Part 5 (1/2)

”During a break in the Games. I met him at the latrines, actually.”

”Nice timing.”

”Oh, I am the sophisticated one in our family!”

”Yes; your life is a.s.suming remarkable elegance.” I was smiling over his bitter quip, which had a wry note that was typical of all the Camilli. ”So tell me, Aulus: at that point there had been a lot of noise, and folk milling about the complex?”

”Yes.” Aelia.n.u.s immediately saw what I meant. ”There were trumpets and applause from the Games too--a scuffle behind the pavilion would have been well m.u.f.fled.”

We spoke no more until we arrived at the Grove.

There were trees. Over the centuries these had been reduced to a straggly windbreak around the complex. The Arval Brothers were not keen foresters. Even routine lopping of the sacred boughs called for elaborate religious procedures; whenever decay or lightning strikes necessitated felling and replanting, major solemn sacrifices had to be performed. This was inconvenient and had had the result that the trees which stood around the sanctuary were in a gnarled, half-rotted condition. The Brethren might wors.h.i.+p fertility, but they should have been ashamed of their arboretum.

Its buildings were a different matter. In decor and taste, the temples with their clean styling could have leaped straight from an architect's cla.s.sical pattern book. The most refined lines and crispest details belonged to the Caesarium, the shrine for the deified emperors; every triglyph and antefix had a superior Augustan smirk. It looked as if the imperial family had plied the edifice with imperial money to ensure they were sufficiently honored. Very astute.

Aelia.n.u.s led me straight to the Master's pavilion. It was a lavish marquee erected once a year on festival days, a far cry from the ten-man leather tents used by the legions in what I called camping. This large, fanciful party piece boasted p.r.o.ng-topped poles and ta.s.seled ropes. Its roof was formed from st.i.tched sheets the size of corns.h.i.+p sails; elaborate side walls were attached all around, and there was a porch, above which hung wreaths of corn and laurel leaves. New torches had just been set up outside the entrance, though nothing was going on inside.

I crossed the porch extension and glanced into the tent. The air temperature rose sharply. The hot, humid atmosphere took me straight back to the army. There was the familiar suffocating smell of warm, trodden gra.s.s. A few oil lamps were lit. A portable throne stood opposite the entrance. Before it, fine cloths covered a low table where only crumbs remained. Cus.h.i.+ons were piled against the back wall of the tent, behind the throne. Attracted in by the light, moths and long-legged insects knocked against the roof. n.o.body else was there.

I pulled out one of the torches. Dew dampened our bootstraps as we made our way behind the tent. Aelia.n.u.s was starting to look apprehensive. Whatever he had seen earlier, he wanted never to see again.

As it happened, somebody had obliged him. When we turned around the corner to where he told me the corpse had been lying, it was no longer there.

I left him at the pavilion entrance while I tried to find attendants. Eventually I learned that there was n.o.body with any authority left at the Grove. All the Arval Brothers had returned to Rome. Oddly, n.o.body seemed to know anything about any man who had been terribly knifed under the guy ropes. There should be a commotion over the sudden death of one of the twelve Brothers. I saw no signs of consternation. The murder must have been hushed up.

I made Aelia.n.u.s return with me to where the body had been. I had no doubts about his story, though I was beginning to fear that other people might be skeptical. I put one hand on the gra.s.s; it was very wet, far wetter than dew alone would cause. By torchlight, no traces of blood were now visible. On the skirts of the pavilion, however, I found a distinct spray of blood splashes. Whoever sluiced the ground had overlooked them.

The knife that had been with the body was gone too. There seemed to be no other evidence. Aelia.n.u.s pushed his hand under the bottom edge of the tent; its side wall had once been pegged to the ground with wooden stays, but they were pulled out. It may have been an oversight; the side walls were probably looped up earlier that day to air the interior.

With some difficulty we dragged up the wall of the tent, finding that the cus.h.i.+ons I had seen were piled just here. We shoved some of them aside. Moving the torch closer, I discovered that the gra.s.s inside the pavilion, under the cus.h.i.+ons, was stained with the rusty red of blood.

”Believe me now?” Aelia.n.u.s demanded defensively.

”Oh, I always believed you.”

”Whoever cleaned up outside failed to realize there was more work to be done inside the tent.”

”Yes. If it's a coverup, they will have been in a rush. I am seeing what happened now. Looks like the fight started inside the pavilion. A good place to ambush somebody--it would have given the killer privacy. At the first a.s.sault, the victim may have fallen against the tent wall. Since it isn't pegged, it gave way under his weight. He would have half fallen outside, then probably struggled right under the tent, trying to flee.”

I ducked under the flap myself going in. On the inner surface of the tenting there were more smears of blood, long marks like dragging, which had not soaked through to the outside. They could have been made by a man falling.

”The trouble started inside. The desperate victim somehow made it outside, probably got caught up in the guy ropes in his panic, and was finished off. Ceremonially, with the sacrificial knife--” We both winced. ”The killer then pulled the tent wall down straight, piling the cus.h.i.+ons up to cover the blood inside.”

”Why bother?”

”To delay discovery. You heard people, you said?”

”It sounded like attendants, clearing the interior.”

”Maybe the killer had also heard them coming. There was time for a few swift adjustments to make the scene look normal.” I wondered if the killer then walked out, pa.s.sing the attendants, or ducked back under the tent wall again. Either way, an encounter with Aelia.n.u.s must have been only narrowly avoided. ”The corpse, behind the tent, could safely have been left.”

”Right, Falco. It might not have been discovered until the pavilion was taken down. That's not going to happen until at least tomorrow--or even the day afterwards, when the festival formally ends.”

Thinking about this, Aelia.n.u.s was staring at the area next to the throne where the a.s.sault must have begun. He gave a start. He had seen something glint under the cus.h.i.+ons. Flinging the ta.s.seled soft furnis.h.i.+ngs further aside, he retrieved a decorative holder of some sort. It was a flat tube, with one open end, the other closed in a curved shape. As a scabbard, it would be too short for a sword and too big for a dagger. It formed a distinctive, short, broad-bladed shape. We both knew what it was: a priest's fancy holder for a sacrificial knife.

”Well, somebody committed sacrilege,” Aelia.n.u.s exclaimed dryly. ”It is forbidden to bring any kind of blade into the Sacred Grove!”

X.

DAWN OVER THE Arx.

Here, on the least high of the Seven Hills, stood the Temple of Juno Moneta. Juno the Admonisher. Juno of the Mint. Juno the Moneybags.

Before her temple stood M. Didius Falco. Falco the ex-informer. Falco the Procurator. Falco, dutifully working in his new post--and looking for a get-out clause.

Juno's temple on the Arx possessed the now-pampered geese whose ancestors had once saved Rome from marauding Gauls by honking when the guard dogs failed to bark. (It said little for the military commanders of the time that they had failed to post sentries.) Now once a year hapless dogs were rounded up to be ritually crucified while the geese looked on from a litter with purple cus.h.i.+ons. I had to ensure proper treatment was being meted out to the geese. I had no remit for dogs. And n.o.body ever had a remit for correcting military incompetence.

Crying birds caught my attention. Two swallows were wheeling, pursued by a predator--broad wings, distinctive tail, short bursts of flapping flight interspersed with hovering and quick fluttering displays: a sparrowhawk.

This was the place of augury. It was the most ancient heart of Rome. Between the two peaks lay the Saddle, which Romulus had decreed a place of refuge for fugitives--establis.h.i.+ng from the very first that whatever austere old men in togas liked to think, Rome would succor social rejects and criminals. On the second peak, the Citadel, rose the huge new Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, the largest temple ever built, and once it was completed in full decorative splendor with its statuary and gilding, the most magnificent in the Empire. There was a fine view of it from the Arx, and from there too another view looking eastwards to Mons Alba.n.u.s, whence the augurs sought inspiration from the G.o.ds. Here, especially at dawn, a man with a religious soul could convince himself he was close to the chief divinities.

I did not have a religious soul. I had come to see the Sacred Chicks.

Alongside the Temple of Juno Moneta lay the Auguraculum. This was a consecrated platform which formed a practical, permanent augury site. I had always avoided the mystical lore of divination, but I knew broadly that an augur was supposed to mark out with a special curly stick the area of sky he intended to watch, then the area of ground from which he would operate and within which he pitched his observation tent. He sat inside from midnight to dawn, gazing out southwards or eastwards through the open doorway until he spied lightning or a significant flight of birds.

I wondered idly just how he was supposed to see birds before dawn, in the dark.

Today no auspice-taker was in action. Just as well, because I looked inside the booth to say h.e.l.lo--forgetting that any interruption would negate the whole night's watch.

The Sacred Chickens had a different role from the Sacred Geese, but being used in augury they too lived on the Arx, and so it had seemed convenient to Vespasian to bundle them in with my main job. I found the chicken-keeper, one of the few people about. ”You're early, Falco.”

”Had a late night.”

Preferring to remain a man of mystery, I did not explain. Going to bed late after a crisis makes me stay awake, brooding over the excitement. Then it's a choice of nodding off at dawn and feeling terrible when you wake up late, or getting up early and still feeling terrible but having time to do something. Anyway, Helena and I had stayed the night at the Camillus residence after I returned with her brother. I could not face breakfast being polite to people I hardly knew.

The keeper showed me the hen coops. They stood on legs to keep out vermin. Double doors with lattice fronts kept the hens in and gave protection from dogs, weasels, and raptors.

”I see you keep them good and clean.”

”I don't want them dying on me. I'd get the blame.”

If I wanted to be pedantic, now that I was the procurator in charge of poultry management, it was my job to answer questions if too many of the precious pullets popped off, but I was not giving him an excuse to slack. ”Plenty of water?” I had been in the army. I knew how to be irritating when people were doing a perfectly adequate job without my supervision.