Saturnalia, p.23
Saturnalia, page 23
part #18 of Falco Series
Another movement caught my eye. A helmet flashed, among the Praetorians assembled on the temple step. Oh no.
The Chief Spy had been visiting Ma just before me yesterday. She must have told him what she told me. Now Anacrites and some of the Guards were on the move, and I could guess where they were all going. They too were heading to the Temple of Diana Aventinensis—and they would probably arrive ahead of me.
XL
The senator had half risen from his seat. He liked heroics. Helena Justina pushed him back. ‘Marcus, take me!’ ‘No.’ I did not want to tell her that it might be dangerous. ‘Stop shutting me out, Marcus.’ She would never change. She had tamed a reprobate, settled down, borne two children, run a household—but Helena Justina would never become a respectable matron, satisfied with domesticity. We first met during an adventure. Action formed part of our relationship. Always did, always would do.
She and I shared a tussle of wills, which I enjoyed more than I should have done. As I looked into those determined dark eyes, she nobbled me as she always did, and I felt a smile twitch. I wanted her to be safe—yet I wanted her to come. Helena spotted my weakness. At once she whipped off the costume wig. Her own fine hair had been pinned up under it, but escaped in a whoosh. She wore little jewellery; with the plain brown dress under a plainer cloak, she would be anonymous on the streets. That was obviously planned.
She bent down, mouthing in her mother’s ear, ‘We are just going to look for—’
‘Oh pee on a column, Marcus! Be like everybody else.’
Bright-eyed, Helena exploded into giggles. I grinned at the senator over Julia Justa’s head, as she burrowed in her hamper again, oblivious. Camillus Verus, trapped there at the banquet, shot us an envious look. Then I clutched Helena by the hand and we left.
We ran into Titus Caesar. Youthful, splendid in the purple, famously magnanimous, the heir to the Empire greeted us like favourite cousins. ‘Not leaving already, Falco?’
‘Following a lead on that case, sir.’
Titus raised his eyebrows and gestured towards Anacrites. ‘I thought it was in hand.’
‘Joint operation, sir!’ I lied. His eyes lingered on Helena Justina, clearly wondering why she was coming with me. ‘I always take a girl to hold the cloaks.’
‘Chaperon duty!’ Helena snorted, as she let Titus see her elbow me hard, correcting my cheeky suggestion. With a jaunty grin for the heir to the Empire, I dragged her away.
Anacrites had been held up. The slaves who guarded the statue were not willing to let him leave the scene until they had checked Saturn over for damage. They milled around the Spy; he was stalled, desperately trying to shake off the unwanted attention without drawing down any more on himselPS The man was completely incompetent. He would be lucky to escape from his ill-timed trip on the spilled oil without a charge of insulting the god. I did not stay to watch.
We were on foot. In light leather party shoes with sloppy straps and flimsy soles, every uneven pavement tortured our feet. Still, we had no need to mill about making decisions. Our only problem was pushing through the crowds. First the banqueters, who were merrier than they should have been, given how hard it was to find any of the free wine. Then the unfed onlookers, who saw no reason to let people who had an invitation dodge their duties. ‘10 Saturnalia!’ And 10 to you, you gawking menace… We were elbowed and shoved—all in a cheerful spirit, of course—and only escaped after we were bruised and swearing.
I reckoned Anacrites would be heading up the Clivus Capitolinus, so we ducked the other way. I took us through the Arch of Tiberius and the Arch of Janus to the back of the temple, then turned along the dark rear portico of the Basilica. On the Palatine side it was deserted, apart from a few ever-hopeful women of easy virtue, but none tried to approach us. At the far end we took a straight run to the right up the Vicus Tuscus, a swerve as we headed for the Circus Maximus, a rush across the Street of the Twelve Gates. To climb the Aventine, I picked the first steep lane. Temple of Flora, then Temple of the Moon. A veer to the left, a shuffle to the right, and we came out by the Temple of Minerva where I had told Clemens to establish his watch-point. Flanked by enormous double porticoes, the Temple of Diana sprawled at an angle, right next door, just beyond our arrival point.
Everywhere should have been silent and in darkness, but the piazza in front of the temples was ablaze with lamps, music and excited voices.
We had picked a bad night. The neighbourhood was choked with a crowd of manumitted slaves, who claimed the goddess Diana as a patron. Their main celebration is supposed to be the slaves’ holiday on the Ides of August, the day when the temple was inaugurated centuries before; at Saturnalia, freedmen pull their cap of liberty back on if they are tired of being sober citizens and want another chance to indulge in riotous behaviour. The singing, dancing crowd was intermingled with others whose shyness suggested they were fugitives. If these furtive souls had been hiding up at the temple, they had now ventured outside to party in the streets, thinking the festival gave them security. But I thought I recognised some from my dark adventure on the Appian Way. I certainly knew their alarming habits. A flock of them were swooping around like uninvited guests, obviously trying to unnerve other people.
‘Hello, pretty boy!’ Clemens greeted me, with a teasing glance at my blue tunic and soft shoes. Dropping the joke, the acting centurion helped a sword belt over my head. Concealing it beneath my cloak, I nestled the familiar weight of the weapon under my right arm. The others were carrying too. It was illegal—but the laws for private citizens in Rome had not been composed to cover occasions when you might have to search the oldest temple recorded by the pontiff, looking for an enemy of the state.
‘This is a bit busy, Falco!’
‘The night is going to be fun. I warn you, we’ll be vying with the Praetorian Guards.’
‘Marcus knows how to organise a good night out,’ Helena told Clemens, perhaps with pride in me.
‘I-o!’
We had a hard time squeezing through the crazy revellers. By the time we reached the altar court below the steep steps to the Temple of Diana, nothing was going as planned. Coming towards us from the gentle dogleg of the Clivus Publicius I now saw Anacrites’ litter, presumably with him lolling inside, massaging his twisted ankle. A small armed escort marched behind. The few Guards who had peeled off from imperial duties at the Temple of Saturn would have been a manageable group for us. But I saw with despondence that a much larger force had already formed up here in the compressed outdoor altar space, waiting to rendezvous with the Spy.
Pressing forward, Clemens had seen neither the new arrivals nor their waiting phalanx of colleagues. I nudged him hard. ‘Hold off!
‘Shit on a stick!’ he muttered, behind his hand. He hissed an order and the lads pulled up. We edged back, hoping to hide in the crowd.
No luck. Anacrites had seen us. He had his litter carried right alongside. His sleek head appeared through the curtains. ‘Falco! You were perfectly right and I should have listened. Your prescience is wonderful.’ Sickened by his fake adulation, I stared around for its cause. The Spy pointed happily. Two figures approached at a fast trot from the direction of Fountain Court: Lentullus, with his ears looking big on a shaven head, loping breathlessly after my taller, faster brother-in-law. ‘ You warned me I did the wrong thing keeping him in custody. I should have let him go myselPS If the priestess will not come to him,’ Anacrites gloated, ‘you knew that Camillus Justinus would come straight to her!’
XLI
The Temple of Diana Aventinensis had been built to dominate the major peak of the Hill. After centuries of isolation, it had succumbed to the crush when the Aventine became a popular living space, and it had lost its drama. The view from afar was lost. The altar court was nothing like the grand meat-slaughtering area at Ephesus, where the warm cuts from daily sacrifice feed the entire city. On the Aventine, noisy, narrow streets abutted the two long portico wings, and the front steps came down into an equally squashed thoroughfare where the altar lurked amidst normal toings and froings. It was no place to hold a riot.
The situation deteriorated rapidly. Trust a mob to sense a carnival: the frolicking freedmen immediately saw that they were unwanted obstructions to an official operation. They whooped and set out to disrupt it. Waving their caps of liberty, they began taunting the Guards, oblivious to danger.
Among them, ran a man I had seen on the Via Appia, the one who tootled a one-note pipe until your teeth gritted. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about the boy flautist from the Quadrumatus house, but I was not free to deal with that.
The Praetorians were not only armed, but every one was an ex-centurion. Many had made it to the top: first-spear, chief centurion in a legion, hard-bitten as they come. All of them were just what you would expect from soldiers who had served out their time yet could not bear to leave the service. These types always begged to be allowed an extra stint in the legions. Then, instead of becoming veterans with provincial farms, the gnarled obsessives signed up for yet another posting, on imperial protection duty. Many had never even been to Rome before. With their special camp on the cityoutskirts that acted like an enormous officers’ club, their fabulous figured breastplates and their immense scarlet helmet crests—not to mention their privileged position so close to the Emperor—they then thought they had been posted to be gods on Mount Olympus.
They rarely had a chance to do more than ceremonial duties. Their mood was edgy. Most of these bullies would at some period have served a tour in Germany; inevitably, some must have been there in the Year of the Four Emperors, during the bloody rebellion Veleda caused. The barbarian element in their duties tonight must be unsettling them. Grim-faced, scarred, and solid as slaughtered beef carcasses, they were keyed up to whip out their swords and fight someone. It could be anyone who offended them. These bastards had a low threshold for annoyance and once they were riled, they were not fussy whom they took it out on.
‘Hold off!’ I ordered my little gang. ‘We can’t engage with Praetorians.’ The lads looked disappointed. I was not sure I could control them. Clemens, inexperienced as an acting centurion, looked as if where they led he would follow.
I had other problems. Anacrites jumped from his conveyance. Before I could intervene, Helena Justina stormed up to him. Delight at being in ascendance had healed his ankle magically, but Helena looked ready to kick his legs from under him. She had not yet spotted her brother; she was concentrating on the Chief Spy. Ever since Anacrites and I once worked together on the Census, she treated him like my junior clerk.
‘This is a mess! Anacrites, I hope you have a properly thought-out public safety plan!’ I doubted that Anacrites had put in place any crowd-control measures. In fairness, he would have thought it unnecessary. Like me, he had believed he was coming to conduct a quiet search, when the temple would be virtually closed. Now he discovered innocent members of the public milling about. From his behaviour, the bastard did not care.
My mood took another knock. As Justinus worked his way around one of the portico buildings, he had noticed the Guards and must have guessed why they were here. It made no difference. He did dodge behind a swarm of bystanders, but when they failed to provide sufficient cover, he broke free and raced straight up the central temple steps and into its colonnaded porch. We glimpsed him, but not for long. Although it was night-time, the great doors had not yet been closed but stood open as a concession to the revellers. Justinus pushed straight through a clutch of priests and priestesses, who had been watching the street party; they were too startled to stop him. He vanished into the interior. Lentullus followed. Nobody imagined they wanted to check the time on the elderly sundial fixed outside, or to consult the ancient treaty between Rome and the cities of Latium that was housed in the cella.
‘That was Quintus!’ Before Helena could take off after him, I managed to grab her.
Anacrites signalled the Guards. Hampered by the marauding crowd, the heavy troops gathered themselves for an onslaught on the temple. Clemens and I exchanged anguished glances. We reached a decision. He and I stripped off our cloaks, followed by the men of the First Adiutrix who had spotted their comrade Lentullus entering the precinct and knew he was in trouble. As one, we piled the garments in Helena’s arms. ‘Marcus, I did not come just to be the girl who holds the cloaks!’
‘Do it. You’re a heroine—but you can’t fight the Guards. In any case, lady, you know the price of cloaks!’ My grin stalled her. Staggering under the weight of heavy winter wool, she succumbed momentarily. ‘Seems we should give your men a hand,’ I said, very politely, to Anacrites. That simpleton looked shocked that we were armed with swords. Then we were all storming through the crowd and up the steps, trampling the big-booted heels of the Praetorians as they clambered ahead of us.
Everyone on the Aventine has a sense of being separate from Rome. It goes right back to Romulus and Remus. Our Hill was occupied by Remus; when he was murdered by his twin, the Aventine was excluded from the original city walls that Romulus completed. The Temple of Diana is the oldest and most venerable in Rome—but it was once outside Rome and that makes its priests reek of superiority. These indignant figures held up their hands and forbade the Guards entrance. ‘You desecrate our shrine! Do not offer violence to a place of asylum!’ There are precedents for requesting the return of a fugitive from the goddess Diana, but even if you are Alexander the Great and all his hosts, you are supposed to be polite.
The Guards, who reckoned they could go anywhere, were outraged. An altercation ensued. Negotiation achieved nothing, so by virtue of their weaponry, the Guards carried the motion and clanked straight indoors. They had slowed down though. Some even removed their helmets deferentially as they reached the inner precincts.
We were not wearing helmets. But like the Guards, once we crushed into the dimly lit interior, we walked more quietly. We passed through a forest of columns, to murky, incense-scented spaces. Statues of Amazons, with disconcerting friendly expressions, gazed at us from all sides. In the centre of the shrine was a lofty statue, modelled on the one at Ephesus: Diana, as a many-breasted mother-goddess, a serene smile on her gilded lips, holding out her hands, palms up, as if in welcome to fugitives.
Our hands were on our sword hilts, but we kept them sheathed. We struggled to overtake the Guards, but the overbearing bastards held us back. Some wheeled around, set themselves shoulder to shoulder, and penned us in a corner. It would be a bad idea to try and hack our wayout.
Justinus and Lentullus had disappeared. Nobody else seemed to be there. A gaggle of priests and priestesses pushed in behind us. They hissed when the Guards started systematically searching. For a time those oafs tried not to cause disruption in the precinct, but their standard approach was to fling property about carelessly. Pretty soon a candelabrum went over. There was a scuffie while quacking priests doused the flames with a curtain, ‘helped’ by emboldened Guards plucking more draperies from their hanging-rods and tossing them aside. Votive statuettes were kicked around under needlessly clumsy boots. As priestesses shrieked and swooped protectively on temple furniture and treasure, the jubilant Guards found Ganna.
A group of Praetorians bunched tightly around her, to prevent escape. They were not harming her. But Ganna was young, female, foreign—and had no experience of defusing trouble. She screamed, and of course she kept on screaming. It was too much for Justinus, who burst trom his hiding-place. Lentullus was at his heels again.
Things grew ugly. Guards finally drew their swords, so the temple staff went crazy. Justinus and Lentullus, both shouting, raced through the shrine towards Ganna, to be faced by a row of glitteringly sharp swords, wielded by brutal men who had twenty years’ experience in using them. The light was bad; the space was cramped; in moments it turned into a nightmare. Justinus, though unarmed, was shouting at the Guards to free the young girl. They advanced on him, intentions clear; Lentullus, who did have a sword, flung himself between them. Clemens and I tried to exert a sensible influence, but we were all still penned in our corner by other Guards, who now decided to disarm us. As we passed our weapons from hand to hand among ourselves, to avoid confiscation, I watched Ganna being dragged outside. Breaking free, I rushed out on to the steps, only to see her carried down into the piazza, where she was bundled through the chanting crowds and shoved into the litter that had brought Anacrites. He shot me a repulsive look of triumph.
Somebody intervened: Helena Justina dropped her armful of cloaks and again accosted the Spy. The crowd hushed to hear her. She understood the situation. I knew she would be disgusted at Ganna’s treatment, but she was clear and polite, with a ringing tone for all to hear: ‘Anacrites, I am here to chaperon Ganna—with Titus Caesar’s approval. Please be careful. You need all your diplomacy. Ganna is too young to have taken part in the rebellion—and she is not under threat of execution. This innocent girl came to Rome merely as a companion of Veleda—a chaperon herself. The intention now is to treat her well and make her a friend of Rome. Then we can send her back where she came from, to spread word among the barbarians that we are civilised people who should be seen as allies.’
