The River God's Vengeance(49)

“Nothing like that!” I said. “Nobody has died. Nobody in my family, anyway. I need to inquire into the disposition of a couple of corpses I sent here yesterday morning.”

“Oh.” He lowered his hands to his sides, severe disappointment written upon his face. “That would be Lucius Folius and his wife.”

“It would.” I was beginning to wonder whether the woman had ever had a name. “I sent a physician here to examine them for signs of foul play, and he informed me that they had been taken away.”

“They were. Barring any instructions to the contrary, it is customary to surrender the bodies of the dead to whatever heirs or others who wish to remove them for cremation and interment. Since these rites were to be performed in their ancestral town of Bovillae, there was no need to keep them here.”

“And this heir was one Caius Folius?”

“So he said.”

“Did he provide any proof of identity?” I asked him.

The man was totally mystified. “Is there some sort of law requiring this? I certainly never heard of such a thing. Proof of identity? What would that be? And who would claim a body without cause? These weren’t like the mummies of pharaohs, decked out in gold and jewels. They were just a pair of corpses getting no more fragrant with the passage of time.” He was growing quite indignant.

“I get your point,” I said, holding out a palm for peace. “Did this Caius Folius claim that he was a son of the late couple?”

“Not likely. He looked older than either of them, and I took him for a brother or cousin or some such relative.”

“What did he look like?”

“Balding, plump, wore a lot of rings. He looked rather nondescript altogether”—he thought for a moment—”except for his nose.”

“What was singular about his nose?”

“He had a large, wine-colored wart on it. If I’d been getting him ready for the pyre, I’d have dusted it with powder to make it less glaring.”

“Thank you, Sextus Volturnus,” I said, grasping both his clammy hands in mine. “You’ve been a great help!”

“If you say so. Please keep me in mind should any of your illustrious relatives depart.”

We left the funeral home and turned our steps toward the Forum. So Juventius, the steward of Aemilius Scaurus, had claimed the bodies of the late Folii; and they were, in all likelihood, on their way to Bovillae with Aemilius himself. Why? That, along with a great many other questions, remained to be answered.

Cato wasn’t hard to find. He never was.

Marcus Porcius Cato was the enemy of all things modern or foreign. These things included sleeping late, eating well, bathing in hot water, and enjoying anything beautiful. He studied philosophy and even wrote philosophical tracts, but he was naturally attracted to the Stoics since they were the most disagreeable of all the Greeks. He believed that all virtue resided in the practices of our ancestors, and that the only path to greatness lay in narrow adherence to those practices. He revered above all others his ancestor Cato the Censor, the most repulsive man among all Rome’s many disgusting personages, most of whom were content to be cruel and vicious on their own behalf. Cato the Censor wanted everyone to be as nasty as he was.

There was a trial that morning in the Basilica Opimia, and I was sure that Cato would attend because it was a capital case and he had been complaining that Roman juries hadn’t been demanding harsh enough sentences lately. He would want to be there to press for the most savage punishments decreed by his revered ancestors.

Sure enough, there he was on a bench, surrounded by his cronies, many of whom affected his “antique simplicity.” Despite the coolness of the weather, he eschewed a tunic, wearing only a primitive, square-cut toga that draped him awkwardly, leaving half his torso bare. Instead of having his hair cut and styled by a barber, he shaved his head every month or so, so that he sported an uneven stubble over his whole scalp.

When he saw me, he got to his bare feet. He thought sandals to be an effeminate luxury, unworthy of our barefoot ancestors, and wore footgear only when campaigning with the army. He was not a large or imposing man and was not particularly powerful, but he refused to recognize any weakness in himself and so was capable of extraordinary feats of strength and endurance through sheer stubbornness.

“Hail, Aedile!” he cried, like a soldier saluting his general as Imperator.

“And a fine morning to you, Marcus Porcius Cato,” I said. “Did you get the felon cut in two with a timber saw or torn to bits by Mollosian hounds or whatever the punishment was?”

“It was a woman who poisoned her husband, and the jury voted for exile just because the man had been beating her regularly.” I did not know whether his grimace of distaste was for the mild punishment or my own levity, another thing of which he disapproved. He had no sense of humor whatsoever.