SATURNALIA by Lindsey Davis

Author:Lindsey Davis [Davis, Lindsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_crime

XXXIII

I was led to a large, unused warehouse. I told myself nothing could go wrong; after all, my sister – the virtuous, pompous one – was in charge of the catering.

A cohort of vigiles is about five hundred strong. Sometimes there is a shortfall, with a group on detachment to guard the corn supply at Ostia, but the Fourth had recently finished a tour of duty there. It is just like the army: on a good day, ten will be laid off with wounds (more after a large building fire, many more after a major city conflagration), twenty in the sick bay with general illnesses, and fifteen specifically unfit for duty due to conjunctivitis. The treasurer has always gone to see his mother. The tribune in charge is always present; nobody can get rid of him, whatever devious ruse they try.

The first sight to greet me, then, was Marcus Rubella, the Fourth's untrustworthy, over-ambitious cohort tribune. He was standing on a table, with his shaven head thrown back, draining the biggest double handed goblet of wine I had ever seen. In a gathering of blacksmiths or furnace stokers, who are the world's heaviest quaffers, this would have been the final stunt of the evening, after which everyone would collapse. Normally a loner, whose men had yet to learn to like him, Rubella was just warming up in between raiding the early canapй trays. Occasions like this were when he did win the vigiles' wary respect. After a handful of quails' eggs and a few oysters, their hard man would accept some other drinking challenge, remaining vertical and apparently sober throughout. The vigiles could admire that. It deserves mention that in order to show how conscientiously he threw himself into occasions of cohort festivity, Marcus Rubella (a staid man, conscious of his dignity) was currently wearing a silly hat, winged sandals and a very short gold tunic. I noticed with a shudder that he had not shaved his legs.

Of the five hundred men who nightly patrolled the Twelfth and Thirteenth Districts, almost every one was there. The sufferers from the sick bay had bravely rallied. Even the bucket-handler with life threatening burns from a bakery fire had been carried in on a stretcher. Someone whispered to me that he had struggled hard to last out until the party. If he died tonight, he would be smiling.

A drink found its way into my hand. I was expected to gulp it as fast as I could then have more; my elbow was jogged as encouragement. I recognised the wine as vinum primitivum from that night at Flora's. Then I spotted my sister Junia, red-faced and harassed as she pushed through the press. She was approaching forty and the menopause, but that hadn't stopped her pinning her hair in fat, lopsided rolls, adorning the edifice with fake rosebuds, and mincing about in her second-best stole. The effect was incongruously girlish. I felt slightly sick. 'Oh Juno, Marcus, these men are voracious – I'm never going to have enough!' 'You knew what you were taking on.

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