Three Hands in The Fountain

VI

It took me an hour to explain why my child had been born in Tarraconensis. I had done nothing wrong and this was nothing unusual. Trade, the army and imperial business take plenty of fathers abroad; strong-minded womenfolk (especially those who regard foreign girls as a walking temptation) go with them. In summer most births in self-respecting families occur at fancy villas outside Rome in any case. Even being born outside Italy is perfectly acceptable; only parental status matters. I did not intend my daughter to lose her civic rights because the inconvenient timing of an investigation for the Palace had forced us to introduce her to the world at a distant port called Barcino.

I had taken all the steps I could. Various freeborn women had been present at the birth and could act as witnesses. I had immediately notified the town council at Barcino (who ignored me as a foreigner) and I had made a formal declaration within the proper time limit at the provincial governor's residence in Tarraco. I had the bastard's seal on a blurred chit to prove it.

There was an obvious cause for our problem today. Public slaves receive no official stipend for their duties. Naturally I had come equipped with the usual ex gratia offering, but the clerk thought that if he made things look difficult he could garner a more spectacular tip than usual. The hour's argument was needed to persuade him that I had no more money.

He started weakening. Julia then remembered she wanted to be fed, so she screwed up her little eyes and screamed as if she were practising for when she grew up and wanted to go to parties that I disapproved of. She received her certificate without further delay.

Rome is a masculine city. Places where a respectable woman can feed her young child modestly are rare. That is because respectable nursing mothers are supposed to stay at home. Helena disapproved of staying at home. Perhaps it was my fault for not providing a more alluring habitat. She also despised suckling the baby at the women's latrines, and seemed in no mood to proffer an entry to the women's baths. So we ended up hiring a carrying chair, making sure it had window curtains. If there was one thing that grated on me more than paying for a chair, it was paying for it to go nowhere.

'That's all right,' Helena soothed me. 'We can take a trip. You don't have to stand on guard outside feeling embarrassed.'

The child had to be nourished. Besides, I was proud of the fact that Helena was high-mindedly feeding Julia herself. Many women of her status praise the idea but pay a wetnurse instead. 'I'll wait.'

'No, ask the men to carry us to the Atrium of Liberty,' Helena ordered decisively.

'What's at the Atrium?'

'It's where they store the overflow archive of the Censor's records office. Including notices of the dead.' I knew that.

'Who's died?' I had guessed what she was up to, but I hated being shoved into things.

'That's what you have to find out, Marcus.'

'Pardon me?'

'The hand that you and Petro found? I'm not suggesting you will be able to trace its owner, but there must be a clerk who can at least tell you the procedure when a person disappears.'

I said I had had enough of clerks, but we were all carried off to the Atrium of Liberty anyway.

Like funeral directors, the clerks in the death notice section were a chirpy lot, a bright contrast to their surly colleague registering births. I knew a couple of them already, Silvius and Brixius. Informers are often sent to the Atrium archives by heirs or executors of wills. It was the first time I had shuffled into their office with my stately girlfriend, a sleeping baby, and a curious dog, however. They took it well, presuming that Helena was my client – a pushy one who insisted on supervising my every move. Apart from the fact that I would not be sending her an invoice, that was close.

They worked in the same cubicle, swapping bad jokes and scrolls as if they had no idea what they were doing; on the whole I thought they were efficient. Silvius was about forty, slim and neat. Brixius was younger but favoured the same short hairstyle and elaborate tunic belt. It was pretty clear they had a sexual relationship. Brixius was the soppy one who wanted to dandle Julia. Silvius, putting on a show of tart annoyance, dealt with me.

'I'm seeking general information, Silvius.' I explained about the discovery of the hand, and that Petronius and I were now curious. 'Looks like a blind alley. If a person goes missing, and it's reported to the vigiles, they keep a note, but I wouldn't like to speculate how long the scroll stays active. Whether they pursue the issue depends on a lot of things. But that's not the problem. This relic is in no condition to be identified. It may be ages old, too.'

'So how can we help?' asked Silvius, suspiciously. He was a public slave. He spent his life trying to think up novel ways of referring requests for information to a different department. 'Our records relate to whole personalities, not unpleasant portions of their anatomy.'

'Suppose we had found a whole body, then. If it was nameless, and stayed so, would it be recorded here?'

'No. It could be a foreigner or a slave. Why would anyone want to know about them? We only register the extinction of known Roman citizens.'

'All right; consider it from the other end. What if somebody goes missing? A citizen, one of the three ranks? When their anguished relatives reach the point where they are forced to assume the person is dead, do they come to you?'

'They might. It's up to them.'

'How?'

'If they want a formal record of their loss, they can ask for a certificate.'

'It's not needed for any official purpose, though?'

Silvius consulted Brixius with a glance. 'If the missing person was a head of household, the certificate would confirm to the Treasury that he had ceased to be liable for taxation, by virtue of paying his debts in Hades. Death is the only acknowledged let-off.'

'Very droll.'

'A formal certificate is not relevant for the will?' Helena put in.

I shook my head. 'Executors can decide to open the will whenever it seems reasonable.'

'What if they make a mistake, Marcus?'

'If a false report of a death is made to the censors deliberately,' I said, 'or if a will is knowingly opened before time, that's a serious offence: theft and probably conspiracy, in the case of the will. A genuine mistake would be viewed leniently, I imagine. What would you do, lads, if a person you had listed as dead turned up unexpectedly after all?'

Silvius and Brixius shrugged, saying it would be a matter for their superiors. They regarded their superiors as idiots, of course.

I was not interested in mistakes. 'When people come to register, they don't have to prove the death?'

'Nobody has to prove it, Falco. They make a solemn declaration; it's their duty to tell the truth.'

'Oh honesty's a duty!'

Silvius and Brixius tutted at my irony.

'There doesn't have to be a body?' Helena was particularly curious because her father's younger brother, who was certainly dead but had been given no funeral as his body had disappeared.

Trying not to remember that I personally had dropped the rotting cadaver of Helena's treacherous uncle down a sewer to avoid complications for the Emperor, I said, 'There could be many reasons for not having a body. War, loss at sea -' That was what had been given out by the family about Helena's Uncle Publius.

'Vanishing among the barbarians,' trilled Silvius.

'Running off with the baker,' supplied Brixius, who was more cynical.

'Well, that's the kind of case I'm talking about,' I said. 'Someone who disappears for no known reason. They may be an eloping adulterer – or they may have been abducted and murdered.'

'Sometimes people deliberately choose to vanish,' said Brixius. 'The pressure of their lives becomes intolerable, and they flit. They may come home one day – or never.'

'So what if a relative actually admits to you that someone is not stiffening on a bier but only missing?'

'If they really believe the person is dead they should just report that.'

'Why? What do you do to them otherwise?' smiled Helena.

He grinned. 'We have ways of making life extremely difficult! But if the circumstances seem reasonable, we issue a certificate in the normal way.'

'Normal?' I queried. 'What – no little stars in the margin? No funny-coloured ink? No listing in a special scroll?'

'Ooh!' shrieked Silvius. 'Falco wants a squint at our special scroll!'

Brixius leaned back on one elbow, surveying me playfully. 'What special scroll would that be, Falco?'

'The one where you list dubious reports that may pop up as trouble later.'

'Why, that's a good idea. I might put that forward as a staff suggestion and get the Censors to instigate the system by edict.'

'We have enough systems,' groaned Silvius.

'Exactly. Listen, Falco,' Brixius explained cheerfully, 'if something looks stinky, any clerk with all his acorns just writes it up as if he hadn't noticed. That way, if there ever are nasty repercussions he can always claim it smelt perfectly sweet at the time.'

'What I'm trying to ascertain,' I ploughed on, realising it was hopeless, 'is whether if anyone goes missing in Rome, you might hold any useful information here?'

'No,' said Brixius.

'No,' agreed Silvius.

'The register of deaths is a revered tradition,' Brixius went on. 'There has never been any suggestion that it might actually serve useful purposes.'

'Fair enough.' I was getting nowhere. Well, I was used to that.

Helena asked Brixius to hand the baby back, and we went home.