Inside the house again I relocked the door behind me. Pertinax probably had his own key when he had lived here, but it was no use to him now. When I act as an executor, the first thing I do is fix new locks.
I walked from the door slowly. One of us might leave that way eventually. It was the only door. This was a rich man’s mansion. Rome was alive with cat burglars, and this gem of a property had been built for multimillionaires with treasures to protect. The external walls were completely blank for security. The windows faced inwards. All the light which flooded in came from internal courtyards and the open roof of the atrium. What happened in the streets outside belonged to another world.
He was here. So was I. I had the key. Until I found him, here we would both stay.
I started to search. There were scores of rooms and in some places there were passages where he could slip past me, so I had to patrol some areas twice. I took a long time. My wound started to burn and bother me. Blood was oozing through the cloth. I trod quietly, to avoid warning him and to conserve my own strength. Gradually I covered every room. And in the end I remembered the one place I had missed; so I knew where he must be.
I walked slowly down the red corridor for a second time. My boots slipped unwarily on the shining, level tessellation of the passageway floor. I stepped between the two plinths where basalt portrait busts had once stood, and into the elegant azure and grey bedroom that had once been a private haven for the lady of the house. The warm, deep blue of the wall panels welcomed me graciously. I felt like a lover, treading an accustomed secret route.
I noticed a small, rust-coloured smudge staining the geometric pattern of the silver and white mosaic. I knelt, with some difficulty, and touched it with my finger. Dry. He had been hiding here a long time. Perhaps he was dead.
Hauling myself upright, I dragged my tired feet over to the wooden folding door. It was closed. But when I opened it, from the far side of Helena’s garden his angry eyes met mine.
LXXXIX
I limped to a stone border and edged myself painfully into a half-sitting position facing him. ‘Couple of wrecks!’
Pertinax grimaced, eyeing up my own condition as he struggled to ease himself. ‘What happens now, Falco?’
‘One of us will think of something…’
He was in the shade. I was in the sun. If I moved to avoid it the fig tree would block my view of him. So I stayed.
He was the fidgety, hasty type; I had plenty of time. He fell silent watching me from that taut, narrow face.
‘Your wife’s garden!’ I carolled, looking round. It was a small peristyle, full of muted sunlight and rich greenery. On one side of the colonnade, a worn stone seat with lion’s paws. Low, sculptured hedges, with the faint scent of rosemary where I had crushed bushes as I found somewhere to perch myself. A thin trail of laburnum. And a small statue of an urchin pouring water -a ragamuffin in a patched tunic-who looked as if Helena might have chosen him herself.
Helena’s garden. A good-tempered, mature little courtyard, as quiet and civilized as she was. ‘This is a peaceful, private place for a talk,’ I told him. ‘And a good, private place for a man who doesn’t exist anyway to die… Ah, don’t worry. I promised your wife - your first wife - not to kill you.’ I let him relax, then put iron in my voice: ‘I’m just planning a series of hard, non-fatal blows that will persuade you staying alive is so painful you will finish off yourself!’
The priest had made a decent start of it. Better this way; some deaths need time.
He was on the ground, sideways to me, leaning on one hand. Almost no position was comfortable. He had to twist into the hasp of the wicked religious knife Gordianus had prodded into his ribs. He wanted to hold it firm. If he pulled it free, the rush of blood might bear his soul away. Some men would take the risk; I would have done.
I said, ‘A military surgeon could safely get that out of you?’ Then grinned, to let him know I would never let a surgeon into the house.
He was white. So was I, probably. Tension does that. He thought he was going to die. I knew he was.
My eyes drooped. I saw him move, hopefully. I opened my eyes again, and smiled at him.
‘This is pointless, Falco.’
‘Life is pointless?’
‘Why do you want me dead?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Today was pointless,’ Pertinax mused. ‘Why the trick with the barmaid? I can repudiate the marriage as soon as I want-‘
‘Got to get out of here first, sir!’
He thought about the marriage bitterly, ignoring me. His old restless bad temper jerked behind those pale, turgid eyes. His face had grown gaunt with his obsessions - that sense of outrage, not at his own failure, but at the world’s refusal to give him recognition. His was a soul inching into madness. But he was not mad yet. I judged him still capable of answering for his crimes.
‘Did my wife arrange this?’ He demanded, as if the sunshine of sudden understanding had flooded him.
‘Your first wife? She has the brain’s, but is she that vindictive, sir?’
‘Who knows what she would do!’
I knew. In any situation I could make a fair guess: look for the obvious, then look for the oddest deviation from it and there would be Helena. Helena, making her quaint choice appear to be the only course anyone with any culture and moral fibre could take. He had owned her for four years whilst she struggled to do her duty by them both - yet he did not know the first thing about that eccentric mixture he called his wife.
‘Helena Justina wanted to help you. Even when she knew you were a traitor and a murderer-‘
‘Never,’ he stated briefly. ‘This was the one thing I asked her to do for me…’ He watched me easing the bloodstained cloth around my ribs. ‘We could help each other, Falco. Neither of us stands much chance alone.’
‘Mine’s a scratch on the surface. You’re bleeding internally.’
Whether he was or not, the threat frightened him.
‘Your wife’s no fool,’ I said, taking his mind off his terror of death. ‘She told me, in Campania, “Every girl needs a husband.”
‘Oh she does!’ exclaimed Pertinax. ‘Did she tell you she picked up a pregnancy?’ He said it as if he meant a heat rash she had caught on holiday.
‘No,’ I replied calmly. ‘She never told me that.’
‘My father found out while she was staying in his house.’ Remembering how she had looked sometimes in Campania, that was allowable. Anyone who knew Helena’s normal stamina should have realized without being told. Including me.
Although he was in the shade, Pertinax was sweating heavily; he blew out his cheeks. I suggested, ‘I suppose it was your father’s idea to use the situation; to rescue Helena’s reputation - to offer a respectable name for her child?’
‘I’m starting to think he wants a grandchild even more than he wants to do something for me!’
‘Have you quarrelled with him?’
‘Possibly,’ he squeezed out.
‘I saw him after you left Campania. I thought his attitude had changed.’
‘If you must know, Falco, my father made it a condition of standing up for me that I should reestablish relations with Helena Justina - and when she rejected the favour he blamed me… He’ll come round.’
‘Did she ask for this favour?
‘No!’ he retorted in his most contemptuous tone.
‘You surprise me!’ I said softly. I let him settle, then put to him, ‘This unlooked-for infant of hers must have a father somewhere.’
‘You tell me! In fact I wish you would. If Helena Justina has slipped up with her father’s driver it’s irrelevant, but if she’s involved with a man of quality I can put pressure on. You were her bodyguard; if you did the job properly you must know what pools she has been dandling her fingers in.’
I smiled faintly. ‘You can assume, sir, that I do my job properly.’
The sunlit air was motionless in the small courtyard. Light gleamed broadly off the
open-palmed leaves of the fig. Heat tingled a clump of scratchy lichen on the old stone seat and thrummed along the pierced wall where I sat.
‘Ever see Helena Justina flirt with another man?’
‘No one who got past me, sir.’
Pertinax spat with exasperation. ‘The proud piece refuses to tell me - and you’re no help!’
‘What’s it worth?’
‘So you do know? Nothing,’ he snarled abruptly. ‘I’ll find out for myself!’
‘Thrash it out of her?’ Pertinax made no answer. Something made him look at me more carefully. I asked softly, ‘Does this man bother you?’
‘Not in the least!’ His defiance faded slightly. ‘When I told her she was a fool not to take my offer she admitted she found it impossible to forget we had been married - but someone had a claim on her…’
I let out a long, low, suggestive whistle. ‘That’s tough! Some sly double-dealer with an eye on her bank box must have persuaded Helena Justina that he is in love with her.’
He stared at me, as though he could not decide whether I was being satirical.
My side was aching more than I could easily tolerate.
‘Talking of well-stocked bank boxes, I have some news for you, Pertinax. Caprenius Marcellus had decided that placing his hopes in you is the short road to a long disillusionment. When you left without seeing him, he made other arrangements-‘
‘Arrangements? What arrangements?’
‘Same as you today; he got married.’
His first reaction was disbelief. Then he believed it. He was too crazed even to feel hurt; I could see him immediately planning ways to extricate himself. The busy thoughts of a madman were moving in his sick eyes; I interrupted relentlessly: ‘Marcellus was extremely fond of Helena. With her help you might have held him - but Marcellus had realized the truth. Oh, in many ways she will always be tied to you! The very high-mindedness you despise her for ensures that. She hated being divorced. But anyone who could offer Helena a refuge from her own sense of failure was bound to supersede you easily enough. Accept it,’ I warned him steadily. ‘You lost Helena Justina the way you failed at everything else you tried.’ Before he could insult me in return I went on, ‘I know why she rejected you. Marcellus knew.’ I straightened my spine as I sat there, bracing myself against the hot pains in my side. He lay, half reclining in the damp shade against the far wall, refusing to ask me. I told him anyway.
‘You think such a lot of yourself, Pertinax!’ Whether I was making any impression on him or not, I had now convinced myself. The insults flowed much faster after that. ‘You were useless - she soon did better once she was free of you. I expect you think you know her very well, but I doubt it! For instance, in all the years you were married to her, did you ever once discover that when a man has made Helena a happy woman, she cries in his arms?’
The truth came home.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You lost her for the oldest reason in the world - she found a better man!’
Pertinax jerked with fury. As he started to come at me, the palm he was leaning on slipped and slid outwards. His bare arm scraped full length on the loose gravel path. I made no attempt to move. At the critical moment I had my eyes closed, but I heard the soft hiss of escaping air as the sacrificial dagger pierced his lung.
He died at once. So I knew that as he fell forwards the Chief Priest’s knife had pierced his heart.
XC
When my own heart had stopped pounding I slowly stood up. Helena’s garden.
One day, however long it took, I would give her another garden, where there would be no ghosts.
I dragged my feet to the street door, feeling stiff and sour-spirited. Fumbling, I got the key in the lock and fell out into the sunny glare of the street. A small curly dog with a stump of a tail was nosing the sheet which some neat-minded Quirinal steward had flung over the bodies of the two German mercenaries while the refined people of the district sat in their houses complaining.
I ducked at the little dog; he wagged his rump like a conspirator.
‘Falco!’
A hired chair stood in the shade of a portico. Beside it, sitting on a step, was the barmaid Tullis.
‘Good of you to wait!’ Not entirely altruistic on her part: I still had her marriage certificate stuffed in my belt. I handed over the contract and told her I had left her new husband conveniently dead.
‘Take this document to my banker. The money I promised is a legacy left to his freedman Barnabas by Atius Pertinax; as the freedman’s widow it’s yours. If the banker should query the signature on the contract, just remind him slaves adopt their patron’s names when they are liberated formally.’
‘How much is the money?’ Tullia demanded briskly. ‘Half a million.’
‘Don’t joke about it, Falco!’
I laughed. ‘Truth! Try not to spend it all the first week.’
She sniffed, with the wariness of a natural businesswoman. This petal would clutch her cash with a sure grip. ‘Can I take you somewhere?’
‘Corpse to dispose of-‘
Tullia smiled gently, pulling me by the arm to her sedan chair. ‘I was his wife, Falco. Leave me to bury him!’
I let a small puff of laughter crease past my throat. ‘Duty’s a wonderful thing!’
She took me where I asked, to my gymnasium. She leaned out and kissed me goodbye.
‘Careful - too much excitement will finish me, princess!’
I watched her settle back inside the chair, with all the gravity of a woman who knew exactly how she would order the remainder of her life. There would be, I thought, very few men.
She leaned out as the chair pulled away. ‘Cashed your bets yet, Falco?’
‘Ferox lost.’
‘Oh, the bets were on Little Sweetheart!’ Tullia informed me laughingly, drawing the curtains to hide her - now she was a wealthy lady - from the crowd.
I staggered in to let Glaucus patch me up, while I dismally remembered my last sight of those white bone disks…
‘What in Hades happened to you? demanded Glaucus, ignoring the sword cut and considering my glum face.
‘1 just won a fortune - but my niece has eaten it.’
Glaucus my trainer was a sensible man. ‘Then put the child on a chamberpot - and wait!’
We had a discussion about whether bone dissolves in stomach acids, but I won’t bother you with that.
He got me clean, and promised I would keep upright if I went steadily. Then I hired a chair myself, as far as the Capena Gate. I sat, dreaming of the new apartment I could now afford if any of the betting tokens were retrieved from Marcia…
Nothing is ever easy. As I paid off the beards at the end of the Senator’s street, I noticed a group loafing outside a cookshop: Anacrites’ men. They had worked out that sooner or later I would try to see Helena. If I approached the house, my convalescence would be in a prison cell.
Luckily I was no slouch as a lover. I knew where to find the Senator’s back gate.
When I crept in like a marble-thief, Camillus Verus himself was standing with his arms folded, staring at the carp in his gloomy pond.
I coughed. ‘Nice evening!’
‘Hello, Falco.’
I saw him making faces at the fish. ‘I ought to warn you, sir, when I leave here I am liable to be arrested in the street.’
‘Give the neighbours something to talk about.’ The tunic Glaucus had lent me only had one sleeve; Camillus twitched an eyebrow at my bandaging.
‘Pertinax is dead.’
‘Tell me?’
‘Some time before I can remember, I shall have to forget.’ He nodded. A carp shoved his snout up to the surface but we had nothing to give him so we just stared back guiltily.
‘Helena has been asking for you,’ her father said.
He took me indoors, as far as the atrium. The statue I had sent him from the Pertinax house now had pride of place. He thanked me as we both gazed at her, with a peacefulness
that would have been unlikely if we had been surveying the real thing.
‘I still wonder,’ mused Camillus, ‘if I should have ordered marble-‘
‘Bronze is best,’ I said. I smiled at him, so he would know it was intended as a compliment to his daughter: ‘More warmth!’
‘Go and see her,’ he urged. ‘She won’t talk, and she won’t weep. See what you can do…’
Her mother and a gaggle of maids were crowding the bedroom. So was a man who must be the doctor. My roses were by Helena’s bed, my signet was on her thumb. She was busy ignoring good advice with a set, stubborn face.
I leaned in the doorway like a professional, looking mean and hard. She saw me at once. Helena had a strong face, which took its softness from whatever she was feeling. Whenever that sweet face lit with relief, simply at seeing me walk into a room alive, the mean, hard look became difficult to sustain.
I went on helping the doorframe to keep itself upright, trying to find the sort of tasteless ribaldry she would expect. She spotted the bandages.
‘Trust you,’ she said, ‘to turn up looking bloodstained when there’s someone else’s doctor to give you a free salve!’
I shook my head slightly, to say I was just scratched. And her eyes answered that whatever I had done to her, she was glad I was here.
Most of my work has to be done alone, but it would be good to know that when a job was over, I could come home to someone who would scoff at me heartily if I showed any tendency to boast. Someone who would actually miss me if I failed to make it home.
Remaining in the room while a lady was examined was obviously indelicate. Luckily the doctor was leaving. I blocked his path.
‘The name is Didius Falco. I live off the Via Ostiana, above the Eagle Laundry in Fountain Court.’ He looked puzzled. I said, ‘Send your bill for professional services to me.’
Within the room, the women of the ‘house fell suddenly still. They all looked at Helena. Helena was looking steadily at me.
The doctor was Egyptian in origin. He had a square head, with eyebrows that met in the centre above a straight, strong nose. He looked distinctive, but was very slow. ‘I understood that the Senator-‘
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