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Back Enemies at Home Save as PDF
Chapters (66)
  1. Also by Lindsey Davis
  2. ENEMIES AT HOME
  3. Lindsey Davis
  4. Copyright
  5. Map
  6. THE CAST
  7. ROME, the Esquiline Hill:June AD89
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‘Who is he?’

‘Their lamp boy yesterday. And Panther.’

‘His dog?’ Constans had told me that the boy went home to see his dog.

‘Right. You’re good at this,’ Dromo declared, mock-admiring. ‘Have you thought about making guessing-games your career?’

‘No. I’m too busy thinking, when shall I get around to beating you for cheek?’

The last thing I wanted today was careers advice.

Panther might be the beast I had heard barking when I called at Polycarpus’ apartment. His wife, Graecina, had said ‘the boy’ took the dog out for a walk, so at the time I assumed she meant their son. Cosmus must be about fourteen, quite a lot older than the child I had heard wailing when I visited. Graecina must have meant ‘boy’ in the other sense. As a freedman, Polycarpus was entitled to possess slaves. Mind you, someone who had been a slave himself ought to know how to buy better. It’s one thing for an adolescent son to loaf about the streets looking for trouble but a slave ought to be kept better occupied. This one looked impervious to training.

Graecina came down from their apartment. She spoke to Cosmus, though I could not hear what was said. He hunched up and stayed put by the leather shop, looking lethargic. Graecina waited a moment, then she walked to one of the other retail outlets. It was where Polycarpus had pulled open a shutter to produce Mucia’s chair for me yesterday.

The shutter was obviously not locked but now it refused to move freely. As best she could, Graecina hauled on it then said something, as if someone – Polycarpus presumably – was inside. It looked like a routine exchange between a wife and her husband. He might be continuing the process of cleaning up the seat cushion, and she might be calling him upstairs for lunch.

I was intending to exchange greetings as I went into the apartment. As I came closer, Graecina spoke again, more impatiently. Seeming on the clumsy side with physical mechanics, she failed to apply her weight properly so could not heave the heavy folding door any further open. I went forwards to help. Giving up, Graecina squeezed through anyway, muttering. It was a tight fit. She was a fleshy woman. She would have acquired bruises.

I reached the shutter; I was standing on the threshold when, within the dim interior, the steward’s wife let out a shriek.

31

The scream sounded more like surprise than anguish, but sometimes you recognise trouble. With a great struggle, I pressed myself through the narrow gap, following Graecina inside. Through the gloom, I saw why the shutter was so hard to open. Polycarpus was lying against it, in a partly bent position with his shoulders and upper body pressed against the inside of the wooden leaf, his weight jamming it.