Our final venture was to walk over to the Capena Gate to see Helena's family. Her father was out, taking his elder son on a vote-catching visit to some other senators. Her mother seized our baby with a rather public display of affection, implying that she was displeased with other members of her tribe. Claudia Rufina seemed very quiet. And Justinus only made a brief appearance looking serious, then slid off somewhere by himself. Julia Justa told Helena he was trying to reject the idea of entering the Senate, even though his papa had mortgaged himself deeply to make election funds available; the son had now been sentenced to take an improving trip abroad.,
`Where to, Mama?
`Anywhere,' commented the noble Julia, rather forcefully. We had a distinct feeling we were only being favoured with half the story, but everyone was being held on a tight rein so there was no chance of a private chat.
`Well, he won't be going before Aulus and Claudia's wedding presumably,' Helena consoled herself. Justinus was her favourite, and she would miss him if he were exiled from Rome.
`Claudia's grandparents are due here in a couple of weeks,' her mother replied. `One does one's best' Julia Justa sounded more depressed and hard-done-by than usual. I had always thought her a shrewd woman. She was that rarity among patricians, a good wife and mother. She and I had had our differences, but only because; she lived by high moral standards. If she was in difficulty with one of her sons, I sympathised. She would not want me to offer help.
Hoping to discover what was up, I tried to run the senator to earth at Glaucus' gym, which we both patronised, but Camillus Verus was not there.
A day later we were, all settled at Tibur. Frontinus was staying; with patrician friends in a lavishly equipped villa which had stunning views. Helena and I had rented a little farm down on the plain, just a couple' of outbuildings attached to a rustic dwelling. We installed Petro in bachelor lodgings above the shack where the winepress would operate if there was one, while his aunt shared a corridor with us. Sedina had insisted on coming along to continue nursing her darling. Petronius was livid, but there was nothing he could do. So much for his romantic aspirations. He was to be pampered, fussed over – and supervised.
`This is a dump, Falco.'
`You chose to come. Still, I agree. We could probably buy this place for not much more than we're paying in rent.'
Disastrous words.
`That's a good idea,' said Helena, coming upon us unexpectedly. `We can start your portfolio of Italian land, ready for when you decide to qualify for a higher rank. Then we can show, off talking about `bur summer residence at Tibur''.
I was alarmed. `Is that what you want?'
'Oh, I want what you want, Marcus Didius.' Helena smiled wickedly. She hadn't answered the question, as she well knew.
She looked more at ease and less weary already than she had been in Rome, so I spoke less grumpily than I intended. `Even to annoy my sister Junia with her fancy aspirations, I won't invest good money in anywhere as pitiful as this.'-
`It's good land, my lad,' reported Petro's waddling aunt, coming in with a bundle of limp greenery in her shawl. `There are wonderful nettles all over the back; I'm just going to conjure up a nice pan of soup for us all.' Like all townswomen, Auntie Sedina loved to come to the Campagna so she could demonstrate her domestic skills by producing dubious dishes from ghastly ingredients that would be shunned with shrieks of terror by the countryborn.
Buying a patch of six-foot-high wild nettles in the faint hope of becoming an equestrian sounded about my level of ambition. Only an idiot would do it. Nobody lived down here on the flat. It was unhealthy; and dingy. Anyone with taste and money acquired a minor palace on a plot surrounded by topiary among the picturesque crags over which the River Anio tumbled in a dramatic cascade.
The Anio was the pretty waterway into which, according to Bolanus, some local madman habitually threw dissected human body parts. -
FORTY EIGHT
I, had not come to enjoy the scenery.
The first task was to familiarise myself rapidly with the area. We were perched at the southern end of the Sabine Hills. We had come out on the ancient Via Tiburtina, crossing the Anio twice, first outside Rome on the Pons Mammacus, and then later on the five-arched Pons Lucanus, dominated bv the handsome tomb of the Plautii. We were already in rich man's territory, signalled by the thermal springs at Aquae Albulae into which Sedina had made sure she dunked Petronius. Since the hot baths were supposed to cure throat and urinary infections I could not see that they had much relevance for, a man who had been
punched and kicked halfway to oblivion, and the unsavoury sight of his wounds certainly caused a flurry of fast-exiting invalids. The feeder lakes were pretty: an astonishing vivid blue. The smell of sulphur pervading the neighbourhood was thoroughly off-putting.
Lest we turn into tourists, the Emperor had done his best to spoil the succeeding area. It was being used to quarry the travertine stone for the huge new Flavian Amphitheatre in
Rome, the process scarring the landscape and filling up the roads with carts. It must be distressing the snobs who had made their holiday homes here, but they could hardly protest about Vespasian's pet scheme.
All the way across the Campagna we had been accompanied by the high, handsome arches of the major aqueducts. Even when they veered away from the road, we could still see the great tawny arcades, dominating the plain as they strode towards Rome from the hills. They took a wide sweep, travelling miles in the process, in order, to provide as gentle a gradient as possible and arrive at the city still high enough to supply its citadels, the Palatine and the Capitol.
At the point where the plain ran out and the hills started, encircled by fine olive groves and commanding unparalleled vistas, stood Tibur. There the incoming River Anio was forced to turn round three corners through a narrow gorge, producing fabulous cascades. The high ground ended abruptly in an escarpment, and the river simply fell straight over the edge, tumbling two hundred yards in its descent.
Sacred to the Sibyl Albunia, this breathtaking spot had been provided not just with the Sibyl's elegant crag-top temple but those of Hercules Victor and Vesta as well, popular, subjects for artists.throughout Italy when painting landscapes in roundels to adorn the walls of fashionable dining-rooms. Here statesmen created opulent country; houses, inspiring yet more derivative art. Poets haunted the place like intellectual vagrants. Maecenas, the financier of Caesar and power-broker of Augustus, had his sumptuous nook here. Augustus himself came. Varus, the legendary military incompetent who lost three whole legions in Germany, owned a spread and had a road named after him… Everywhere was dripping with wealth and appropriately snobbish. The town centre was neat, clean, and prettied up with well-positioned maidenhair ferns. The populace seemed friendly. They usually do in towns where the main. occupation is overcharging visitors.
We knew Bolanus was up in the hills, so a messenger was sent to announce our arrival. Meanwhile, Julius Frontinus and I shared out the job of checking the real estate. He took the sinister mansions with private racing stadia and armed guards, the ones which were supposed to be impenetrable to strangers. Most opened the gate for a consular official with six lictors. (Of course he had brought the lictors. They deserved a holiday. He was thoroughly considerate.) I took the rest of the properties, which were fewer than I had feared. Tibur was a millionaires' playground. So exclusive it was worse than the Bay of Neapolis in high summer.