Graveyard of the Hesperides

XXXIV

Now they were talking freely, at my urging they revealed more about how brothels like those in the White Chickens operated. Some were directly owned by a pimp or procuress, who installed girls to work there, and occasionally boys too. Others were owned by property agents who hired out rooms to independent workers as direct subtenants. As we discussed more details, there was giggling about the kinds of men who paid for sex, which led to variants-for instance, fine Roman ladies visiting incognito for a thrash with a gigolo. Further laughter followed, as the Macedonians harped on about such women coming back for more.

We all chortled at the thought of Roman fathers not knowing that their children had been sired in the stews, then the talk swung to the risk that women thrill-seekers might afterward find themselves in trouble; a pregnancy meant their adventures would become public knowledge. They would have to get rid of it. At least the well-to-do could afford a quick solution, we agreed.

One of the girls, Chia, went rather quiet at this point.

I made a face at a girl with a mole sitting near me, who replied behind her hand that I was right; Chia could be expecting. She looked to be the youngest. I could see she was extremely anxious. She frowned a lot, moved jerkily, picked at her cuticles.

It would be her first time. That was bad enough for most women. But the worst problem for Chia was that soon it would prevent her from working. The pimp would beat her and give her no pocket money, so she was liable to starve. Even if she came through and managed to produce a child, there was nowhere to keep it, no one to look after it. The poor mite would be a slave anyway, probably taken away by the pimp as soon as it was saleable. Masters of that type don’t hesitate to separate mothers and babies-and they do not sell slave babies to be nicely taught to read and write as docket clerks or secretaries. Girl or boy, it faced abuse.

None of us spoke to Chia about her predicament. That did not make us unsympathetic. I picked up a silent understanding that first she had to be sure she was pregnant, then she must face up to it and decide what she wanted to do. After that, if she wanted help, she could ask.

Finally, I tackled my reason for approaching them. “You know that some bodies have been found at the Garden of the Hesperides. One is a woman.”

They all nodded. “Rufia.”

Rufia’s story had reached even women who were too young to have known her.

“It must have been before your time, but have you heard anything about her? Why I am asking is because everyone calls Rufia a barmaid, but I am starting to wonder. I certainly have the impression most people were in awe of her, and she kept the Hesperides running her own way. I know there are women who organize and control other working girls. They tend to be powerful characters. I am trying to find out if she ran things.”

The Macedonians listened. They considered. They said they had never heard of Rufia being that kind of barmaid, although of course it was possible.

Then I asked, “There is another woman now, once connected with her. Do any of you know Menendra?”

Brighter than I expected, the one with the oddly placed mole on her cheek asked, “Do you think she does that?”

“Organizes girls?”

“So you think she runs a racket.”

“Am I wrong then?”

Several of them shrugged. If Menendra did control a vice ring, it did not include these young women. They had a pimp. They admitted as much, pointing him out. He was a lean dandy with a slick hairdo, sitting outside the Romulus with one knee elegantly crossed over the other, holding a small cup between three fingers, enjoying a tisane. Watching whatever they did.

I loathed him on sight, but he was theirs. In a grim way they accepted him. I daresay they knew worse men.

I had a cold feeling that later that vermin over there would batter every one of them because they had been talking to me. They were risking it. Maybe he would have battered them all anyway. I wanted to hope our conversation was an act of defiance on their part, but I did not wish it to cause them harm.

“So how do you girls know Menendra?”

A glance passed among them, which I could not interpret. “She lives in the White Chickens.”

“In a brothel?”

They sniggered. In their world any house might be used for sexual commerce, any room was a potential location for trade. If it had a bed, that clinched it.

Menendra rented a place of her own over a cookshop. They had never seen her take men there-or women, giggled the one with the uncombed goat-girl curls. But that meant little. There were plenty of nooks for assignations. What they seemed sure of was that Menendra did not have other prostitutes using her own premises.

I believed that. Any woman of business needs her private place for after work. So Menendra kept a room that was her personal retreat, just as I had my apartment.

I asked where exactly hers was. They told me an address. I asked where they themselves lived. They were cagier. I did not press them.

With a decent meal inside them, the girls were reluctant to resume working. As we sat there at the Brown Toad, out of habit one or two made desultory attempts to lure men off the street, but they were half-hearted. Their pimp had left the Romulus. Speculating among themselves, they reckoned he had gone off to a dice game. They were obliged to work that evening, but decided to take time off this afternoon, behind his back.

We drew our conversation to a close. I thanked them, and that was when I told them I came from Britain. We laughed; it made them feel they were the high and mighty ones. Well, I was used to that.

On the verge of parting, the one with the wild curls gave me a narrow look. “What we’ve been talking about didn’t seem to surprise you.”

Another backed her up. “Is it from personal experience?”

I gave them a wan smile. “Close.” I took a deep breath. “I escaped. But I do know what it feels like to be fourteen, hungry and worthless in your own eyes, then some filthy brute picks you up, calls himself your friend, promises kindness-but curses and kicks are all you get as he grooms you. You soon become too scared to refuse to work for him.”

“And all the time he’s telling you, this is what you deserve,” said the one with the mole.

I nodded.

“So what happened to you, Albia?” asked the curly one, in a hard voice.

“Luck. Some rich people saw me and thought I would make a cheap nurse for their babies.” Better to put it that way. “I just want to tell you-if I could get out, you can too.”

The Macedonian sex slaves knew it wasn’t true for them. That was the worst aspect of the life that had been imposed on them. They had absolutely no hope.

As I left I ventured to ask whether they were afraid of ending up like Rufia. I was surprised that they showed no fear of sharing her fate. Any one of them was vulnerable to being beaten up, all of them risked death on a daily basis. Presumably they had to blank that.

I left them and went back to the Hesperides. The workmen were still hard at it, with Tiberius in charge. He broke off when he saw me returning.

I sat down and told him some of what I had learned. I said that increasingly I thought this bar might once have been the center of a prostitution racket, with Rufia strongly implicated.

“All bars are brothels, officially,” he answered.

“Well this one has only three rooms upstairs. I am wondering if Rufia carved out a wider empire.” That would fit with what witnesses had told me, how everyone in the neighborhood knew her.

“So who would the five dead men have been? Clients? Someone who decided not to pay?”

“I don’t know.”

If a whore’s customer refused to hand over her fee, he had to expect a violent reaction-though killing five would seem extreme, and the neat, organized burial at the Hesperides surely argued for advance planning. As a general rule in business, if somebody fails to honor a bill, you don’t kill them-you want them alive to pay up. Mind you, there had probably been plenty of Roman executors who were asked to settle debts for sexual favors procured by the deceased. I expect favorite prostitutes were sometimes even passed on as bequests.

“If Thales was a brothel-keeper, wouldn’t it be recorded somewhere?” I asked Tiberius.

“Brothel-keeping is not illegal. Prostitution neither. If Old Thales profited from vice, so long as he declared his income at the census, and duly paid his taxes, that was his only responsibility. The state’s interest is not moral, merely fiscal.”

I laughed gently. “The government never minds the source, so long as cash clinks into the Treasury! But I thought prostitutes counted as outlawed noncitizens, along with actors, gladiators and the like?”

“Whores only. Their masters not. Perfectly ‘respectable’ people fund their lives by the sex trade. You would be surprised how many society people have fortunes that come from brothels.” I could see Tiberius thought as I did, that this was hypocrisy. He added, “The Emperor Caligula levied a direct tax too; each prostitute has to pay a one-off to the Treasury, whatever she charges per man. It was an unheard-of measure when he introduced it-but quickly became accepted, given how lucrative it is.”

I kept niggling. “I know you have records. Aediles keep them. So who does have to be registered?”

“Any woman acting as a prostitute.”

Again, Tiberius saw my disapproval: I thought it typical that only the women were monitored so closely. That was in addition to their being tied to pimps and brothel-keepers. Everyone had power but them. Meanwhile, those who organized the game escaped censure. “I want to understand the rules. Tell me?”

Tiberius shifted uncomfortably. “This has not been my favorite aspect of the job…”

“All right, I’m not accusing you.”

“Every prostitute has to register with the aediles. She must present herself, give her correct name, her age, her place of birth, and the pseudonym under which she intends to practice. If a girl turns up who looks young and respectable, we try to persuade her to change her mind.”

I shot him a look. He managed not to squirm. “Look, we do our best! Well, I have tried always to … If she is adamant,” he continued, still looking abashed, “we are bound to issue her a license. She tells us what price she intends to charge. We enter her name in the roll.”

“Can she be removed if she gives up the trade?”

“No. Never. It’s permanent.”

“So no prostitute, even if she is forced into it at a very young age, by other people, can ever repent, reinstate her good name or be forgiven by society?”

Tiberius agreed dourly.

I knew better than to blame him for this. He acted as an instrument of government policy. If he refused the task, someone else would do it. I would rather he was checking the legality of market weights, but if an aedile had to be involved, better it was Manlius Faustus. He was straight. He had a charitable attitude.

I bet there had always been different magistrates, men who exacted a trick when they registered a woman. Their free sample. “Checking that her price is value for money.” These men had a duty to protect the public from rip-offs, after all. They would claim they must test out the goods. Compared to the majority, mine was oddly innocent.

I gave him a hug, to show I did not regard him as tainted. Then, without telling him my plans, I left him at the Hesperides while I went by myself to have a look around the district the Macedonians had mentioned, where both they and Menendra lived. From what they said, I too would soon feel soiled, merely from going there.