The Chariots of Calyx Read online

  THE CHARIOTS OF CALYX

  Rosemary Rowe

  Copyright © 2002 Rosemary Aitken

  The right of Rosemary Rowe to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP in 2013

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Rowe, Rosemary

  The chariots of Calyx

  1. Libertus (Fictitious character) – Fiction 2. Romans – Great Britain

  – Fiction 3. Great Britain – History – Roman period, 55 BC – 449 AD

  – Fiction 4. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 0508 7

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

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  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also By

  Dedication

  Author’s Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  About the Author

  Rosemary Rowe is the maiden name of author Rosemary Aitken, who was born in Cornwall during the Second World War. She is a highly qualified academic, and has written more than a dozen bestselling textbooks on English language and communication. She has written fiction for many years under her married name. Rosemary has two children and also two grandchildren living in New Zealand, where she herself lived for twenty years. She now divides her time between Gloucestershire and Cornwall.

  Also by Rosemary Rowe and available from Headline:

  The Germanicus Mosaic

  A Pattern of Blood

  Murder in the Forum

  The Chariots of Calyx

  The Legatus Mystery

  The Ghosts of Glevum

  Enemies of the Empire

  A Roman Ransom

  A Coin for the Ferryman

  To Ann Gower

  Author’s Foreword

  The Chariots of Calyx is set in 187 AD, a time when most of Britain had been for almost two hundred years the northernmost province of the hugely successful Roman Empire: occupied by Roman legions, subject to Roman laws and taxes, criss-crossed by Roman roads and presided over by a provincial governor answerable directly to Rome, where the increasingly unbalanced Emperor Commodus still wore the Imperial Purple.

  Provincial government was centred in the then new capital city of Londinium (London), which the Romans, with their superior engineering skills, had founded soon after the conquest on unpromising ground at the lowest practicable bridging-point of the Thames, where no real settlement had stood before. The new capital was intended to impress. Visitors write in awed terms of the magnificent basilica – one of the finest in the Empire – while the safe, navigable waters and the well-planned network of supporting roads made it a successful trading centre from the outset. There was also a considerable military presence. The exact size of the garrison at the time of the story is disputed, but it seems clear that several thousand troops were quartered in the city, although that number may include the personal staff of the governor whose personal bodyguard, as well as his numerous clerks, secretaries, messengers and attendants, were all officially army personnel. Perhaps this is not surprising; after the almost-successful Boudicca rebellion of a hundred years earlier, when much of the new city was destroyed by fire, there was always a substantial legionary presence in towns controlling the tribal areas of the rebel lceni and Trinovantes. For instance nearby Verulamium (St Albans), which also features in this story, housed a sizeable military garrison of its own.

  Londinium, like any city of the time, relied upon the twin necessities of corn (in the Roman sense of edible grainstuffs) and water. Corn fed both people and horses, and water was vital for life and industry, as well as the transport of goods, and this story reflects the importance of these essentials. (Oil, mostly olive oil, was then the ‘third necessity’ of civilisation – used for cooking, cleaning and light.) Corn supplies were a constant area of discontent – especially in a city like London which (unusually) had no extensive grain-fields adjacent. Instead, grain had to be brought into the city, usually by water, and following a series of disastrous gluts and famines was now stored in granaries until required – under the control of the town authorities, who were distinct from (although subject to) the provincial government. Stored grain often rotted and spoiled and there are plaintive accounts from all over the Empire of the excessive price demanded for inferior grain, but the Roman commercial precept of caveat emptor was held to prevail and any man taking possession of goods in exchange for money had no recourse once the transaction was completed. ‘Let the buyer beware’ indeed. For two centuries successive imperial decrees had attempted to control the price and distribution of grain, and then of bread, but the system was still subject to considerable abuse, and the frumentarius (corn officer) was traditionally one of the ‘most hated, most fêted’ officials in any city – usually rich, often corrupt and not infrequently the subject of riots in which the hated officer was dragged around the streets in effigy. Such is the figure of Caius Monnius in this story.

  Horses, too, required a lot of grain and the city revolved around the use of horses for transport, power (horse-driven mills were not uncommon) and entertainment. Chariot racing was one of the most popular spectacles in the Empire – as witness the colossal Circus Maximus in Rome – and although no chariot circus has ever been conclusively identified in Britain it is certain (from accounts and other related finds) that such contests were equally popular here and even attracted famous charioteers from other parts of the Empire. The ‘circus’, with its purpose-built track and turning posts, was a racecourse, not to be confused with the amphitheatre for gladiatorial ‘games’, of which many British examples have been identified. Serious chariot racing was professional, although local towns might also have amateur meets. Racing drivers (as the Latin translates) often began as slaves, but were traditionally allowed to keep at least a proportion of the handsome purses they won, and – if successful – were soon able to buy their freedom, although they were usually still subject to a ‘contract’ with their team. Huge transfer fees were paid, and successful drivers often rose to be exceptionally wealthy, idolised by their fans and, (unusually for the lowly bo
rn), accepted into the best society. The four (later six or eight) teams, or ‘colours’, were not politically neutral. The Green team was at this time associated with anti-imperial feeling and unrest, while Reds were the pro-government team, and so on – although it was not unknown for drivers to change teams at the end of a contract, or even to buy themselves out. The parallel with modern football – even to the rivalry between, say, Celtic and Rangers – is almost irresistible.

  As mentioned above, the exact location of the circus in London is unknown. One dubious theory places it north of the river near the Cheapside baths, and this hypothesis has been accepted for the purposes of this story. Equally uncertain is the identity of the Roman governor at this period. Helvius Pertinax was appointed as governor in the early eighties, and he was clearly in Britain in early 187, but it is not certain at what date he relinquished his command. Following the uncovering of a plot against Commodus, the just, severe and incorruptible Pertinax enjoyed a meteoric rise, to be first Governor of Africa and then Prefect of Rome, two of the most powerful posts in the Empire. He was actually acclaimed Emperor by the loyal soldiery after the murder of Commodus – although he was insufficiently corrupt to hold the post for long and was assassinated soon after.

  What is remarkable is that this man – who was the son of an ex-slave and began as a teacher of grammar until found a military posting by a rich sponsor – has no identified successor to the post of Governor of Britain, and no clear dates are available for his departure. One possible theory is that no successor was ever named, and he continued to govern by proxy until his appointment to the Prefecture of Rome, when his own nominee was awarded the post and the records (otherwise complete) begin again. For the purposes of this story, this not entirely unprecedented arrangement is presumed to have evolved in late 187, and Pertinax is here portrayed as planning a farewell tour of the province.

  Apart from Pertinax and Commodus himself all characters in this story are fictitious. The Romano-British background to the book has been derived from a wide variety of (sometimes contradictory) written and pictorial sources, as well as interviews with specialists on the period. However, although I have done my best to create an accurate picture, this remains a work of fiction and there is no claim to total academic authenticity.

  Relata refero. Ne lupiter quidem omnibus placet. (I only tell you what I heard. Jove himself can’t please everybody.)

  Prologue

  In the opulent town mansion of Caius Monnius Loveinius, one of the wealthiest officials in Londinium, everyone was asleep. Or almost everyone.

  It had been a Roman holiday – the birthday of one of the deified imperial dead (or perhaps not dead, since emperors were now officially immortal) – and Caius Monnius, like everyone else of importance, had marked the occasion with a feast.

  But the remains of last night’s banquet had now been cleared away: scores of slaves, for whom a Roman holiday was no holiday at all, had worked for hours by oil-light moving the last platters from the tables and sweeping scraps of roast peacock from the mosaic floors, but now even they had finished. The fine pottery eating bowls had been scrubbed clean with sand and ashes, the oil-lamps replenished for the night, and the elaborate food libation to the gods – fragments of gilded swan and of delicate honeycake – had been duly shared, as custom permitted, and the weary servants had gone gratefully to their sleeping spaces.

  The invited revellers were long since gone home, replete and benevolent in their carried litters: while the master of the house, stupid with lust and wine, staggered to his lady’s quarters and by the light of two lamps held by a pair of unwilling slaves, roughly and repeatedly violated his beautiful young wife. Then he too had lumbered to his bed in the adjoining room, posted one slave to sleep outside his door and the other outside his wife’s, and had fallen at once into a drunken slumber without even removing his toga.

  Elsewhere, the whole household was asleep. Even the doorkeeper had succumbed to the powerful draught he had unwittingly taken in his glass, and had nodded into oblivion, still sitting on his stool, his head resting against the painted plaster wall of his waiting niche. In the darkened corridors nothing moved except the flickering light of a few feeble oil-lamps suspended from the rafters. The tiny wicks, in their open bowls, cast a faint glow upwards but did little to illuminate the area beneath them, and most of the exquisite tiled floor and elegant passageway of interconnecting rooms was a pool of darkness and sinister shifting shadows.

  Strange, since in any well-run city household there is always at least one servant awake and watchful, to keep guard.

  But tonight there was no one watching. No one to see a single shadow, darker than the rest, detach itself from the gloom of the librarium and move silently and stealthily towards the room where Caius Monnius lay. It hesitated a moment outside the lady’s door, guarded by the sleeping female slave. The servant was old, and breathing heavily. The shadow bent over her, but the woman did not so much as stir.

  The shadow moved on to the master’s room. The wretched page sighed and turned slightly in his dreams. The shadow paused. There was no one to see the hands that flashed out suddenly, the fingers that lifted the head by the hair, or the savage tightening of the close-linked silver chain around the throat of the unconscious slave. The sleeping draught had done its job so well that the boy did not even give a grunt as he died.

  The shadow let the boy fall gently back, and stepped silently over the lifeless figure into the room beyond. There was a long, long pause. Caius Monnius was a substantial man, and he did not die without a struggle. But a pillow muffled his gurgling and at last the woven chain – its three strands supple and strong yet together no wider than a man’s finger – accomplished its deadly work again.

  Then the shadow edged soundlessly to the connecting door which led to the bedroom of the lady. The door inched open. A knife gleamed dully in the gloom. The shadow moved towards the bed.

  But the lady Fulvia was not asleep. She lay back on her pillows, eyelids shut, and as the knife was raised she seemed to tense. Then, as the blade came down, she moved her arm so that the savage edge merely slashed across her flesh. She opened her eyes and stared about, but before she could even force herself upright – gasping with pain and clutching at the wound – she knew she was alone. She heard the knife clatter to the floor. And then the lady screamed, and kept on screaming, so loudly that the sleeping servants in the attics woke.

  A moment later the stairs rang with the sound of their footsteps, and the passages glowed in the flare of their hastily lighted tapers. A dozen slaves rushed into the lady’s room, to find her sitting up on her bed, clutching her blankets to her with bloodied hands. She was pale and shivering, and gesturing wordlessly towards the inner door and to the bloodstained knife which still lay glittering on the floor nearby.

  ‘The master!’ someone shouted, but Caius Monnius would never come to his wife again. He lay slumped upon his bed, the pillow by his side, with his crushed festal wreath still grotesquely on his head and the chain so tightly wound around his neck that here and there the hammered metal had bitten into flesh, and blood was oozing between the narrow links. The shutters at the window-space had been forced open. A servant cried out in horror.

  Fulvia struggled to rise. ‘I must attend my husband!’ But she collapsed into the arms of her slave-woman.

  Frightened slaves rushed outside at once into the dark. The garden was walled, but the lights of their torches soon revealed a crude ladder set up against the wall in the furthest corner. There was no one in the garden: no one in the street. The shadow, whoever it was, had merged into obscurity and vanished.

  Of course, I didn’t know all this at the time. Like every other honest citizen in Londinium, I was fast asleep in bed.

  Chapter One

  Unlike most of those respectable citizens, however, it was not my own bed that I was occupying. In fact when the household slave arrived to call me, it took me a few moments to work out where I was.

  ‘Cit
izen? Libertus? Pavement-maker?’ I came to my senses to find somebody calling my name. Unnecessarily loudly and close to my ear, I thought. I had been dreaming that I was an emperor, resting on cushions of down.

  I opened one eye and shut it again instantly. That’s a powerful oil-lamp, I thought crossly, as the brightness seared my sight. What idiot had brought it inches from my eyes?

  ‘Longinius Flavius Libertus!’ The voice was insistent. ‘Are you awake?’

  I forced the eyelid open again. No oil-lamp, I realised painfully, just sunlight streaming through the open shutters. But my fuddled brain refused to deal with the implications of that. I simply turned on my pillows and tried to drift back into oblivion, muttering crossly, ‘Go away.’

  ‘Citizen mosaic-maker! His Excellence the Governor enquires if you have slept.’

  That woke me. I sat up in bed so suddenly that I narrowly escaped oversetting the bowl of scented water that the slave was carrying. For a moment I goggled at the painted walls, the carved table, the fine wooden shutters standing open at the window-space, the terracotta paving on the floor. And this bed! Not cushions of down, exactly, but the next best thing – a proper bed with a woollen mattress on a splendid stretched goatskin base. A far cry from my usual humble pile of rags and reeds. And the young slave at my bedside was not my own cheerfully scruffy Junio, but an elegant stranger in an exquisitely bordered tunic.

  Of course! This was not the wretched attic over my mosaic workshop in Glevum. I was a house-guest of His Supreme Excellence Publius Helvius Pertinax, supreme commander of the legions and governor of all Britannia. I was in his palace in Londinium, and judging by the broad daylight pouring through the windows I was guilty of a serious breach of etiquette. Most Roman households rise at dawn, and all important citizens expect to begin the day by receiving their clientes, the retinue of humbler citizens and freemen who call each morning to offer their homage in return for patronage, favours and even – occasionally – breakfast. I should have been awake, dressed, and ready to attend upon on my host hours ago.