I moved around, standing quietly on the edges of crowds, listening at first. When I had the feel of things, I murmured questions to fellow bystanders.
‘That one sounds all right. Nice speaking voice. I’ll tell my husband to vote for him. Is he rich?’
‘Must be.’
‘Promising! I wonder who he banks with?’
Given how dearly people like to keep their business confidential, it was surprisingly easy to winkle out background. Helpful members of the public passed on dirty details. Soon I knew Trebonius Fulvo was involved in a lengthy wrangle about mortgages (a law case brought by his own elderly grandfather, who had a terminal disease, poor man, and feared he would not live to see justice), while his colleague Dillius Surus had been accused by a heartbroken mistress of fathering a daughter on the promise of marriage and (this was the real eye-waterer) stealing her jewellery, including a valuable necklace that another lover had given her … As I found out later, much of this was unreliable.
Rumours would do. When you blacken someone’s name in politics, hearsay can be freely deployed. Scandal needs to be colourful, not true. Vibius was never going to win if he had a conscience.
‘Surus looks like a lush to me,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, he’s a wonderful character. Laugh a minute, really enjoys life. We need a breath of fresh air in Rome.’
Nobody knew who financed the candidates but I think that detail is always telling. I had to find out for myself. I would ask a banker.
8
On the left side of the Forum, as you face away from the Capitol and just after the Curia, lies the two-storey Basilica Aemilia, adorned with a colonnade called the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius. This was the Emperor Augustus honouring his grandson heirs through fancy shops. Gaius and Lucius died, but their fine arcade was still here, still smart enough to be frequented by bankers pretending to be upmarket. Our family used Nothokleptes, which Father claimed means thieving bastard, a pseudonym bestowed by my uncle, Lucius Petronius. There were now two generations in the firm, and we used the son even though wicked Uncle Petro said that for him we should add useless.
Young Notho still kept chained deposit chests in the main aisle, on the lower level where desperate debtors could rush straight in from the Forum, into the arms of the kind-hearted financiers who were waiting to save them from creditors. For a huge fee.
The banking stations graced a lofty interior that had massive floor-slabs of marble in beautiful, expensive international varieties. There I found the folding bronze stool Nothokleptes used, standing empty beside a change table, guarded by an ugly Pisidian bouncer, under a frieze with scenes from Roman myth and an enormous statue of a barbarian. I assume this was commissioned in gratitude, for it symbolised the origins of Rome’s wealth: crushing peoples from provinces like mine.
I am generally Roman, but portrayals of sad, defeated nudes in torcs soon turn me back into a Briton.
I went straight upstairs, ignoring the Pisidian, apart from a mild jibe of ‘Who are you staring at, pig-face?’ (This was not prejudice, but factually accurate: his snout was squashed, he always stared and I always said it.) Nothokleptes Junior was at his barber’s in the upper colonnade. He was shady, even by the Egyptian standards from which he took both his monetary heritage and his crazy hairstyle. His rings were so chunky they kept his fingers splayed. Born and bred in Rome, he still managed to find tunics that were too long and too tight over his big belly, so he looked Oriental. Which in any lexicon is another word for dubious.
His father was sitting with him, now reduced by age to watery smiles and silence. Always a heavy man, Nothokleptes Senior had spread slowly into a vast blob of smooth flesh. They had pegged a barber’s napkin under his chin, even though he was not being shaved, in case he dribbled. He didn’t know the time of day, but if you put a bag of mixed coins in front of him, he would rapidly sort it into denominations while palming a percentage by some sleight you could never spot. Most of his brain was far away, but his essence persisted. He still loved the feel of copper and silver under his clever fingers.
His son was having his beard painfully scraped off with pumice, a daily routine that nevertheless left him permanently blue-jawed. ‘Nothokleptes! Yes, you, the useless one!’
Junior gave me the family glare, a mix of blatant ingratiation and mild rebuke for useless thieving bastard. He would never get us to stop and, thanks to Uncle Petro, half Rome believed it was his real name.
‘Flavia Albia.’ His father had taught him to be reverently formal. This was supposed to set people at ease while loans they could not afford were seductively pressed upon them. It must work. They had pots of lucre to use for making more. Nothokleptes Junior had collected at least three priesthoods to show how highly the public valued being fleeced by him. ‘And how are you this fine day, Flavia Albia?’
‘Too hot. You can drop the fake politeness. I don’t need you. I’m solvent.’
He pretended to laugh. ‘So like your dear father.’ He turned to his own and shouted, ‘Look, oldster, it’s Falco’s daughter!’
Nothokleptes Senior dribbled with what might have been delight.
‘Didius Falco sends his regards,’ I told him gently. That was nothing like what Falco would have said, but the old man was past insulting.
‘So, daughter of the esteemed Marcus Didius, our favourite client,’ smarmed Junior, jumping up from the barber’s chair in the hope that he was tall enough to look down my tunic (he wasn’t but he never learned), ‘if you don’t want financial advice …’
‘Your advice is always “Borrow a lot of money from us at wincing rates of interest”! I can do without that kind of sorrow. No, I am working, Notho.’
I told him about both my lines of enquiry. The man found in the chest fascinated him more than the election rivals.
‘It’s always possible the deceased in the strongbox had reneged on a loan with one of your more vicious colleagues and was punished as an example,’ I suggested. ‘He looked respectable before he started rotting, so if you hear of any punter who’s gone missing unexpectedly I’d like to know.’
‘You don’t need the ones we expect to disappear?’
‘No point. Your flight-risk bankrupts will have planned their exile – besides, they will come sneaking back, once they get tired of hiding on Greek islands. This man has met a surprise fate, I believe. I have no clue to his identity. He could be anybody. Even, in fact, a banker.’
‘Flavia Albia, if a banker goes missing, everyone will know.’
‘Yes, you’re right. Cheers would resound from here to Tusculum.’
Junior was insulted too often to react. ‘I have been eagerly waiting for your proceeds from the Callistus sale, Flavia Albia, but who will bid, when the goods are contaminated?’
‘Fear not. Our staff say close contact with a corpse brings added value.’
He cheered up. ‘So, any plans to have a body in every sale?’
‘No. Restraint, Notho, is the motto of our house. Anyway, the market is too volatile – you can never get hold of a good gloopy cadaver at the right moment.’
He blenched. Changing the subject as a courtesy, I asked what he knew about the men standing for aedile. Even though Uncle Petro called him useless, he knew quite a lot. I obtained the names of all their bankers, plus confirmation that Dillius Surus had inherited the best wine cellar in Rome but it was now known to be empty, due to his diligent testing of vintages. ‘It doesn’t matter. He married a rich woman. Terentia wants to be the wife of a magistrate so, until he is one, she will humour him.’