Enemies at Home by Lindsey Davis Page A

before. It held unhappy memories, about a man I should never have tangled with. (Let’s face it, all my bad memories concern men in that category.) Luckily, the offender no longer worked there. I could revisit the scene with indifference.
    I learned Manlius Faustus was out but expected back, once he finished working the streets to monitor the public. Pity the public; he was a stickler.
    The slaves were loafing in the courtyard, looking relaxed; that was typical of slaves. There was nothing they could do about their predicament; other people owned their lives and would decide their fate. The threat of death had stopped worrying them, at least for the time being.
    Although the aediles were given no personal guards, their building contained strongboxes full of fines from the many who broke regulations (well, those who were spotted) so the place had protection. Its guards were temporarily keeping an eye on the Aviola slaves.
    ‘We lost one this morning.’
    ‘Careless! Someone run away?’
    ‘Died on us. The porter who was beaten up. He’s still on the premises if you want to have a look at him.’
    ‘I may as well.’
     
    Nicostratus lay dead on a pallet, covered with a cloth, which did little to allay the stink of his rotted wounds. I could learn little about him from his corpse, except that he had been short, dark and hairy – and cruelly treated. The battery was pointless; why would thieves stop and beat up a porter so badly, when a couple of well-aimed blows is usually enough to have such a man whimpering in a corner? Or couldn’t they just have slipped him a few coins to lose himself for half an hour?
    Were these robbers in love with violence? And had the porter’s beating fired them up, so they went on to attack Aviola and his bride too? But that would mean the murders were unplanned.
    ‘Someone knocked all hell out of this one! Did anyone try to look after him when he arrived here?’ The guard pulled a face. Fairly neat bandaging had been carried out on the dead man and one of his legs had a splint. ‘Manlius Faustus let him be seen by a doctor?’
    ‘But of course! Faustus insists we treat them all tenderly. We want them in good condition for the arena beasts, don’t we? There’s no fun if convicts are submissive and limp.’
    I did not suppose having the man fit for the lions was Faustus’ motive.
    ‘Will someone ask the doctor to come and have a word with me? Dromo can take a message, if you give him directions. The patient may have said something, while he was being treated.’
    Dromo did go, only to return bitterly complaining that the doctor was a bad-tempered Greek who had been horrible to him. That did not surprise me. I sympathised with the doc.
    The man sent me a verbal message that he had better things to do than attend the dead. However, to satisfy Manlius Faustus, there was also a written report. The doctor described Nicostratus’ injuries, including a broken leg, a hole in his skull, and various traumatic wounds that appeared to have been inflicted by a blunt flat-faced weapon, such as a plank. Splinters of wood were in the wounds.
    In the doctor’s expert opinion (his phrase), the savagery used on Nicostratus differed significantly from the controlled force required to strangle the other two victims.
    In answer to my query, the patient gave up the struggle after a week of drifting in and out of consciousness, during which he never said anything about the attack.
    Thank you, Hippocrates.
     
    By the time Dromo brought me this, I was interviewing the slaves one by one, in the room Faustus used as his office. Afterwards, those I had seen were kept separate from those I had yet to see, so they could not confer.
    Some owners acquire slaves who are all of a type. Not these. The nine survivors were a mixed bunch, all heights, colouring and weights. I reckoned they varied too in their levels of intelligence, skill and willingness. The young men had hair to their shoulders, normal practice, and