Free The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis

him to act polite to Nepos two nights ago, and yet be a pernicious swine to his own slaves and freedmen on a daily basis.
    ‘And did he react to your unease about Salvidia’s death?’
    Nepos was gazing at the spitting flames. ‘Not specifically.’
    ‘I presume he is not intending any follow-up action?’
    Nepos spoke a little abstractedly. ‘No. No, he won’t be doing that.’
    Like the undertaker, Nepos made it casual and seemingly sincere. But his acting was less good. He was a cheesemaker and seller. He did not spend his professional life putting on a show of false emotion, as any funeral director has to. Nepos seemed so honest that if a piece of cheese had a spot of mould, he would point it out and advise you to slice off the worst before you served it. So in his case, I saw through him: as he tried to deflect me, a curtain came down. More had been discussed with Faustus than he was prepared to tell. He was blotting out a topic he did not want to discuss with me.
    Something was going on. Something that was being kept from the public in general and me in particular.

10
    T he death squads were out that evening.
    When I first came to Rome it was the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, tough but decent. My parents knew him. They knew his elder son Titus as well, but Titus only survived his father by a couple of years, years that were dominated by the disastrous volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Even in that dark moment, Rome was well-run and thriving. But when Titus died unexpectedly, rumours that he had been poisoned by his jealous brother Domitian indicated just what kind of rule would follow. Eight years later, we were used to suspicion and fear. Praetorian Guards were regularly sent out to search for those whose low opinion of their emperor had aroused his loathing for them.
    Failure to flatter that podgy despot Domitian was a deadly mistake. Many people inadvertently made the error; the slightest thing could offend him. So, as I returned wearily to the city from the necropolis, I was not surprised to glimpse a small group of soldiers passing the end of a dark street; there was no doubt of their sinister intent. As they tramped into the neighbourhood, everyone disappeared from the streets. Even a cat fled, yowling. It realised the soldiers were pitiless men who, if it strayed within their reach, would grab its tail and dash its brains out.
    The night was dark by then, moonless and starless, though almost too early for the imperial guards to arrive. Normally, they liked to surprise victims with sudden and thunderous knocking at the door while everyone was sleeping. Just before dawn, a bleary porter would find set-faced men with drawn swords, bringing punishment, often for a crime the victim had not even known he had committed. If the soldiers turned up during hours of darkness, there was less chance of resistance; less chance, too, of angry neighbours raising a public outcry. Tyrants are petrified of riots. Come the pale light of morning, word of a new death in the upper classes would infiltrate basilicas and emporia, though such brutal deletions of humanity were never formally listed in the
Daily Gazette.
    That night the first warning of their presence was their torches. Guards always carried rather good torches, and plenty of them. Trained killers need big, long-lasting flames; only the very best tar for Domitian’s punishers. These heavyweights are crack troops; they don’t want to march out on a mission to murder some measly senator only to be jumped by one of the petty muggers who hang about at night. It would be just too, too shameful to creep back to the Praetorian Camp and have to admit that they had been held up and had their medals and fancy daggers stolen by one of the moth-eaten larcenists on Chickenbone Alley.
    We were used to the execution squads. That was the worst part; we now accepted it. Children were growing up in Rome who had never known an ordinary, safe existence. Even adults who remembered