too miserly. Festive wax tapers had burned down homes, with the loss of crucial documents. Houses left empty had been broken into and stripped of their artworks. Could we recover the loot? The wrong people had been kissed in dark corners, only to be spied on by spouses who now wanted not only divorce, but also their rights (in the form of the family shop). Children had been abused by uncles and stepfathers during the ghost stories. Could we blackmail the bastards and stop it? Drunks had never come home. Slaves playing king-for-the-day acquired too much of a taste for role-swapping and locked crazy old masters and mistresses in cupboards while they took over the house permanently. Lonely recluses had died unnoticed, so their cadavers were now smelling out their apartments. Once long-lost offspring were found and lured back to arrange burials, a hunt would start for missing fortunes that had long ago been whisked away by swindlers, then there would be work hunting down the swindlers, then the swindlers would swear their innocence and want their names cleared – and so on.
We had plenty to do. Since dear Aulus and Quintus, my patrician assistants, thought such stuff was beneath them, I was doing it. It was beneath me, too, but I had been an informer through some desperate times and I had not learned to say no.
It had been the first Saturnalia when Julia Junilla was old enough to take an interest. Helena and I had our work cut out ensuring that she stayed awake when her grandparents came calling, or running after her when she snatched her darling little cousins' presents and insisted they were her own. Sosia Favonia, our baby, went down with some frightening sickness, which parents soon learn is inevitable at festivals; it comes to nothing as soon as you are both utterly worn out with panic, but you suffer first. Few doctors were answering their doors, even if patients were successfully rushed to them through the crowded streets. Who wants to hand their tiny baby to a medico who is falling down drunk? I tried the nearest, but when he threw up on me I just carried her home. Favonia could vomit all over my holiday tunic. She didn't need him giving her ideas.
After seven days the torture ended. Saturnalia, I mean. Favonia recovered in five.
Then Julia caught whatever Favonia had had, after which naturally Helena was stricken with it. We had a British girl living with us, who looked after the children, but she collapsed too. Albia had led a troubled life and was normally withdrawn; now she also felt terribly ill in a strange, enormous city where everyone had gone mad for a week. We were responsible for placing her in this nightmare. Helena dragged herself out of bed to comfort the poor girl, while I curled up on a couch in my office with the little ones, until I was rescued by Petronius.
My old friend Petro was escaping from the noise at the house he now shared with my sister Maia. Most of the racket was not caused by rowdy children, but by my mother and other sisters telling Maia she always made bad choices with men. The rest of the rumpus was Maia losing her temper and yelling back. Sometimes my father would be lurking on the sidelines; Maia helped with his business so he reckoned he could irritate Petro by appearing at every possible awkward moment and eavesdropping. Petronius, who until then had always thought I was hard on Pa, now understood why the sight of his grey curls and sly grin could make any sensible man climb out of a back window and leave town for three days.
He and I went to a bar. It was closed. We tried another, but it was full of the relics of riotous behaviour. I had had enough of that, looking after my sick children. The third bar was clean but still had the rioters; when they started being cheerful and friendly, we left. The only place where we could be morose was the Fourth Cohort's station house. Not for the first time, we ended up there. After seven long days and even longer nights of dousing fires caused by sheer stupidity, and then dealing with rapes, stabbings, and persons who had snapped and turned into maniacs, the vigiles were in a grim mood. That suited us fine.
`Nightmare!' Petronius uttered.
`You could have stayed single,' I reminded him. His wife, Arria Silvia, had divorced him and for a short while he had enjoyed his freedom.
`So could you!'
`Unfortunately, I loved the girl.'
It would have been good to hear Petro assure me that he loved my sister – but he was pushed to the limit and only growled angrily.
We would have been sharing a drink but we had forgotten to bring any. He leaned back against a wall, with his eyes closed. I stayed quiet. A few months beforehand, he had lost two of his daughters. Petronilla, the survivor, had been brought up to Rome to spend Saturnalia with her father. The child was taking life hard. So was her father. Enduring bereavement among the festivities had been grim; the fun and games that were always arranged by Maia's thriving brood were not the best solution for anyone. What choice was there, though? It would have been a desperate week for Petronilla alone with her mother.
`I thought I would never get through this month,' Petro admitted to me. I said nothing. He rarely broke into confidences. `Gods, I hate festivals!'
`Has Petronilla gone back to Silvia yet?'
`Tomorrow. I'm taking her.' He paused. I knew that since he had had to admit to Arria Silvia that he was now sharing a bed with Maia, he found it easier to avoid his ex-wife. My sister had played no part in their separation, but Silvia accused Petronius of having always lusted after Maia – and he stubbornly would not deny it. `I'd better see for myself. Can't be sure what we'll be walking into.' He paused a second time, trouble heavy in his voice. 'Silvia had a bust-up with that lousy boyfriend of hers. She was facing Saturnalia alone and not looking forward to it. She threatened -' He stopped altogether. Then he said, `She made wild threats about killing herself.'
`Would she?'
`Probably not.'
We sat in silence.
It was Petronius who told me that when the courts reopened, Silius Italicus was to charge the apothecary with murdering Metellus. Petro had heard it from the Second Cohort. They were agog because not only was Rhoemetalces to be offered to the praetor as having a case to answer, but Silius was putting up Rubiria Juliana as his co-accused. Well, that mischief will have brought festival joy to yet another Roman family.
Io Saturnalia!
XI
‘SILIUS is doing this because he wants a Senate hearing,' Petro said.
He was a good Roman. Legal gossip excited him. `He's out to make his name. Parricide is a bloody good way to ensure it; the public will be avid for details. This Juliana woman is patrician, so it will go before the Curia. If the family have imperial influence it could be even better than that. To spare her the ordeal, Vespasian may himself take her case at the Palace -'
`He won't,' I disagreed. `The old man will distance himself from this family. Ordinarily, he might have rescued them from the ordeal of a public trial, but the corruption conviction will put them on their own.
`You mean he is an Emperor who won't fiddle things for the elite?'
`I mean, Petro, he won't want it to look that way.'
`Does he fiddle?' Petronius was certain that I had inside knowledge.
`Presumably. Don't they all? What's the point of ruling the world if you never fix things?'
`I thought Vespasian didn't give a toss about the upper class.'
`Maybe not. But he wants them in his debt.'
`You are a cynic,' observed Petronius.
`You get that way.'
`It's very hard for Juliana,' Helena reckoned when I went home and told her. `To be accused of killing her papa, when she bought the pills only because he sent her.'
'Silius will argue that Juliana is lying. Why send her? Why not send out his wife or a house slave?'
`She was his daughter,' Helena said. `She knew the apothecary. Metellus trusted her to make sure they were pills that would be quick and clean and painless.'
`Would you do it for Decimus?'
Helena looked shocked. She loved her father. `No! But then,' she reasoned, Juliana tried -'Helena learned fast; she quickly swung along with my caution. `Or she says she tried – to thwart her father's suicide.'
`I am sure the defence will parade that claim on her behalf.'
