Illegally Dead

31

We took the carriage into town the next day, Perilla and I, about two hours shy of lunchtime. I got Lysias to park it just short of the market square — no point in giving the duplicitous bastard advance warning — and we walked the rest of the way to Pontius’s. We’d timed it well: they’d all be inside already.

I led the way up the outside stair to the first floor and opened the door at the top. Perilla and I slipped inside.

The place was packed full of women. At least, there was one man there, apart from the major attraction at the front of the room, and he was standing two or three yards away. I edged over, grabbed his arm and twisted it up his back. He squealed, and a plump woman sitting on the bench immediately in front of him turned round and said: ‘Ssssh!’

‘Sorry, lady,’ I whispered. ‘Private business.’ Then, in his ear: ‘Gabba, you bastard! You set this up, didn’t you?’

‘Corvinus? What the hell are — ?’ Then he saw Perilla, and swallowed. Yeah, well, I knew the feeling.

‘How much are you getting?’ I said.

‘Just the usual agent’s fee, consul. Ten per cent of the gate. But it’s a public service. You heard old Titus Luscius downstairs the other day, his wife feeds him on beans four days out of five, and the fifth it’s chitterlings. I just thought — ’

The plump woman turned round again. ‘If you two don’t shut up,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you bloody chitterlings myself.’

‘Right. Right.’ I let go of Gabba’s arm. ‘Sorry, lady.’

‘Sauce!’

‘Sauce,’ Meton said. ‘Well, ladies, if you want to raise everyday braised meats like these’ — he indicated the cutlets on the skillet sitting on top of the charcoal stove in front of him — ‘right into the dinner-party bracket you can’t do better than a fish pickle sauce. Here it is, very simple, I made it earlier. Grind the herbs and spice very finely, that’s thyme, caraway, lovage and pepper, a good three-fingersful pinch of each. Me, I’d go for black peppercorns every time, but use white if you prefer a milder taste. Oh, and one small tip here: if you’re on a very tight budget, or you want something more traditional, try using dried myrtle berries. They’re not the same, but they’re a lot cheaper, and a few juniper berries mixed in work wonders where flavour’s concerned, especially with stronger meats such as goat, wild boar or venison, when I’d add them anyway. Lovage — well, I’d use the seeds here myself for preference, but I’ve nothing against the leaves, fresh or dried, or even the root, if you must. And if you can’t get lovage for any reason, or again if you prefer something a little more subtle, then use celery, the seeds or the leaves, not the stems. Once you’ve done the business with the mortar and pestle, add the result to a mixture of finely-chopped shallots and dates — again for you budget-watchers figs are a good alternative, but the taste’ll be quite different — then stir in the fish pickle, Spanish if you can find it and afford it, naturally, but the factories in Pompeii are producing some pretty good stuff these days, so I’d give that a try if you see it in your local market. If you’re in doubt I’d go for the mackerel-based version, the average quality tends to be higher, although anchovy pickle has a lot to be said for it if you know your source. Blend with some honey, a little of the meat stock and some olive oil, pour over the cutlets half way through the cooking time — here we go — and — ’

— at which point, across the crowded room, our eyes met and held.

‘Ah,’ Meton said.

And dried.

Silence. Then three dozen other pairs of hostile eyes swivelled in my direction…

‘But, Marcus, he was talking! Really talking, not his usual monosyllabic grunt-and-mumble.’ Perilla steadied herself against the carriage’s windowsill as Lysias hit yet another pothole. ‘And holding the entire audience spellbound. Meton was! Don’t you find that interesting?’

‘Personally, lady, I found it frightening. They’d’ve lynched us if we hadn’t got out in time.’ I wasn’t exaggerating, either: when Meton had corpsed, and it became obvious why, the audience had turned distinctly nasty. Forget your stories of German Frauen wading into battle tooth and nail beside their husbands, a crowd of Latin matrons with their blood up’ll have them beat six ways from nothing every time, and that plump woman had had fists the size of hams. ‘It just shows you, where food’s concerned you don’t argue. Especially with a roomful of housewives caught in compositio interrupta.’

‘Well, I think Gabba was right. Meton’s performing a public service and we should encourage him. Not just live demonstrations, either: there must be a huge market out there for cookery books. If we could get him to write some of his recipes down and hire a few copyists — ’

Gods! ‘Read my lips, lady,’ I said. ‘We’d be unleashing a monster. The world is not yet ready for a celebrity chef.’

She smiled and ducked her head. ‘Perhaps just Castrimoenium, then.’

‘Yeah.’ I settled back into the cushions. ‘I’ll compromise on that.’

We drove home.