Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis

Author:Lindsey Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466891449
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

XXXV

Some people know Ad Gallinas Albas as the whimsical name of the elegant imperial Villa of Livia at Prima Porta. Supposedly an eagle soaring overhead once dropped a white hen in the empress’s lap, bearing a sprout of olive in its beak. Waste not, want not, so the great lady kept both, planting an olive grove and keeping a poultry farm, with the bonus that on occasions they presaged the deaths of emperors. So useful. If I ever have my own olive tree, I want it to wilt when the daggers are about to be plunged into Domitian.

The poultry area by the Ten Traders may boast the same name, but it is as different as anything could be from the fine rural retreat on the Via Flaminia that was once the possession of Livia Augusta. Forget the desirable residential areas that did exist on the Viminal further on. Was Gallinae Albae ever a farm? If there had once been hens, they must have been hoarse, pox-ridden laying-fowl that produced soft-shelled eggs. Their eyes would weep, their lungs would clog with the foul seepage of diseases of the dirt. The human birds who lived in this sour valley bottom now, scrawny creatures pecking for clients, were little different.

Not all the prostitutes were brought in from abroad. Not all were slaves. A few were freeborn women, lured here by want, vulnerable souls in distress who were so desperate they had to turn to vice. They disappeared from their former lives, in total thrall to their procurers.

More often than you may want to believe, the people who controlled their daily acts were women. Many of those women had once been working girls too. They were callous; they felt no pity for the new generation. I suppose they were simply glad they themselves had grappled their way into a slightly better position. By then, abuse was all they knew. When perversion was not being imposed on them, they imposed it on someone else.

I was coming to see this as Rufia’s way of life, and Menendra’s too. This pair, I decided, were power players in the sordid game.

* * *

I wished I had not gone to the White Chickens alone. It gave me a terrible sense of dread. The reason I knew all about what went on here was that thankfully brief period when I myself had been kidnapped by a brothel owner. It had only lasted a day, though it was the worst of my life. At the time I was a forlorn child, who believed his lie that he would take me to a safe place. But when he violently turned on me it was no surprise. Living on the streets had taught me what goes on.

I would have given in and done whatever that man made me do, because I had no other recourse. No friends, no family, no home. At that time, to be wanted for his filthy purposes was better than not to be wanted at all. I could have pretended to myself that his lies were real.

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