The skirmish was brief, however. 'You seem to bee man of taste,' she said.
'I like to bask at my own fire.' I liked rather more than that, and what suited my taste was not sold by the hour. My girl could never be bought.
Lalage dropped the subject, though not without a sneer. 'Well thanks for making it sound like an apology!'
'Aventine etiquette.'
She gave me a sharper look, but I chose to pretend I had said nothing significant. She still did not know what I was hinting; she had seen too many men to remember who I was. I felt her lose interest – leaving me with a strong sense of unfinished business.
Unexpectedly she spun back to Petro: 'I haven't got all day! What do you want?'
She was using our own separation routine; letting one relax, then trying to catch him off guard. Petro managed to avoid being thrown. His chin came up, but he turned it into a surly gesture by sweeping back his straight hair with one hand, like a dandy who didn't reckon on letting a mere woman make him jump. 'To discuss the Emporium heist.'
'Oh that was a loud one!' She rolled her eyes. They were still very beautiful: wide-set, large, dark as a winter evening, and melting with suggestiveness. Personally, I liked eyes with a more subtle challenge. But Lalage had nice eyes.
Petronius had noticed them, though only a close friend would know it. 'Yes, they're talking about it everywhere – but nobody's whispering who did the dirty deed.'
'Who do you think did it?' Lalage asked, pretending to flatter him.
'I haven't time to waste thinking. I want names.'
She tried the innocent-little-woman trick: 'Well what makes you believe I might know anything about thieves?'
Petro's temper was running short now. His teeth had locked. 'You mean, apart from the fact that your downstairs parlour is full of sneaks who follow funerals to rob the mourners, door-knock thieves who work the rush-the-porter game, balcony-crawlers, basement rats, and that little runt who hangs the fake fly in people's faces, then slits their purse thongs while they're brushing it away?'
I was impressed. We had only glimpsed the trading room for a moment. Petro must have sharp eyes. He certainly knew the streets… And I knew him. I recognised the signs: he felt uneasy with the location and was working up to dragging Lalage over to his station house. If she had been a well-bred schoolgirl who had never spoken to a public official he might have stood a chance. But he ought to realise what a fool he would look, trying to put an arm lock on a glittering saffron butterfly who would shriek abuse at him all the way to the Aventine. Arresting a brothel madam is never discreet.
'Are you talking raids again?' Lalage laughed. She knew he had lost his grip enough to give her the upper hand.
'He knows better,' I assured her. 'By the time we can bring the espartos in, the joint will be clean. Macra probably gave the word straight after she finished massaging your magistrate.'
'Well I do hope she was thorough,' grinned the madam shamelessly. 'A person of his status doesn't expect to be hustled!'
It seemed to me it was time the man was hustled out of office. Rome would never be cleaned up if every time Petronius brought a mugger to court the bad character could smile at a judge who had shared the ewer where he washed his privates after his Tuesday-afternoon binge. The fellowship of Plato's had insidious tentacles. A fact that was only one aspect of our visit today that had an aura of ambidextrous ethics. The smack of sticky payments seemed to be lurking everywhere.
Lalage's diversion failed. Petronius Longus was strictly unamused. 'Who's your landlord now?' he sprang on her. 'Who runs this place since Nonnius did his singing from the high twig and Balbinus Pius took a sail?'
'What sort of a question's that?'
'Well it's not about who has decorating rights under your building tenancy. Who's the mighty man behind you, Lalage?'
'I don't go in for boys' stuff.'
'Stifle the innuendo! Who's giving Plato protection? We proved in court that Balbinus used to cream off his percentage, so who skims Plato's now?'
'Nobody. Who needs it? I'm running everything myself.'
It was what we already suspected. Petronius screwed the corner of his mouth. "This had better be honest then.'
'Who needs a man?' scoffed Lalage lightly. 'I had it up to here with the old system. Balbinus demanded an exorbitant cut, then I was constantly giving presents to Nonnius to stop him breaking up the furniture – all ln return for a supposed service we never saw. Any trouble had to be sorted out by my own staff. What happened when the Lycian blew away was typical – we tried to clear up ourselves. I was doing the herd work, and Balbinus was just milking the business. That's over. The only commerce I'm interested in now is when men are paying me!'
'Someone will try to take over his position,' Petronius insisted.
'Let them try!'
'If it hasn't happened yet, now Balbinus has left Rome you'll meet with pressure eventually. When it happens, I want to know.'
'Sorry,' she answered acidly. 'You're in the same bumboat as all my customers: you'll get what you pay for – and no more!'
'That's closer to what I call a bargain,' Petronius responded, in his normal, level tone. 'For the big item, I'll be buying.'
She heaved her bosom, setting up ripples of light from the jewellery. The effect was less worrying than the eye trick, but highly professional. 'How much?'
'What it's worth. But I don't want shoddy goods or fakes.'
'You don't want much.' The last comment was amiable bluster. They had reached the real centre of the discussion; the terms were understood and more or less accepted by both sides. Whether that meant Lalage would ever produce any information was another matter.
'Bring me the name I need, and you won't regret it. You'll find me at the station house in the Thirteenth,' Petro announced politely.
'Oh go away,' she sneered, addressing me as if her patience with him had run out. 'And take the Big Unsusceptible with you!'
We were leaving. I turned back at the last moment to add a courtesy of my own. Giving the famous whore a generous smile, I said, 'I'm glad to see your ear healed up!'
While she and Petronius were thinking about it, I grabbed him by the elbow and we fled.
XXII
We emerged unscathed, though I for one wanted to head for the nearest respectable bathhouse.
'What was the crack about the lug, Falco?'
I just grinned and looked mysterious.
The place seemed much emptier than when we arrived. News spreads.
The girl Matra was standing back at the outside door. She looked edgy, but when she saw we were leaving peacefully she relaxed. As we passed her I heard a young child's cry. Macra noticed my surprise. 'Things happen, Falco!'
'I thought you were organised in places like this.' Some brothels were so organised, their expertise had led to them operating as neighbourhood abortists.
'Losing a baby's illegal, isn't it, officer?' Macra gurgled at Petronius. He looked tense. We all knew it would be a long time before anyone bothered to take a prostitute to court for this. The unborn are protected if there's a legacy in it; the unborn with shameless mothers have few rights.
'Like to see around the nursery?' the girl then offered Petro. There was a distinct undertone of offering him a prepubertal titbit. He declined in silence, and she giggled. 'You're a hard man to tempt! Maybe I'll have to come and see you in your station house.'
'Maybe I'll show you the cell!' Petro growled in annoyance. A mistake.
'It's a promise!' Macra shrieked. 'We know a client in the vigiles who does amazing things with chains during "interviews".'
Petronius had had enough. He took out his note tablet formally: 'And who would that be?'
'Well do you believe,' she leered at him, 'his name seems to just escape me..'
'You're a lying little flirt,' Petronius told her, fairly pleasantly. He put away the note tablet. We stepped out into the street with her jibes ringing along the narrow passage at our backs.
&n
bsp; 'So that's a brothel!' Petro said, and we both nudged each other, grinning at an old joke from the past.
We had hesitated, lacking plans. We should not have laughed. Laughing on a brothel doorstep can lead to disaster. Never do it before you have taken a careful look in both directions down the street.
Somebody we knew was coming towards us. Petro and I were already helpless. It was too late to make off discreetly; far too late to look less like guilty men.
Approaching down the narrow lane, crying loudly, was a little girl with big feet and a dirty face. She was seven years old, in a tunic she had outgrown months ago; with it she wore a cheap glass bracelet that a kind uncle had brought her from abroad, and an extravagant amulet against the evil eye. The evil eye had not been averted; the child was being dragged along by a small, fierce-old lady with a pinched mouth who had an expression of moral outrage even before she spotted us. Spot us she did, of course, just as we two emerged like utter layabouts from Plato's Academy.
The little girl was in deep trouble for playing truant. She was glad to see anyone else she could drag down to Hades with her. She knew we were exactly the distraction she needed.
'There's Uncle Marcus!' She stopped crying at once.
Her jailer stopped walking. Petro and I had been reprobates in our youth, but nobody in Rome knew that. Petro and I had not been stupid. We were reprobates abroad.
We had just blown our cover. My niece Tertulla stared at us. She knew that even bunking off school after her grand na had pinched and scraped to pay for it failed to match our disgrace. We knew it too.
'Petronius Longus!' cried the old lady in frank amazement, too horrified even to mention me. Petro was renowned as a good husband and family man, so this disaster would be blamed on me.
'Good afternoon,' murmured Petro shyly, trying to pretend he had not been chortling, or if he had it was only because he had just heard a very funny but perfectly tasteful story about an aspect of local politics. With great presence of mind he embarked upon explaining that we could not make ourselves available to escort people to a safer neighbourhood, owing to a message he'd just received about a crisis over at the station house.
At the same moment a flying figure whom I recognised as my fraught sister Galla came hurrying down the lane crying, 'Oh you've found the little honor!' Galla spent half her life oblivious to what her children might be getting up to, and the rest in guilty hysterics after somebody stupid had told her.
'I found more than that!' came the terse reply, as a pair of unmatchedly contemptuous eyes finally fixed themselves on me.
There was nowhere to hide.
'Hello, Mother,' I said.
XXIII
When I walked into my apartment I found someone standing in the doorway from the balcony. Her dark hair shone in the sunlight behind her; she had left its warmth immediately she heard my footfall.
She was full of grace and serenity. She wore a simple dress in blue, with a late October rosebud in a pin on the top seam. If she had used perfume, it was so discreet that only the favoured fellow who kissed her neck would be aware of it. A silver ring worn on her left hand showed her loyalty to whoever he was. She was everything that a woman should be.
I gave her a courteous nod.
'People will be racing to tell you,' I said, 'that Petronius and I spent an hour in a brothel near the Circus Maximus this afternoon. It's famous for offering disgusting services as bribes to the vigiles. We were witnessed coming out nudging each other guiltily, and with happy grins.'
'I know,' she said.
'I was afraid of that.'
'I dare say!'
The slender links of one bracelet slipped over her fine wrist as she lightly held a scroll. Her feet were bare. She, who should have been cushioned. on swan's-down amidst some great man's marble colonnades, had been reading in the warm sun, high above the squalor of the Aventine where she lived with me.
I selected a cool and formal tone. 'People overreact sometimes. I was with Petro when he reached his own house and couldn't make his wife answer the door. A neighbour shoved her head through a shutter and bawled, "She's taken the children to her mother's and your dinner's been thrown at the cat." I had to help him pick the lock. He loves that cat; he insisted on going in to look for it.'
She smiled. 'Every hero should have a tragic flaw.' I happened to know she didn't care for cats. I suspected she despised heroics too.
I thought it best to maintain a serious approach. 'Despite his pleading, I felt unable to escort him to fetch Arria Silvia from her mother's lair.'
Did you leave him by himself then?'
'He was all right. He had his cat..,' Something caught in my throat. 'I wanted to make sure you were still here.'
'I'm here'
'I'm glad.'
It was mid-afternoon. I had been as quick as possible, but I had gone to bathe. Now I was clean. Every inch of me was oiled and scraped, but I felt as if I walked in grime.
'Were you worried?' I asked.
Her dark eyes were fixed on me with a steadiness my heart was failing to match. 'I do worry when I hear you're in a brothel,' she told me in a low voice.
'I worry when I go into a brothel myself.' For some reason, I suddenly felt clean again. I smiled at her with special warmth.
'You have to do your work, Marcus.' There was a shade of resigned amusement lurking deep in Helena Justina's gaze. It seemed to me she had deliberately placed it there. While she waited for me she had taken her decision: either we could fight, and she would only end up feeling more wretched than when she started, or she would make it be like this. 'So what did you think of the brothel?' she asked quietly.
'It was a dump. They didn't have a monkey. I wouldn't take a senator's daughter near the place.'
'The monkey in the one we ran through was a chimpanzee,' she reminded me. Her tone was serious, but the seriousness was a joke.
Sometimes we did fight. Sometimes, because she wanted me too badly to use reason, I could make her quarrel bitterly. Other times, the intelligence with which she handled me was breathtaking. She set trust between us like a plank, and I just walked straight across.
I could see a very faint twist at the corners ofher mouth. If I chose to do it now, with merely a look in my eyes I would be able to make her smile.
I crossed the room. I came right up to her and took her by the waist. A slight colour stained her cheeks, echoing the unopened rose pinned to her dress. As I had suspected, the perfume was there for somebody who knew her well enough to come close enough to treat her tenderly. Not many had ever had that privilege. I breathed slowly. A whisper of cinnamon crept over me, not just any perfume, but one I particularly liked. It was fresh, only recently applied.
I let myself enjoy looking at her for a while. She enjoyed herself letting me drown gently in old memories and new expectations. I must have dropped my hand without intending it. I felt her fingers entwine in mine. I drew up both our hands and held hers hard against my chest.
The room was silent. Even the street noise beyond the balcony seemed far away. -
Helena leaned forward and brushed my mouth with a kiss. Then, with no flutes or incense or sticky wines, without needing to negotiate a price, without even needing words, we went to bed.
XXIV
By the time consciousness reasserted itself, my sister Galla had told my sister Junia, who had rushed to relate the tale to Allia, who – since she could no longer exclaim with Victorina, who was dead – told Maia. Maia and Alba normally did not get on, but this was an emergency; Allia was almost last in the queue and she was bursting to amaze somebody with news of my latest offence. Maia, who alone amongst them had a conscience, first decided to leave us alone with our trouble. Then, since she was a friend to Helena, she set off for our apartment to make sure nobody had left home over it. Had rapid action been necessary, Maia would have comforted anyone she found sobbing, then rushed out to look for the runaway.
While she was still on her way to us, I was rousing myse
lf. 'Thank you.'
'What for?'
'The sweet gift of your love.'
'Oh that!' Helena smiled. I had to close my eyes, or I would have been in bed with her until nightfall.
Then she asked me, wanting answers this time, about our visit to Plato's Academy. I rolled over on my back, with my arms behind my head. She lay with her cheek against my chest while I told her my impressions, ending with the fact that I had known Lalage long ago.
Helena laughed at the story. 'Did you tell her?'
'No! But I left a few hints to worry her.'
Helena was more interested in the results of our official enquiries: 'Did you believe her when she claimed she was going to resist having the place "protected" by a male criminal?'
'I suppose so. To call her competent would be an understatement! She can run the brothel and easily beat up anyone who tries to interfere.'
'So maybe,' suggested Helena, 'she was telling you more than you think.'
'Such as?'
'Maybe she would like to take over where Balbinus left off '
'Well we've agreed she wants to run her own empire. Are you suggesting something more?'
'Why not?'
'Lalage control the gangs?' It was an alarming thought.
'Think about it,' said Helena.
I was silent, but she must have known I always took her suggestions seriously. Grumpily I accepted this one, though it was against my will. If we could say Nonnius Albius had stepped into the space left by his former chief, things would be much simpler both to prove and to put right. If we needed to consider newcomers, let alone women, the affair assumed unwelcome complexity.
Wanting to make sure I had listened, Helena sprang up excitedly, leaning over me on her elbows. Then I noticed her expression change. With a sudden mutter she turned away out of bed and left me. She scampered next door, and I heard her being sick.
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