‘Oh, thinking about women, sir.’
‘No wonder then! Want a cup of wine?’ I wanted it so badly it seemed safest to decline.
‘Enjoy your trip?’
‘Well I still get seasick, and I still can’t swim…’
The Emperor gave me a thoughtful look as if he could tell I was feeling cynical.
I was far too tired, and not in the mood; I made a bodge of narrating my report. Other people, more important people, had told him most of it anyway. Going over the sorry details of how Aufidius Crispus was pointlessly drowned felt like a waste of time.
‘The Censor published the news as “an unfortunate boating accident”,’ the Emperor grumbled angrily. ‘Who commanded the trireme that’s in need of steering practice?’
‘The Herculaneum praetor, sir.’
‘Him! He turned up in Rome; I met him yesterday.’
‘Showing his profile round the Palace, in the hope of a fancy foreign post! Sextus Aemilius Rufus Clemens -‘ I proclaimed. ‘Good old family and a wealth of mediocre public service to his name. He’s an idiot, but how can he lose? Now Crispus is dead, when it comes awarding honours I assume this hasty-handed trierarch takes precedence over me?’
‘Grit your teeth, Falco: I don’t issue contract bonuses when senators get drowned.’
‘No, sir. As soon as the ships crashed, I guessed I would be slapped down for it!’
‘Rufus has been extremely helpful with advice about the fleet,’ the Emperor reproved me with his fiercest growl.
‘Oh, I can do that, Caesar, the Misenum fleet needs an overhaul: more discipline and less drink!’
‘Yes. I had the impression Rufus fancies wielding an admiral’s baton himself -‘ I was furious, until I caught the Emperor’s glint. ‘In future the Misenum fleet prefecture is reserved for trusted friends of mine. But I shall certainly give this fellow a chance to prove himself with the perils of command; he must be ready for a legion-‘
‘What? In a spectacular frontline province where his incompetence can flower more visibly?’
‘No, Falco; we all have to accept that a public career involves serving a turn in dismal holes abroad…’
I started to grin. ‘What have you dug up for Rufus, sir?’
‘Somewhere landlocked; that should spare us the benefits of his nautical expertise: Noricum?’
‘Noricum!’ Crispus’ old province. Nothing ever happens there. ‘I think Crispus would approve of that!’
‘I hope so!’ smiled Vespasian, with deceptive gentleness. Our new Flavian Emperor was not a vindictive man. But one of his attractions was a private sense of fun.
‘That all, Falco?’
‘All I can hope for,’ I croaked wearily. ‘I would nag you for a bonus for coercing Gordianus, but we went through that-‘
‘Not at all. I put you down for it. Is a thousand enough?
‘A thousand! That would be a good reward for an after-dinner poet who had coined a smooth ten-line ode! Rich pickings for a theatre lyre player-‘
‘Never believe it, Lyre players nowadays demand at least two thousand before they shift offstage. What does a man like you need money for?
‘Bread and a bottle. After that my landlord mostly. Sometimes I dream of changing him. Caesar, even I might like a home where I can turn round to scratch myself without taking the skin off my elbow. I work to live - and my life at the moment distinctly lacks elegance!’
‘Women?’
‘People always ask me that.’
‘I wonder why! My spies tell me,’ Vespasian threatened jovially, ‘you came back from Campania richer than you went.’
‘One duff racehorse and a sacred goat! The goat has gone into retirement but next time you break a molar on a gristly meat rissole, say hello to Falco’s horse - Rome is richer too,’ I reminded him. ‘By a good part of fifteen billion bushels that could have gone astray…’
He seemed not to hear me. ‘Titus wants to know this horse’s name.’
Brilliant. I had only been back in Rome six hours, but news of my ghastly windfall had reached the Emperor’s elder son! ‘Little Sweetheart. Tell Titus Caesar to save his stake! I’m only running the nag as a favour to the bookmakers, who say they have been short of laughs lately-‘
‘That’s honest for a horse owner!’
‘Oh, sir, I wish I had the nerve to steal and lie like other people, but conditions in jail are notorious and I’m frightened of the rats. When I want a laugh I tell myself my children will be proud of me.’
‘What children?’ whipped back the Emperor aggressively. ‘O Caesar, the ten little Aventine urchins I cannot afford to acknowledge!’
Vespasian shifted his big, square-bodied frame while his brow creased and his mouth compressed in the way he was famous for. I always knew that when his mood altered and he stopped baiting we had reached the crux of the interview. The lord of the world tutted at me gently like a great cuddly uncle who was letting himself forget how much he disapproved of me.
‘What you accomplished with the grain ships was excellent. The Prefect of Supply has been requested to report on a suitable level of reward -‘ I knew what that meant: I would never hear anything about it again. ‘I shall give you a thousand for Gordianus - and I’ll make that ten if you can also settle Pertinax Marcellus without publicity.’
Miserly; though on Vespasian’s scale of public remuneration, madly generous. I nodded.
‘Pertinax is officially dead. There will be no need to announce it in the Daily Gawk again.’
‘What I would really like,’ the Emperor suggested, ‘is some proof of his guilt.’
‘You mean, it may have to come to trial?’
‘No. But if we deal with him without a trial,’ Vespasian commented drily, ‘perhaps there is even more reason to have some evidence!’
I was a republican. Finding an Emperor with moral values always startled me.
At this late stage, proof against Pertinax was a near impossibility. The only one of his victims who had ever survived was Petronius Longus and even he had nothing to tell a court. That left as our only material witness Milo, the Gordianus steward. Milo was a slave. Which meant we could only accept his evidence if it was extracted under torture.
But Milo was the sort of stupid stalwart whose response to the challenge of a professional torturer would be to grit his teeth, brace his mighty muscle and die before he broke.
‘I shall do my best to find something!’ I promised the Emperor solemnly.
He grinned.
I was leaving the Palace, with the sardonic taste of this interview still pursing my mouth, when someone in a doorway greeted me derisively.
‘Didius Falco, you disreputable beggar! Thought you were wearing yourself out on the women around Neapolis!’
I wheeled cautiously, ever on my guard in the Palace environs, and recognized the grim presence. ‘Momus!’ The slave overseer who had helped with the dispersal of the Pertinax estate. He seemed grubbier than ever as he grinned through half toothless gums. ‘Momus, the widespread assumption that I fill all my free time fornicating is beginning to get me down! Has somebody been saying something I might want to dispute?
‘Plenty!’ he chaffed. ‘Your name seems to come up everywhere these days. Have you seen Anacrites?’
‘Should I?’
‘Keep your head down,’ Momus warned. There was no love lost between him and the Chief Spy; they had different priorities.
‘Anacrites never bothered me. Last I saw, he was demoted to book-keeping.’
‘Never trust an accountant! He keeps bouncing in saying he wants to examine you about a certain lost consignment of Treasury lead -‘ I groaned, though I made sure I did so under my breath. The word is that Anacrites has booked a pallet in the name of Didius Falco in a long-term cell in the Mamertine.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I told Momus, as if I believed it. ‘I’m in on it. Prison is just a ruse to escape the indignant fathers of all the women I have de
ceived…’
He grinned, and let me go. Pausing only to shout after me, ‘By the way, Falco, what’s this about a horse?’
‘He’s called Hard Luck,’ I answered. ‘By Short Commons, out of Come to Grief! Don’t bet on him; he’s bound to break a leg.’
I strode out of the Palace on the north side of Palatine Hill. Halfway back to my own sector I passed an open winery. So I changed my mind, mined into it, and got drunk after all.
LXXIX
I was woken by the sound of a very brisk broom.
This told me two things. Someone thought it was their duty to wake me up. And last night I did find my way home.
When you fall down in a gutter people leave you there in peace.
I groaned and grumbled a few times, to give warning I might emerge; the broom fell silent huffily. I hauled on a tunic, decided it was dirty, so covered the stains with a second one. I washed my face, rinsed my teeth and combed my hair, all without achieving any improvement in how I felt. My belt was missing and I could only find one boot. I stumbled out.
The woman who made it her business to keep my apartment in order had been working quiet miracles for some time before she started that stuff with the broom. Her familiar black eyes seared me with piercing disgust. She had done the room; next she would tackle me.
‘I came to make you breakfast, but it had better be lunch!’
‘Hello mother,’ I said.
I sat down at the table because my legs were objecting to holding me up. I assured my mother it was good to be home, having a decent lunch prepared for me by my loving ma.
‘So you’re in trouble again!’ snarled my mother, undeceived by flattery.
She fed me lunch while she washed out the balcony. She had found her new bronze bucket for herself. She had also found my spoons.
‘Those are nice!’
‘A nice person gave them to me.’
‘Have you seen her?’
‘No.’
‘Have you seen Petronius Longus?
‘No.’
‘What are you planning today?’
Most men who do my job have the shrewd sense to free themselves from the attentions of their curious family. What client wants to employ an informer who has to tell his mother every time he ventures out?
‘Someone to find.’ My strength of mind had been weakened by the lunch.
‘Why are you so irritable? What do you want this poor fellow for?’
‘Murder.’
‘Oh well,’ sighed my mother. ‘There are worse things he could have done!’
I inferred that she meant things done by me.
‘On second thoughts,’ I muttered, washing the spoon I had eaten my lunch with, then wiping it with a cloth as I had been instructed by Helena, ‘I’ll go to a wineshop instead!’
I refused to admit to a hangover, but the thought of more liquor did have a vinegary effect on my insides. Belching painfully, I went to visit Petronius.
He was moping at home, still too weak to patrol the streets yet, and fretting that in his absence his deputy was obtaining too much sway among the ranks. The first thing he said was, ‘Falco, why is the Palace fraud squad after you?’
Anacrites.
‘Misunderstanding about my expenses-‘
‘Liar! He told me what commodity was named on the warrant.’
‘Oh did he?’
‘He tried to bribe me!’
‘To do what, Petro?
‘Turn you in!’
‘If we’re talking arrests-‘
‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘As a matter of interest, how much did he offer? Petronius grinned at me. ‘Not quite enough!’
There was no chance that Petronius would ever cooperate with a Palace spy, but Anacrites must be well aware he only had to spread the whisper that there might be money in it and the next time my landlord Smaractus was sending round his rent squad, some penniless runt on an Aventine backstair would think of fingering me. Getting out of this pickle looked likely to involve personal inconvenience of some sort.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said lamely. ‘I’ll sort it out.’ Petronius laughed bitterly.
Arria Silvia came in to supervise us, a penalty of Petro being stuck in his own house. We talked round the subject of their journey home, my own journey, my ludicrous racehorse, and even the hunt for Pertinax, all without mentioning Helena. Only as I was taking my leave did Silvia’s patience break: ‘Can we assume that you know about Helena?’
‘Her father informed me of the situation.’
‘The situation!’ echoed Silvia, in high old indignation. ‘Have you seen her?
‘She knows where to find me if she wants to see me.’ ‘Oh for heavens’ sake, Falco!’
I caught Petro’s eye and he said in a low voice to his wife, ‘Better leave it. They have their own way of doing things-‘
‘Hers, you mean?’ I grated at them both. ‘She told you, I gather?’
‘I asked her!’ Silvia ranted accusingly. ‘Anyone could see the girl is having a terrible time of it-‘
I was afraid of that.
‘Well think yourselves honoured; she never told me! Before you start condemning me, consider how I feel: there was no reason why Helena Justina should keep this to herself! And I know perfectly well why she preferred not to tell me-‘
Silvia interrupted in horror, ‘You think someone else is the father!’
The thought had never crossed my mind. ‘That,’ I stated coolly, ‘would be one possibility.’
Petronius, who was very straightforward in certain respects, looked appalled. ‘You never believe that!’
‘I don’t know what I believe.’
I did know. What I really thought was worse.
I gave them one last glance as they stood there, both furious, and both allied against me. Then I left.
Convincing myself I might not be this baby’s father was insulting to Helena and demeaning to myself. Yet it was easier than the truth: look at what I was. Look at how I lived. I could not blame her for an instant if Helena Justina refused to bear a child of mine.
She had, without me knowing it, already told me what she planned to do. She would ‘deal with it’; I could still hear her saying so. That could only mean one thing.
I filled in the rest of that afternoon by accepting I had a hangover, and going home to sleep it off.
LXXX
Lying in bed is never entirely wasted. Somewhere in that void between convincing yourself you are awake and then ages later rousing yourself, I devised a plan for picking up the trail on Pertinax. I dug out a tunic I used to like; it had been mauve once but was now unappealingly light grey. I went to the barber’s for a really good shearing. Then, merging anonymously into the throng, I set off.
At the magic hour just before dinner I crossed the Tiber on the Aurelian Bridge. I was alone. No one knew where I was going, or would notice if I failed to return. None of the people who might once have cared to do so would be bothering to remember me tonight. So far, curing a headache had been the most productive aspect of my day.
Days change. In my case, usually for the worse.
Smoke from a thousand bathhouse furnaces drifted across the city. It caught my throat, calling to life the unhappy rasp that was already lurking there. By now, Helena Justina would know I was back in Rome, aware of her plight. Her father was bound to have told her how deeply hurt I felt. As I expected, she made no attempt to contact me. Not even though I had made it easy for her by spending most of the day at home in bed.
Crossing the river, I listened to the ripple of refined applause from a performance in Pompey’s theatre - not the ripe jollity of a satyr play or even the gasps and cheers that greet arthritic monkeys on tightropes. Tonight it must be something old, possibly Greek, probably tragic, and definitely reverent. I was glad. It suited my mood to think of other people suffering: three hours of sombre stuff from the chorus, a tight little speech or two from a principal actor fresh out of eloc
ution class, and then, just as you get to the good bit with the blood, your honeyed dates fall down into the row in front, so you have to bend forwards to grab them again before some shopkeeper with enormous buttocks sits back and squashes them - and as you lean down to get them you miss the only excitement in the Play—
Tough. If you want entertainment, stay in and pick fleas off a cat.
The Aurelian Bridge was not the most straightforward route to where I was going, but tonight was for choosing long ways round and losing my way. Cursing blind beggars. Bumping old grandmothers into the gutter. Stepping in games of draughts chalked on the pavement while the players were still using them. Losing face. Losing grace. Hurting my toe trying to kick a hole in the stubborn travertine parapet of an ancient bridge.
The Transtiberina fills up by night. During the day it disgorges its populace over the river to hawk contaminated pies, damp matches, sinister green necklaces, good-luck charms, curses, the use of the salesman’s sister for five minutes in the crypt of the Temple of Isis at half an as a go (and if you catch something incurable, don’t be surprised). Even the solemn, dark-eyed children disappear from the streets of their own sector to play their special kind of tag - lifting purses from unwary pockets around the Cattle Market Forum and along the Sacred Way (where nothing is sacred nowadays, though perhaps not much ever was).
At night back they all come, like dark effluent seeping silently into the warrens of the Fourteenth. The thin men swinging armfuls of belts and rugs. The hard-eyed women who fix you with demands for their twisted sprigs of violet or cracked bone amulets. Those children again, with their sad, beautiful, vulnerable expressions. - and unexpected catcalls of obscene abuse. By night the Transtiberina swells even more richly with the exotic. Above the warm aura of oriental flavourings rises the murmurous music of foreign entertainments carried on behind barred doors. Hard gambling for small sums, but a lifetime’s misery. Casual lechery being served at a high price. The thump of a tabor. The shiver of tiny brass bells. To the walker a shutter swinging stealthily overhead in the dark is as dangerous as the door which flies open abruptly, spilling light, and a manic knifeman, onto the street. Only an informer with the kind of brain disorder that needs his doctor to send him on a six months’ sea cruise with a huge bottle of purgatives and a fierce course of exercise goes into the Transtiberina alone at night.
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