I decided to establish more facts, double-checking with the banking fraternity. No one else had so keen an interest in a man’s domestic background. I could either make a return visit to Nothokleptes or call on my own financier, Claudia Arsinoë. I did that. Arsinoë could be relied on to give me mint tea.
She lived and worked not in the Basilica Aemilia or anywhere else in the Forum, but above one of the bookshops that quietly inhabit the Vicus Tuscus at the back of the lawcourts. Her bank had a change-table among the élite financiers in the Clivus Argentarius, but private clients saw her at home. This was like visiting an auntie. I took flowers and had the posy tied with ribbon.
You had to allow for eastern formality. First, we pretended this was a catch-up on friends and family. She called for the mint tea. Sipping, she spoke well of my mother, and I asked after her health. Then we ran lightly through my investments. The weather came up for notice; we fanned ourselves wearily. I gave my opinion of her newest patisserie provider. She pressed more tea upon me. And another cake.
Arsinoë was a forty-year-old native Athenian, putting on the pounds. As a widow, she wore dull clothes and covered up. However, her hair, still naturally dark to all intents, was rarely veiled and held in place by a pointed gold stephane that any goddess would have coveted for her temple statue. She was deeply religious but she enjoyed worldly pleasures. Waiting for her missing fiancé never interfered with her colourful Greek social life. I had been invited to these gatherings. There was laughter, throbbing lyres, lashings of traditional food, resinous wine and utterly sad singing. Arsinoë loved a good cry. (Yes, I know: it’s hard to envisage a banker in tears.)
She was a good source. From her, I learned that Trebonius Fulvo had been married to the same woman for years, quite happily; she did not let him bully her and like many tough men he appreciated that. The louche Arulenus Crescens had had a couple of wives and several long-term mistresses, shamelessly overlapping these creatures and leaving behind children. Dillius Surus was the second husband of a woman who had married first extremely well – at least, well in Arsinoë’s terms: he had enviable pots of money and he left it all to his widow.
‘Being dead is good – why did she spoil everything by taking on an idiot?’ Arsinoë wondered.
Ennius Verecundus had a sweet young wife of a few years and a baby.
‘I bet they live with his mother?’
‘I believe they do, Flavia Albia.’
‘Disaster.’
‘Surely there can be good mothers-in-law? Kindly women who will help a new bride while she is learning, and become fast friends with her?’
‘Is that irony? This kindly woman is called Julia Verecunda.’
‘Oh, that witch!’ Arsinoë made a sign against the evil eye – well, that was what I assumed the gesture to be.
‘You know of her?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Has she money?’
‘None worth mentioning.’
‘She is putting her son up for election.’
‘He has cash. From his father, Ennianus. Verecunda is not allowed to touch it. I have heard she finds her husband’s prudence galling.’
Salvius Gratus was about to announce his engagement to an Aventine hide-importer’s daughter. (Arsinoë knew the details, even though Gratus had yet to announce it.) And Vibius Marinus, as I knew, was married with two children.
‘Ah, yes. Arsinoë, have you heard any rumours?’
‘Why, no! Tell me the gossip.’
‘One candidate is said to be a wife-beater. Since his Julia has gone missing from home, can it be Vibius Marinus? At least, that is the slur from Nothokleptes.’
Arsinoë made a short noise of disgust. ‘Nothokleptes is a useless bastard.’
‘Really!’ I chortled. ‘Have you heard any hint that Julia Optata may have left Vibius?’
‘No, I have not.’
‘By some coincidence, her mother is Julia Verecunda also.’
‘Pallas Athene!’ cried Claudia Arsinoë. ‘The mother-in-law has caused the rift. She is famous for quarrelling. She makes her daughters treat their husbands badly, leave them for better ones. She loves to see families disintegrate and to know she is responsible.’
‘What makes her like that?’ I wondered.
‘A wicked nature. Hating is her character.’
‘And she brought her children up to be the same? Are they all aggressive?’
‘No need to teach it to them,’ scoffed my banker. ‘Venom came with her milk, like a sorceress. But the family character was there before their birth. Their very blood is poisoned.’
Even allowing for Greek drama, this boded ill for Vibius. I felt sympathy for the other son-in-law, Volusius Firmus, and more still for Ennius, the natural son in this unhappy-sounding family.
‘You know your road,’ declared Arsinoë. She tended to declaim like a fortune-teller, though her fees were cheaper and you didn’t have to watch her handle mummified gizzards. ‘You better go and see this horrible cow. Tell her I send a howling Fury in hot wind if she harms one hair of you.’
‘Thank you, darling.’
Arsinoë jumped on me and smothered me with hugs as if she thought she might never see me again. I took that as her Athenian love of the theatre. If she really had been a fortune-teller, I might have found it worrying.
28
What was I trying to prove here, and would anybody thank me? Deciding no to that, I opted to be cautious.
It was mid-morning. I walked down the Clivus Tuscus past the Temple of Augustus, heading into the Forum. This temple had been destroyed by fire and rebuilt by Domitian; the neat edifice was newly released from its scaffold, so I paused to admire its eight spanking columns and glimpse the interior statues of Augustus and Livia.
Considering my next move, I would look again at the various candidates, including the now-problematic Vibius.
It seemed very quiet. If the rivals were on their daily walkabout, either I kept missing them or they had floated off to a new venue. None was at the Rostra, the main point for formal oratory, where Sextus Vibius was to make his speech today. Had he done it? Had the jibes hurt the others so deeply they had crept home to lick their wounds like defeated athletes? I did not suppose so. I am a realist.
‘Anybody been on the rostrum today?’
‘One of the fools was up there spouting. I took no notice.’
Great.
So much for being a political speech-writer. Nobody thanks you. Even the dummy who is reading the words misses the point of your best jokes; your fine sentiments will be superseded by events and forgotten by tomorrow; anyway, the crowd don’t even listen. No one is impressed. Get a new career. Sell fish-pickle.
Perhaps because they were always somewhat isolated from the main group, I did run into Ennius Verecundus and his mother. If the other rivals had moved off in a body, these two had missed the picnic invitation. He was the boy nobody else wants to play with.
I watched Ennius lavishing those smiles on everyone he met. He had a rectangular face with a pointed chin and a slightly receding hairline that made his forehead extra square. His eyes looked more intelligent than fitted his humble stance. If you met him out of his election robes, you might identify him as a disillusioned secretary. One who had been pensioned off because he was no good.
Mama did not steer her son quite as blatantly as I had originally thought. He moved around of his own accord, even though she was constantly watchful. She must know he had no real aptitude. He launched himself towards people and dutifully shook their hands; that smile of his was not exactly false, though meaningless. If someone had called him a lying cheat, he would have kept smiling.