While I was musing, Petronius had fallen silent, despite the glorious opportunity to rib me about the Auditorium of Maecenas last night. He must be tired after his shift. He never talked about his work much, but I knew how grim it could be.
Helena had her eyes shut, letting the sun soak into her as she tried to blot out the distant, wearing tantrum from Julia. The screams soared in volume.
'What can we do?' Helena asked Petro. He had three daughters, taken away by his wife to live with her boyfriend in Ostia; his children were all past the hysterical phase. He had lived through that, then lost them.
'It will pass. If not, you'll bloody soon get hardened to it.' His face had closed. He loved his girls. It did not help that he knew losing them had been his own fault. 'Probably a tooth.' Like all parents, he regarded himself as the expert and those of us who were new to the business as incompetent idiots.
'It's earache,' I lied. There was no visible reason for Julia to be going mad. Well, no, there was a reason. She had been a well-behaved child for far too long; we had gloated and thought parenting too easy. Now this was our punishment.
Petronius shrugged and rose to leave. Apparently he had forgotten about telling me his views on my poetry. I had no intention of reminding him.
'Go and see your client,' muttered Helena to me, knowing the client was non- existent and working herself up to be furious about being left to cope alone. She heaved herself from her stool, ready to attend to our offspring before neighbours issued writs.
'No need.' I was frowning down the street. 'I think he's found me of his own accord.'
You can usually spot them.
Fountain Court, the dirty alley where we lived, was a typical minor backstreet where deadbeats festered in dank lock-up shops. The buildings were six stories high. It managed to be gloomy right down to street level, yet even on a hot day like this the dirty tenements never provided enough shade. Between the crumbling walls surged the unpleasant smells of ink-making and over-warm corpses at the funeral parlour, while light gusts of smoke from various commercial sources (some legal) vied with humid updraughts of steam from Lenia's laundry opposite.
People walked through, about their morning business. The huge rope-twister, a man I never spoke to, had lurched past looking as if he had just come home after a long night in some oily jug. Customers visited the stall where Cassius sold slightly stale bread rolls along with even older gossip. A water-carrier slopped his way into one of the buildings; a chicken in fear of the plucker set up a racket by the poultry pens; it was the school holidays so children were out and about looking for trouble. And trouble of some other sort was looking for me.
He was a fleshy, untidy lump with his belly over his belt. Thin, untrimmed dark curls fell forwards over his brow and twisted backwards over his tunic's neck in damp-looking coils as if he had forgotten to dry off properly at the baths. Stubble patchily decorated a double chin. He came wandering along the street, clearly looking for an address. He was neither frowning enough for the funeral parlour, nor sheepish enough for the half-a-copper hag who two-timed the tailor. Besides, that woman held her horizontal at-homes in the afternoon.
Petronius passed him, not offering assistance, though he eyed up the man with deliberate vigiles suspicion. The fellow was noted. To be picked up later by a hit squad, maybe. He seemed oblivious instead of terrified. Must have lived a sheltered life. That did not necessarily mean he was respectable. He had the air of a freed slave. A secretary or abacus louse.
'Dillius Braco?'
'Didius Falco.' My teeth met grittily.
'Are you sure?' he insisted. I did not answer, lest my response should be uncouth. 'I hear you held a successful recital yesterday. Aurelius Chrysippus fancies we may be able to do something for you.'
Aurelius Chrysippus? It meant nothing, but even at that stage I had a dark feeling.
'I doubt it. I'm an informer. I thought you might want me to do something for you.'
'Olympus, no!'
'One thing you had better do is tell me who you are.'
'Euschemon. I run the Golden Horse scriptorium for Chrysippus.'
That would be some outfit where sweatshop scribes copied manuscripts – either for their owner's personal use, or in multiple sets for commercial sale. I would have perked up, but I had guessed that Chrysippus might be the Greek-bearded irritation who had taken over our recital. The wrong label he gave me in his introduction was about to stick. So much for fame. Your name becomes well known – in some incorrect version. It only happens to some of us. Don't tell me you've ever bought a copy of Julius Castor's Gallician Wars.
'Am I supposed to have heard of a scriptorium at the sign of the Golden Horse?'
'Oh, it's a top business,' he told me. 'Astonished you don't know us. We have thirty scribes in full employment – Chrysippus heard your work last night, of course. He thought it might be good for a small edition.'
Somebody liked my work. Involuntarily my eyebrows raised. I invited him inside.
Helena was with Julia in the room where I interviewed clients. The child ceased her raving immediately, her interest caught by the stranger. Helena would normally have carried her into the bedroom, but since Julia was quiet she was left on her rug, absent-mindedly chewing her wooden stag while staring at Euschemon.
I introduced Helena, shamelessly mentioning her father's patrician rank in case it helped imply I was a Poet to be patronised. I noticed Euschemon glancing around in astonishment. He could see this was a typical cramped lease, with one-colour painted walls, plain boarded floors, a meagre artisan's work table and lopsided stools.
'Our home is outside the city,' I said proudly. It sounded like a lie, of course. But we would be moving if ever the bathhouse contractors managed to complete their work. 'This is just a toehold we keep in order to be near my old mother.'
I explained quickly to Helena that Euschemon had offered to promulgate my work; I saw her fine brown eyes narrowing suspiciously. 'Are you visiting Rutilius too?' I asked him.
'Oh! Should I?'
'No, no; he shuns publicity.' I might be an amateur but I knew the rules. The first concern of an author is to do down his colleagues at every opportunity. 'So – what's this about?' I wanted to extract the offer, while pretending indifference.
Euschemon backed off nervously. 'As a new author you could not expect a large copy run.' He had a merry jest all ready; he must have done this before: 'The number we sell on your first publication may depend on how many friends and relatives you have!'
'Too many – and they will all expect free copies.' He looked relieved at my dry reaction. 'So what are you offering?'
'Oh, a full deal,' he assured me. I noticed his kindly tone – leave all the details to us; we understand this business. I was with experts; that always worries me.
'What does the deal entail?' Helena pressed him. Her tone sounded innocent, a senator's daughter, curious about this glimpse into the world of men. But she always looked after my interests. There had been a time when what I was paid – or if I was paid – bore a direct relation not just to what we could put on the table, but whether we ate at all.
'Oh, the usual,' muttered Euschemon off-handedly. 'We agree a price with you, then publish. It is straightforward.'
We both looked at him in silence. I was flattered, but not enough to grow stupid.
He expanded somewhat: 'Well, we shall take your manuscripts, Falco, for an appropriate price.' Would I like it, however? 'Then we make the copies and sell them from our outlet – which is attached directly to our scriptorium.'
'In the Forum?'
He looked shifty. 'Near the end of the Clivus Publicius. Right by the Circus Maximus – a prime location,' he assured me. 'Excellent passing trade.'
I knew the Clivus Publicius. It was a lonely hole, a back alley route down to the Circus from the Aventine. 'Can you give me a realistic figure?'
'No, no. Chrysippus will negotiate the price.'
I hated Chrysippus already. 'What are t
he options then? What kind of edition?'
'That depends on how much value we attach to the writing. Classics, as you know, are furnished with first quality papyrus and parchment tide pages to protect the outer ends of the scrolls. Lesser work has a less elaborate finish, obviously, while a first-time author's work may even be prepared as a palimpsest ' Copied onto scrolls that have already been used once, with the old lines sponged out. 'Very carefully done, I may say,' murmured Euschemon winningly.
'Maybe, but I wouldn't want that for my stuff. Who decides the format?'
'Oh, we must do that!' He was shocked that I had even raised the subject. 'We choose the scroll size, finished material, decoration, type and size of the edition – all based on our long experience.'
I played dumb. 'And all I have to do is write you something, then hand it over?'
'Exactly!' He beamed.
'Can I make further copies for my own use?'
He winced. 'Afraid not. But you can buy from us at a discounted rate.' Buy my own work?
'Bit one-sided?' I ventured.
'A partnership,' he chided me. 'We work together for mutual benefit.' He sounded as reliable as a cheap gigolo moving in on his mark. 'Besides, we develop the markets and we carry all the risk.'
'If the work doesn't sell, you mean?'
'Quite. The house of Aurelius Chrysippus is not in business to provide kindling for bathhouse furnaces when we are forced to remainder failures. We like to get it right first time.'
'Sounds good to me.'
A harder note crept into his bland tone. 'So I assume you are interested?'
I could see Helena, who was standing behind him, shaking her head passionately, with bared teeth.
'I'm interested.' I smiled blithely. Helena had closed her eyes. 'I would like to see more of what you do, I think.' Where she might have looked relieved at my caution, Helena now acted out manic despair; she knew what I would be like if I was let loose at a scroll-seller's. She read as avidly as I did – though when it came to buying, she did not share my taste. As my taste had until recently depended upon what I could lay hands on in a limited corner of the second- or third-hand market, she was probably right to be sceptical. For most of my life I only ever had parts of scroll sets (unboxed), and I had to swap them once they were read.
'Well, you can come down and see us,' Euschemon conceded grumpily.
'I will,' I said. Helena mimed throwing a large skillet at my head. It was an excellent mime. I could smell the dumplings in the imaginary hot broth and feel the sharp-edged handle rivets dinging my skull.
'Bring your manuscripts,' replied Euschemon. He paused. 'In case you should think of writing something specially, let me give you a few tips. Even our very best works do not exceed the Greek scroll length – that's thirty-five feet, but only applies to works of high literarymerit. As a rule of thumb, it's a book of Thucydides, two of Homer, or a play of fifteen hundred lines. Not many moderns rate full length. Twenty feet or even half that is a good average for a popular author.' He let me work out that my work might not be popular. 'So short is good – long could be penalised. And be practical in your setting-out if you want to be taken seriously. A scroll will have twenty-five to forty-five lines to a column, and eighteen to twenty-five letters to a line. Do try to accommodate our scribes. I'm sure you want to seem professional.'
'Oh yes,' I gulped.
'When you're calculating, don't forget to count the modern aids to the reader.'
'What?'
'Punctuation, spaces after words, line-end marks.'
These, presumably had taken the place of outmoded concepts like intensity of feeling, wit, and stylistic elegance.
V
Fuschemon had fallen into the old trap. He thought he had bamboozled me. Informers by repute are stupid; everyone knows that. Most of them really are – meticulous at not seeing and not hearing any valuable information, then misinterpreting what they do take in. But some of us know how to bluff.
I refrained, therefore, from rushing straight to the Chrysippus scriptorium, piteously eager to hand over my most inspired creations for a laughable fee. Not even if it came with a contractual right to buy back copies at whatever puny discount their normal cringing hacks accepted; not even if they offered me gold- leaf palmettes on their sales projection chart. Since I was an informer, I decided to check up on them. Since I had no clients (as usual), I was equipped with free time to do it. I knew the right contacts too.
My father was an auctioneer. Sometimes he dabbled in the rare scrolls market, though he was a fine art and furniture man at heart; he regarded second-hand literature as the low end of his trade. I was rarely on speaking terms with Pa. He ran off when I was seven, though he now maintained that he did give my mother financial support for bringing up the rowdy children he had sired. He may have had good reasons for leaving – better reasons than the allure of a certain redhead, anyway – but I still felt that since I grew up lacking a paternal presence, I could exist without the inconvenience of him now.
He enjoyed annoying me, so I wondered why Pa had not shown his face for my reading last night. He would not be deterred by the fact that I had failed to invite him. Once, Helena would have done so, for she had been on genial terms with the old rogue – but that was before he recommended Gloccus and Cotta, the bathhouse contractors who had made our new home uninhabitable. As their trestles and dust, and their lies and contractual wriggling, impelled her to the frustrated rage of any endlessly disappointed customer, Helena's opinion of my father had moved closer to my own; the only risk now was that she might decide that I took after him. That could finish us.
My father owned two properties that I knew of, although he was both well-off and secretive so there were probably more. His warehouse-cum-office was at the Saepta Julia, the enclosure inhabited by all sorts of double-dealing jewellers and hangdog antique frauds. It might be too early to catch him there. Auctions were held out on site, in private homes or sometimes in the Porticoes, but I had spotted no adverts for sales by Didius Geminus chalked in the Forum recently. That left his house, a tall edifice with a fine roof terrace and a damp basement down on the river frontage of the Aventine. It was the nearest place to look for him, though I always felt uneasy going there because of the redhead I mentioned. I can handle redheads, especially the elderly faded kind, but I preferred to avoid the trouble it caused with my mother if she ever heard I had met Flora. In fact I had only ever talked to the woman once, when I called in for a drink at a caupona she ran. She might have lived for twenty-five years with my father, but that gave us nothing to say to each other.
Climbing down to the river from the Aventine Hill is difficult, due to the sheer crag that faces the Transtiberina. I had a choice of descending via the Lavernal Gate to the bustle around the Emporium and then turning right, or going up past the Temple of Minerva, down a steep path towards the Probus Bridge, and walking back along the riverbank the other way.
Pa's house had a view across the water roughly towards the old Naumachia, had he been interested in tantalising glimpses of mock sea battles when they were staged at festivals. For the average real-estate crook it would probably count as a selling point.
This was a noisy, bustling area with the smell of exotic cargoes and the yammer of sailors and wharfside stevedores. If the wind was in the wrong direction a faint pall of dust from the huge granaries behind the Emporium hung in the air. Being so close to the river produced its own disturbing excitement. Being down amongst the cheating whelks who worked there kept me on my guard.
I risked a strained tendon manoeuvring the doorknocker. This hunk of bronze looked like part of a horse's leg from a multiple sculpture of some tangled battle scene. The door itself had an imposing size and importance that would better suit the secret shrine of a very snobbish temple. Not so the pallid runt who eventually answered; he was a timid slave who looked as if he was expecting me to accuse him of a particularly vile incestuous crime.
'You know me. I'm Falco. Is Geminus
in? Tell him his charming son is asking if he can come out to play.'
'He's not here!' squeaked the slave.
'Neptune's navel! When did he go out?' No answer. 'Buck up. I need to speak to him, and not next week.'
'We don't know where he is.'
'What? The old beggar's disappeared again? Who do you think he has run off with this time? He's getting rather ripe for fornication, though I know he does not reckon to be stopped by that -' The slave trembled. Perhaps he thought my father's lady love was about to appear behind him and overhear my rude remarks.
I was used to being fobbed off with excuses on doorsteps. I refused to give up. 'Do you know where my dear papa has gone, or when that most excellent piece of muledung is expected back?'
Looking more frightened than ever, the fellow then whispered, 'He hasn't been here since the funeral.'
This quaking loon was determined to flummox me. Obstruction was usual in my profession, and also a regular reaction from my family. 'Who's dead?' I chivvied him cheerfully.
'Flora,' he said.
It had nothing at all to do with me, and yet I knew I would end up becoming involved, despite myself.
VI
There was no escape. I now had to trek across town to the public building complex alongside the Field of Mars where Pa kept hiswarehouse and office in the Saepta Julia. That was a double-storeyed edifice, set around an open area, where you could buy any kind of junk jewellery and bric-a-brac or be fleeced over furniture and so-called art by masters of the auctioneering fraternity like Pa. Unless you were desperate to acquire a fifth-hand general's fold-up throne with one leg missing, you left your arm-purse at home. On the other hand, if you hankered for a cheap reproduction Venus of Cos with her nose glued on crookedly, this was the place to come. They would even wrap it up for you, and not laugh at your gullibility until you had almost left the shop.
Marcus Didius Favonius, renamed Geminus after he fled from home, the paternal ancestor upon whom I ought to model my life and character, had always skulked in clutter. I picked my way through the warehouse, getting covered in dust and acquiring a large bruise from an untethered man-sized candelabrum that toppled over as I passed. I found my father slumped against the stacked parts of several dismantled metal bed-frames, behind a small stone Arternis (upside down in a sack of pottery oddments but you could see she was a game girl), with his feet up on a horrible Pharaonic treasure chest. Luckily he was not wearing boots. That would save the tacky turquoise and gold veneer. He was not drunk but he had been. Probably for several days.
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