Free A Body in the Bathhouse by Lindsey Davis

that time.
    Helena had “found” a letter “hidden” in her luggage from Marius, explaining that it was the children who had decided to send their mother away to safety. Maia believed Petronius Longus must have helped them, and that it was a ploy to steal her children now his own were with Silvia. Maia sat around the whole journey, planning to poison him with toad’s blood. We stopped trying to include her in conversations.
    “Our uncle Gaius has sent me some information about the area and the project,” said Helena briskly. “You two boys have never met him. You have to pretend this is being expounded by a neat, enthusiastic, lifelong administrator who has a huge knowledge of his province and insists on telling you everything—”
    Gaius Flavius Hilaris was married to their aunt, a quiet, intelligent woman called Aelia Camilla. He was currently at the end of a long term as financial procurator in Britain. As far as we could tell, he had no intention of retiring back to Rome. He had been a provincial, born in Dalmatia, so Rome had never been his home base anyway. He worked like a dog and was absolutely straight. Helena and I both liked him enormously.
    “Imagine Britain as a rough triangle.” Helena had a letter in her hand, so well studied she hardly referred to it. “We are going to the middle of the long south coast. Elsewhere there are high chalk cliffs, but this area has a gentle coastline with safe anchorages in inlets. There are some streams and marshland, but also wooded places for hunting and enough good farming land to attract settlers. The tribes have come down from their hill forts peacefully here. Noviomagus Regnenis—the New Market of the Kingdom Tribes—is a small town on the modern model.”
    “What makes this different from any other tribal capital?” asked Aelianus.
    “Togidubnus.”
    “So what makes
him
special?”
    “Not a lot!” I grunted.
    Helena shot me a mock-severe look. “Convenient birth and mighty friends.” With her serious air allied to a lighthearted tone, she could make plain facts sound satirical.
    “Would he introduce me to his friends?” Justinus said, grinning.
    “Nobody with any taste would let you near their friends!” Aelianus snorted.
    “Has Togi good taste?”
    “No, just top pals and a lot of money,” I said.
    “His taste may be exquisite,” Helena murmured. “Or he may simply employ advisers who know class. He is able to call on all types of specialists—”
    “Who charge huge fees and know how to spend lavishly,” I grumbled. “Then Togi gets our famously frugal Emperor to foot the bill. No wonder Vespasian wants me there. I bet the invoices for this pretty pavilion need scrutinizing at arm’s length using blacksmith’s tongs.”
    Helena Justina was a dogged lass. With only a slight rattle of bracelets to reproach me, she tried to reassert sense. Too much tetchy prejudice was rampaging through this group of exhausted travelers. “Togidubnus straddles the transition where barbarian Britain became a new Roman province. Once, thirty years ago, his tribe, the Atrebates, had an old king called Verica, who was under pressure from rivals—the fierce Catuvellauni who were marauding across the southern interior.”
    “Fighting fellows.” To the fore of the Great Rebellion when I was there. “Good haters and encroachers. Boudicca was not their queen, but they galloped after her with panache. The Catuvellauni would follow a dung beetle into battle, if it led them to some other tribe’s arable pastureland—better still, to slicing off Roman heads.”
    Helena waved an arm to silence me. “A huge system of earthwork entrenchments protects the Noviomagus area from raids by chariots,” she continued. “But in the reign of Claudius, there was anxiety nonetheless; Verica called in the Romans to help him fight off trouble. That was when Togidubnus, who himself may already have been singled out to take over as king, met a young Roman commander on his first