does seems unlikely that garum from different makers could be so completely identical.”

“Unlikely? Impossible! Fabricius must have stolen my secret recipe!”

So it happened, for the promise of a lifetime’s supply of the world’s best garum — and because Lucius Claudius is my good friend and steadfast patron — that I found myself down in Pompeii a few days later, taking a tour of Lucius’s garum manufactory with the foreman, a tall, wizened slave named Acastus. I carried a letter of introduction from Lucius and posed as a would-be investor.

The compound was quite impressive, situated alongside a stream on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, overlooking the city of Pompeii. Patios surrounded large sunken tanks in which the sardines were fattened; the murky water glistened with masses of darting silver fish. A warehouse held great stores of salt, herbs, and spices. Nearby, there was a shed where artisans cast clay vessels; storage pots for spices, as well as special pots for making the garum and amphorae for transporting it, were cast on site. There was also a large stable full of horses and wagons for transporting the finished product overland to various Italian cities as well as down to the waterfront to be shipped to markets as far away as Alexandria. Among those who could afford it, the garum of Lucius Claudius was a much sought-after, highly valuable commodity, the integrity of which he wished devoutly to safeguard.

At the center of the compound was the large, charmingly rustic house where Lucius stayed when he was in residence. Attached to the house were the guest quarters where I would be staying, as well as an annex containing Acastus’s office, where pigeonhole shelves were stuffed with correspondence and tables were stacked high with ledgers. The view from the terrace was spectacular, with the rooftops of Pompeii spread below and the glittering bay dotted with sails beyond. Closer at hand, beyond the little wooded cleft cut into the hillside by the stream, I could see the roofs and terraces of a neighboring compound.

“What’s that place?” I asked.

Acastus squinted. “Oh, that’s the manufactory of Marcus Fabricius. They make garum, too, or something they call garum. Of no interest to a serious investor, I assure you. Their product is quite inferior.”

“I see. Can you show me exactly how the garum is prepared?”

“What’s that you say?”

I repeated my request, more loudly.

“Certainly,” wheezed Acastus. He seemed so old and frail that any master but Lucius would likely have replaced him long ago; but Lucius had a kindly streak, despite his patrician snobbery. Acastus, he had assured me, was the most trustworthy of all the foremen on all his farms and manufactories (for garum was only one of Lucius’s moneymaking enterprises). Acastus oversaw production, scheduled shipments, billed customers, and kept the books. At all these tasks, Lucius told me, Acastus excelled. But a foreman must be watchdog as well as overseer; if something odd was going on at the garum manufactory, were Acastus’s eyes and ears sharp enough to notice?

With a doddering gait, he led me toward a terrace shaded by olive trees, where various slaves toiled over large clay pots. “Garum was invented by the Greeks, you know,” he said. “In the old days it was a luxury that only the wealthiest Romans could afford. Nowadays everyone eats it, every day, on everything — or at least they eat something they call garum, whether it’s worthy of the name or not. The best garum is still quite costly. Here, we’ll watch this fellow make up a batch. Patro is your name, isn’t it?”

“Yes, foreman.” A bright-eyed young slave stood before a very large, wide-mouthed, flat-bottomed clay pot that came up to his knees. The bottom of the pot was already covered with a mixture of aromatic dried herbs. I leaned over the pot and breathed in the smells of dill, coriander, celery, fennel, oregano, and mint. No doubt there were other spices my nose was too untrained to discern.

“Who mixes the spices?” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I said, who mixes—”

“The master comes down from Rome and does it himself, every other month or so,” said Acastus.

This confirmed what Lucius had already told me. “But others must know exactly which spices are stocked in the warehouse. The recipe can’t be a secret.”

Acastus laughed. “The ingredients aren’t the secret. It’s the proportions that make the difference. The master does the measuring and the mixing himself, with no one else present. He’s got a most refined palate, does the master. There are over thirty spices in all. You’d be hard-pressed to reproduce that exact mixture by tasting the finished product, or haphazardly trying this or that amount.”

Patro, meanwhile, had fetched another pot, this one filled with sardines. These he spread over the layer of spices. “The fatter the fish, the better,” commented Acastus.

Over the sardines, Patro spread a thick layer of salt. “Two fingers high,” said Acastus. “More is too salty; less, not salty enough.”

Patro repeated these three layers — spices, fish, salt — until the container was full. He then placed a lid on the pot, sealed the rim with pitch, and, with the help of another slave — for the pot must have been quite heavy — carried it to a sunny spot nearby.

“Now we let the mixture sit in the sun for seven days. No more, no less! After that, we’ll stir it every day for twenty days. And then...” Acastus kissed his fingertips. “The finest garum on earth. I taste each batch myself before it’s shipped out.” He flashed a gap-toothed smile. “You were wondering, weren’t you, why the master has kept me on, long past my prime? Not for my squinting eyes or my half-deaf ears. For this.” He tapped his nose. “And this.” He stuck out his tongue.

I heard laughter behind me and turned to see Patro and the other slave cover their mouths and look away. Acastus squinted in their direction. “Did you hear squirrels chattering?” he said. “Terrible pests. Known to open the garum pots during fermentation and scatter it all about. We have to throw the whole batch away when that happens.”

“Would it spoil, if you simply resealed it?”

“Probably not, but we can’t take the chance. The master has a standard to maintain.”

“How often does this happen?”

“Perhaps once a month.”

“I suppose you note the loss in your ledgers?”

“Of course! I keep strict accounting of all expenditures and losses, including spoilage. It’s not a major problem; still, I feed the workers fresh squirrel as often as I can, so as to thin the ranks of those nasty pests!”

That night Acastus and I dined not on squirrel but on herb bread and liver pate, with generous helpings of garum. Acastus went to bed early. I stayed up for a while, examining the ledgers, with his permission. Eventually I went to bed myself, with instructions to be awakened at the beginning of the work day.

A slave woke me at dawn. I roused myself, went down to the stream to splash my face, and ate a crust of bread on the terrace. Acastus was not yet up, but the rest of the compound was stirring. I strolled over to the fermentation area.

From a distance I saw young Patro with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Can you believe it? They’ve done it again, those damned squirrels!”

It appeared that the phenomenon Acastus had described had occurred during the night. The lid of the container that Patro had sealed the previous day lay on the grass, salt was scattered about, and a whole layer of sardines was missing.

“Mischievous little pests, aren’t they?” I said.

Patro smiled. “More hungry than mischievous, don’t you imagine? Either way, they’re only as the gods made them. Well, I suppose I should get rid of this batch, then let Acastus know. Here, Motho, come help me carry it down to the stream.”

Together, they lifted the open container. Walking slowly and awkwardly, they headed toward the wooded cleft in the hillside.

I headed for the cleft myself, walking fast and taking a different route. I was waiting on the opposite bank when they arrived. Instead of emptying the contents of the pot in the rushing water, they crossed the shallow stream and began to climb the opposite bank, huffing and puffing.

“And where might you fellows be headed?” I said. They froze in their tracks and gazed up at me blankly.

“We... that is to say...” Patro frantically tried to think of some explanation.

“I think you’re headed for Fabricius’s place, to sell him that pot of garum. He’ll only need to add some sardines and salt to the top, seal it up, and let it ferment. A month from now he can sell it at his little shop in Rome and claim that it’s every bit as delicious as the famous garum of Lucius Claudius — since it is the garum of Lucius Claudius!”

“Please, this is the first time we’ve ever—”

“No, Patro. You’ve been doing this about once a month for almost half a year. That’s how often such a loss is noted in Acastus’s ledgers.”

“But — we didn’t spoil this batch. I was in my bed all night, and so was Motho—”

“I know you didn’t. Nor did a squirrel. I did it myself, to see what would happen. I imagine that the very first time it happened, it was the act of a squirrel, or some other nocturnal pest. And you thought: What a pity to waste all that lovely, valuable garum. Why not sell it to the neighbor? What do you two do with the money Fabricius pays you? Enjoy a night of wine and women down in Pompeii?”

Their faces turned red.

“I thought so. But what was it you said about the squirrels? ‘They’re only as the gods made them.’ Hard to blame you for taking advantage of the occasional accident — except that what began as an accident has become a regular occurrence. If it happens that you two have been damaging batches of garum on purpose—”

“You can’t prove that!” said Patro, his voice rising to a desperate pitch.

“No. But I intend to stop it from happening again. What do you say? I’ll turn a blind eye to this morning’s mischief, in exchange for your promise that you’ll never sell garum to Fabricius again.”

The two of them looked very relieved and very repentant.

“Very well. Now, let’s see you empty that spoiled batch of garum in the stream!”

On the way back to Rome, I pondered the dilemma I had gotten myself into. How could I assure Lucius Claudius that the problem had been taken care of without getting those two young slaves into trouble? And further, how could I let Lucius know, without getting Acastus into trouble, that the foreman needed an assistant with a sharper pair of eyes and ears and a more suspicious temperament?

I would think of something. After all, a lifetime’s supply of the world’s best garum was at stake!