Graveyard of the Hesperides

XXXVIII

When I went looking for Gavius, I took along Tiberius. Marble was his speciality. He wanted to come and meet the supplier.

Tiberius took the bowl back to Gran at the Brown Toad. He thanked her for the hot pot (angling for more another day) and followed his usual routine of asking a nitpicky question; this time he wanted to know whose granny the old granny was. Flattered and giggly, she said, “Pretty well, everyone in the High Footpath district.” He asked if she knew where the fascia salesman might live nowadays and she then said in Mucky Mule Mews, which she had told me already.

I led him to the dungheaped alley, where we could ask the man’s parents for the actual house Gavius lived in nowadays. They let us pat the dog Gavius had left with them, a slobbering, happy creature who greeted us like old friends even though we were strangers. But she was a large girl, and when we first arrived she let out a sonorous bark. It might deter intruders, if they were cowardly. The parents gave directions to the other end of the mews, only for us to find Gavius was out. If he was working, he could be anywhere; he might even be visiting a quarry miles from Rome.

We became a little despondent, then we heard his other two dogs barking loudly indoors. So he was coming back eventually and could not have gone far. We walked to the street end to escape the high smell of sun-warmed dung, but decided to wait. This was a hazard of being an informer; it was not all mint tea and walnut cake. However, Dromo spotted a stall selling fruit tarts so he dragged us over there. While we were watching his meticulous choosing process, Gavius arrived home to give his dogs their afternoon exercise. We knew him because the stallholder called out a greeting. So he was popular.

We followed Gavius back to his house, though not for long.

“They’re barking so much because they heard you and thought you were me coming to take them out! You will have to trot along with us. The girls will go mad if I don’t take them straightaway now they’ve seen me.”

Apparently these dogs took precedence over everything else, but he let us accompany their walk. I was still digesting my lunchtime pie, plus stew, but was now forced on a hike the whole length of the Viminal. Most of our journey was uphill. Nothing else, we were assured, would do for the Three Graces (including Euphrosyne, whom Gavius had collected from his parents as we passed).

“I can’t leave her behind; she’ll soon let me know what she thinks of that.”

At first we humored their owner and let him warble about his pets. They originated in the Pyrenees, so were quite unsuitable in Rome. They were huge flock-guarding dogs, with long, white, merrily shedding fur that was thickest over the folds of flesh on their great shoulders; on all three, the white fur had large dark blotches over their heads and upper bodies. Gavius actually said he bought them as pups “from a man in a bar.” I had not thought people really did that. But of course crowded bar counters are packed with dodgy dealers selling all kinds of things.

According to their owner, the Three Graces possessed the gentlest, calmest natures; they loved children, adored having visitors to count, but would ferociously protect their home and family against intruders. (Despite our experience of being happily slobbered at his parents’ house?) They adored going on walks so they could look around, check out the neighborhood and make as many friends as possible. We saw them even try to lick a potter’s raven through the bars of its cage. The bird told them to get lost. Well, it was ruder than that, but they wagged their long tails anyway.

Gavius himself was sized in proportion to the dogs he doted on. In his case it derived from many hours of leaning on bar counters, sampling snack bowls as he discussed marble requirements. He was unmarried and, apart from visiting his parents every day, even his social life consisted of drinking with his colleagues, as he freely told us. I would never have guessed this heavily paunched, fat-faced, easygoing fellow was the son of the worn, fleshless, anxious-seeming couple I had met. When they were all together he must look like an outsized cuckoo in a meadow pipits’ nest.

After we had worked through enough canine lore, Tiberius opened a discussion of marble. Every caupona, popina, thermopolium and mansio throughout the Empire has one or more counters faced with stone crazy-paving pieces. These make food shops instantly recognizable, besides being attractive and easy to clean down.

Gavius was knowledgeable. He liked to chat. Tiberius had begun by mentioning that the counters at the Garden of the Hesperides had just suffered damage. “Some idiot looks to have landed a couple of blows with a lump hammer.” Gavius exclaimed in horror at that; he had provided the marble so recently. They discussed repairs.

Gavius quickly saw that Tiberius had the kind of professional knowledge he respected. “Well, you know how it is around here, sir, they want everything for nothing, with goat bells on. We provide whatever they will pay for, and sometimes I do squeeze a commission with exotics-Cipollino, Brescia. But the bars around here tend to have a mix of Luna and Pentelic, same old white and gray you see everywhere, not much of a challenge for me and the boys.”

“Do you mainly supply reclaimed pieces?”

“It’s legit!” Gavius protested, as if Tiberius was suggesting his supplies were stolen.

“I know, I know. The reclaimers even have a guild in Rome. I am not criticizing you, Gavius. It’s understood-when a property is to be rebuilt, the contractor has a right to any materials he takes out, which he is allowed to sell on. Do you have contacts in the building trade or the quarries?”

“I know everyone. That’s good business.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Fifteen years, easily.” Gavius thought Tiberius had merely asked a polite question but it was useful to me; the marble-supplier had definitely been trading as long ago as the Hesperides killings. “We do obtain offcuts from quarries, though I mainly pick up suitable pieces after renovations. I often buy on spec, keep the bits at the yard. One source for me recently was Domitian’s Temple of the Flavians. Nice and close. Absolutely slathered in gorgeous new marble-have you seen it? He was so choosy, they had a lot of rejects. The builder practically paid me to take them away.”

“And that new Forum of his is only down the Argiletum. It has a good Temple of Minerva.”

“Yes, though very little wastage came off that site. The contractors were old mates, so I picked up any spoiled pieces but hardly worth taking the cart. It comes and goes. We’re still benefiting from that great fire in Titus’ reign. Plenty of big public buildings needed restoration, so the old material had to be taken out and it’s not all fire-damaged. They are generally glad for us to clear the site or at least pick through the skips. I don’t enjoy profiting from a disaster-but you take your chances in life, don’t you? If you know when to turn up, it’s lucky-dip time!”

Tiberius glanced at me, smiling slightly, as if I was one of the chances he had taken.

* * *

I was still considering being a prize in a lucky dip, but now I nipped in. “I am very glad we found you. We had believed you were a dead man, Gavius!”

“As you see, that’s a malicious rumor.” The marble-supplier had a sense of humor; he laughed it off. Other people really take against false reports of their deaths. “Was my obituary flattering?”

“Yes, I believe there is a very moving ode to you by a court poet … I would have known better-I met your parents, lovely people, but they never mentioned your name. All a mistake, so I apologize. The ancient grandma who cooks for the Brown Toad set me straight.” Gavius grinned. He knew who I meant. “Don’t tell me she’s your granny, Gavius?”

He winked. “Mine and half the High Footpath. Father’s mother.”

“She never said.”

“She likes stringing people along. That would be my gran, all right. She’ll ask me what your face looked like when I told you, then she’ll wet herself chuckling … Gobble up her hot pot if you can get it, but don’t believe a word she tells you.”

It would be rather inconvenient to me if her stories about Rufia had been invented. But I did not think so.

“So, Gavius, I expect you have heard we found bodies. At least it’s not you and your crew planted out in the garden. One is reckoned to be the barmaid, but five others look male. Faustus and I intend to find out who they are and what happened. We need witnesses. You have been regularly mentioned as one of the customers that night. I hope you can remember?”

“Oh yes.” Gavius had a darker expression now. “Thales suddenly had a go at us, so we stopped drinking there.”

“It was also the night Rufia disappeared.”

“That was another reason not to go any more.”

“People have described her as rather stern, but you liked her?”

“Kind of. She was a bloody good waitress. They had others there though.”

“If my sources are correct, Rufia also had, let’s say, a wide influence in the community?” Gavius looked blank. “Took a motherly interest in all the bar girls, and the professional prostitutes?”

He shrugged. Women’s stuff. Don’t ask him.

I knew he had had sex that night. Nipius and Natalis had said all the marble-suppliers went upstairs. Presumably it was regular. Rufia “looked after them,” though that could mean she found a free girl, not necessarily that she went with them herself.

I wondered if their nights out had ever resulted in pregnancies that Gavius knew nothing about. Women who slept with salesmen were not the kind who could name the fathers of their children. Afterward, if it went wrong, Rufia would have dealt with it; the salesmen would never even be told. Well, not unless a girl badly needed money to cover her expenses and came cooing round after cash. I bet with regular clients the girls kept quiet rather than deter these men from future business.

No doubt paying for abortions was another aspect of bar life that Julius Liberalis would call an overhead.

I could not help thinking about Chia. The threat of a baby was a much bigger issue for her. This was street life: men casual, women desperate.

I asked Gavius the crucial question: did he and his crew see another group of drinkers, five of them, at the Hesperides, the night Old Thales quarreled? But he said no, not while his crew were there; they must have arrived later.