Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online

that most relatives of senators are talentless buffoons, a cynic might wonder.
    'And before Gratianus Scaeva died so tragically, what were his connections with Veleda?'
    'He barely met her. We held a couple of formal family dinners to which the woman was invited as a courtesy; she was introduced to him. That's all.'
    'No infatuation on one side or the other, a flirtation that you might have been unaware of at the time?'
    'Certainly not. Scaeva was a man of spirit, but we could always rely on him for proper behaviour.'
    I wondered. The Veleda I remembered glowed with lustrous assurance. We had looked at her and gulped. It was more than a queenly figure and pale gold hair. To win the trust of suspicious, belligerent tribesmen took special qualities. Veleda made the Bructeri believe fighting Rome was their only destiny; moreover, she persuaded them they had chosen this for themselves. She used strength of mind and strength of purpose. She was cloaked in an aura that went way beyond the fake mystery of most fortune-tellers and charlatans. She was brilliant, enthralling--and, when I met her, she had been desperate for intelligent male conversation. If she had been a prisoner for months, she would have been desperate again.
    Veleda had been quick to share her thoughts and dreams with a 'promising young man' when we provided one. The young man I saw vanish up her tower with her had cast aside 'proper behaviour' without thinking twice. I did warn him to watch himself, but he rushed at the chance to be close to her.
    Afterwards, Justinus had carried the pain of leaving Veleda behind for five years, and I saw no reason to think he would ever be free of her. So had Scaeva been captured in the same subtle spider's web?
    Quadrumatus Labeo had finished with me, whether or not I had finished with him. His dream interpreter had arrived.
    'Nightmares since the murder?'
    The senator looked at me as if I was cracked. 'Such consultations aid rational thinking. My man calls daily.'
    So the dream therapist governed his every act. I kept my gaze neutral. 'And did you consult him about whether to allow Veleda to stay here?'
    His expression sharpened. 'I assure you, Falco! I maintained scrupulous security.'
    I took that as an admission.
    The dream therapist had a cold. He was wiping his nose on the sleeve of his star-spattered knee-length tunic as he brushed past me, heading after his dignified client to the inner sanctum. We were not introduced. I would know him again, though. He looked straight from the Chaldees, right down to the long hooked nose, peculiar cloth head-dress and air of having caught a disease from over-friendly relations with his camel. As exotic enhancement, he wore soft felt slippers with curly toes that had foully moulded themselves to the shape of his feet; he was a martyr to bunions, by the look of it.
    His name was Pylaemenes. The house steward told me. To my surprise the slaves here seemed indifferent to the man; I had reckoned they would be hostile to an influential outsider--especially one of distinctly foreign appearance whose robe hem needed tacking up but who was probably paid zillions.
    'We are used to all sorts,' shrugged the steward, as he took me to find the slave who discovered the body.
    This was a distraught waif of about fifteen, now trembling in the corner of his cubicle, hugging his knees. When I entered the bleak compartment, a typical slave cell which he shared with another, he showed me the whites of his eyes like an unbroken colt. The steward picked up a thin blanket and draped it over him, but it would clearly slide off again.
    As a witness the lad was useless. He would not speak. It looked as if he did not eat. If nothing was done soon, he was a lost soul.
    What could anyone expect? The steward had told me about him. He had been a cheery, useful teenager who then found himself alone in a room with a headless corpse. Born and bred a house slave in a home of refulgent luxury, where the owners were obviously