Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis Page A

safe. If I have any influence, you will be happy.”
    â€œI know.” I was always happy with him, and being happy makes you feel safe.

 
    26 August
    Seven days before the Kalends of September (a.d. VII Kal. Sept.)
    Five days before the wedding of Tiberius Manlius Faustus and Flavia Albia

 
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    Breakfast was our special time. This had started when we would meet as if by chance and sit together in my aunt’s caupona. At the Stargazer, you had to converse to stop losing your grip on life. Talking together was easy, we had found, even though we were both by nature reticent. So, we became friends over the Stargazer’s granite bread and fatty meats. I would watch Faustus mentally assessing how the waiter, whoever it was that day, had given us the least possible number of olives he could serve without having the pottery saucer thrown at his head. Those bite bowls are small but carry weight, as any scavenger knows. I had had them flung at me, back in Londinium.
    After a few Stargazer breakfasts, I noticed Faustus was not in fact auditing the nibbles but taking an interest in me.
    Now we were living together, he would probably go back to real olive-counting. He was an aedile. Monitoring behavior was his favorite task. I let him get on with it. Supervising waiters was better than imagining he could supervise me.
    In daylight today, we were able to spot remnants of the ancient market that must have originally given the Ten Traders its name. There were single-room shops, each with a vaulted roof and a room above, like the one where we were staying. Early in the morning the bars were closed—well, around here you could still get a drink, and I don’t mean water—while shops we had not seen yesterday afternoon now opened and revealed their presence. Dry goods and fresh greens mostly. One of the scroll-sellers for which the Argiletum was supposedly famous. A cutler, so people in the bars could buy bone-handled dinner knives to stick into other people they argued with.
    A sign said an apothecary lived in one of the upstairs rooms, ready to run out with salves for any nonfatal knife wounds. He claimed he also sold love potions. He risked having an aedile raid him, to root out magic. Like plenty of others the seller clung on, purveying herbs that worked and incantations that didn’t, pills that put you on a bucket all night and powders that claimed to make you irresistible to others, but might kill you.
    On the Vicus Longus we found a streetside snackery that was being swept clean by a worn woman, while her thin-faced daughter served a few rolls and cheese wedges to passing workers. Rather than have us clutter up their counter, they put out a bench for us to sit on.
    We each reported on yesterday’s efforts. When I expressed anxiety that Tiberius was wearing himself out, he reassured me. He said nothing about progress on the house, although I gathered he had been there. He had told the aediles’ office he was “going to his villa at the seaside”; apparently no magistrate was ever expected to work in the August heat, although Manlius Faustus must be the only one in history who was too poor to own a holiday home. He was arguing with his uncle over his right to draw cash from their family finances. He would never prise money out of Uncle Tullius for luxuries. Business deals were hard enough to fund.
    Meanwhile he had left Julia and Favonia with a wedding-guest list. When they applied themselves to something they wanted to do, my younger sisters could be meticulous. They had Katutis, Father’s secretary, writing out invitations; between them there was no chance any awful relative would be left out. Any day now, this event would be scribbled on everyone’s calendar. I was stuck.
    I mentioned that I had myself hired victimarii and an augur. My bridegroom looked annoyed. He pointed out, mildly, that since I had refused to take any interest, he and his helpers had fixed all the details;