Helena was still too angry. "No, it's monstrous! Even at this late stage you should take your landlord before the regional council and argue for reinstatement."
"My ex-landlord," Optatus replied slowly, "is an extremely powerful man."
"But disputes can be heard before the provincial governor." With her deep hatred of injustice, Helena refused to give in.
"Or the quaestor if he is sent to the regional court as the proconsul's deputy," Optatus added. His voice was tight. "In Corduba that usually happens. The quaestor spares his proconsul the business of hearing pleas."
Remembering that the new quaestor was to be Quinctius Quadratus, the son of the senator I had met and disliked in Rome, I was losing my confidence in the regional rule of law. "The quaestor may be young, but he is a senator-elect," I argued, nevertheless. Not that I had ever felt any awe for senators-elect. Still, I was a Roman abroad and I knew how to defend the system. "When he stands in for his governor he ought to do the job properly."
"Oh I'm sure he would!" Optatus scoffed. "Perhaps I should mention, however, that my previous landlord is called Quinctius Attractus. I should be making my petition to his son."
Now even Helena Justina had to see his point.
TWENTY
I wanted to know Optatus better before I discussed anything with political overtones, so I yawned heavily and we went to bed. He had described some lively local disputes and crookedness. Still, that happens everywhere. Big men stamp on little men. Honest brokers stir up their neighbors' antagonism. Incomers are resented and regarded as fair game. Urban life seems to be noisy and violent, but in the country it's worse. Poisonous feuds fester behind every bush.
Next day I persuaded Optatus to tour the estate with me. We set off to inspect the olive trees that all the fuss was about, while Nux gamboled wildly around us, convinced that our walk was for her sole benefit. She had only ever known the streets of Rome. She tore about with her eyes mere slits in the wind, barking at the clouds.
Optatus told me that along the Baetis, especially running west towards Hispalis, were holdings of all sizes—huge estates run by powerful and wealthy families, and also a variety of smaller farms which were either owned or leased. Some of the big holdings belonged to local tycoons, others to Roman investors. Camillus
Verus, who was perennially short of cash, had bought himself a pretty modest one.
Though small, the place had potential. The low hills south of the Baetis were as productive in agriculture as the mountains to the north of the river were rich in copper and silver. Camillus had managed to obtain a good position, and it was already clear his new tenant was putting the farm to rights.
Optatus first showed me the huge silo where grain was stored underground on straw in conditions that would keep it usable for fifty years. "The wheat is excellent, and the land will support other cereal crops." We walked past a bed of asparagus; I cut some spears with my knife. If my guide noticed that I knew how to select the best, how to burrow down into the dry earth before making my cut, and that I should leave a proportion for growing on, he made no comment. "There are a few vines, though they need attention. We have damsons and nuts—"
"Almonds?"
"Yes. Then we have the olive trees—suffering badly."
"What's wrong with them?" We stood under the close rows, running in an east-west direction to allow breezes to waft through. To me an olive grove was just an olive grove, unless it had a chorus of nymphs tripping about in windblown drapery.
"Too tall." Some were twice as high as me; some more. "In cultivation they will grow to forty feet, but who wants that? As a guide, they should be kept to the height of the tallest ox, to allow for picking the fruit."
"I thought olives were shaken down by banging the trees with sticks? Then caught in nets?"
"Not good." Optatus disagreed impatiently. "Sticks can damage the tender branches that bear the fruit. Falling can bruise the olives. Hand-picking is best. It means visiting every tree several times in each harvest, to catch all the fruit when it is exactly ripe."
'Green or black? Which do you favor for pressing?"
"Depends on the variety. Pausian gives the best oil, but only while the fruit is green. Regia gives best from the black."
He showed me where he was himself stripping back the soil to expose the roots, then removing young suckers. Meanwhile the upper branches were being severely pruned to reduce the trees to a manageable height.
"Will this harsh treatment set them back?"
"Olives are tough, Falco. An uprooted tree will sprout again if the smallest shred of root remains in contact with the soil."
"Is that how they can live so long?"
"Five hundred years, they say."
"It's a long-term business. Hard for a tenant to start afresh," I sympathized, watching him.
His manner did not alter—but it was pretty restrained to start with. "The new cuttings I have planted this month in the nursery will not bear fruit for five years; it will take at least twenty for them to reach their best. Yes; the olive business is long term."
I wanted to ask him about his old landlord Attractus, but I was not sure how to tackle it. Last night, with supper and wine inside him he had shown his feelings more freely, but this morning he had clammed up. I am the first to respect a man's privacy—except when I need to extract what he knows.
In fact he saved me the trouble of opening the discussion.
"You want me to tell you about the Quinctii!" he announced grimly.
"I'm not harassing you."
"Oh no!" He was working himself up well. "You want me to tell you how the father did me down, how I suffered, and how the son gloated!"
"Is that how it was?"
Optatus took a deep breath. My quiet attitude had relaxed him too. "Of course not."
"I didn't think so," I remarked. "If we had been talking about an obviously corrupt action you wouldn't have stood for it, and other people would have come out on your side. Whatever pressure the Quinctii applied to make you leave, you must have felt that technically at least, they had the law on their side."
"I'm not the man to judge what happened," Marius Optatus said. "I only know I was helpless. It was all achieved very subtly. I felt, and still feel, a deep sense of injustice—but I cannot prove any wrongdoing."
"The Quinctii had definitely decided that they wanted you out?"
"They wanted to expand their own estate. The easiest way, and the cheapest of course, was to kick me off the land that my family had been improving for several generations and take it over themselves. It saved them buying more ground. It saved them clearing and planting. I couldn't complain. I was a tenant; if I gave them cause, ending the contract was their right."
"But it was harsh, and it was done badly?"
"The father was in Rome. His son dealt with me. He doesn't know," Optatus shrugged, still almost with disbelief. "Young Quinctius Quadratus watched me leave with my bed, and my tools, and my saltbox—and he really did not understand what he had done to me.
"You call him young," I rasped. "He has been given charge of all the financial affairs of this province. He's not a child."
"He is twenty-five," Optatus said tersely.
"Oh yes! In his year." Quadratus had achieved the quaestorship at the earliest possible date. "We're in circles where golden youths don't expect to hang about. They want their honors now—so they can go on to grab more!"
"He's a shooting star, Falco!"
"Maybe somebody somewhere has a sharp arrow and a long enough reach to bring him down."
Optatus did not waste effort on such dreams. "My family were tenants," he repeated, "but that had been our choice. We were people of standing. I was not destitute when I left the farm. In fact," he added, becoming quite animated, "it could have been worse. My grandfather and father had always understood what the situation was, so every last wooden hayfork that belonged to us was inventoried on a list. Every yoke, millstone and plough. Every basket for straining cheese. That gave me some satisfaction.