I was still clutching her recipe.
‘What’s that?’
‘How to cook Turbot in Caraway. No doubt her husband’s favourite midday snack -‘ I sighed grimly. ‘You know what they say: for the price of three horses you may buy a decent cook, and with three cooks you can possibly bid for a turbot - I don’t even own a horse!’
He eyed me evilly. ‘Want her, Marcus?’
‘Nowhere to keep her.’
‘That statue?’ he asked, with a broad grin.
‘Oh the statue!’ I answered, smiling sadly too.
We decided it would be highly improper to sell a noblewoman’s portrait in the public marketplace. Vespasian would agree; he would make her family buy it back at some exorbitant price. Geminus disapproved of emperors as much as I did, so we omitted Helena Justina from the Imperial inventory.
I sent the statue to her father. I wrapped it myself for transit, in a costly Egyptian carpet which had not been inventoried either. (The auctioneer had tagged it for himself.)
The brain can play strange tricks, late at night in an unfurnished house.
Gornia and his porters had already departed; Geminus went ahead of me. I stepped into a reception room to collect my crumpled toga; when I came out I was rubbing my eyes from weariness. The lamplight was dim, but I half noticed someone in the atrium - one of the slaves, presumably.
He was looking at the statue.
In the moment when I was turning to close the door of the room behind me, he disappeared. He was a light-haired, slender man of about my own age, with sharp features that reminded me of someone I had once met… Impossible. For one chilling moment I thought I had glimpsed the ghost of Atius Pertinax.
I must have been brooding too much lately; I had a fertile imagination and was overtired. Thinking about dead men all day had turned my brain. I did not believe that dispossessed spirits ever returned resentfully to stalk their silent homes.
I strode to the atrium. I opened doors but failed to find anyone. I returned to the bronze figure and stared at her boldly myself. Only her face showed, above the hem of the carpet I had earlier furled round her.
‘So it’s you, me and him; sweetheart. He’s a ghost, you’re a statue, and I’m probably a lunatic…’
The grave image of the young Helena looked back at me with bright, painted eyes and the suggestion of a smile that was ethereal, sweet and true.
‘You’re all woman, princess!’ I told her, giving her carpet-wrapped posterior another playful spank. ‘Thoroughly unreliable!’
The ghost had melted into some marble panelwork; the statue looked superior. The lunatic shivered, then hurried out after Geminus on his way home.
XI
It’s my opinion Rome’s best houses are not the fine shuttered mansions on Pincian Hill, but the character dwellings that line the Tiber’s bank in my own sector, with their quiet steps down to the river and wonderful views. Geminus lived there. He had money and taste and had been born in the Aventine; he would.
To make me feel better he always said they flooded. Well; he could field enough slaves to sweep the Tiber out again. And if an auctioneer finds his furniture wet, he can easily get more.
He was travelling back tonight in his normal quiet style - a lordly litter with six massive bearers, a gaudy troop of torchmen and his two private bodyguards; I hitched a lift. On the way he whistled through his teeth in the annoying way he had, while I hardly spoke. When he dropped me off two dirt tracks from home, he gave me a dark stare.
‘Stick with your roots, Marcus; keep the nobility for fleecing, not flirting!’ I was in no mood to argue. Besides, the man was right. ‘Talk about it?’
‘No.’
‘You want to find yourself-‘
‘Please don’t tell me what I want!’ I sneered unpleasantly. I climbed out.
Geminus leaned after me to ask, ‘Would money help?’
‘No.’
‘You mean, not from me-‘
‘Not from anyone.’ I stood stubbornly in the street while his litter moved off.
‘I never understand you!’ he grumbled back at me.
‘Good!’ I said.
Reaching my apartment block, I heard the sinister cackle of Smaractus my landlord being entertained with raw wine and ribaldry by Lenia. I was exhausted. The sixth floor seemed a mile away. I had intended to bunk down at laundry level in some hamper of grubby togas, but the self-assurance of Smaractus had fired me with so much bad temper I went surging upstairs without a second thought.
A shutter flew open below me. ‘Falco?’ I could not face another quarrel about my unpaid rent, so I leapt to the next landing and kept going.
Six flights later I had just about calmed down.
As I opened my door in the dark I heard one or two astute roaches rustle off. I lit a rush and lunged about, batting hopefully at the rest. Then I squatted on a bench, resting my tired eyes from the glitter of rich men’s marble as I gazed at the grey slatted walls of home.
I suppressed a curse, then unsuppressed it and let rip. My gecko shuffled on the ceiling, looking shocked. Halfway through the oratory I noticed an iron skillet sitting on my cooking bench; it was half-full of yesterday’s veal cutlet stew. When I went over to peer under the upturned dish which I was using as a lid, the stew looked so clammy I could not face eating it.
A document had been left for me on the table: good quality papyrus and Vespasian’s seal. I ignored that too.
Thinking of my talk with Geminus, the only statue I had room for was one of those three-inch clay miniatures people leave at shrines. There was nowhere for a fully grown wench who needed space to keep her dresses and somewhere to sulk in private when she found herself offended with me.
Fighting my weariness, I stumbled out onto the balcony and watered my plants. It could be windy up here, yet my hanks of dusty ivy and pots of blue scillas flourished better than I did. My youngest sister Maia, who looked after them when I was away, said that this gardening was meant to impress women. Our Maia was a shrewd little bun, but wrong about that; if a woman was prepared to climb six flights of stairs to see me, she knew in advance what kind of cheapjack here she was climbing those stairs for.
I breathed the night air slowly, letting myself remember the last young lady who visited my eyrie, then left with a flower in her shoulder brooch.
I was missing her badly. No one else seemed worth bothering with. I needed to talk to her. Every day without Helena seemed somehow unfinished. I could manage the hurly-burly, but the evening stillness reminded me what I had lost.
I fell indoors, too tired to lift my feet. I felt drained, yet Vespasian’s letter got the better of me now. As I wrenched at the wax I was automatically assessing today’s events.
A conspirator in a dead plot had died unnecessarily; a freedman who ought not to be important suddenly was. This idiot Sambas provided an irresistible challenge. Smiling, I unrolled the document.
a) Curtius Gordianus (priest), heard to be at Rhegium. Departure: immediate.
b) Trawl Gordianus herewith.
It sounded crisp. Needless to say, the ashes were missing; I would have to endorse someone’s docket to get those released. For Rhegium read Croton. (Palace scribes are never accurate: they don’t have to make the forty-mile detour over mountain roads when they get it wrong.) As usual, they had forgotten to enclose my travel pass, and there was no mention of my fee.
A vigorous snake in the margin in the Emperor’s own hand exclaimed:
c) Why am I rebuilding the Temple of Hyades? Can’t afford it. Please explain!’
I found my inkpot behind half a cabbage and wrote on the back:
Caesar!
a) The priest has been loyal.
b) The Emperor’s generosity is well known. The Temple was not any big.
Then I resealed the letter, and re-addressed it to go back.
Under the cabbage (which my mother must have left for me) I noticed another important communique from her. She stated darkly, ‘You n
eed new spoons.’
I scratched my head. I could not tell if this was a promise or a threat.
I set my cup on the corner of the blanket box, then peeled off my tunic, rolled under the hairy counterpane and drank my drink in bed. Tonight I just fell down on top and kept all my clothes on. I managed to think about Helena long enough to share all my worries, but just as I reached what might happen after that I could feel myself falling asleep. Had she been there in my arms events would probably have taken the same course….
Informing is a drab old business. The pay’s filthy, the work’s worse, and if you ever find a woman who is worth any trouble you don’t have the money and you don’t have the time; if you do, the chances are you simply don’t have the energy.
I could no longer remember leaving my house that morning; I had come home tonight too exhausted to eat my dinner and too depressed to enjoy a drink. I had passed by my best friend without a chance to gossip; I had forgotten to visit my mother and let Helena guess my ghastly involvement in the disposal of her relative’s corpse. I had shared my lunch with a watchdog, swapped insults with an Emperor, and thought I’d seen the ghost of a murdered man. Now my neck ached; my feet hurt; my chin needed shaving; I was longing for a bath. I deserved an afternoon at the races; I wanted a night on the town. Instead, I had committed myself to travelling three hundred miles to visit a man I was not allowed to interview, who would probably refuse to see me when I arrived.
For a private informer, this was just an average day.
Part Two
A TOURIST IN CROTON
SOUTHERN ITALY (Magna Graecia)
Several days later
.. Croton, a very ancient city, once the foremost in Italy… If you are a sophisticated type and you can take incessant lying, you are following the right road to riches. You see, in this city no literary pretensions are honoured, eloquence has no standing, sobriety and decent behaviour are not praised and rewarded…
PETRONIUS, The Satyricon
XII
Vespasian had signed a travel pass for me. I screwed this treasure out of his clerks and picked up a state mule from a stable at the Capua Gate. The ancient watchtower still stands at the start of the Appian Way, though the city has expanded beyond into a quiet suburb, popular with the more discerning type of millionaire. Helena Justina’s father lived hereabouts so I delivered her box of recipes and I dare say she would have had me in for a few words of thanks, but she was a sociable lady with a life of her own and the door porter claimed she was not there.
Young Janus and I had had run-ins before. The Camillus family never needed a floor mosaic to say beware of their dog; this two-legged specimen of human mange drove off enquirers before they edged a sandal in the door. He was about sixteen. He had a very long face, which gave plenty of scope for his current flush of acne, with a very short brain cavity on top; the brain inside was an elusive piece of plasma. Talking to him always made me tired.
I refused to believe these were Helena’s orders. She was capable of dispatching me on a one-way ferry to Hades, but if she wanted to do it she would tell me herself. Still; it solved one problem. Telling her I was not going to see her again would be difficult if they never let me in.
I asked where she was; sonny didn’t know. I informed the porter pleasantly that I knew he must be lying because even when she becomes a batty old harridan with no hair or teeth, Helena Justina will be much too well-organized to sail off in her sedan chair without a word to her staff. Then I left friendly greetings for the senator, left Helena’s box, and left Rome.
Which I hate. At Capua the Via Appia took its route towards Tarentum in the Heel of Italy while I turned west, heading for the Toe. Now I was on the Via Popilia, for Rhegium and Sicily, aiming to strike off it just before the Messana Strait.
I had to cross Latium, Campania and Lucania, and go deep into Bruttium - half the length of Italy; I seemed to be travelling for days. After Capua came Nola, Salernum, Paestum, Velia, Buxentum, then a long hike close against the Tyrrhenian shore until the road to Cosentia in the far south. There the ground climbed abruptly as I peeled off the highroad to cross the peninsula. It was then the mule I had picked up at the last staging post turned tetchy on me, and I saw I had been right to dread a mountain rollicking.
Cosentia: provincial capital of the Bruttii. A hunchbacked collection of single-storey shacks. It was up in the hills, hard to get at, and had not been as important as the Bruttians’ second city, Croton, for several hundred years. Still, Cosentia was their capital; odd tribe, the Bruttii.
I stayed a night at Cosentia, though I hardly slept. This was Magna Graecia: Greater Greece Rome had conquered Magna Graecia long ago; in theory. But I rode through its sullen territory with care.
The roads were almost empty now. At Cosentia only one other traveller stayed at the inn - the man I never saw. This fellow had his own pair of horses, which were what I recognized; a big roan that narrowly missed the grade as a flat-racer, and a skewbald pack animal. We had been running parallel from Salernum, if not longer, but I was always up and on the road before he appeared in the morning and by the time he caught up at night I had fallen into bed. If I had known he was still with me at Cosentia, I would have made an effort to stay up and make friends.
I hate the south. All those old-fashioned towns with massive temples to Zeus and Poseidon; all those schools of philosophy that make you feel inferior; all those sombre-faced athletes and the broody sculptors sculpting them. Not to mention their sky-high prices for strangers and their awful roads.
If you believe the Amid, Rome was founded by a Trojan; as I travelled the south my scalp crawled as if these Greek colonists had me marked as their ancient enemy in a Phrygian cap. People seemed to have nothing to do but lurk in their dusty porches watching strangers down the street. Cosentia was bad enough; Croton, thinking itself more important, was bound to be worse.
Crossing over to Croton involved serious alpine work. The temperature dropped as my road went on rising. Thick forests of chestnut and Turkey oak covered the Sila plains, then beeches and silver fir, while alders and aspens grappled onto the granite crags. Locals called this a good road; it was a wild and winding track. I never travelled after dusk; even in daylight I thought I heard mountain wolves. Once, when I was eating lunch in a sunny clearing full of wild strawberry plants, a viper slipped away behind a rock, eerily emerging from beneath my outstretched boot. I had felt safer swapping insults with the cutthroat Roman call girls at the Circus Maximus.
Snowcaps still lay on the peaks but the naval contractors had started trekking up for seasoned logs, so smoke from their bonfires sharpened the thin air. My nose dribbled as I drew off the path among wayside violets to overtake oxen with long wagons that swayed under the boles of mighty trees. The crumpled plain rose a thousand feet and higher above the sea. In Rome summer was approaching, but here the climate lagged. Everywhere was dripping in the thaw; furious torrents rushed along deep river valleys and icy spring water quenched my thirst.
I forged alone through this rough terrain for a couple of days. Above the Neaethus Valley a spectacular view opened onto the Ionian Sea. I descended among cultivated olives and vines, yet the landscape became scarred with erosions and pimpled with weird cones of clay, stranded there by the summer rush of waterways which had dragged away all the looser topsoil, stripping the dry scenery like a savagely sucked fig. At length my road switchbacked again and I reached Croton, which lurks like a very painful bunion, just underneath the ball of Italy’s big toe.
This place Croton had been Hannibal’s last refuge in Italy. I reckoned if a heathen like Hannibal passed through here again, Croton would still be prepared to give him a free splash in the Municipal baths and honour him into exile with a banquet at the town’s expense. But there was no friendly welcome for me.
I rode into Croton with a stream of sweat between my shoulder blades. The landlord at the official Inn was a lean laggard with eyes like slits who assumed I had come to check his reco
rds for the Treasury auditor; I declared haughtily I had not yet sunk so low. He examined me closely before he condescended to let me book in.
‘Staying long?’ he whined furtively, as if he hoped not.
‘I don’t expect so,’ I answered, implying with pleasant Roman frankness that I hoped not to. ‘I have to find a priest called Curtius Gordianus. Know anything about him?’
‘No.’
I was certain he did. In Magna Graecia lying to Roman officials is a way of life.
I was in my own country yet I felt like a foreigner. These dry old southern towns were full of fine dust, ferocious insects, lumbering bylaws, and tight-knit corrupt local families who only honoured the Emperor if it suited their own pockets. The people looked Greek, their gods were Greek, and they spoke Greek dialects. When I strolled out to get my bearings in Croton, I found myself in trouble in the first half-hour.
XIII
A toga would have been out of place in Croton. Only the magistrates at the courthouse even possessed formal clothes. Luckily I never insult a strange city by appearing overdressed. I had an unbleached tunic beneath a long storm-grey cloak, with plain leather sandals and a soft cord for a belt. The remains of a good Roman haircut were discreetly growing out, but no one could object to that since my head was well-hidden under swoops of white cloth. I was not frightened of sunstroke; I was disguised as a priest.
A forum is the place to find people. I walked towards it, politely allowing the citizens of Croton the shadier side of the street. They were a pushy lot.
Croton was a shabby sprawl, full of buildings that had been shoved askew by earthquakes. Sour smells seeped out from cluttered alleys where peeling walls carried election notices for men I had never heard of. Dogs that looked like wolves from the Sila mountains scavenged alone or raced through the byways in yelping packs. On second-floor balconies overweight young women with bulging jewels and narrow eyes waited until I passed by, then passed lewd comments on my physique; I refused to answer back because these ladylike daughters of Croton were probably related to the best men in the town. Besides, as a priest I was too pious for witty street chat.
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