The Chariots of Calyx

Chapter Three

Londinium is an awe-inspiring city, even when viewed from the uncomfortable vantage point of a swaying litter carried by two sweating slaves. From the moment we lurched past the ornamental fountains and the crowd of curious onlookers, and out of the gates of the governor’s palace, I began to understand why this provincial capital is spoken of in awed terms by all who visit it.

I had glimpsed something of its wonders the evening before, though because of the imperial festival there had been little commerce on the streets. Even so, as we arrived in the failing light the mere expanse of tiled roofs had impressed me, and so had the vast numbers of houses, shops and colonnades. This morning, in slanting sunshine, the city was about its business again and the sheer quantity of people made me gape.

There are rumoured to be ten thousand men in Londinium, and as we turned away from the so-called Wall Brook and on to the main road across the city, I felt that all of them must be out here on the streets.

I am accustomed to crowds — Glevum is a substantial town and so is neighbouring Corinium — but I had never seen so many men together at one time in the same place, except for military processions or religious festivals. But this was an ordinary working day.

There were people everywhere: rich men in togas giving orders; lesser ones in tunics lifting bales; others, in little more than rags, attempting to sell their pitiful baskets of wild herbs and berries, or offering to hold a horse for a bronze as or two. Boys hustled by with handcarts laden with pigskins; women passed with firewood bundled on their backs. And creatures too. Dogs and donkeys loitered in doorways, caged birds whistled from a vendor’s stall, and pigs, sheep and cattle called plaintively from the butchers’ pens in the distant market, while mules and horses plodded in the gutters, laden with every cargo known to man, from olive oil to oysters, candlesticks to cloth.

‘Where does it all come from?’ I muttered, half to myself.

The supercilious slave was trotting beside my chair, obedient to the governor’s orders, and heard the remark. ‘All unloaded from the boats that come up the river,’ he informed me breathlessly.

The pace that the litter-bearers were setting meant that he had to scurry along in a rather undignified manner to keep up, to my secret amusement. His name was Superbus, he told me proudly, ‘meaning excellent’, and that caused me to smile even more. ‘Superbus’ does mean ‘excellent’, but it also means ‘supercilious’. Governor Pertinax had his own sense of humour, then, under that stern exterior.

The slave was not looking very excellent now. The pace was telling on him — he was already turning red and panting slightly, to the visible detriment of his self-esteem and the scarcely concealed amusement of the litter-bearers. (I half suspected they were doing it on purpose, so I was unreasonably pleased to notice that Junio, who was striding along on the other side of the carrying chair, appeared to be managing the brisk walk effortlessly.)

Junio caught my eye and grinned appreciatively. ‘A little bigger than Glevum, master. Look at that basilica!’

I could scarcely help looking at it. We had just turned into the street which fronted the forum, and the building which Junio was excitedly indicating would have been hard to miss. It dominated the entire neighbourhood with its lofty columns and gracious portico. The whole dignified edifice — town offices, function halls and courtrooms, flanked by temples and official market halls — was set back across a spacious public square, itself dotted with mighty statues and surrounded by a colonnade where independent vendors had set up makeshift stalls.

‘Great Mercury!’ I exclaimed, as all this came fully into view. ‘Whoever built that intended to impress!’

‘It’s said to be the biggest basilica in the Empire, outside Rome,’ Superbus informed us, as loftily as his heavy breathing would allow. Despite his scarlet cheeks he managed to sound as if the glories of the city were to his personal credit.

‘Imagine!’ I gave him a cheerful smile, hanging on to my chair with both hands as my bearers navigated a pile of turnips spread out for sale on the pavement. ‘Hard to believe that less than two hundred years ago there was nothing here but a swamp.’

Unkind, perhaps, although it was nothing less than the truth. Everyone knew that the Romans had built their elaborate city on virgin land. None of our Celtic tribes had ever bothered with the place — the lowest practical crossing of the river, certainly, but the soil for miles around was too poor to support farming. Superbus, however, saw any comment on the city as a blow to his own self-esteem, and he deflated like a punctured pig’s bladder. His face became more scarlet than ever and he said nothing further until we had arrived at our destination.

This proved to be a substantial mansion in the north-east of the city, the door already hung with a wreath of funerary green. It was a large house in possession of a privately walled rear garden with — as far as I could tell from a glimpse over the high wall — a long, low addition on one side. The ‘wing’ in which the fearsome Annia lived, I guessed. After Pertinax’s description, I was looking forward to meeting her.

I had not long to wait. I had hardly set foot to paving before a small, stout woman with folded lips and greying hair had brushed aside the doorkeeper and was waiting in the corridor to greet me. From her wine-coloured stola and imperious air, and the pair of maidservants skulking nervously behind her, this was clearly a lady of some account.

I was surprised to find her there, since I am not a person of particular importance. It is not at all customary for a householder, particularly a female one, to come hurrying out personally in this fashion. Usually the visitor drums his heels in the atrium first, nibbling at dates, while a slave goes through the pretence of summoning the master — or mistress — who will arrive only after a dignified interval. One expects these conventions.

‘Lady. .’ I stopped, lowering my eyes respectfully. ‘The citizen Libertus, at your command.’

If I had supposed, even vaguely, that her unexpectedly prompt appearance was due to womanly anxiety and grief for her dead son, her first words were enough to disabuse me. ‘Well, citizen, so there you are at last. Oh, get up, get up — we’ll have none of that time-consuming nonsense here.’ I had attempted to kneel before her with bowed head, a conventional gesture of respect towards a Roman matron in mourning. ‘There’s work to be done. That female has conspired to have my son done away with, and I want you to prove it. It may not be easy. They are clever, she and that lover of hers. That’s why I sent to Pertinax. I said I wanted the best.’ She inspected me, discontentedly, like a cook at the market appraising a fowl and finding it tough and scrawny. ‘And he sent you. Are you the best?’ I half expected her to reach out and test the flesh on my forearm.

‘I will do my best,’ I said, foolishly, still startled by the nature of my welcome. We had not moved from the entrance-way, and Annia Augusta — if that was indeed who it was — was still standing before me with folded arms, as forbidding as the Nubians at the palace. ‘To find out who is guilty, that is.’

‘It is not a question of finding out who’s guilty,’ she said sharply. ‘Fulvia Honoria, my daughter-in-law, and that wretched Lividius Fortunatus of hers — they are the ones who are guilty. Any idiot could guess that. Proving it will be the problem. That is why I sent for you. What do you say to that?’

I had nothing to say to it. I was too taken aback to make any sensible reply. After a death, especially a violent death like this, one expects emotion — shock at least, or grief — and most of all from the mother. There was no sign in Annia Augusta of anything except scarcely concealed impatience.

She was looking at me pityingly now. ‘It seems you’re not as sharp-witted as I was led to believe. Well, since the governor has sent you, I suppose you had better come in. Come on — all of you!’ She made a sharp gesture with her hand, then turned and led the way into the atrium. We followed her like a flock of docile sheep — her attendants, myself, Junio and Superbus, who by this time was smirking all over his face at my discomfiture.

I tried to ignore him, and concentrated on my surroundings.

The atrium was as tall, classic and gracious as Annia Augusta was not. It was roofed, as most atria are in this most northerly of the provinces, but someone had added an ornamental pool, in imitation of the Roman fashion, with a central statue, a few scattered plants and one or two lethargic fish lurking in it. I wondered what Herculean efforts by the servants were required to keep that little feature constantly cleaned and replenished.

The walls were of painted plaster, depicting hunting scenes, and the room had been elaborately furnished with more expense than taste. On one wall a huge and heavy gold-crusted table groaned under a pot-bellied onyx vase; on another a gigantic marble statue of Vesta squinted down at us from her plinth in a painted niche; and the whole floor boasted an elaborate mosaic, depicting lumpish nymphs and sea creatures in an intricate design of quite exceptional ugliness. What caught my attention, however, was a small plain table in a corner of the open tablinium beyond, on to which a young page was carefully placing a tray containing a selection of fresh fruits and a jug of watered wine.

Annia Augusta glowered at him. ‘What are you doing here?’

The boy stopped, platter in hand. ‘The mistress,’ he ventured. ‘She bade me. . for our guest. .’

To my surprise, Annia seemed to accept this, although ungraciously. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said impatiently. ‘Put it on the table and leave it there.’ The boy did as he was ordered, and escaped from the room with evident relief.

‘My daughter-in-law,’ Annia said. ‘Giving herself airs.’ She smirked — a little smile of satisfaction. ‘Well, let her wait until the will is read. That will put a stop to her tricks. Filius will be the heir, and we shall see who is the mistress then.’ She turned to me with a tight little smile and gestured to the plate. ‘Though I suppose you may have some of this if you desire, now that it has been prepared. I don’t like to see good food wasted. I would have offered you refreshment myself, if I thought you wanted it. But you have come from the governor’s palace. No doubt you are already fed and watered satisfactorily?’

This was so outright discourteous that for the first time since I had entered the house and encountered this extraordinary woman I abandoned all attempts at the delicacy one normally displays in the face of sudden loss. I squared my shoulders and tried to look as masterful as I could.

‘Madam citizen,’ I said, with punctilious courtesy, ‘I shall be grateful to accept your hospitality.’ She was right, of course: I was neither hungry nor thirsty, but I felt that if I did not take a stand, and soon, I would lose my precarious authority altogether, governor’s protégé or not.

Annia Augusta looked affronted at my words — I guessed she was not often defied by anyone — but she signed to one of her maidservants to fetch a stool, while the other led Junio and Superbus off to wait in the servants’ room, as the custom was.

‘And while I am enjoying your generous welcome,’ I added, following up my earlier social swordplay with a calculated thrust, ‘you mentioned a number of names. Perhaps you could explain to me who these people are?’

‘People?’ She sounded as if she had never mentioned a person in her life.

‘This. .’ I searched for the name, ‘Filius, did you call him? And Lividius Fortunatus, who is he? The only Lividius Fortunatus I have ever heard of is a racing driver in the circus.’

I said it with a suppressed smile. That Lividius Fortunatus was known to every man in the province. Drivers of racing chariots may be of humble origin — indeed many of them begin as slaves — but those who survive the training soon earn enough to acquire their freedom, and the successful ones are among the most highly paid men in the Empire, even if they are still tied by contracts to their teams. ‘Living like a driver of the Blues’ has become a synonym for conspicuous extravagance — and there are few drivers more successful than Fortunatus.

Even here in Britannia, that young hero of the circuit was rumoured to be paid more gold for a single race than a successful wool-trader might make in a lifetime. And it was not just the money. Young women (and sometimes nubile young men) were said to haunt his dressing rooms, to throw themselves at their idol’s feet (or any other part of his anatomy). Rich men fêted him, poets praised him and vendors of his favourite wine and olives would not only give him samples of their wares, they would sometimes pay the charioteer handsomely to be seen consuming them in public.

So Annia would hardly be talking about that Fortunatus. There were, no doubt, many others. There has been a fashion recently for newly created citizens to choose their own Roman names, instead of necessarily taking their master’s, the Emperor’s and a nickname, as I had done. It prevents the world from being full of men called Julius, and having a Marcus Aurelius Something-or-other at the end of every street — though I wonder how the great and the famous react to finding their almost-namesakes everywhere. This was some racing enthusiast, probably, or would-be charioteer, naming himself after his favourite hero.

‘I am a stranger in the city, madam citizen. Who is this other Lividius Fortunatus? I’m afraid I do not know the man you are talking about.’

I had begun to think that Annia Augusta had exhausted her ability to surprise me, but I was wrong.

‘Of course you do,’ she said sharply. ‘That is the very man I mean. Lividius Fortunatus, the racing charioteer. Oh, don’t stare at me in that disbelieving slack-jawed fashion. I am perfectly serious. I don’t know how he did it, but I’d wager a thousand denarii that he murdered my son. And that, my dear citizen, is what I want you to prove.’