‘I don’t see why not.’
‘I do. The men she hangs around with know she’s not looking for a husband. It makes it easier for them-not having to worry about the fact they all have wives!’
Helena sighed.
We were standing on a corner of the great Appian Way. It was about as public as the Forum of the Romans on a quiet day. Brown-clad slaves with baskets and amphorae on their bent shoulders butted up the street in both directions trying to get in the way of five or six litters carrying ladies from refined homes. Workmen were chiselling unconvincingly at the dark bulk of the old aqueduct, the Aqua Marcia. A cart laden with marble slabs came by, struggling to mount the raised pavement as it lurched out of control. Three donkey-drovers waiting to overtake it, two old women with a goose, and the queue on a bench outside a barber’s had tired of watching the cart and started to notice us.
To make the day memorable for everyone, I slid my arms around Helena Justina and kissed her. Rome is a city of sexual frankness, but even in Rome senators’ daughters are rarely grappled on street corners by creatures who are obviously only one rank up from woodlice. I had caught her off guard. There was nothing she could do to stop me, and no reason for me to stop of my own accord. A small crowd collected.
When finally I let her go Helena became aware of the crowd. She remembered we were in the refined Capena Gate sector, home of her illustrious parents. ‘There are rules, Falco!’ she muttered hotly.
I had heard that in patrician circles husbands had to make appointments three days ahead if they wanted to embrace their wives. ‘I know the rules. I felt like changing them.’
‘Do it again, and I’ll jab my knee somewhere painful.’
I kissed her again, so she applied the knee, though her nerve failed and it was too gentle to do damage. The crowd applauded anyway.
Helena looked upset; she thought she had hurt me. ‘Goodbye Marcus!’
‘Goodbye, my darling,’ I responded in a pained croak. Now she suspected me of feigning.
Helena strode to her father’s house in her most frosty style. I watched her right to the door, with my arms folded. While she waited for the porter, whose attentions at the door were always haphazard, she turned back furtively to check that I was gone. I grinned and then left, knowing she was safe. Her family would lend her an escort of slaves when she wanted to go back to the Aventine.
After the tension at Marina’s I felt stiff and in need of action. I made a detour for some weight training. There was plenty for a man to do at the gymnasium. I managed to linger for hours.
‘We’re seeing a lot of this customer lately,’ Glaucus commented in his wry way. ‘You guessed it; the customer is trying to avoid his family!’ Calmer, I nearly put off further investigation. But kissing Helena publicly in the street had reminded me of my preference for kissing her more privately. If Petronius decided to arrest me there would be no point struggling to rehouse us, but if I could manage to keep out of jail, new furniture for my wrecked apartment was a priority.
‘Petronius was looking for you,’ Glaucus warned me. My trainer had a restrained way of speaking that could play on my worst fears.
‘Skip it. I’m avoiding Petro as well…’
I didn’t care whether or not I interviewed my father, but Petronius Longus would never expect to find me in his company, so a visit to Geminus promised me some breathing-space. Besides, where my father was I might find a cheap bed. So I set off for the Saepta Julia.
With my cloak around my ears, I emerged from the bathhouse into the Forum, skulked past the Temple of Fortune below the Citadel, and furtively made for the Theatre of Marcellus, my starting-point for a hike into the Campus Martius. Everyone I passed seemed to look at me twice, as if my tunic had a foreign cut or my face was a suspicious shape.
Now that I was going to see Geminus my sour mood returned. I still felt restless. Little did I know I was heading for a chance to expend real energy.
Many public buildings have been inflicted on the Campus by men who thought they ought to be famous-all those pompously named theatres, baths, porticoes and crypts, with the occasional temple or circus to keep the tourists agape. I passed through without noticing them; I was too busy looking out for officers of the watch, in case Petronius had instructed them to look out for me.
The Saepta Julia lay between the Baths of Marcus Agrippa and a Temple of Isis; it had the Temple of Bellona at the end nearest my approach. I took a long detour round the Flaminian Circus, partly to stay unobtrusive. I was too bored to go straight up the road which reaches the Saepta the simple way. I came out near Pompey’s Theatre, facing the long Porticus in front of it. I could hear a lot of noise, so I turned my boots that way.
The Porticus of Pompey was the usual impressive enclosure. Heavy architecture on four sides formed a secluded interior space where men could hang about pretending to admire works of art while they hoped something more lively would turn up: an invitation to dinner, a quarrel, an expensive boy with a body like a Greek god, or at least a cheap female prostitute. Today the interior was stuffed with goods and people. No need for me to walk further: an auction was being held there, supervised by none other than my loathed papa.
The goods he was shifting looked authentic from a distance and only mildly dubious from closer to. He knew the trade.
I could hear him up on his trestle, trying to cajole bids. He had a slow, unsensational voice that carried effortlessly round the inner quadrangle. From his vantage point above the crowd I presumed he would soon see me. I made no attempt at contact. We would be face to face and quarrelling soon enough.
He was trying to rustle up interest in a mixed batch of folding stools. ‘Look at this one: pure ivory; beautifully carved. Probably from Egypt. The noble Pompey himself might have sat on it-‘
‘Pompey had his noble head cut off in Egypt!’ a heckler called out cheerfully.
‘True, sir, but his noble arse was left intact-‘
Pompey’s stool was part of a house clearance. Someone had died and the heirs were selling up so they could divide the cash. On inspection these relics of a departed life were faintly sad: half-used flagons of ink and rolls of untouched papyrus, lidless grain jars still part full of wheat, baskets of old boots, bales of blankets, the bowl they used to feed the watchdog from. There were pans with loose handles and oil-lamps with broken noses. Lazy bidders settled their backsides against couches with chipped legs and shredded material: signs of long wear that an owner stops noticing but which stood out pathetically here.
That said, it had been a middle-class household; to me that hinted of bargains, for the family money was probably recent and the chattels had a modern air. I adopted a casual attitude, while scanning the lots eagerly.
No sign of a bed, of course; the one thing I wanted. I could see some good outdoor stoneware (I had no garden, but in Rome dreams are cheap). The outstanding piece in the sale was a pedestal table with a huge citron-wood top that must have cost thousands; even in the open air on a dull winter’s day its grain shimmered lustrously. Geminus had had it polished up with oil and beeswax. I drooled, but moved on to a group of neat bronze tripods of various sizes. One, with lion’s feet and a nicely scrolled lip to stop things rolling off the top, involved a fascinating device for adjusting its height. I had my head underneath, trying to work out how to move it, when one of the porters nudged me.
‘Don’t bother. Your old fellow’s slapped a huge reserve on that. He wants it himself.’
Trust him.
I glanced at Pa on his trestle, a short but commanding figure with untidy grey curls and a straight, sneering nose. Those dark eyes of his missed nothing. He must have been watching me for some minutes. Gesturing at the tripod, he gave me a derisive wave to confirm that I would be overbid. For a wild second I would have given anything to get the adjustable tripod-then I remembered that is how auctioneers grow rich.
I moved on.
The heirs were determined to milk their inheritance. A pair of folding wooden
doors that probably once graced a dining-room had been lifted off their pivots. The bronze dolphin from a fountain had been wrenched from its plinth, grazing the poor creature’s beak. The looters had even cut handsome painted panels from interior walls, shearing them off on thick rectangles of plaster. Geminus would not approve of it. Neither did I.
Other things were not quite right today. Being a born rifler through rubbish, at first the sale goods held my attention and I hardly noticed the people or the atmosphere. Then gradually I began to suspect that I had walked in on a situation.
The auction would have been publicised for a week or so at the Saepta. Big sell-offs attracted a regular core of buyers, most of whom would be known to Geminus. Some I even recognised myself: dealers, plus one or two private collectors. There was little here for real connoisseurs, so those in search of serious art were already drifting off. The dealers were a shabby, peculiar lot, but they were there for a purpose and got on with it. A few passers-by could always be expected to wander in, and the Porticus had its daily quorum of unemployed intellectuals hanging about. Then there were various people looking embarrassed because they were auction novices; they probably included the sellers, trying to check up on Geminus, and curious neighbours of the dead man who had come to pick over his library and sneer at his old clothes.
Among the usual time-wasters in the cloisters I spotted five or six awkwardly large men who did not fit in at all. They stood about in separate places but wafted a clear smell of confederacy. They all wore one-armed tunics like labourers, but with leather accessories that could not have been cheap-wrist-guards, ponderous belts with enamelled buckles, the odd hide cap. Though they sometimes pretended to inspect the merchandise, none of them bid. Geminus had his regular cadre of porters bringing the lots to him, but they were an elderly squad, significant for their small size and meek manners. He never paid much; his labour force had stayed with him out of habit, not because they were growing fat on it.
It struck me that if thieves were planning to raid a sale in progress (which had been known), I had best hang around.
Hardly had I reached this magnanimous decision, when the trouble began.
XXII
More people were arriving to swell the crowd: ordinary men in twos and threes, wearing ordinary tunics and cloaks. Nothing to get stirred up about.
Geminus had moved on to the lamps.
‘First lot in this section: an important piece, gentlemen-‘ He was not a lamps man; big pots and carpentry were what grabbed his attention, so he was galloping through the lighting more rapidly than it deserved. ‘A silver lampadarium, in the form of a Corinthian column, deft architectural detailing, four arms, one lamp chain is missing but could easily be replaced by a competent silversmith. An extremely nice item… Who’ll start at a thousand?’
Bids were sluggish. Winter is a bad time for selling. The gloomy weather made everything, even deft architectural detailing, look dull. If people care for their heirs they should die when it’s hot.
A yard from me a customer, one of the ordinary cloak men, pulled a plum-coloured coverlet from a basket. It had a loose end of fringe dangling; he gave it a disparaging tug, which was fair comment, but then turned to his companion with a laugh and deliberately ripped a yard more from its stitches.
A porter stepped forward adroitly and reclaimed the material. Most people noticed nothing. But I spotted two of the big lads moving disturbingly closer.
‘Now a charming set,’ Geminus was announcing. ‘A pair of candelabra in the form of trees, one with a pine marten creeping up the stem to catch a bird in the branches-‘ Someone to the left of me knocked the elbow of a porter who had been carrying a rack of condiment pots; little brown jars skittled everywhere, their gooey contents sticking sandals to the gravel as people tried to step away but found their feet welded to the pathway by old fish pickle. ‘The other column has a household cat about to spring-‘ A porter sprang, just in time to steady a pile of round silver scroll boxes that were teetering off balance.
Around me the atmosphere was altering. In a second, for no obvious reason, the mood became rough. I spotted the eldest porter swiping a large gilded urn from the centre of the big citron table; he threw the metalware into a chest and slammed the lid for safety. Above the heads of the crowd I spied one columnar lamp being wielded so that it tangled in the thicket of others waiting to be sold, knocking them down like pine trees in a hurricane. Two dealers, who realised what was happening, stepped back on their way out and accidentally fell among crates of kitchen gear. Cries of alarm went up as innocent viewers found themselves being jostled. Fine goods received rough treatment. Sensitive people took elbow jabs in delicate spots.
Near the auctioneer’s raised platform the populace had thinned out fast as damage occurred on every side. Pottery was smashing all around and loose bronzes were bowling under foot. One of the large thugs was grappling another man, with dangerous results for Geminus; they swayed furiously against the trestle, which creaked and collapsed. I heard Geminus call a warning that changed into protest. After forty years of bellowing bids, his yell cut the air with a rasp that hurt, then he disappeared in a jumble of slats and spars.
The porters were doing what they were supposed to if a fracas arose: throwing themselves on the stuff, best pieces first, then hurling it back into the carts and crates in which it had been brought to the Porticus. As Gornia, their foreman, nipped past me gathering up valuables, he squawked, ‘Show some filial piety, Marcus; give us a bloody hand with this!’
Filial piety was not my strong point, but I was prepared to join in a fight. I looked around for something useful. I seized a curtain-pole; it still had a curtain attached, so I wound that round hastily before whirling the whole heavy flagstaff to clear myself space. It marked me as trouble. As two of the big men in the hide caps ran at me, I swung the rod across their knees and cut off their rush like sickling corn.
Suddenly my father scrambled out of the wreckage of his stand. He was clutching the auction cash box and looked a nasty reddish colour. ‘Not them! Not them!’ I ignored him. (The traditional filial response.) ‘Go for the other lot, you idiot-‘ The big chaps I had been attacking must be muscle Geminus had hired. Things must be desperate if he actually paid for protection.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him upright while he still mithered on at me. ‘Settle down, Pa. I haven’t damaged your bouncers-‘ Well, not much.
His frustrated cry was cut off as one of the supposedly innocent customers rammed him in the chest with a rolled carpet. Still breathless from his previous fall, he could not resist the blow.
One of the bouncers grabbed the ‘customer’ who had felled Geminus. Seizing him round the waist, he swung the fellow, carpet and all, so that he belted another troublemaker sideways with his woven load. Struggling to realign my loyalties I whammed my curtain-pole into the second man, and batted him back again. It cleared a path for my father to escape with the cash box (his main priority), while I launched myself into the midst of another fracas.
Someone had a reading-couch completely upended on one of its sphinx-shaped ends and was turning it towards a group of bystanders. I managed to lean on him while another came at me. The end of my pole painfully settled that one, though I lost my weapon in the process. The couch crashed down, leaving one sphinx with a broken wing and several folk with badly squashed toes. Somebody came at me from behind. Applying my shoulder as I spun round, I knocked my assailant on to his back on the citron table; I gripped his belly and with a wild shove skidded him along the polished wood. His belt stud scoured out a livid white scar. My father, reappearing at exactly the wrong moment, hollered with anguish; he would rather have seen ten men butchered than witness fine wood being damaged.
The leather boys were slow learners. They still regarded me as part of the organised rumpus. I was fighting back, while I tried to remember to hit the big lads gently in order to lessen Father’s compensation claim. Even so, if they charged him by the bruise, he would soon be digg
ing deep.
It was no time for finesse. I aimed a large stone pestle at someone’s neck; it missed, but the sensational crack as it hit the ground stopped him short in his tracks. I managed to shut another’s man arm in a heavy box so that he screamed out with pain. I saw my father ramming someone against a column as if he were trying to demolish the whole Porticus. At this point the porters grew tired of protecting the silverware and raced in ready to break teeth. The little old chaps were tougher than they looked. Soon wiry arms were flailing and bald heads were butting people as the auction staff took a hand. The giants had finally grasped that I was family and lined up with me. The opposition decided their hour was up and fled.
‘Do we follow them?’ I yelled at Gornia, the whiskery chief porter. He shook his head.
A mop of grey curls appeared again as my father brought his presence to bear on the wreckage of his sale. ‘This won’t encourage the buyers. I think we’ll call it a day!’
‘That’s shrewd!’ I was busy reassembling a fold-up chair that had been unfolded rather too drastically. ‘Strikes me, someone else blew the trumpet on this sale…’ When I got the chair back together, I sat down on it like a Persian king surveying a battlefield.
Geminus had clapped a consoling arm around one of the muscle-men; he was holding his eye after a particularly well-aimed blow from me early on in the fight. Several of the others had shines that would be glowing by tomorrow. I was well bruised myself, come to that. They gave me what I hoped were admiring looks; I started to feel exposed.
‘Those are big lads. Do you buy them by the yard?’
‘Trust you to attack the hired help!’ grumbled Geminus through a split lip.
‘How was I to know you had your own cohorts? I thought your old lads were on their own with it. I’d have stepped aside if I’d realised these lummoxes were being paid to get their knuckles grazed!’
Coughing with exertion, Geminus fell on to an unsold couch. He was showing his age. ‘Jupiter, I could do without all this!’
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