I dismissed the servants while I tried to decide. Helena urged, 'It could be important; you ought to go.'
'Only if you stay with Petro and Silvia until I get back.' 'Gnaeus will never hurt me.'
'You don't know that,' I scowled, irritated by her use of his familiar name.
'He needs me.'
'I hope not! What for?'
By then I was so agitated she had to confess. 'This is bound to upset you. The Consul has convinced him he ought to remarry me.' She was right. I was upset. 'You would ask! Listen, Caprenius Marcellus has two great aims: salvaging a public career for Gnaeus, and obtaining an heir. A grandchild would secure the estate-'
'I don't want to hear this. You appall me sometimes; how can you even speak of it?'
'Oh, a girl does need a husband!' Helena suggested ironically.
It was completely unfair. I shrugged, struggling to express my own lack of status, and contacts, and cash. Then hopeless rage took over. 'Well you know what to expect from that one! Neglect, uninterest – and probably worse now! Did he beat you? Don't worry; he will!' Helena was listening with a set face as I crashed on like a loose heifer in a melon patch. 'Well, you're a man. I'm sure you know!' she retorted stiffly. I jumped down from my perch.
'You do what you want, my darling! If you need to be respectable, and you think that's the way, you go back to him -' I lowered my voice, restraining myself because she needed to remember this: 'But any time you've had enough of it, I'll come and fetch you out of it.' I was off along the balcony. 'That's called loyalty!' I threw back insultingly.
'Marcus!' she pleaded; I set my back and refused to answer her.
Half-way down the estate road I saw Pertinax. He was schooling his horses on the riding range; even at a distance he looked thoroughly absorbed. He had both the racers out. He kept one in the shade while he was galloping the other. It was far more deliberate than the young men's light recreation for which that tree-shaded area had been first designed. He was working them professionally. He knew exactly what he was doing; the procedure was a joy to watch.
Little Sweetheart was snuffling in the grass for poisonous plants that would give him belly ache. Pertinax was on the champion, Ferox. If he had been alone, I would have fought him then and settled everything, but Bryon was with him.
Bryon, who was leaning on a post eating figs, stared at me curiously but with his master there I did not speak. Pertinax ignored me. The sombre skill with which he was galloping Ferox seemed to emphasize the advantages he would always have over me.
There was fresh mule dung under the cypress trees, but the two animals I found there last night had gone. I had a feeling I would soon see them again.
I had marched all the way to the high road before a boy caught up with me.
He only had to run as far as the herm. I was sitting on a boulder, cursing myself for quarrelling with Helena, cursing her, cursing him… desperately worrying.
‘Didius Falco!'
The lad had fish pickle spilt down his tunic, a skin problem it was better not to think about, and badly grazed, dirty knees. But if he had been fainting on a podium in the slave market I would have mortgaged my life to save him from cruelty.
He handed me a waxed tablet. The writing was new to me, though my heart leapt. It was short, and I could hear Helena's aggravated tone in every word:
He near hit me; though I always felt he might. What makes you think I could choose someone like that, after I had known you?
Don't fall in any water. HJ
Back at home on the Aventine I sometimes found love letters lying on my door-mat. I never kept incriminating correspondence. But I had the feeling that in forty years' time when my pale-faced executors were sorting through my personal effects, this was a letter they would find wrapped in linen, tucked down the side of my stylus box among the sealing wax.
LXIII
The fact he had asked me to visit him did not mean that Aemilius Rufus troubled to be at home when I arrived. He was in court all day. I had lunch at his house, politely hanging round for him. Rufus wisely ate out.
I perched on one of the knife-edged silver seats, leaning against its unyielding horsehair cushions with the pensive expression of a man who cannot get his bottom comfortable. I was wriggling about beneath a frieze of King Pentheus being torn to shreds by Bacchantes (nice relaxing subject for a waiting room) when I heard Aemilia Fausta going out; I stuck fast in my stuffy nook, avoiding her.
Eventually Rufus deigned to return. I popped my head out. He stood talking to a lank boy, a good-looking Illyrian slave who was squatting on the front step cleaning out the wickholder of an interesting lantern; it had rattling bronze carrying chains, opaque horn sides to protect the flame, and a removable top which was pierced with ventilation holes.
'Hello, Falco!' Rufus was staggeringly agreeable after his lunch. 'Admiring my slave?'
'No, sir; I'm admiring his lamp!'
We exchanged a whimsical glance.
We adjourned to his study. This at least had some character, being hung with souvenirs he had picked up on foreign service: peculiar gourds, tribal spears, ships' pennants, moth-eaten drums – the sort of stuff Festus and I hankered after when we were teenagers, before we moved on to women and drink. I declined wine; Rufus himself decided against, then I watched him becoming sober again as his meal took effect. He threw himself sideways onto a couch, giving me the best view of his profile and the glints in his golden hair that shimmered in the sunlight coming through an open window. Thinking about women and the sort of men they fall for, I hunched glumly on a low seat.
'You wanted to see me, sir,' I reminded him patiently.
'Yes indeed! Didius Falco, events certainly liven up when you're around!' People often say this to me; can't imagine why.
'Something about Crispus, sir?'
Perhaps he was still trying to use Crispus to do himself some good, because he sloughed off my question. I quelled my next thought: that his sister had made some obnoxious complaint to Rufus about me. 'I have had a visitation!' he complained sulkily. Magistrates in dull towns like Herculaneum expect a quiet life. 'Does the name Gordianus mean anything to you?'
'Curtius Gordianus,' I classified carefully, 'is the incumbent elect for the Temple of Hera at Paestum.'
'You keep up with the news!'
'Good informers study the Forum Gazette. Anyway, I've met him. So why did he approach you?'
'He wants me to arrest someone.'
A long core of stillness set like cooling metal down the centre of my chest. 'Atius Pertinax?'
'Then it is true?' Rufus asked warily. 'Pertinax Marcellus is alive?'
'Afraid so. When the Fate was snipping his thread, some fool jogged her elbow. Is this what you heard at the banquet?'
'Crispus hinted.'
'Crispus would! I was hoping to play off Crispus and Pertinax against one another… So were you, I dare say!'
He grinned. "Gordianus seems set on complicating things.'
'Yes. I should have expected it.' This new move by the Chief Priest fitted his stubborn intensity. I could envisage him after I had left Croton, brewing to the boil as he mourned his brother's death. And now that the magistrate had mentioned Gordianus, I remembered those two familiar shadows I had observed the previous night – and identified them. 'He has two lookouts keeping Pertinax under day-and-night surveillance.'
'Does that mean you have seen him?'
'No. I've seen them.'
The magistrate eyed me, uncertain how much I knew. ‘Gordianus spun me a weird tale. Can you shed any light, Falco?'
I could. So I did.
When I finished Rufus whistled softly. He asked sensible legal questions then agreed with me; the evidence was all too circumstantial. 'If I did place Pertinax Marcellus under arrest, more facts might emerge-'
'A risk though, sir. If some widow without two sesterces to rub together had put this case to you, you would decline to hear it.'
'Oh, the law is impartial, Falco!'
‘Yes; and barristers hate to earn a fee! How did Gordianus know Pertinax was hereabouts?'
'Crispus told him. Look, Falco, I shall have to take Gordianus seriously. You are an Imperial agent; what is the official view?'
‘Mine is that if Gordianus forces a trial it will raise a bad smell all the way from here to the Capitol. But he might succeed despite the lack of evidence. We both know the sight of a grief-stricken brother calling out for justice is the sort of sentimental scene that makes juries sob into their togas and convict.'
‘So I should arrest Pertinax?'
‘I believe he killed Curtius Longinus, who may have threatened to expose him, and later he tried to kill Gordianus too. These are serious charges. It sticks in my craw to grant him a pardon simply because he is a consul's adopted son.'
Aemilius Rufus listened to my grounds for action with the caution I should have expected from a country magistrate. If I had been the victim of a malicious prosecution based on flimsy evidence, I might have commended his thoroughness. As it was, I felt we were wasting time.
We talked round the problem for another hour. In the end Rufus decided to throw it over to Vespasian: just the sort of negative compromise I despised. We stopped the next Imperial dispatch rider who came through town. Rufus penned an elegant letter; I tore off a terse report. We told the horseman to ride all night. Even at the rate they travel the earliest he could arrive in Rome was dawn tomorrow, but Vespasian liked reading his correspondence at first light. Thinking of Rome, I was buffeted by homesickness, and wished I had dashed off with the message to the Palatine myself.
'Well. Nothing else we can do now,' the magistrate sighed, swinging his athletic torso into a sitting position so he could reach a tripod table and pour us wine. 'May as well enjoy ourselves-'
He was not the type I choose for a companion and I wanted to leave, but writing reports gives me a strong urge to get drunk. Especially at a senator's expense.
I almost suggested we went out to the baths together, but some lucky fluke stopped me. I hooked myself upright, stretched, and hopped over to fetch my wine; once in possession I condescended to sit on his couch to facilitate clinking cups like the cronies we weren't. Aemilius Rufus favoured me with his relaxed, golden smile. I buried myself gratefully in his Falernian, which was immaculate.
He said, 'I'm sorry I never saw much of you when you were tutoring my sister. I have been hoping to put that right-'
Then I felt his right hand fondling my thigh, while he told me what beautiful eyes I had.
LXIV
I have only one reaction to approaches like that. But before I could trump my fist against his handsome Delphic jawbone he removed his hand. Someone he could not be expecting came into the room.
'Didius Falco, I'm so glad I caught you!' Bright eyes, clear skin, and a swill, light step: Helena Justina, the darling of my heart. 'Rufus, excuse me, I came to see Fausta but I gather she is dining out… Falco, it's much later than I expected, so if you are going back to the villa,' she suggested serenely, 'may I travel under your protection? If that suits your own plans, and is not too much trouble-'
Since the magistrate's wine was the very best Falernian, I drained my cup before I spoke.
'Nothing is too much trouble for a lady,' I replied.
LXV
'You might have warned me!'
'You were asking for all you got!'
'He seemed such a gentleman – he caught me by surprise…'
Helena giggled. She was heckling me through the window of her sedan chair while I walked alongside grumbling. 'Drinking wine with him, snuggling on one seat with your tunic up over your knees and that doe-eyed, vulnerable look-'
'I resent that,' I said. 'A citizen ought to be able to drink where he likes without it being interpreted as an open invitation to advances from men he hardly knows and doesn't like-'
'You were drunk.'
'Irrelevant. Anyway I was not! Lucky you came to see Fausta-'
'Luck,' rapped back Helena, 'had nothing to do with it! You were away so long I started worrying. I passed Fausta actually, going the other way. Were you glad I came?' she suddenly smiled.
I stopped the chair, brought her out, then made the bearers walk ahead while we followed in the twilight and I demonstrated whether I was glad.
'Marcus, why do you think Fausta was heading for Oplontis? She had discovered that a certain someone will be at Poppaea's villa again, treating the commander of the fleet to dinner again.'
'Crispus?' I groaned, and reapplied myself to other things. 'What's so special about the Misenum prefect?' wondered Helena, unimpressed by the distractions I was offering.
'No idea.'
'Marcus, I shall lose my ear-ring; let me take it off.' 'Take off anything you want,' I agreed. Then I found myself being drawn into considering her question. The damned Misenum fleet commander had adroitly intruded himself between me and romantic mood.
Ignoring the British squadron, which is almost beneath the notice of anybody civilized, the Roman Navy orders itself in the only way possible for a long narrow state: one fleet based over at Ravenna to guard the eastern seaboard, and another at Misenum in the west.
Answers to several questions were suggesting themselves now. 'Tell me,' I broached thoughtfully to Helena. 'Apart from Titus and the legions, what was the key feature of Vespasian's campaign to become Emperor? What was worst in Rome?'
Helena shuddered. 'Everything! Soldiers in the streets, murders in the Forum, fires, fever, famine-'
'Famine,' I said. 'In a senator's house I suppose you managed as normal, but in our family no one could get bread '
'The corn!' she responded. 'It was critical. Egypt supplies the whole city. Vespasian had the support of the Prefect of Egypt, so he sat all winter in Alexandria, letting Rome know that he controlled the grain ships and without his good will, they might not come.
'Now suppose you were a senator with extraordinary political ambitions, but your only supporters were in deadbeat provinces like Noricum-'
'Noricum!' she chortled.
'Exactly. No hope there. Meanwhile the Prefect of Egypt still strongly supports Vespasian, so the supply is assured – but suppose this year, when the corn ships hail in sight of the Puteoli peninsula-'
'The fleet stops them!' Helena was horrified. 'Marcus, we must stop the fleet!' (I had a curious vision of Helena Justina sailing out from Neapolis like a goddess on a ship's prow, holding up her arm to stop a convoy in full sail.) She reconsidered. 'Are you really serious?'
'I think so. And we're not talking about a couple of sacks on the back of a donkey, you know.'
'How much?' demanded Helena pedantically.
'Well, some wheat is imported from Sardinia and Sicily; I'm not sure of the exact proportions, but a clerk in the office of the Prefect of Supply once told me the amount needed annually to feed Rome effectively is fifteen billion bushels -'
The Senator's daughter permitted herself the liberty of whistling through her teeth.
I grinned at her. 'The next question is, whether Pertinax or Crispus is now the prime mover of this abominable plan?'
'Oh that's answered!' Helena assured me in her swift, conclusive way. 'It's Crispus who is entertaining the fleet.'
'True. I reckon they were in it together, but now Pertinax has taken to assaulting all and sundry, Crispus views him as a liability… The corn ships leave for Egypt in April -' I mused… Nones of April – Galatea and Venus of Paphor, four days before the Ides, Flora; two days before May, Bulimia, Concordia, Partheuope, and The Graces… 'It takes three weeks to get there and as much as two months to sail back again against the wind. The first ones home this year must be overdue -'
'That's a problem!' Helena muttered. 'If this fiasco takes to the water, you'll be stuck!' I thanked her for the confidence, and quickened my step. 'Marcus, how do you think they are planning to proceed?'
'Hold up the ships when they arrive here, then threaten to sail them off to some secret locatio
n? If I was doing it, I'd wait until the Senate sent some stiff-necked praetor to negotiate, then start emptying the sacks overboard. The vision of the Bay of Neapolis being turned into one vast porridge bowl would probably produce the sight effect.'
'On the whole,' said Helena with feeling, 'I'm glad it's not you doing it! Who asked you to investigate the corn imports?' she asked me in a curious tone.
'No one. It was something that I stumbled on myself.' For some reason Helena Justina hugged me and laughed. 'What's that for?'
'Oh, I like to think I've cast my future into the hands of a man who is good at his work!'
LXVI
I decided to raid Poppaea's villa while Crispus was there.
Ideally I would have slipped inside the place on my own. My expertise as an informer would lead me straight to the diners at the moment when they concluded the sordid details of their plan; then, equipped with hard evidence, M. Didius Falco, our demigod hero, would confront them, confound them, and single-handedly clap neck-irons on the lot.
Most private informers will boast of such ideal episodes. My life had a crankier pattern of its own.
The first problem was that Helena, Petronius and Larius, who were all highly inquisitive, came too. We arrived like second-rate temple drummers, too noisy – and too late. As we stood on the terrace debating how best to get in, the supper party streeled out past us. There was no chance of extracting a confession from any of them – or the slightest sense.
Crispus himself led the exodus, feet first and face down; he knew nothing about anything. The dispassionate slaves who were bringing him to his skiff had simply lifted the dinner table he had fallen across, limbs akimbo, then bumped him outside on it like a finished dessert course, with tonight's limp wreath hung on one of the handles and his shoestraps through another. It would be a long time before his honour woke up, and he would not make a good subject for interview at that point.
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