Master and God (2 page)

He continued to ignore her. Increasingly nervous, she tried not to attract his attention. She gazed around but apart from the table and bench there was nothing in the room except a large map on the wall. It showed the Seventh and Eighth Regions, which the First Cohort covered, a segment of the city which ran from the city boundary above the Pincian Hill, down past the Gardens of Sallust and the Quirinal, right into the Forum. It was where she had been brought up so she recognised the main features, even though the street names had faded badly. Occasional newer marks in different inks had been added, as if to pinpoint local incidents.

She should not have come. She should either have left it alone, or made her mother come with her. That had proved impossible; she should have accepted that her mother did not want the vigiles involved.

After various shouts and banging of doors outside, a man burst into the room, grumbling loudly. Some sort of prisoner-escort could be heard in the portico, while Scorpus reappeared and leaned on the doorframe, watching with a smirk.

‘Morena!’ Vinius greeted the new arrival calmly. The protester was scrawny and seedy-looking, with disastrous combed-over straggles of hair. Lucilla saw he was the kind of man who wasted all day at a street bar counter, making obscene jokes to offend passers-by. From the officer’s expression, Vinius would second her:
and then he expects the waitress to fuck him for nothing
. Perhaps adding, if he was particularly depressed,
and the sad little cow probably does it
. . .

‘Is it about Isis Street again? You can’t do this to me!’

‘No option,’ Vinius disagreed. ‘Morena, I have warned you twice about keeping fire buckets. My duty is to check up on you like a bastard, then your duty is to carry out my orders. But you have persistently done nothing.’

‘The tenants keep pinching the water for their balcony flowerpots!’

‘Refill the cistern. Evict your tenants for breach of their lease – I presume even speculators like you give the poor sods a lease? We can’t do our job without water. Jupiter, man, one dropped lamp in your lousy building and you could burn the city down!’

‘Give me another chance.’

‘You said that the other times.’

‘I just ordered the improvements—’

‘My tribune wants arrests.’

‘How much?’

In the doorway, Scorpus grinned. Vinius sighed stagily. ‘I hope you are not trying to bribe me, Morena?’

‘Stuff you then, Vinius, you ugly two-faced skank!’

‘Cut it.’ Vinius rose to his feet. Ugly was no word for him, though Lucilla would never have admired him openly; he was too sure of himself already. He was tall and well-muscled, entirely self-composed. He barely raised his voice: ‘Morena, you are the landlord of a five-storey, ramshackle, multiple-occupancy dump in Isis Street which fails its fire inspection every time we visit. You are a whining, flea-bitten, fine-dodging, mortgage-shovelling, widow-cheating, orphan-starving, small-minded slave-shagger – is that right?’

Morena wilted. ‘Fair enough.’

‘So bugger off to the Prefect and stop wasting my time.’

Morena was dragged out backwards, with harsh shouts from the vigiles. Gaius Vinius sank back to his seated position, barely winded. Still not turning his head, he looked sideways at Lucilla. ‘Right, young lady; what brings you to this fine haven of public order?’

Vinius had already assessed her unobtrusively. He was surprised she arrived alone; young girls usually tripped about in pairs. She would be safe, at least on his watch, but he suspected she had some mischievous purpose in coming. At the first sign of playing up or cheek, she was for it.

She was average height, skinny and flat-chested, though not badly nourished. She, or her parents, had grown up in a household where if they ate scraps the scraps were remains of good meals: leftovers from a well-to-do but wasteful family, typical of the slave-serviced classes. Vinius correctly classified her as a daughter of freed slaves.

Nobody’s little princess, she wore a narrow tunic in a cheap natural colour; she had grown out of the garment, so it showed her ankles. Nice ankles, but she wasn’t a child now and ought to keep them covered up. Her chestnut hair was twisted and speared with one long pin that surprisingly looked like ivory – a gift? If not a gift, probably filched from a much richer woman’s ornament box.

When Gaius Vinius interviewed the public he was businesslike, not one of those enquirers who would banter with women then botch their reports. However, had it been relevant, his assessment was that his visitor would be good-looking when she grew up. Which he prophesied would happen in about a month’s time.

He shuffled the wax tablets in front of him, selected one, and smoothed it over with the flat of his stylus. ‘Name?’

‘Flavia Lucilla.’ Her voice came out as a scared little squeak, causing Vinius to check the spelling. ‘Flavia’ confirmed that her family had obtained citizenship under the current emperors, so in the last generation.

‘Age?’

‘Seventeen.’
Take away two years
, calculated Vinius.

‘Father?’ Lucilla stayed silent; Vinius moved on. Many people he interviewed had no idea who their fathers were. ‘Mother?’

‘Flavia Lachne, imperial freedwoman.’

Vinius felt sceptical of ‘imperial’. There were plenty of ex-slaves from the palace, but after three years of dealing with the public he took nothing on trust; he suspected this was merely the child of a fishmonger’s filleter, enhancing her status. ‘And you live?’

‘Opposite the Porticus Vipsania, by the conch fountain.’ Vinius could not place it. He had tried to become familiar with all the narrow alleys of the Seventh Region since he was posted in, but he was still learning. The wall map was no help; you could pick out temples and theatres, but finding tenements where the poor lived had never been a vigiles priority. ‘An apartment on the fourth floor.’ The middle classes lived at ground level; the destitute toiled up six flights of stairs; the fourth floor was close to poverty, yet not absolutely there.

‘So what’s your problem, darling?’

Lucilla bridled. ‘Officer, I am
not
your darling!’

‘You’ll never be anybody’s, with that temper.’ Vinius saw the girl take a furious breath so, dropping his stylus onto the table, he made a swift appeasing gesture, open-palmed. Then he linked his hands behind his head and produced a rueful half smile. This generally had a good effect with women. Lucilla glared as if she had paid to see a celebrity gladiator but got stuck with a creaking understudy. ‘So, have you come to report a crime or to make a complaint?’

Sensibly, she stifled her indignation. ‘We have been burgled.’

‘“We”?’

‘Me and my mother.’

‘Any slaves?’ The slaves would be his first suspects.

‘Oh our extensive staff!’ Lucilla snapped, firing up again. ‘A battalion of pastry cooks, three wardrobe women – and we just wouldn’t be
anybody
without an unpublished poet who works as our door-porter.’

Vinius looked sour, to stop himself smiling. ‘What size apartment?’

‘Two rooms; we live in one and my mother works with her clients in the other.’

‘Works as . . . ?’

‘A beautician.’ Belatedly Lucilla realised how it sounded: as if Lachne was a prostitute.

Vinius wondered if the daughter was being trained in the same trade. He decided that would be a pity. Gods, he must be going soft.

‘Mother is a hairdresser, for the Emperor’s family,’ Lucilla protested.

Vinius did not believe that story. But if Lachne sold herself to men, she must be registered here; he could check the vigiles records, so there was no point in the girl lying. If the woman worked on her back and had
not
registered, it was foolish to attract his attention – which might explain why the girl was sent here by herself, with the mother keeping out of the way.

‘Where is your mother now?’

‘At home, hysterical.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Mother came home and found all her jewellery missing.’

‘Any of it valuable?’

‘All of it!’ Lucilla saw the investigator’s suspicion.

‘Sure it’s gone? Mama couldn’t have stuffed her beads behind a cushion and forgot?’

‘We searched the whole apartment.’ Lucilla had done that, and she had been methodical. She had her own doubts about her mother.

Vinius applied a friendly face. ‘I shall make a list eventually, so be thinking.’ He noted that apart from her ivory hairpin, the waif-like Lucilla wore not so much as a pebble necklace. Nobody would place her as a child of a woman with possessions worth stealing. Jupiter, even among the homeless under the Tiber bridges, mothers usually decked daughters in a string of pebbles. His own toddler wore an amulet. ‘So, Mama comes home . . . Any signs of a break-in?’

‘No.’

‘Damage to your door?’

‘None.’

‘Would other people have known you would be out?’ Lucilla shrugged, implying their movements were random. ‘You’re on the fourth floor – could anybody climb over from a neighbouring balcony?’

‘No, we don’t have a balcony, and we keep the shutters closed.’

‘So the only way in is through the door? You do lock it when you’re out?’

‘Yes, we are not stupid!’ Anxiously, the girl lashed out at him again, ‘You are not taking any notes!’

All Vinius had scratched on his tablet so far was her name. He never wasted effort. The chances of solving this burglary were slim. Rome was awash with house-breakers, bath house clothes’ pilferers, purse-thieves, rogues who pulled packages off the backs of moving carts, dishonest slaves, and walk-in chancers who strolled into houses to empty dining rooms of their silverware. He rarely caught any of them.

‘What kind of lock?’

Under his prompting, Lucilla described the pointless inexpensive kind that bad landlords like Morena always installed; at least hers had a key, not merely a latch-lifter. Gaius Vinius, who believed crime prevention was his most useful work, recommended a barrel-lock, suggesting where the women could buy one from a reputable locksmith.

‘“Reputable” means . . . ?’ asked Lucilla cynically.

Vinius had his human side; he was rather enjoying the conversation now. ‘The one I always recommend. Then at least I know where to head if someone who has followed my advice is subsequently burgled . . .’ More serious, he asked the usual question: ‘Does anyone other than your mother or yourself have a key?’ This was patronising. On the other hand, there was a good reason why the vigiles always asked it. Lucilla shook her head; victims always denied giving out duplicates. Vinius kept going: ‘I know it is very unpleasant to think you might have trusted the wrong person . . . Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘No.’ Lucilla looked embarrassed. He should have known from her absence of ornament; the first crook who came after this girlie would get her in return for a faux-gold snake bangle with glass eyes.

‘What about your mother?’ Lucilla’s silence told its own story. ‘I see. Does she have a crowd of followers, or just one at a time?’

‘One at a time!’

‘So what do you think of the fellows your mother entertains?’

‘Not much.’ Lucilla was finding the interview more difficult than she had expected. Vinius knew how to break down her defences. ‘The present one is a businessman. He doesn’t need to steal.’

‘Name?’

‘Orgilius.’

‘How well off?’

‘Enough.’

Vinius watched her thoughtfully. He allowed Lucilla time to work out why.

He could see he had upset the girl; he was sorry for that.

This was the first time in her relationship with her mother that Lucilla took any initiative. Lachne had seemed reluctant to involve the authorities, even though the contents of her jewel box, gifts from important women she had served and men she had attracted, were genuinely expensive. Indignant, and frightened that a thief had been inside their home, Lucilla had flounced off here to report the theft, leaving her mother slumped on a chair. Lachne often played the helpless woman; it had not seemed out of character.

In addressing this crisis, Lucilla had shown new independence. She was already beginning to feel doubts, when the officer’s lightly posed question made her see how her mother had duped her.

‘One thing I always have to consider,’ explained Vinius, ‘is whether a reported “burglary” might be an inside job.’

He was right. Lucilla inderstood now. Lachne was preying on her latest man.
Orgilius is such a sweetie; when he sees how unhappy I am, he is bound to replace things
. . . Lachne did not need to report the theft, because it never happened. But she must have decided that letting her unwitting daughter run and appeal to the vigiles would make the story more credible.

Her mother had bamboozled her, lied to her,
used
her. Sitting there under the quizzing of Vinius, Lucilla realised she had been cruelly betrayed by the only person close to her.

Even Vinius, who had never met her before, recognised the hard look as Lucilla decided not to put up with it. She was only fifteen. She had few options. Nevertheless, she would break with her mother over this.

Outside in the yard, there were noises, which Vinius had noticed. His glance went to the door; he was listening, trying to evaluate the activity.

‘I’ll send someone along. One of your neighbours may have noticed something . . .’

Flavia Lucilla recognised the brush-off. Vinius had not even written down where she lived. No one would be sent. It was a waste of time. Even if one of his troops did investigate, Lachne would simper and giggle, and finger the man’s muscles, and let herself be squeezed, until some half-baked understanding was reached, then Lachne and Lucilla would have to spend weeks letting the new hopeful down gently and stopping Orgilius running into him . . .

‘So who do you think did your break-in?’ Vinius asked: yet another question that the vigiles always put.

‘How would we know? It’s your job to find out – that’s if you can be bothered,
pretty boy
!’

‘Ah, sadly, sweetheart, my pretty days are over.’ Vinius swung around in his seat to face Lucilla full on.