Graveyard of the Hesperides

XIV

Julia Junilla Laeitana had been given a third name because she was born in Spain where our father had had to deliver the baby himself and save our mother from near death-as he boringly reminded us on occasions. After these horrors, he badly needed to swig the local Laeitana wine and named his firstborn after it.

Sosia Favonia was birthed at home by our two sober grandmothers, so only had two names, but that suited her because she was traditional; a private, austere girl, she regarded her sister as frivolous, not least for her excess of names. She was called Sosia for a long-dead cousin. There was some tragedy involved, so nobody used it. Don’t ask me to explain: some long-ago family business.

Julia was sixteen, tall and slim, desperately bright. Favonia was fourteen, sturdy and gruff, with deep-grained, practical intelligence. I was old enough for us never to have squabbled; I had lived elsewhere for much of their childhood. When I visited home, they often did my hair, or altered my clothes and jewelry, as if I were a big doll in their toy collection. I loved them to bits.

These were my daft, spoiled, innocent, lovely young sisters, who were ecstatic to be roped in by Faustus for our wedding. No one had entrusted anything important to them before. They were arranging things better than I ever would, though with no regard for my wishes, my father’s willingness to pay or my mother’s good taste in social matters. It was the best fun they had ever had-and now they had capped that by coming to a shitty bar where they were hoping to see dead people.

“How did you get here?” I nagged. “Don’t tell me you walked, not down the Argiletum?”

They had seen we had a bench, so were busy sorting out another for themselves. Soon the building site looked like a picnic spot. Julia took charge. “We did walk. Good heavens, that’s an interesting street. Wigs and false teeth!”

Along the Argiletum, they would have tripped past barbers and slave-sellers, butchers, linen merchants, makers of iron goods and suppliers of all kinds of food. The teeth and wigs were certainly exotic, but oh dear gods, not as colorful as the whores, bumboys and people who called themselves actors and were openly bisexual. I hoped the girls would not go home to our concerned parents all full of it. But I knew they would.

“Who were those fascinating women who left just now?” demanded Favonia. “What is the job they warned us off?”

“Prostitutes. You couldn’t do it. You don’t have the application and you’re both too squeamish.”

“But it is steady work,” suggested Faustus. I was really discovering his provocative side today. “They were telling us just now how their speciality is selling their virginity.”

“Oh, that’s so neat! How much could we make with ours?” asked Julia, apparently a serious question.

I growled. “Not enough to buy you dress pins.”

The girls sat down side by side on their bench (having thoroughly dusted it) and smiled at us. Neither had yet realized how beautiful they were, not even Favonia, who was the more observant; thank goodness for the murkiness of mirrors. They had dark hair, dark eyes, strappy sandals, fluttery stoles, complicated girdles they had created themselves from streamers of ribbon, and so much jewelry I knew they must have sneaked out of the house without Mother spotting them. The whiffs of peculiar perfume were ripe. Flies were dropping dead all over the courtyard.

“Who brought you? Please don’t tell me you came unescorted.”

“No, no, don’t fuss, Albia. We have Katutis.”

“Where is he?” Favonia mouthed, anticipating my next demand. “Outside, talking to Dromo.” Father’s Egyptian secretary and Faustus’ awkward slave had struck up an unlikely alliance while Dromo was guarding some scrolls Faustus had “borrowed” from his uncle and Katutis was transcribing the transaction history of Faustus’ inheritance.

“Tiberius is such a nice man,” said Julia, apparently to me, though she was aiming the compliment at him. “But have you noticed him slyly getting people to do things for him? He is very clever, Albia!”

“Rich boy,” I answered. Faustus smiled easily, unfazed by my sister’s outspokenness. Or even by mine. “So, gorgeous girlies, update me on my horrible wedding plans.”

“Leave it to us. Just turn up and let it happen,” commanded Favonia sternly. I told you she was practical.

“You will enjoy it, you will, you will!” Julia pleaded, desperate for me to do so.

I snorted that I was taking an interest and that I had myself arranged the augury. Like Faustus, they shrieked about duplication. I described the victimarii, laying it on thick. Wide-eyed, they backed down. They even wanted to be taken along to Costus’ office to inspect the heavenly hunks right now. I vetoed that.

Instead, Favonia ran out to Katutis, returning with a set of note tablets from which she and Julia read aloud selected items. I tried suggesting that because I had to investigate the courtyard bones, we should delay the ceremony. My sisters cheerfully slapped me down. They had already chosen the date for me. They were the wedding planners; I was merely the bride.

They reminded me of their limited options. The Kalends, Nones and Ides of every month, plus the day following each, were unlucky. Various extra religious events interfered. August had a great festival of Diana on the Aventine; it also had a celebration of Consus, a fertility god, in which all the beasts of burden were given a day off, prettily garlanded, then led about the very streets we would be needing for our own procession; among other things in the calendar, there was one of the days when the entrance to the Underworld was believed to be open, so we had to avoid any danger of ghosts popping out. Even more importantly, in September Faustus would be one of the officials organizing the Roman Games, which would take all his time and concentration. Julia and Favonia pointed this out to me, much as if I was failing in my wifely duties by not trying to relieve him of stress.

“Obviously I shall take care of Tiberius when he comes home exhausted from the races and plays.”

“No, you must be right at his side through all the events! Flavia Albia, it will be to his public credit if he is a proper married man.” Being paraded at festivals as his domestic dear was a role I might dodge. As he listened to the chatter, Tiberius twinkled at the thought. He did know what he was in for with me. I, however, had not previously considered the full horror of being an aedile’s wife.

I had one more possible weapon. “I believe a widow who is remarrying, by tradition, ought to choose a public holiday or major festival in order to conceal her shame that, instead of being a one-man woman, she is committing the social blunder of a second marriage.”

“Ha! Don’t try it!” scoffed Julia.

Favonia leaned forward. She explained to me as if to a dimwit: “The purpose of your wedding, Albia darling, is to demonstrate publicly that the brave Tiberius Manlius Faustus is committing himself to you, our eccentric sister, and that from now on he wants you to be invited to supper parties with him. Even though we have told him you will be rude to his friends.”

“So he thinks I’m starving; it’s to get me more prawn nibbles?” I chortled.

Favonia rolled her eyes at my beloved. “We warned you. She is incorrigible. If you want to back out, do so now before it’s too late and the wedding guests are traveling.”

“Ah, but she is the woman for me!” He took my hand tenderly but firmly.

My sisters then looked at each other, miming This is just so-o-o romantic! It lasted a few moments before they lost interest. They had known me since they were babies. In some ways they found it inconceivable that I might have a love life-let alone with a man they had come to perceive as very old (by their standards) yet nevertheless nice (even by their standards).

He took them seriously. They liked that. In fact, they had slightly grown up while fixing this wedding for him. I knew our parents were impressed.

The madcaps had been talking about one subject for as long as they could manage. Now they turned to what had really lured them here from the Aventine.

“Can we see the bones?”

I frowned. It made no difference. “Show some respect, Julia.”

“We do. We know it was a person once. We want her poor spirit to rest easy. But can we see the bones, can we? Is that them there, in that basket Tiberius has under his seat?”

Before we could stop them, they flew across the courtyard, pulled out the rubble basket and like competent navvies carried it over to their own bench. In fairness, they opened it carefully. They could have tipped it out all over the yard, but of their own accord they spent time lifting out each bone, or piece of bone, individually. They handled each with cautious reverence.

Julia and Favonia set out the collection on the ground, to some extent composing a skeleton. Father’s work as an informer meant they had acquired strange gobbets of knowledge, anatomy being just one subject they would one day have to conceal from respectable husbands. Pa had taught them to play dice too. Favonia even had her own-she had filched a set of counterfeit ones that turned up once at the auction house.

Now they were absorbed, heads together, as they pored over the remnants of the skeleton.

“Where is her skull?”

Good point. These flighty bits could notice significant things. A skull certainly ought to survive in the ground, if other bones do. The workmen had not found it.

“Her head is not here. This will not do! There needs to be more digging,” declared Favonia. Julia always seemed to be the leader but Favonia was a born organizer. Then it was she, my thoughtful youngest sister, who noticed something else, something crucial: “Look, this is not right. These leg bones are different sizes. Either the barmaid was deformed, or the bones come from two different people.”