The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis Page B

farm, when international trade is such a doddle? They rush from their fields, dying to sell Rutupiae oysters to Rome.’
    ‘While we eagerly buy them!’ Andronicus grinned. Clearly he had heard that British delicacy outrivalled others.
    ‘Allowing the Britons to drink themselves silly in Londinium bars.’
    ‘By the way − you, dear girl, may look like a neat little Roman matron who has a distaff in one hand and household accounts in the other, but you have a muddy provincial background and may be a druid.’
    My heart sank again. ‘I solve my cases by waving a mistletoe bough over the evidence? Ridiculous. I did let people spread that rumour years ago, though believe me I never started it. Actually, all druids are devious old men. Uncombed beards and mystic secrets. They never write anything down, because then people could check on what dirty cheats they are. Then it was explained to me by a sharp lawyer that in Rome dabbling in magic is a capital offence.’
    ‘Faustus was told that you do indeed know some sharp lawyers.’ Andronicus was watching me keenly, but there was enough fun in his gaze for me to enjoy it.
    ‘More uncles. I consult them for free, every time we have a family party.’
    ‘So handy! . . . The well-known Camilli, I believe?’ Oh joy! Cassius Scaurus really had gone into detail. ‘Up-and-coming barristers – and both of them are in the Senate.
That
news was disconcerting to a plebeian aedile, I can tell you, Albia. He thinks himself so lofty – then he found out you were way above his level socially.’
    ‘You really do not like Faustus!’
    I asked him straight: what had the aedile done to him? Since we were exchanging personal information so openly today, Andronicus told me.
    Manlius Faustus was plebeian nobility, the kind that had a long history of confrontation with the Senate because their wealth made them so powerful they refused to be told what to do by the traditional aristocracy. Princes in trade and commerce. As Rome became a great empire, they had seen and exploited the possibilities: Faustus’ family commissioned, built and hired out warehouses. Through this, they had become extremely rich. Although they lived in modest style on the Aventine, it was thought they had chests of money, and they certainly owned a battalion of slaves, all high-priced ones, selected by the aedile’s uncle because they were beautiful or talented. These were groomed and educated with the same attention to detail with which the Fausti looked after their warehouses. A clerical freedman with this background could consider himself a highly desirable commodity.
    So, after being brought up and trained in the uncle’s house, once he was granted his freedom from slavery (now he did finally acknowledge his status), Andronicus had expected to be promoted. He had wanted a position as Manlius Faustus’ personal secretary. Faustus thought otherwise. He would not grant Andronicus that kind of access to his private papers. Andronicus felt the nephew should have fallen upon him gratefully as an assistant and confidant. Instead, Faustus not only refused, but arranged for him to work outside the house as an archivist at the Temple of Ceres.
    ‘I can just about put up with that – but then this year the swine gets himself elected as aedile. Of course Uncle Tullius fixed that, with vigorous wheeling and dealing, in the usual way. So now, I’m stuck with his godforsaken nephew on a daily basis, yet without the job I wanted – which in a just world was mine for the asking.’
    ‘Poor you.’
    ‘Thank you. I am indeed unfairly wretched.’
    Junillus had despaired of us ordering anything else we might actually pay for. Since we continued to occupy his best table, he dumped a pair of free drinks in front of us. He glared. We ignored that.
    ‘So,’ I said, as we raised our beakers together, ‘while Faustus and the miserable tribune were gossiping, what cunning fly-on-the-fresco position were you