I had met him once. Not when I tailed him to the Transtiberina; the year before. I could still feel his soldiers pulping my body and hear his voice calling me savage names. I could still see his pasty legs below a senatorial toga, striding from my apartment where he had left me lying beside a broken bench, helplessly spitting blood on my own floor.
He was a traitor and a thief; a bully; a murderer. Yet Helena Justina was letting him lounge in her bedroom like a lord. Well he must have sat with her like this a thousand times, in that grand, tasteful, blue-and-grey room he allowed her in their house…
'My mistake. Your name's not Barnabas!'
'Is it not?' he dared. I could see him still wondering how to react to my sudden arrival.
‘No,' I responded quietly. 'But officially Gnaeus Atius Pertinax Caprenius Marcellus is mouldering in his funeral urn-'
'Now you see the problem!' Helena exclaimed.
I wondered how she could bear to sit there eating until I noticed how she was nibbling at her chicken bone, showing her teeth as if she despised his predicament too much to let it interfere with her appetite.
I strode into the room. Apart from the fact I was intent on arresting him, it was a good old Roman custom that in the presence of your moral superior you leapt to your feet. Pertinax tensed, but sat tight.
'Who the hell are you?' He had made too much noise before too. 'And who gave you permission to enter my wife's room?'
'The name is Didius Falco; I go where I like. By the way – she's not your wife!'
'I've heard about you, Falco!'
'Oh, you and I are old acquaintances. You once arrested me for the pleasure of it,' I reminded him, 'though I like to think I have the character to rise above that. You destroyed my apartment – but I helped dispose of your house on the Quirinal in return. Your Greek vases did well,' I smiled annoyingly. 'Vespasian was pleased with those. Your Praxiteles Cupid was a disappointment though -' I knew Pertinax had paid a lot for it. 'A copy; I expect you realized…
'I always thought it had big ears!' Helena told me conversationally. Pertinax looked peeved.
I hooked a footstool forwards with my heel and squatted where I could cover Helena yet still fix him. She coloured slightly beneath my quiet scrutiny; I found myself wondering if Pertinax realized I had been her lover – with a passion I was proud of – a few hours before. A glance at him told me: it never crossed his mind.
'So what happened?' I wondered thoughtfully: 'In April this year the Praetorians burst in to question you -' He listened with an exaggerated, weary look as if 1 was being ridiculous. ‘Barnabas was dressed up in your senatorial stripes; the short-sighted Praetorians whisked him off to jail. He would expect a nasty beating when they found out, but no worse. Poor Barnabas definitely shook hands on a bad bargain that day. One of your fellow plotters decided to silence their luckless jailbird-'
Pertinax sank back, his thin shoulders hunched. ‘Cut it, Falco!'
I was fascinated by those nuts. Some of the shells fell loose on a table as he spat them ineffectively back at the bowl; most dropped onto the striped Egyptian floor rug.
‘You soon realized your fellow plotters were being picked off by the Palace.' I let him absorb this, watching him again. Bryon the trainer had called him desperate, but to me he looked merely unpleasant. In fact I found Pertinax so offensive, the hairs on my neck prickled at sharing the same room. Yet he was one of those men who seem quite unaware of their own obnoxiousness. 'If you reappeared you were a marked man. Your half-brother was dead. You took his identity in order to claim his corpse from the jail. You buried him, and paid him the last respect of telling his mother the truth, even though a wrong word from that batty old basket in Tarentum might expose you. Then you realized that you and Barnabas were so alike you had a first-rate, possibly permanent, disguise. So you have foolishly stuck yourself, honourable sir, only one step up from slavery!'
Pertinax, whose manners were as uncouth as you would expect in a Calabrian who had been given more luck in society than he ever deserved, cracked another nut. If he had been a commoner my exposing his story would be the first step to jail; he knew as well as I did that a consul's son could stare me out derisively. For several reasons, all of them personal, I would have liked to smash my fist through his pistachios – after he had eaten them.
Helena Justina had finished her meal and tidied her own tray. She went down on her knees, collecting the shells Pertinax had scattered, like a wife trying to prevent their servants noticing what a boor her husband is. Pertinax, like a husband, let her do it.
'You don't exist!' I reiterated in his direction as cruelly as I could. 'Your name has been sponged off the Senatorial list. You have less social standing than a ghost.' Pertinax moved restlessly. 'Now all your attempts to contact your fellow conspirators are going awry. Tell me, did Curtius Longinus meet his fate because when he saw you in Rome again, alive, he threatened to expose you to gain Vespasian's goodwill for his brother and him?' He made no attempt to resist the charge. It could wait. 'Crispus too has plans of his own now, in which you do not feature,' I harassed him as my anger grew. 'You saw him at Oplontis. You tried to coerce him, but he gave you the brushoff; am I right? Your dining couch was reassigned to a woman – Aemilia Fausta, who had not even been invited – then Crispus pointed me straight at you, hoping I would get you off his neck. Aufidius Crispus,' I emphasized, 'is another double-dealer who would cheerfully see you strangled, Pertinax!'
Helena was still on the floor, sitting back on her heels.
'That's enough,' she interrupted quietly.
'Too near the knuckle, lady?'
'Too strong, Falco. What will you do?'
Good question. The ex-Consul was unlikely to allow me to drag his precious son off the estate.
'Suggest something,' I offered, ducking it.
Helena Justina folded her hands in her lap. Always ready with a plan: 'The easiest solution is to leave the conspirator Pertinax at peace in the Marcellus mausoleum. I think my husband should put his past mistakes behind him, and start life afresh.' Although Helena was trying to help him, Pertinax sat biting his thumb contemptuously. He had nothing to contribute.
'As Barnabas?' I queried. 'Fine. His children will count as full citizens; his descendants may be senators. A freedman can use his talents; assemble a fortune; even inherit from Marcellus, if Marcellus can bring himself to cause a social upset by doing it. You are a wonderful lady; it's a wonderful solution, and he's a lucky man to have you to support him like this. Just one problem!' I grated in a changed voice. 'Pertinax the conspirator is supposed to be dead – but Barnabas is wanted for arson and a senator's premeditated death.'
'What are you saying, Falco?' Helena glanced quickly between the two of us.
'Augus Curtius Longinus died in a fire at the Little Temple of Hercules. I'm saying, "Barnabas's lit the fire.'
I had never told Helena the details. She was shocked, yet remained acutely logical. 'Can you prove that?'
Pertinax finally troubled himself to interject unpleasantly, 'The lying bastard can't.'
'But Falco, if you wanted to pursue it,' Helena reasoned, 'there would have to be a trial -' You could tell those two had been married by the way that she ignored him. 'A trial would force recent events into the open-'
'Oh, plenty of adverse rumours will fly!' I agreed.
'Curtius Gordianus will be embarrassed over his priesthood in Paestum; Aufidius Crispus has been promised the past may remain confidential I laughed softly. 'Yes; they lose any chance to back out of their plot discreetly! Helena Justina, if your ex-husband adopts your suggestion I might support him to the Emperor.' I would sooner have prepared him a legionary ambush: a ditch across his path some dark night, set with barbed stakes viciously peeled back like lilies… but producing him as a penitent would earn me greater favour. ‘So now he has to decide what he wants.'
'Yes, he must.' Her eyes left me, and fell rather disparagingly on him. He looked at her without expression. Knowing his
real identity, I understood why Helena felt so troubled. He was alive, minus his property. So he was demanding back the legacy he had bequeathed to her. At least that; perhaps much more.
I had a sense of them wrangling, though I may have imagined it.
Helena Justina climbed to her feet carefully, holding one wrist behind her as if she had backache.
'I should like you both to leave now.' She rang a bell. A slave came in immediately, as though when Pertinax was here swift service was expected.
‘I'll go with you,' I said to him. I had no intention of letting him out of my sight.
'There's no need, Falco!' muttered Helena swiftly. 'He cannot leave the villa,' she insisted. 'He has no identity – nowhere to go.'
'Besides,' Pertinax weighed in, with a dreary attempt at nonchalance, 'your filthy associates harry me if I try!'
'What does that mean?'
'Don't you know?
It was Helena who enlightened me in a troubled voice. 'Two men have been following Gnaeus everywhere. He went out riding yesterday and they prevented him from coming home all night.'
'What were they like?' I asked him curiously.
'One built like a gladiator, and a runt.'
'Means nothing to me. You managed to shake them off? 'They were on commercial mules; I had a decent horse.' 'Really? I did not tell him I had found the two mules here tonight on his father's estate. 'I work alone. I had nothing to do with it.'
If Helena thought I would leave a man in her bedroom she could think again. But Pertinax shrugged a goodnight to her almost at once, then sneered at me and went out onto the balcony.
I followed him as far as the folding door and watched him down the stairs and on his way, a thin figure strutting with a little too much confidence. From the far side of the garden court below he glanced back once. He would have seen me, a solid black shape in the doorway, outlined from behind by the bedroom lamps.
I came back in, fastening the catch on the folding door. With her servants now present, Helena and I were not free to speak openly, but I could see that sharing the secret was a heavy relief. I confined myself to commenting, 'I might have known he would be someone who makes a mess with his food, and has never learnt to close a door when he goes out!' She smiled wearily.
I said goodnight and went to my own room. There were people looking after her. Helena was safe tonight.
Not so true of Pertinax. When he looked back towards the house and scowled at me, he had missed something else: two dark figures emerging from the darkness beneath the balcony.
One like a gladiator, and a nag… They must have heard me up above them. And as they slipped across the courtyard like twisted shadows on a badly polished hand-mirror they must also have realized that I was bound to see them too.
When Pertinax set off walking again, they silently made after him.
LXII
Nothing else transpired, but it seemed a long night.
That resentful tick would never surrender quietly. Helena Justina had a high sense of duty; he still made her feel responsible for his plight. So sooner or later Pertinax and I faced a private reckoning.
As my initial shock wore off, I remembered what I had heard about their marriage. Helena had led a solitary life. She slept alone in that beautiful room while Pertinax had his spacious quarters in a different wing, with Barnabas as his confidant. For a young, ambitious senator, taking a wife was an act of state service which he endured to win fools' votes. Having done it, Pertinax expected his marital rights, but begrudged her his time.
No wonder senators' wives run after gladiators and other low life forms. Pertinax should count himself lucky that his had the good manners to divorce him first.
Next morning I ambled about the villa looking for something to happen. I found the ex-Consul in a large garden at the back of the house, discussing asparagus with one of the staff.
'Seen your son this morning?' I hoped Pertinax had had a heavy weight dropped on his head by the two intruders during the night. But Marcellus disappointed me.
'Yes, I have. Falco, we need to talk…'
He said a few words about wilt to the gardener then we strolled, slowly because of the Consul's infirmity, among the formal flowerbeds. They had the usual profusion of urns, fountains, birdbaths and statues of Cupids with guilty expressions, though the Consul's landscape gardener was a passionate shrub man at heart. He had double quantities of box and rosemary planted out in scroll shapes; his trellises and stone borders were almost invisible under enthusiastic daphnes and rampaging quince. Everywhere lattices sagged under jasmine; huge mulberry trees were lovingly tended in formal parterres. Of the twelve species of roses, I counted at least ten.
'What are your intentions?' Marcellus asked bluntly.
'My instructions just don't cover this. The Emperor will expect me to consult before I act.' We had paused, staring into the sunlit depths of a lengthy fish-pool which placidly reflected his gaunt frame and my shorter, more sturdy one. I crouched down, admiring an unusual variegated periwinkle. 'Mind if I pull a shoot off this?'
'Take what you like.'
I jerked away a runner-that looked ready to reroot itself; the Consul watched in amusement. 'Family failing, sir! So, about your son, I can't see you letting me rope him to a donkey's tail. Even if I did, it's pointless if the Emperor then tells me he cannot possibly offend such a prominent man as yourself by locking up your heir. Domitian Caesar plotted too. Treating your son less leniently would be illogical.'
That was a gamble, but the Emperor did prefer easy solutions and an offer of an amnesty might make Marcellus co-operate.
‘And why,' he broached, eyeing me cannily down that massive nose of his, 'are you questioning an accident at the Temple of Hercules?'
'Because it was no accident! But I can count the beans in a pod. Any decent barrister should be able to convict Barnabas, but it will be hard to find a prosecutor able to stand up to the smooth-chinned, quicksilver lawyers who will rush to make their reputation defending a consul's son.'.
‘My son is innocent!' Marcellus insisted.
‘Most murderers are – if you ask them!' The Consul was careful not to let his annoyance show. 'Sir, Helena Justina's suggestion seems the best plan to me-'
‘No; it's out of the question! My son needs to resume his own name and status – a way must be found.'
‘You intend to stand. by him whatever the outcome?' 'He is my heir.'
We took a turn under a pergola.
'Sir, rehabilitation may be difficult. What if Vespasian reckons bringing the dead back to life raises too many questions? Since your fortune provides an obvious motive for fraud, he might find it more convenient to announce, "here's a wicked freedman hoping to profit by his patron's death"!'
'I will vouch for his real identity-'
‘Ah well, sir! You are an elderly man in poor health who has lost the heir he doted on. Naturally you want to believe he is still alive-'
'Helena will vouch for him!' the Consul snapped. I grinned.
'How true. And how fortunate for him!'
We both stood for a moment, smiling at how if Helena ever saw a mix-up she went flying in to speak out with the truth.
‘They should never have separated!' the Consul complained bitterly. 'I knew I should not have allowed it. Helena never wanted a divorce-'
'Helena Justina,' I agreed coolly, 'believes in marriage as a contract of close companionship to last for forty years. She knew,' I said flatly, having given myself a nervous twinge, ‘she did not have that with your son.'
'Oh, they could do!' Marcellus brushed it aside. 'My son has great promise; something must be done for him-'
'Your son's a common criminal!' This was true, though unhelpful. I added more mildly, 'I reckon Vespasian's old- fashioned respect for a patrician name will protect Pertinax Marcellus; he'll survive to tend your ancestors' death masks. One more criminal in the Senate makes no difference after all!
'A jaundiced view!'
'I spe
ak as I see. Consul, I've sampled the Herculaneum holding cell; it's crude. If I let Pertinax remain in your custody, will you honour the parole and keep him on the estate?
'Of course,' he said stiffly. I was not convinced Pertinax would stick to it, but I had no choice. Marcellus could call on scores of slaves to prevent an arrest. The ugly armed cavalry Pertinax had commanded when he tried to intercept me at Capua the day I arrived with Petro was probably estate blacksmiths and drivers, got up in iron hats.
'He will have to answer the charges against him,' I warned.
'Possibly,' replied the Consul offhandedly.
I felt utter frustration at his air of self-assurance; we were discussing treason and murder, but I had completely failed to impress on him how serious the situation was.
I gathered I was dismissed.
I found Helena on her balcony. I ran up and beamed at her; she was reclining with a beaker of cold water, sipping it uncertainly.
'Off colour?'
'Slow to wake up…' She smiled, with a private gleam that gave me a tickle in my throat.
'Look, the problem of Pertinax will depend on dispatches now. Don't expect an early adjudication from a gang of Palace clerks -' Helena gazed at me, assessing my reaction to last night's discovery. After a moment I muttered, 'How long have you known?'
'Since the night of the banquet.'
'You never said!'
'Are you jealous of Pertinax?'
‘No, of course not…
'Marcus!' she chided gently.
'Well what do you expect? When I walked in last night, I assumed he had come for the same reasons as me.'
'Oh I doubt it!' she laughed, in a dry tone. I was still sitting on the balcony parapet digesting this when someone brought me a messenger.
It was a slave from Herculaneum; Aemilius Rufus wanted to see me. I guessed this would be about Crispus. I had lost interest in Crispus – except for the fact that he was one quarry Vespasian had agreed to pay me for and I was desperate for cash.
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