He released me abruptly. I nearly fell over. When I staggered round to tell the swine he had made himself quite clear enough, he had already gone.
XXI
I was having a frustrating time: when I retraced my steps to the Swan, Albia had disappeared too. 'Went off with a man,' the proprietor enjoyed telling me.
'You should be ashamed if people are using your bar as a pick-up point. Suppose she was my darling little daughter and you had let her be dragged off by a pervert!'
'But she's not your darling, is she?' he sneered. 'She's a street child. I've seen her around for years.'
'And was she always with men?' I asked, nervous now about what type of bad influence Helena had imposed on the children at the residence.
'No idea. Still, they all grow up.'
Albia was fourteen, if she really was an orphan of the Rebellion. Old enough to be married off, or at least politely betrothed to a poxy tribune, if she were a senatorial brood mare. Old enough to get pregnant by some layabout her father hated, if she were a plebeian needed in the family business. Old enough to be wise in ways I could not think about. Yet she was childishly slight, and if her life had been as hard as I suspected, she was young enough to deserve a chance, young enough to be capable of being saved – if she had stayed with us.
'She'll be at it all over the forum soon, even if she's a virgin now.'
'Sad,' I commented. He thought I had cracked. And I did not like the way he watched me walk away down the street.
I had no plan when I set off walking, just a need to get out of there. I felt there were too many eyes watching me, from people in doorways or even people unseen.
I had gone about three streets. I was starting to be aware that there was more activity in Londinium than most Romans would expect. All the regular commodities were sold. The dark little shops were open in the day; life in them just had a duller pace than I was used to. Buyers and sellers lurked inside, just as they always did; even when the sun was so hot that I was sweating after fifty strides, people here forgot they were allowed to sit out in the open air. Otherwise I felt at home. In the daily markets, selling fresh veg and sad-eyed dead game, the traders' shouts were vibrant and their wives' jokes were coarse. The men could have been tricky barrow boys around the Temple of Hope back home in the Tiberside Vegetable Market. The stench of old fish scales is the same anywhere. Walk your boots across a newly sluiced butchers' street, and the faint odour of animal blood will haunt you all day afterwards. Then pass a cheese stall and the warm, wholesome waft will draw you back to buy a piece – until you are sidetracked by those remarkably cheap belts on the stall next door that will fall apart when you get them home…
I turned my back on the belts eventually (since I would not be caught dead in brick red leather). Mooching into a shop full of jumbled hardware, I was trying to work out how I could carry back home with me ten stupendously good value, but heavy, black pottery bowls. Despite a generous discount offered by the pleasant shopkeeper, I said no and I started to inspect some interesting skeins of hairy twine. You can never have too much hairy twine around the house and he assured me it was the best goat's hair, neatly twisted, the skeins only going for a song because of over-production in the goat-hair-twine making trade. I loved this tempting hardware emporium, where next I spotted a quite hilarious lamp. It had naked young ladies either side of the hole, looking over their shoulders to compare the size of their bottoms -.
No chance to linger. I happened to glance out of doors and there were the two enforcers strolling past the shop.
The amiable seller caught the direction of my glance so I muttered, 'Know those two?'
'Splice and Pyro.'
'Know what they do?'
He smiled bleakly. Pyro obviously set the fires, while Splice must have some painful speciality on which I would not speculate.
In two heartbeats I was out of there and dodging after them. Informers learn not to load themselves up with shopping, just in case of such emergencies.
I held back as the pair walked unconcernedly. I had recognised them at once: Splice, the short, well-built one, who probably did the chat and the brutality, and his leaner chum Pro, who stayed on guard or played with flame. Splice had a square face decorated with two intriguing old scars; Pyro sported dirty beard-shadow and a speckled crop of moles. A snipper who knew how to wield steel had given them fine Roman haircuts. Both had muscled legs and arms that must have seen some nasty action. Neither looked like a man to argue with about the outcome of a horse race.
Watching from behind, I could sum them up from how they walked. They were confident. Unhurried but not loitering. A bulge under Splice's tunic hinted that he might be carrying swag. Once or twice they exchanged words with a stallholder, light greetings in passing. These men behaved like locals who were old faces about the district. Nobody showed much fear; they were an accepted part of the scenery. People almost seemed to like them. In Rome they could have been typical spoiled wastrels: everyday adulterers who avoided work, lived with their mothers, spent too much on clothes, drink and brothel bills, and dabbled with the sordid end of crime. Here, they stood out as Romans because of their Mediterranean colouring; they both had facial bone structure that was straight off the Tiber Embankment. Maybe that hint of the exotic attracted people.
They had melded in, apparently very fast and without effort. Londinium had accepted extortion as easily as it accepted mist every morning and rain four times a week. That was how the rackets worked. The enforcers arrived in a place and made out that their methods were a normal part of the high life. People could sniff money when near them. Moneyed bastards will always attract sad people who yearn for better things. These thugs – they were no better – soon acquired status. Once they had beaten up a few stubborn customers, they carried another smell too: danger. That also has a perverse attraction.
I saw it all working when they led me right back where I came from earlier, straight past the Swan to the other caupona, the Ganymede. They were well known to the waiter, who came out at once and chatted as he laid their table, a private one set slightly apart from the rest. It was lunchtime and a lot of people were calling for a hasty bite, but the enforcers were able to take all the time they liked over whether they wanted olives in brine or in aromatic oil. Wine came automatically, probably in their special cups.
Pyro went inside, perhaps to visit the latrine, more likely to stash the money from their morning round. I had obviously found their operating base. Here, Splice and Pro were openly holding court. Male visitors came and went constantly, like cousins at a Greek barber's. On arrival there would be formal standing up and handshakes. The two enforcers then got on with their lunch, rarely offering hospitality, rarely being bought drinks. The point for everyone was to make contact. They were businesslike and even abstemious; they ate stuffed pancakes with simple side salads, no sweetmeats, and their wine flagon was the small size. The visitors would sit and gossip for a respectable period, then leave after more handshakes.
I saw no sign that Splice and Pro were being brought bribes or payments. People just wanted to register respect. Just as in Rome a great man holding public office will receive clients, supplicants and friends in the formal rooms of his pillared house at set hours every morning, so these two lice allowed fawners to assemble at their table on a daily basis. Nobody handed out presents, though it was evident that this was a favour-exchange. On one side, reverence was being offered in a way that made me bilious; on the other, the enforcers promised not to break the supplicants' bones.
Passers-by who did not choose to stop and grovel used the far side of the road. There were not many.
I had positioned myself outside a booth selling locks. Unfortunately, as I pretended to peruse the intricate metalwork, I was standing in full sun. Only I could land myself a job in a province famous for its chilly fog on the one week in a decade when the heat would make a sand lizard faint. My tunic had glued itself to my body right across my shoulders and all down my back My hair
felt like a heavy fur rug. The inner soles of my boots were wet and slippery; a boot-thong that had never given trouble before had now blistered my heel raw.
While I stood there, I was pondering a complication: Petronius. Had I been working alone, I would have returned to the procurator's residence to request a posse to arrest Splice and Pyro and search their base. I would then have held the thugs incommunicado for so long that some of their victims might be reassured enough to speak out. The governor's enquiry team, his rough quaestiones, could meanwhile have played with the enforcers, using their nastiest instruments of coercion. The interrogators, who must be bored out here, were trained to persist. If Splice and Pyro felt enough pain and found their isolation too terrible, they might even scream out the name of the man who was paying them.
It seemed a good solution. But I could still hear those terse words from Petronius: leave it, or I'm a dead man.
Whatever he was doing, we had been wrong to suspect flirtation or debauchery. He was working, the devious hypocrite. He was under cover somehow. On what? The Verovolcus case had clearly intrigued him, though I failed to see the draw myself; I was puzzled by it, but I was only pursuing the issue out of loyalty to Hilaris, Frontinus and the old King. Petronius Longus had no such ties. I had no idea why Petro should get involved. But if he was watching these two bullies, I would not move against them before consulting him. That was a rule of our friendship.
I was still fretting over this when a passer-by who did not know the local respect system came tripping along: my sister Maia. What was she doing? Unaware of the two enforcers, she walked straight past the Ganymede on their side of the street. That meant I had no chance to warn her off, or ask why she was here. Wanting to stay unobtrusive, I could only watch.
Maia was striking to look at, but she had grown up in Rome. She knew how to pass safely through streets full of obnoxious types. Her walk was quietly purposeful and although she looked briefly into every shop and food place, she never met anyone's eye. With her head and body wrapped in a long veil, she had disguised her private style and become unremarkable. One man did lean over a rail and say something to her as she passed – some mutt who on principle had a try at anything in a stola – but as my fists balled, that chancer was treated to such a savage look he shrank back. He certainly knew he had encountered proud Roman womanhood.
Mind you, my sister's self-possessed disdain could itself attract attention. One of the men with Splice and Pyro stood up. At once Pyro spoke to him and he sat down again. Maia had by then gone past the Ganymede.
Nice thought: that the enforcers had a noble regard for women! But they just left women alone to avoid attracting the wrong public notice. Gangs who work through fear understand, if they are efficient, that normal life should be allowed to flow through the streets unhindered. Some even go so far as to batter a known rapist or threaten an adolescent burglar, as a sign that they represent order, men who will protect their own. This implies they are the only force of order. Then the people they are threatening feel they have nowhere to turn for help.
They had finished their lunch. They stood up and left. As far as I saw, there was no attempt to offer them a bill. Neither of them left money anyway.
I followed them around for the early part of the afternoon. From place to place they went like election candidates, often not even speaking to people, just making their presence felt. They did not appear to be collecting. That would be better done after dusk. More worrying, and the wine bars would have more cash in the float.
Soon they returned to the Ganymede and this time went indoors, no doubt for a good Roman siesta. I gave up. I was ready for home. My feet were taking special care to remind me how many hours I had been out walking. When I saw a small bath house, the feet headed that way on their own. I stopped them when I spotted Petronius Longus already on the porch.
I was desperate to talk to him. I wanted to discuss the gangsters, and I had to tell him of his children's deaths. But I took his warning to heart.
So far he had not noticed me. I stood still, in what passed for a colonnade – hardly what Rome would know as a grand arcade. Petro made no move to enter the baths, but stood talking to a ticket-man who had come out for air. They seemed to know each other. They looked up at the sky as if discussing whether the heatwave would persist. When new customers drew the gateman indoors, Petronius settled down on a small bench outside as if he were a fixture at the baths.
This street had a slight curve and was so narrow that by crossing over to the other pavement I could walk up close, keeping tight against the wall, without Petro seeing me. His back was slightly turned in any case. A neat bank of cut furnace logs, nearly four feet high, was stacked – blocking the pavement of course – on the bath house boundary. This made the road almost impassable but formed a tiny free area outside the premises next door. The baths were unnamed, but the neighbouring hovel had a painted sign with red Roman lettering, calling itself the Old Neighbour. I passed the open door and saw a dark interior whose purpose was undetectable. It looked more like a private house than a commercial property, despite the sign.
Whatever it was, it offered me a handy broken stool on which to lower my tired body only a few feet from Petronius; now I could try to attract his attention. It would have been ideal, but just as I dropped out of sight preparing to cough loudly, I saw my damned little sister again, approaching from the other direction. She stopped dead just as I had done. Then being Maia, she threw back her stole and marched straight up to Petronius, who must have seen her coming. I huddled up to the furnace logs. If this was a romantic assignation, I now had no way to leave without giving away my presence.
But my sister's manner had already told me that Petronius was not expecting her. Maia had had to brace herself to come and speak to him, and I knew why…
XXII
'Petronius! Petronius!'
'Maia Favonia.'
'You want to tell me to get lost?'
'Would it work?' Petro asked drily. Maia was standing, facing my way. I had to keep down low. Luckily she was not tall. 'Maia, you are not safe here.'
'Why; what are you doing?' That was my sister all over: crisp, blunt, brazenly curious. Part of it came from motherhood, though she had always been direct.
'I'm working.'
'Oh but surely the vigiles have no jurisdiction in the provinces!'
'Exactly!' Petro broke in harshly. 'Shut up. I'm out of bounds. Nobody must know.'
Maia lowered her voice, but she would not let go. 'So were you sent here?'
'Don't ask.' His mission was official. Well, the bastard kept that quiet! I heard my own intake of breath, more angry than surprised.
'Well, I'm not interested in that. I have to talk to you.'
Then Petronius changed his tone. He spoke quickly, in a low, painful voice: 'It's all right. You don't have to tell me. I know about the girls.'
I was so close I could sense Maia's tension. That was nothing to the emotion I could sense in Petronius. Somebody local came walking up the road. 'Sit down,' muttered Petro, clearly thinking that by standing in front of him, agitated, Maia was attracting attention. I thought I heard the bench legs scrape. She had done as he said.
After the man had passed, Maia asked, 'How long have you known?' The acoustic had changed. I had to strain to catch what she said. She was more obviously upset, now that it was out in the open. Did a letter reach you?'
'No, I was told.'
'Marcus found you?'
'I did see him earlier.' Petronius was talking in staccato sentences. 'I didn't give him a chance. I suppose that's why he's been searching for me.'
'We all are! So who did tell you?'
Petro made a small sound, almost laughter. 'Two little boys.'
'Oh no! Not mine, you mean?' Maia was angry and mortified. I felt no surprise. Her children had been fretting over where their hero was; they knew about the tragedy; they were an outgoing group who readily took independent action. Petronius stayed silent. Maia finally sai
d ruefully, 'So much for telling them not to bother you… Oh I am so sorry!'
'They caught me right out… Petronius sounded remote as he began to talk, in the way of the bereaved, needing to recite how he had learned his dreadful news. 'I had already spotted Marius. He was sitting on a kerbstone, looking depressed. Ancus must have wandered away from him and he saw me -'
'Ancus? Ancus told you?'
Petro's voice softened, though not much. 'Before I could growl at him to scarper, he ran up. I just thought he was pleased to see me. So when he climbed up on the bench, I put an arm round him. He stood here and whispered in my ear.'
Maia choked slightly. I was stricken myself. Ancus was only six. And Petronius would have had no idea what was coming. 'You were never supposed to hear this from children.'
'What difference does that make?' Petronius rasped. 'Two of my girls are gone! I had to know.'
Maia let his outburst quieten. She, like me, must be worried what young Ancus had blurted out, because she made sure Petronius was given the details properly: 'This is it, then. You have lost two; we were not told which, stupidly. People are trying to find out for you. Chickenpox. My guess is that it happened shortly after you left Italy. The letter didn't say.'
'I must have caught it myself when I said goodbye to them. I infected yours,' admitted Petronius. 'I blame myself…'
'They survived.'
'I survived.' He was not the type to say he wished he had died instead, though it sounded close. 'Just so I would have to live with this!'
'You will, Lucius. But believe me, it's hard.' My sister, who like most mothers had seen a child die, spoke bitterly. There was a silence, then Maia repeated, 'I am sorry about the boys.'
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