Scandal takes a Holiday

Don't fret. I'll explain you are a senator's daughter, brought up in ignorance and luxury, and have no idea of distance, direction or time."

And I'll say you're a swine!"

Oink." Our room nearby came with neither a breakfast menu nor a slave to serve it up. The accommodation had a bucket for the well and a couple of empty lamps, but not so much as a foodbowl. One reason we were out and about was to buy basics for picnics before Albia and the children arrived. My little daughters might be fobbed off with

Let's all go hungry for fun on this holiday!, but Albia was a ravenous teenage girl; she turned nasty unless fed every three hours. At least we were in the commercial hub of the Empire. That helped with the shopping. Imported goods were piled in mounds everywhere and helpful negotiators were only too happy to drag items from the bales and sell them cheaply. Some actually had a connection with that cargo; one or two might even pass the price to the owner. I had already bought some winecups an hour ago, and thus considered my part done. There was no need to order up amphorae; provision had been put in hand by me. Helena pointed out that after a mere week on my own I had reverted to the classic informer. I now reckoned a room was fully furnished if it contained a bed and a drink, with a woman as an optional extra. Food was something to snatch at a street caupona while on watch. So far I had nobody to watch. My case was going nowhere.

You found out where Diocles was living, though?" Helena asked, after finishing a mouthful of fresh bread. I picked olives from a cone of old scroll papyrus. A hired room near the Marine Gate."

So staying with his aunt" was a fiction. He is not with his family?"

No. Commercial landlady of the forbidding kind."

And how did you discover her?"

The scribes knew the street name. Then I knocked on doors. The landlady soon popped out of her hidey-hole, because Diocles had left owing rent and she wanted it. Her story matches what the scribes already told me, Diocles arrived here about two months ago, seemed set to stay for the summer season, but vanished without warning after about four weeks, abandoning all his stuff. It came to light because the Gazette had an arrangement to send a runner once a week to pick up copy. The runner couldn't find Diocles." Helena gurgled happily. A weekly runner? So is there plenty of scandal at Ostia?"

I'd say Diocles just sits at the seaside and giggles as he makes it up. Half the people he libels are away themselves and never hear about it, luckily for him." Helena licked her fingers. You paid the rent he owed and obtained his baggage?"

No chance! I'm not paying some truant's rent, especially for a room he hasn't occupied."

The woman has not re-let the room?"

Oh, she re-let all right. I refused to pay, and I've sent to the Gazette."

For the money? She shouldn't be paid twice." I explained to Helena that port landladies traditionally double-charge, under an edict that dates back to when Aeneas first landed and was put up at a ludicrous rate in a fisherman's spare room. Helena still looked dis approving, but now she disapproved of me. Be sensible. I am trying to take an interest in your work, Marcus." I gazed at her. I loved her very much. I pulled her closer, paused, carefully wiped olive oil from my lips, then kissed her tenderly. I have sent for a very stern docket which will say I am to be allowed to take away Diocles" property as it belongs to the state."

The landlady will already have searched it; she knows it is dirty undertunics," Helena demurred. She was still clasped to my chest. Passing stevedores whistled.

Then she will be impressed that the state is so interested in this man's underwear."

You think there may be something more useful in his luggage?"

I was brought up rough," I said, and I confess to some fetishes, but so far I have not sunk so low that I go sniffing at people's old tunic stains."

You want note-tablets." Helena Justina snuggled against my shoulder and was silent for a while, watching the ferry. Pages of helpfully scribbled clues." Eventually, because she knew I was waiting for it, she murmured with polite curiosity, My darling, what fetishes?"

VI