Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

it.
    It was likely to be some time longer before Faustus returned. Not only was the Aventine a good step from here, he had given himself too much to do: aediles’ business, wedding plans, fetching luggage and visiting Lesser Laurel Street to see what his workmen were up to. I hoped they would not dig up any more human remains, or I too was liable to be overstretched.
    Of course finding bones was possible in any city, especially in Rome, which had such a long history. The rule against burying a corpse within the city boundary was good public hygiene, but it must always have led to the surreptitious concealment of bodies. It was not necessarily the result of misdemeanor. Many of the poor could not afford a niche in the cheapest columbarium, let alone a tomb in a necropolis. Even to bury ashes in a broken old pot, they would first have to pay for cremation. So, when digging anywhere in Rome, there was a good chance of finding bones that should not be there. Skeletons of babies abounded, though if a child died in its first four days it was permissible to bury the body at home. It was better to tuck your stillborn under your own threshold than cast its sad corpse onto a rubbish heap with the risk of dogs, rats, carrion crows and witches, let alone youths looking for something horrible to kick around the streets.
    I decided that Faustus and I had better try to identify whether the bones we had were truly those of a woman, one who had vanished in living memory. There was no point in me chasing down what happened to Rufia if this was not her at all. By the look of it, the Garden of the Hesperides had been a bar since the Republic, so given what tended to happen in bars, it could have a long series of sad little waitresses who had met untimely ends.
    Now I was despondent. Why had I so easily gotten involved? Why did I never learn?
    *   *   *
    I tried a small bathhouse, only reminding myself how disgusting they can be. At your local, you stop seeing the scum. Here, floating dirt and oil lapped in the basins and pools all too obviously, while the floors were slippery with other people’s scraped-off filth. The customers looked like people who peed in the plunge pools.
    All right; you can’t tell from appearance. But they all looked like people who were just asking to be insulted.
    Emerging glumly, I explored more stalls and shops around the Ten Traders area, buying provisions that I carried back to our hired room. The bag of bones silently greeted me; I tucked it away under the bed. While I waited for Faustus I took more note of the location.
    The room was directly above a teeming crossroads. Behind a battered shutter, I found a balcony onto which you could take one step, if you really wanted to stand on a ledge like a pigeon. Teetering there I could see people thronging the Vicus Longus, with all the usual extras: smells I tried not to identify, mules braying while their drivers yelled themselves hoarse, strident women arguing with hoarse neighbors, artisans singing as they worked, copper-beaters hammering, carpenters rasping wood with adzes that set my teeth on edge. Someone was scraping out a huge cooking pot into the gutter and a sad child was bawling for attention it would never receive. Nine feral dogs in a pack came rampaging down the road, scarily barking their heads off, then bystanders yelled after the dogs.
    By now I had identified some of the smells, and wished I hadn’t. I braced myself to keep looking because I wanted to get a feel for the neighborhood.
    People came from all levels and the whole fabric of society. Groups of the idle hung about waiting for life to improve, making more noise than seemed wise, given that while I watched a bunch of the Urban Cohorts marched in, looking for people to harass. A few mature women who looked quite respectable were going home with shopping baskets. These women would want places for religious observance, though temples were nowhere in evidence. The