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Lindsey Davis

JUPITER MYTH

Londinium, Britannia

August, A. D. 75

I

It depends what we mean by civilization," the procurator mused.

Staring at the corpse, I was in no mood to discuss philosophy. We were in Britain, where the rule of law was administered by the army Justice operated in a rough-and-ready fashion so far away from Rome, but special circumstances meant this killing would be difficult to brush aside.

We had been called out by a centurion from the small local troop detachment. The military presence in Londinium was mainly to protect the governor, Julius Frontinus, and his deputy, the procurator Hilaris, but since the provinces are not manned by the vigiles, soldiers carry basic community policing. So the centurion attended the death scene, where he became a worried man. On investigation, an apparently routine local slaying acquired "developments. "

The centurion told us he had come to the bar expecting just a normal drunken stabbing or battering. To find a drowned man headfirst down a well was slightly unusual, exciting maybe. The "well" was a deep hole in a corner of the bar's tiny backyard. Hilaris and I bent double and peered in. The hole was lined with the waterproof wooden staves of what must be a massive German wine container; water came nearly to the top. Hilaris had told me these imported barrels were taller than a man, and after being emptied of wine they were often reused in this way.

When we arrived, of course the body had already been removed. The centurion had pulled up the victim by his boots, planning to heave the cadaver into a corner until the local dung cart carried it off. He himself had intended to sit down with a free drink while he eyed up the attractions of the serving girl.

Her attractions were not up to much. Not by Aventine standards. It depends what we mean by attractive, as Hilaris might muse, if he were the type to comment on waitresses.

Myself, I was that type, and immediately as we entered the dim establishment I had noticed she was four feet high with a laughable leer and smelled like old boot liners. She was too stout, too ugly, and too slow on the uptake for me. But I'm from Rome. I have high standards. This was Britain, I reminded myself.

There was certainly no chance of anyone getting free drinks now that Hilaris and I were here. We were official. I mean really official. One of us held a damned high rank. It wasn't me. I was just a new middle-class upstart. Anyone of taste and style would be able to sniff out my slum background instantly.

"I'll avoid the bar," I joked quietly. "If their water is full of dead men, their wine is bound to be tainted!"

"No, I'll not try a tasting," agreed Hilaris in a tactful undertone. "We don't know what they may stuff in their amphorae…"

The centurion stared at us, showing his contempt for our attempts at humor.

This event was even more inconvenient for me than it was for the soldier. All he had to worry about was whether to mention the awkward "developments" on his report. I had to decide whether to tell Flavius Hilaris-my wife's Uncle Gaius-that I knew who the dead man was. Before that, I had to evaluate the chances that Hilaris himself had known the casked corpse.