‘Hmm!' I mused, as we stood at the far end of the garden among fine-scented roses, looking back towards the stupendous fluted pillars of the grand saloon. 'This would be nice work if we had time to enjoy it -' I tilted my wreath to a more debonair angle, but Helena answered severely: 'We don't have time!'
She hauled me back indoors and we started to explore the smaller rooms. As we crossed the lofty atrium we passed one of the senators who had dined in the triclinium, already leaving the party with his wife. He nodded goodbye to Helena, with a grim glance at me as if I was just the sort of low-down plebeian rake he would expect to find with a senator's daughter twined around him at a party like this.
‘That's Fabius Nepos,' Helena told me in an undertone, not bothering to untwine her arm just to save an old gent's blood pressure. ‘Very influential in the Senate. He's elderly and traditional; not inclined to speculate-'
‘Looks like we can assume he's one prospective collaborator who is going home early, unimpressed!'
Encouraged, we pressed on into a smaller hall which was decorated with illusionary perspectives of Corinthian columns, theatrical masks, a peacock to please the popular taste, and an elevated Delphian tripod to add a touch of culture for the rut. An extremely serious man with a beard was talking about philosophy. He looked as if he believed himself. The people who were privileged to hear his visionary dissertation looked as if they all thought they would probably believe him too – only nature had denied them the wherewithal to catch his drift.
I did. I thought it was tosh.
When we peeped back into the triclinium, Aemilia Fausta was sitting morosely by herself, plucking at her cithara. We ducked out before she spotted us, giggling together uncharitably. Later we discovered a long corridor set with stone benches for waiting clients, where Fausta's brother and a group of similar well-barbered aristos were standing round with wine cups, watching some of the younger male waiters playing dice on their knees on the floor. Rufus looked surprised to see us, but made no attempt to reclaim Helena so I waved and we sped on.
She seemed in no mood to go sedately back to him. Her spirit was up now. She pushed ahead of me eagerly, sweeping open double doors and rapidly scanning the occupants as if she hardly noticed the ribaldry from the drinkers or the startling combinations of people who had wrapped themselves together for the purposes of pleasure. It was not, as I remarked at the time, the kind of party you would take your Great-aunt Phoebe to.
'I expect an aunt could cope with it,' Helena disagreed. (Thinking about my own Auntie Phoebe, she was probably right.) 'But let's pray your mother never finds out you came!'
'I'll say you brought me -' I grinned suddenly. I had noticed a welcome alteration in her appearance. 'You've washed your hair!'
'A lot of times!' Helena admitted. Then she blushed.
In one colonnade the musicians who had come with the Spanish dancers were now strumming and fluting for their own amusement – about six times as well as they had played for the girls.
Not a good night for fountains. By one in a small tetrastyle atrium we saw the other senator from the triclinium, spread- eagled between two slaves while he was gloriously, obliviously sick.
'I don't know his name,' Helena told me. 'He had a lot to drink. He's the commander of the Misenum fleet -' As he sagged between the slaves we watched for a moment, admiring the fleet commander's total abandonment.
After half an hour of fruitless search we both stopped, frowning with disgust.
'Oh, this is hopeless!'
'Don't give up; I'll find him for you -' The part of me that wanted to snort that I would find him for myself backed down happily before the part that was smitten with honest lust. When Helena Justina was bright-eyed with determination she looked adorable…
'Stop it, Falco!'
'What?'
'Stop looking at me,' she growled through her teeth, 'in that way that makes my toes curl!'
'When I look at you, lady, that's how I have to look!' 'I feel as if you were going to back me into a bush-' 'I can think of better places,' I said. And backed her towards an empty couch.
The annoying bundle wriggled out from under me just as for once I had her in a satisfactory clinch. I landed on the couch in the graceful position the Fates liked to see me in: flat on my face.
'Of course!' she exclaimed. 'He'll have a room! I should have thought of that!'
'What? Have I missed something?'
'Oh, hurry, Falco! Get up and straighten your wreath!'
Two minutes later she had me back in the atrium, where she crisply extracted from the chamberlain directions to his master's dressing room. Three minutes after that we were standing in a bedroom with a dark-red painted ceiling, just off the seafront side of the house.
In the five seconds since we had stepped inside his borrowed boudoir, I had learned two things. Aufidius Crispus was wearing an ensemble which made his ambitions perfectly clear: his dinner robe was deeply dyed with the juice of a thousand Tyrian sea-shells to the luxuriant crushed purple which emperors reckon suits their complexions best. Also, his luck was better than mine: when we came in he had the prettiest after-dinner dancer pinioned on a bed with her rose behind his ear and half her breast in his mouth, while he was banging away at her Spanish tambourine with breathtaking virility.
I turned Helena Justina against my shoulder to shield her from embarrassment.
Then I waited until he had finished. In my business it always pays to be polite.
LII
The dancer slipped out past us, bearing her rose for re-use elsewhere. Evidently the incident had been rapid and routine.
'Beg your pardon, sir; did I put you off your stroke?'
'Frankly, no!'
Helena Justina sat quickly on a stool, more straightbacked than usual. She could have waited outside, though I was glad that she stayed to see me through this.
Crispus glanced at her without much interest, then he settled in an armed chair, shuffled his purple folds back into order, plugged his head back through a laurel wreath, and offered audience to me.
'Sir! I'd thank you for inviting me to your highly select symposium, but I came with Aemilia Fausta, so 'invitation' is hardly the word!' He smiled faintly.
He was in his middle fifties, with a tireless, boyish look. He had a swarthy complexion with slightly heavy though good-looking features (a fact he was rather too aware of), plus a great array of regular teeth which looked as though he whitened them with powdered horn; he showed them at every opportunity, to emphasize what superb teeth they were and how many he still owned. Beneath the wreath, which he wore as if he was born with it, I admired the careful way his barber had layered off his hair. (Probably that same afternoon, judging by the fatty whiff of Gallic pomade which hung around the dressing room.)
'What can I do for you, young man? Who are you, first?' 'Marcus Didius Falco.'
He leaned on his thin thoughtfully. 'Are you the Falco who sent home my friend Maenius Celer with some colourful bruising and stomach cramps?'
'Could be. Or maybe your Celer just ate a bad oyster and bumped into a wall. I'm a private informer. I'm one of the dispatch boys who have been trying to deliver a letter to you from Vespasian.'
The atmosphere crackled as he sat more alert in his chair.
"I don't like you, Falco!" Isn't that what I am supposed to say? Then you answer something like, "That's all sight, sir; I don't much care for you!" I could see at once that this would be nothing like convincing the chief priest Gordianus; Crispus was really expecting to enjoy our interview.
'I suppose you'll throw me out now, sir?'
'Why should I?' He was scanning me with some interest. 'I've heard you are an informer! What qualities does that need?'
‘Oh judgement, foresight, constructive ideas, acceptance of responsibility, reliability under pressure-plus the ability to shovel dung down a sewer before it attracts public notice.'
'Much the same as an administrator!' he sighed. 'Well, Falco, what's your missio
n here?'
'Finding out what you're up to – which is more or less self-evident!'
'Oh really?'
'There are plenty of public positions you could want. For all of them you need the Emperor's support – all except one.'
‘What a shocking suggestion!' he told me pleasantly.
‘Sorry; what I do is a shocking job.'
'Perhaps I should offer you a better one?' he tried, though with a latent humour in his tone, as if mocking his own attempt.
'Always open to suggestions,' I said, not looking at Helena. He smiled at me again, though I noticed no grand offers of employment rushing forth.
'Well, Falco! I know what Flavius Vespasianus has palmed off on Gordianus; what's he offering me?' The way he named the Emperor as if he were still a private citizen gave a clear indication of his disrespect.
‘How do you know about Gordianus, sir?'
'For one thing, if the garland you are wearing was provided by me tonight, it came in a consignment I had shipped round the coast from Paestum.'
'Paestum, eh! Apart from a talkative garlandseller, who else is spreading rumours that Gordianus is going to Paestum?'
At my insistent return to the question I saw a glint in his eyes (which were brown enough to entice the women, though too close together to be classically correct). 'He told me himself. He wrote to me about his brother's death -' Crispus stopped.
'Warning you!' Barnabas.
‘Warning me,' he agreed gently. 'Have you come to do the same?'
'Partly sir; also to negotiate.'
'What with?' he exploded, on a contemptuous note. (I remembered Crispus owned half Latium, in addition to his expensive dinner outfit and his natty sailing boat.) 'Vespasian has no money. He never had any money; it's what the man is famous for! All though his public career he was notoriously mortgaged to the hilt. As Governor of Africa – the most gracious post in the Empire – he ran out of credit so disastrously he had to trade in Alexandrian wet fish… What does he pay you, Falco?
'Too little!' I grinned.
'So why do you support him? The man purred. I found him easy to talk to, perhaps because I reckoned he would be difficult to offend.
'I don't, sir, particularly. Though it's true I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher's bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!'
Crispus was laughing. I had never expected to like him. I was beginning to see what made everyone tell me he was dangerous; popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command.
'I never sing in public!' Crispus assured me affably. 'A dignified Roman hires in professionals… You see, from my point of view,' he explained, taking time to convince me, 'after Nero died we saw Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian – not to mention various other pretenders who never even managed to edge their buttocks onto the throne – and the only thing which made any of them better than anybody else – for instance better than me! – was that they had the simple luck at the time to be holding public positions which provided armed support. Otho won over the Praetorian Guard, while the rest were all stationed in provinces where the legions they commanded were bound to hail their own governor to the skies. So if I had been in Palestine in the Year of the Four Emperors…'
He stopped. And smiled. And cleverly left any statement of treason unsaid.
'Am I right, Falco?'
‘Yes, sir- up to a point.'
'What point?' he enquired, still perfectly pleasantly.
‘Where your political judgement – which looks pretty shrewd – ought to tell you what we all have to accept: that a violent cycle of events has reached its natural conclusion. Rome, and Italy, and the Empire, are exhausted by the civil war. By popular consent Vespasian is the candidate who survived. So whether anybody else could, in theory, have challenged him is, in practice, no longer relevant. With all due respect to you, sir!' I declared.
At this juncture Aufidius Crispus rose in order to pour himself some wine at a pedestal table. I declined. He inflicted some on Helena without consulting her.
'This is not the woman you came with!' he commented satirically to me.
'No, sir. This is a kind-hearted lady who volunteered to help me find you. She's good at blind man's buff?
Helena Justina, who had not previously spoken, put down the wine cup untasted. 'The lady Didius Falco came with is my friend. I shall never mention this conversation to Fausta but I do feel concern about what you intend for her.'
Crispus looked astounded by this female initiative, but soon managed to answer with the same frankness he had shown me: 'It might be tempting to reconsider my position there!'
'I can see that! Hypothetically, of course,' Helena challenged.
'Of course,' he interrupted in a laughingly suave tone.
'A man with his sights on the Palatine might reflect that Aemilia Fausta comes from a good family with one consul among her ancestors and a brother who promises to duplicate the honour. Her face would look dignified on the back of a silver denarius; she is young enough to bear a dynasty, sufficiently devoted to prevent any scandal-'
'Too devoted!' he exclaimed.
'Is that your problem?' I chipped in.
'It was. Indeed it is.'
'Why did you let her dine with you?' Helena hectored him.
'Because I see no reason to humiliate the lady. If you are her friend, try to explain to her that I could marry for policy – but not with such intensity on her side and such lack of it on mine.' He prevented himself from shuddering, but only just. 'Our marriage would be a disaster. For her own sake Aemilia Fausta's brother ought to give her to somebody else-'
'That would be extremely unfair to some other poor man.' Helena plainly thought him selfish. Perhaps he was; perhaps he should have tried to make a go of it -and plunged them both into domestic misery, like everybody else. 'What will you do?' she asked in a low voice.
'At the end of the evening take her home to Herculaneum on my ship. Tell her decently, in privacy, that I cannot oblige her. Don't worry. She won't be upset; she won't believe me; she never did before.'
His briskness closed the subject, though none of us objected to letting it rest. Aemilia Fausta's predicament embarrassed us all.
I got to my feet, and removed from my tunic the letter I had been carrying for so many weeks. He smiled, looking relaxed. 'Vespasian's billet-doux?'
'It is.' I gave it to him. 'Will you read it, sir?'
'Probably.'
'He wants me to take your reply.'
'Fair enough.'
'You may need time to think about it-'
'Either there is no answer at all, or I'll tell you tonight.'
'Thank you, sir. Then if I may, I'll wait in the colonnade outside.'
'Surely.'
He was businesslike about it. The man had talent. He had shown over the problem of Fausta that he possessed some compassion, which is rare. He also had good sense, a cheerful humour, the ability to organize, and an approachable style. He was quite right; he matched the Flavians. Vespasian's family had years of public service behind them, yet they continued to seem small-minded and provincial in a way this urbane, likeable character never would.
I did like him. Mainly because at bottom he refused to take himself seriously.
'There is one thing I wish to ask you, Falco.'
'Ask away.'
'No,' said Aufidius Crispus, glancing coldly at Helena. 'I want to ask you when this lady has withdrawn.'
LIII
Helena Justina shot us both a disparaging look, then slipped out of the room – like the dancing girl, but more aggressive and without a rose.
'Hates secrets,'
I excused.
'You after her?' His eyes narrowed with that semiserious glint he used when he was amusing himself manipulating people. 'I can probably arrange it…'
'Nice present, but the lady won't look at me!'
He grinned. 'Falco, you're an odd sort for a Palace messenger! If Flavius Vespasianus has written to me personally, why send you as well?'
'Hiring in professionals! What did you wish to ask me? And why not in front of the lady?'
'It touches on her husband-'
'Ex-husband,' I stated.
'Pertinax Marcellus; divorced from her, as you say. What do you know about Pertinax?'
'Over-ambitious and under-intelligent.'
'Not your type? I saw his death announced recently,' he murmured, giving me a speculative look.
'True.'
'Is it?'
'Well, you saw it announced!'
He stared at me as if I had said something that might not be genuine. 'Pertinax was involved in a project I know something about, Falco.' Crispus' own role as a plotter had never been proved and I could hardly foresee him admitting it. 'Certain people had collected substantial funding – I wonder who has it now?
'State secret, sir.'
'Does that mean you don't know, or you won't tell?'
'One or the other. You say first,' I offered bluntly, 'why you need to know?'
He laughed. 'Oh come!'
'Excuse me, sir, I've better things to do than sit on a stool in the sun watching grapes ripen. Let's be frank! The cash was being hoarded in a pepper warehouse by a man who has apparently disappeared – Helena Justina's uncle.'
'Wrong!' Crispus shot back. Lies dead, Falco.'
'Really?' My voice rasped as once again I smelt the decaying flesh of that body I had flushed down the Great Sewer.
'Don't play games. I know he is. The man wore a ring; a monstrous great emerald, rather low taste.' Even for his banquet Crispus himself had not troubled with jewellery, apart from one flat onyx signet ring, good quality but discreet. 'He never took it off: But I've seen the thing, Falco, I was shown it here, earlier tonight.'
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