‘But this is lovely!’ Perilla said as we made our way back downstairs. ‘Absolutely perfect!’
Yeah, I had to agree. I’d been through to Ostia quite a few times over the years, but by the nature of things they’d been flying visits, and they’d been restricted to the town itself with, when I couldn’t manage the thing in a oner, a shakedown on the couch at Agron’s place. Getting the use of Fulvina’s villa had been a real stroke of genius on the lady’s part. Once Meton had sussed out the local market – which, knowing Meton’s scale of priorities, would be as soon as he’d laid out his chef’s knives, made sure everything was hunky-dory where equipment and larder were concerned, and terrified the wollocks off Fulvina’s kitchen skivvies – I reckoned we’d be as well-set-up here as we were at home. Better.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll just leave you to settle in and get on with things.’
She stopped, and stared at me. ‘Oh, Marcus! Be reasonable!’ she said. ‘You’re not going to start straight away, surely?’
‘Naturally I am. What did you expect?’
‘Come on, dear! We are on holiday after all.’
I grinned. ‘You may be, lady. Me, I’ve got a job to go to. And after six hours twiddling my thumbs in the coach I could do with the walk.’ True: I’m no coach-traveller, me, and fourteen-plus miles with only a couple of cushions between me and the Ostian Road cobbles, even if Lysias had stuck to the unpaved verge whenever he could, had left me in sore need of exercise. ‘Sore’ being the operative word. ‘Enjoy. I’ll see you later.’
Like I said, the villa was on the coast road, and the town itself was a bare half-mile away, at the Tiber’s mouth. An easy distance to walk, particularly given the weather we had at present: it was distinctly cooler here than in Rome, and much fresher-smelling, although that wouldn’t’ve been difficult, particularly at the height of summer in comparison to anywhere in the city downwind of the river, with a pleasant, salt-tangy breeze off the sea. Perfect weather for walking, in fact, especially after a six-hour carriage-drive. The countryside wasn’t bad, either: the Laurentian coast on the inland side of the road grows a fair proportion of the town’s fruit and vegetables, and most of the space between the big villas is taken up with small farms and market gardens, with the occasional vineyard or orchard; while on the sea side you get the small family owned boats that supply the town’s fish market.
Yeah, well, maybe Perilla’s point about being on holiday wasn’t too far off the mark after all; the case aside, I reckoned we could spend a very pleasant few days here. The lady’s pal Fulvina and her husband certainly had the right idea. Perhaps we should get out of the city more often.
I still had most of the afternoon to play with when I reached the Laurentian Gate. Coming from the east along the main road as I always did when I travelled through from Rome, I wasn’t too familiar with this part of town. The Tiber, with its various wharves, landing stages, warehouses, and so on, not to mention the main dockyard area just outside the walls at Tiber Mouth itself and most of the public buildings – my usual stamping ground – was on the northern side; the Laurentian quarter to the south was almost exclusively upmarket residential. Even so, Ostia’s not big; you can walk across it from end to end practically inside of half an hour. And although the old fort that was built originally to protect Rome’s harbour is long gone, for practical purposes it’s given the place an overall shape. The street leading up from Laurentian Gate – the Hinge – takes you directly to the Market Square, the original fort’s centre, where it crosses the main drag, Boundary Marker Street, which runs the length of the town to the Roman Gate.
Easy-peasy, right? Especially when you compare it with Rome, which is a town planner’s nightmare. Mind you, off the main drag things got a bit more haphazard.
So; where to start? I’d have to call in on Agron, of course, to say we were here, check if he’d managed to trace the cack-handed crane operator Siddius for me, and maybe invite him and Cass round for dinner, but his yard was diagonally across town, by the river on the Roman Gate side. Lippillus had said that Correllius’s house – or his widow’s, now; what was her name? Mamilia, right – was one of the big properties south of Market Square on the Hinge itself. As a first port of call, then, that made sense; at the very least I could suss out where it was for later reference.
I carried on up the Hinge. Not altogether an easy matter: the street was pretty narrow, and there were quite a few pedestrians around, although not as many as there would’ve been in Rome at that time of day, plus – as wouldn’t be the case in Rome – you had the occasional cart to contend with. The locals didn’t seem to be in all that much of a hurry, either, as they would’ve been at home, which slowed things up further. Lippillus had been right, though: judging by the overall length and carefully maintained condition of their frontages the houses in this part of town were definitely well upmarket. I spotted a door-slave sunning himself outside one of them and asked for directions to the Correllius place, which turned out to be a scant twenty yards further up the street.
There was a door-slave there as welclass="underline" a much bigger guy this time, bald as an egg but with arms as thick – and hairy – as an ape’s. Definitely prime bouncer material, which in a laid-back place like Ostia was interesting.
I went up to him, getting a long, suspicious stare all the way.
‘Afternoon, pal,’ I said when I’d reached conversational distance. ‘Would this be the Correllius house?’
He considered for a while, inserted a little finger into an ear the size and general shape of a cabbage leaf, wiggled it around, withdrew it, inspected the result, and wiped it off on his tunic.
‘It might be,’ he said finally.
I wondered for an instant whether that might be one of those weird philosophical paradoxes, like Achilles and the tortoise, but then Zeno the guy definitely wasn’t. What we had here was obfuscation, which was interesting again. I sighed.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I know the master’s dead, right, but I was wondering if I could have a word with your mistress. That possible at all?’
‘Mistress is out.’
‘OK. Make it someone else, then. You choose.’
‘Business or social?’
‘Business. I’m through from Rome. It’s about your master’s death, as it happens.’
That got me another long, suspicious stare. Then he grunted and stood up.
‘Mister Doccius do?’ he said.
‘Perfect. Who’s Mister Doccius?’
‘The master’s deputy.’
‘Great. Mister Doccius it is.’
‘OK. You wait here, right?’ He paused, his hand on the door knob. ‘Name?’
‘Corvinus. Valerius Corvinus.’
Another grunt. He disappeared inside, closing the door behind him, and I kicked my heels for a good five minutes before he reappeared.
‘Mister Doccius’ll see you,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
I did. Once through the front door I’d been expecting the usual standard arrangement of lobby plus atrium with rooms off to the sides and back, plus a peristyle garden to the rear, which was in effect what I got. But then chummie led me straight through the peristyle to a block of rooms on its far side whose doors opened onto a series of what, from their furnishings, were obviously offices. Most of them had clerks beavering away inside them, and the place had a definite busy feel about it that didn’t square at all with the private house side of things.
Interesting yet again.
‘In here,’ chummie said, and without another word turned on his heel and disappeared back into the house proper, presumably to excavate the cabbage-leaf’s partner in comfort.
It was the middle room of the line, and bigger than the rest, but without the office furnishings. There were a couple of chairs facing outwards and a small table with the makings of a meal on it. The guy sitting on one of the chairs working his way through a plateful of bread, cheese, and cold vegetables was mid-thirties with black curly hair. If he wasn’t quite in the door-slave’s class for size, he was big enough, and most of it was muscle. One good step up socially from the bouncer on the door, this Mister Doccius, but clearly out of the same mould. I was beginning to get some pretty definite signals here: your ordinary provincial merchant establishment, let alone laid-back Ostian private residence, this place clearly wasn’t.