Shadows in Bronze

by Lindsey Davis

  When I found the right apartment, its burly, black-bearded occupant was at home, relaxing after lunch.

  ‘I’m Didius Falco. We met once…’ He did remember me. ‘I’m going to show you something. I want to know where it belongs. But only tell me if you feel sure enough to repeat it in a court of law.’

  I produced the iron key. The man held it in one hand and gave due consideration before he spoke. It was nothing special: the straight sort, with a large oval handloop and three plain teeth of even lengths. But my potential witness ran his forefinger over a faintly scratched letter which I had noticed myself on the widest part of the stem. Then he looked up, with those deep, dark, beautiful oriental eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ said the priest of the Little Temple of Hercules Gaditanus sadly. ‘That is our missing Temple key.’

  At last: hard evidence.

  Seeing the priest wiping off his beard with a dinner napkin reminded me I was short of sustenance myself. I had a bite in a cookshop, then strolled along the river walk, thinking about my discoveries. By the time I returned to Maia’s house I was more optimistic.

  Maia had been to Lenia’s, come home for lunch, then vanished to visit my mother, but she had left a bundle of my garments, most of which I recognized dismally; these were all the tunics I had never bothered to pick up from the laundry because they had sleeves unstitched or lamp-oil burns. The most decent was the one I had worn when I disposed of the warehouse corpse. I had dumped it on Lenia afterwards, where it had been waiting to be paid for ever since.

  I sniffed at it, then pulled myself into the tunic, and was pondering my next move against Pertinax when Maia came home.

  ‘Thanks for the clothes! Was there any change?’

  ‘Coinedian! By the way, Lenia said somebody keeps trying to find you - and since the message is from a woman, about an assignation, you may want to know-‘

  ‘Sounds promising!’ I grinned cautiously.

  ‘Lenia said…’ Maia, who was a pedantic messenger, prepared a faithful recitation. ‘Will you meet Helena Justina at the house on the Quailed because she has agreed to talk to her husband and wants to meet you there? Are you working on a divorce?’

  ‘No such luck,’ I said, with foreboding. ‘When am Ito go?’

  ‘That could be a snag - the servant mentioned this morning. I would have told you at lunchtime, but you weren’t here-‘

  I spat a short exclamation, then shot from my sister’s house without waiting to kiss her, thank her for yesterday’s custard, or even explain.

  The Quirinal Mount where Pertinax and Helena had lived when they were married was unfashionable, though people who rented apartments in this pleasant, airy district were rarely doing so badly as they complained. While Vespasian was still a junior politician his youngest child Domitian, the scorpion’s sting in the Emperor’s success, had been born in a back bedroom in Pomegranate Street; later the Flavian family mansion had been there before they fixed up a palace for themselves.

  I felt odd, coming back to the place where I had worked thinking Pertinax was dead. Odd, too, that Helena regarded her old home as neutral ground.

  Since our house clearance, the building itself remained unsold. It was what Gemini would call a property ‘waiting for the right client’. By which he meant, too big, too expensive, and with a nasty reputation for harbouring ghosts.

  How true.

  There was a porter from the Palace payroll whom I had installed to guard the mansion until its freehold was transferred. I expected him to be fast asleep at the back of the house, but he answered my urgent banging almost at once. My heart fell: that probably meant he had been roused from his normal slumbers by previous activity today.

  ‘Falco!’

  ‘Has a man called Pertinax been?’

  ‘I knew he was trouble! He claimed to be a buyer-‘

  ‘O Jupiter! I told you to keep out passing speculators - is he still here?’

  ‘No, Falco-‘

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘Hours ago-‘

  ‘With a lady?

  ‘Came separately’

  ‘Just tell me she didn’t leave with Pertinax.’

  ‘No, Falco. ‘

  I squatted on the porter’s stool, held my temples until my temper cooled, then made him go calmly through what had occurred.

  First Pertinax himself had conned admission. He started walking round quietly, just like a prospective purchaser, so since there was nothing to steal the porter left him to it. Then Helena arrived. She asked after me, but came in without waiting.

  At that point she and Pertinax seemed like a couple - probably, the porter deduced, virtual strangers whose marriage their relations had recently arranged. They walked upstairs, where the porter heard them arguing-nothing out of the ordinary when two people view a house: one always loves the outlook while the other hates the amenities. My man kept his head down, until he heard voices more sharply raised. He found Helena Justina in the atrium, looking badly shaken, while Pertinax was bellowing at her from the landing above. She ran out straight past the porter. Pertinax rushed after her, but at the street door he changed his mind.

  ‘Did he see something?’

  ‘The lady was talking to a senator outside. The senator could see she was upset; he helped her into her chair, urging the bearers to hurry-‘

  ‘Did he go with her?’

  ‘Yes. Pertinax hung in the doorway, muttering, until he saw them leave together, then he made off too-‘

  My first thought was that the senator must have been Helena’s father, but I learned differently almost at once. Violent knocks announced Milo, the dog-taming steward.

  ‘Falco - at last!’ Milo gasped, out of breath despite his fitness. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere - Gordianus wants you at our house urgently-‘

  We wheeled out of the Pertinax house. Gordianus also had a mansion on the Quirinal; on the way Milo told me that the Chief Priest had brought himself to Rome, still out for vengeance from his brother’s murderer. Since the Quirinal was such a respectable district, after last night’s sticky heat Gordianus had risked an unattended morning stroll. He had spotted Pertinax; followed him; watched Helena arrive; then saw her rush out. All Milo could tell me was that immediately afterwards Gordianus himself took her home.

  ‘You mean to his house?’

  ‘No. To hers-‘

  I stopped dead.

  ‘When his own, with all his servants, was only three blocks away? He, -a senator, walked all across the city to the Gapena Gate? Why the urgency? Why was the lady so distressed? Was she ill? Was she hurt?’ Milo had not been told. We were within sight of the street where he said Gordianus lived, but I exclaimed, ‘No, this is bad news, Milo! Tell your master I shall come and see him later-‘

  ‘Falco! Where are you rushing of to?’

  ‘The Capena Gate!’

  LXXXIV

  That nightmare journey all across Rome took another hour.

  I planned the best route I could round the southern side of the Palatine, though it meant clambering through the grounds of Nero’s Golden House. The Golden House was in limbo - too extravagant for the Flavians - so I found a whole convention of surveyors crowding the lake area, trying to decide what our respectable new Emperor should do with it. Vespasian himself had a grand idea that this prime site should be returned to the people, the Flavians’ gift to Rome for all posterity… So here were the designers, about to wish on us a fifteen-year construction site for their new city amphitheatre. The last thing I wanted as I struggled to reach the Camillus house was having my way impeded by a swarm of dreary architects in peculiar-coloured tunics, planning yet another forgettable Imperial monument. It strikes me the happy Roman mortar mixer who developed the use of concrete has a lot to answer for.

  At last I reached the peace of the Capella Gate. As usual, the door porter refused to let me in.

  I argued; he shrugged. He looked like a king and I felt like a lout. He stood inside; I
stayed out on the step.

  By then I was so hot after my gallop, and so anxious, that I grabbled the young pervert by the front of his tunic, then flung him against the doorpost and banged my way in. Falco: ever ready with the subtle touch.

  ‘If you know what’s good for you, sonny, you’ll learn to recognize the friends of the house!’

  A sharp female voice demanded what the commotion was. I was whisked into a reception room, face to face with the noble Julia Justa, the Senator’s highly irritated wife.

  ‘I apologize for breaking in,’ I said tersely. ‘There seems no other way I can pay my respects-‘

  Helena Justina’s mother and I had failed to strike up a friendship. What I found most unnerving (since, to put it bluntly, her mother did not like me) was that where Helena had inherited expressions and intonations from her father, her looks came from her mother’s side. It was always odd to see the same intelligent eyes as hers viewing me so differently.

  I noticed that Julia Justa, who was a well-dressed, well-mannered woman, with a face that had benefited from the best oils and cosmetic a millionaire’s wife could buy, looked pale and strained today. She also appeared to have some problem deciding what to say to me.

  ‘If,’ began Helena’s mother slowly, ‘you are visiting my daughter-‘

  ‘Look - I heard something that disturbed me; is Helena all right?’

  ‘Not entirely.’ We were both standing. The room seemed incredibly stuffy; I was finding it hard to breathe. ‘Helena has lost the child she was expecting,’ her mother said. Then she regarded me with a pinched expression, uncertain what to expect from me - yet certain it would be something she did not like.

  It was quite unacceptable to turn my back on the wife of a senator in her own home, but I took a swift interest in a dolphin statuette that served as a lamp. I never like other people seeing my emotions until I have inspected them for myself.

  The dolphin was a slick little clown, but my silence was worrying him. I returned my formal attention to the Senator’s wife.

  ‘So, Didius Falco! What have you to say about this?’

  ‘More than you think’: My voice sounded tinny, as if I had spoken into a metal vase. ‘I’ll say it to Helena. May I see her?’

  ‘Not at present.’

  She wanted me out of the house. Good manners and a bad conscience both dictated a speedy departure. I never had much truck with good manners: I decided not to shift.

  ‘Julia Justa, will you tell Helena I am here?’

  ‘I cannot, Falco - the doctor has given her a strong sleeping draught.’

  I said in that case I had no wish to inconvenience anyone, but unless Julia Justa vividly objected I would wait.

  Her mother agreed. She could probably see that if they put me out of doors I would only cause speculation among their noble neighbours by lurking out in the street like a seedy creditor.

  I waited three hours. They forgot I was there.

  Eventually, the door opened.

  ‘Falco’ Helena’s mother surveyed me, startled at my sticking power. ‘Somebody should have seen to you-‘

  ‘Nothing I wanted, thanks.’

  ‘Helena is still asleep.’

  ‘I can wait.’

  At my grim tone, Julia Justa came further into the room. I answered her curious gaze with a hard, bitter stare of my own.

  ‘Madam, was today’s event an accident of nature, or did your doctor give your daughter something to help things along?’

  The lady considered me with Helena’s own angrily perturbed dark eyes. ‘If you know my daughter, you know the answer to that!’

  ‘I do know your daughter; she is extremely sensible. I also know Helena Justina would not be the first unmarried mother who had a solution to her predicament wished on her!’

  ‘Insulting her family will not help you to find out!’

  ‘Excuse me. I’ve spent a long time thinking. Always a bad idea.’

  Julia Justa let slip a slight sigh of impatience. ‘Falco, this is achieving nothing; why are you still here?

  ‘I have to see Helena.’

  ‘I must tell you, Falco - she never asked for you!’

  ‘Did she ask for anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then no one else will be offended if I wait.’

  Then Helena’s mother said that if I felt so strongly I had better see Helena now, so that for everybody’s sake I could go home.

  It was a small room, the one she had had as a child. It was neat, and convenient, and when she had returned to her father’s house after her divorce she must have asked for it back because it was nothing like her grand apartment in the Pertinax house.

  In a narrow bed, under a natural linen coverlet, Helena lay motionless. She was drugged so deeply there was no chance of waking her. Her face looked completely colourless and plain, still in the exhaustion of her physical ordeal. With other women in the room I felt unable to touch her, but the sight of her dragged out of me, ‘Oh they should not have done this to her! How can she know anyone is here?’

  ‘She was in pain; she needed rest.’

  I fought against the thought that she might need me. ‘Is she in danger?’

  ‘No,’ her mother said, more quietly.

  Still sensitive to atmosphere, I noticed that the white-faced maid who was sitting on a coffer had been crying earlier. I found myself asking, ‘Will you tell me the truth; did Helena want the child?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ her mother answered immediately. She disguised her annoyance, but I glimpsed the bad feeling that must have surged around this family before today. Helena Justina would make no one an easy relative; she did everything in her own stubborn high-minded way. ‘That may have placed you in a difficult position,’ Julia Justa suggested to me in a thin voice. ‘So this must be quite a relief?’

  ‘You seem to have me well weighed opt’ I answered narrowly.

  I wanted Helena to know that I had been with her today.

  I had nothing else to leave, so I tugged off my signet ring and laid it on the silver tripod table at the side of her bed. Between the pink glass water beaker and a scatter of ivory hairpins, my worn old ring with its dirty red stone and greenish metal looked an ugly chunk, but at least she would notice it and know whose grimy hand she had seen it on.

  ‘Don’t move that, please.’

  ‘I shall tell her you came!’ Julia Justa protested reprovingly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. But I left the ring.

  Her mother followed me from the room.

  ‘Falco,’ she insisted, ‘it was an accident.’

  I would believe what I heard from Helena herself. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Is it your business, Falco?’ For an ordinary woman - or so she seemed to me - Julia Justa could pack a simple question with heavy significance. I let her decide. She went on stiffly, ‘My daughter’s ex-husband asked to meet her. They quarrelled. She wanted to leave; he tried to stop her. She broke free, slipped, and hurt herself running downstairs-‘

  ‘So this is down to Pertinax!’

  ‘It might well have happened anyway.’

  ‘Not like this!’ I burst out.

  Julia Justa paused. ‘No.’ For a moment we seemed to have stopped sniping. Her mother agreed slowly, ‘The violence certainly increased Helena’s distress… Were you intending to come again?’

  ‘When I can.’

  ‘Well that’s generous!’ cried the Senator’s wife. ‘Didius Falco, you arrived a day after the festival; I gather that is usual for you - never around when you’re really wanted. Now I suggest you stay away.’

  ‘There may be something I can do.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Helena’s mother. ‘Now this has happened, Falco, I imagine that my daughter will be quite content if she never sees you again!’

  I saluted the Senator’s wife graciously, since a man should always be good-mannered to a mother of three children (especially when she has just made a
highly dramatic statement about the eldest and sweetest of her children - and he intends to insult her later by proving her wrong).

  Then I left the Camillus house, remembering how Helena Justina had begged me not to kill Pertinax. And knowing that when I found him, I probably would.

  LXXXV

  I walked straight to the Transtiberma and up to his room. I was completely unarmed. It was stupid. But all his personal property had gone; so had he.

  Across the street the wineshop was doing a hectic trade, but with a stranger serving. I asked after Tullia and was brusquely informed: tomorrow; the waiter could hardly find time to account for her. Men were always calling for Tullia, I expect.

  I left no message; no one would bother telling that busy young lady that yet another healthy male with a hopeful expression had been hanging round for her.

  After that I spent a lot of time walking. Sometimes I was thinking; sometimes I just walked.

  I crossed back to the city, pausing on the Aemilian Bridge. Downstream, the desultory river slapped past the triple peperino arch of the main exit from the Great Sewer. At some time in the past three months a bloated corpse, for which I had responsibility, must have swirled out down there, anonymous amidst the dark storm water that carried him away. And now… Did you know, only emperors and stillborn babies have the right to be buried in Rome? Not that it would have been relevant for our poor scrap of life. I had a wry idea what informal arrangements were made for the relics of early miscarriages. And perhaps if I had been a different man, with a less neutral view of the gods, I might have heard in the sound of the Tiber lapping past the Cloaca Maxima the crude, punishing laughter of the Fates.