‘Never been here, Falco.’
‘How did you find it so quickly then?’
‘I asked someone.’
After working off his breakfast and working up another appetite with his mad gallop to Ostia, he was tucking into a substantial lunch. He had bought and paid for it; there was no offer to include me. I called for a small flagon and decided to eat later on my own.
‘The records still exist,’ mumbled Gaius, chewing happily. ‘It will take a few months to wade through them.’ He was a slow worker. I could speed him up, but I knew in advance it would frustrate me.
‘I’ll help if they will allow me in. Can I look at them with you?’
‘Oh yes. Any citizen with a legitimate reason can inspect the shipping lists. Of course,’ he said, ‘you have to know the procedures.’ From Gaius Baebius this was a message that he was doing me a favour, and would remind me about it in future at every opportunity.
‘Fine,’ I said.
My brother-in-law started making elaborate arrangements for meeting me tomorrow, while I groaned inwardly. I hate people who complicate life with unnecessary paraphernalia. And I was none too pleased at the prospect of spending days in his dreary company. Lunch was bad enough.
I was looking around. The place was as grim as I remembered. Gaius Baebius sat eating his bowlful of beef and vegetables with the impervious calm of an innocent. Maybe my eyesight was better. I was filled with unease by the dark corners and sinister clientele.
We were in a dank cellar, a hole cut half into the Caelian Hill, more a burrow than a building. Beneath its filthy arched roof stood a few battered tables lit by tapers in oily old jugs. The landlord had a lurching gait and sported a viciously scarred cheek, probably acquired in a bar fight. His wine was sour. His customers were worse.
Since my last visit one of the rough-cast walls had acquired a crudely drawn pornographic picture in wide swathes of murky paint. It involved some mightily furnished manly types and a shy female who had lost her guardian and her clothes but who was gaining some unusual experience.
I summoned mine host. ‘Who did your striking art work?’
‘Varga, Manlius and that mob.’
‘Do they still come in here?’
‘On and off.’ That sounded useless. It was not a den where I wished to hang around like a critic or a collector until these flighty artists deigned to appear.
‘Where can I look them up while I’m in the neighbourhood?’
He made a few desultory suggestions. ‘So what do you think of our frescos?’
‘Fabulous!’ I lied.
Now that the wall-painting had been drawn to his attention, Gaius Baebius was staring at it so fixedly I felt embarrassed. My sister would have been seriously annoyed to see him studying it so closely, but she would be more furious if I abandoned him anywhere so dangerous. Out of brotherly regard for Junia I had to sit there fuming while Gaius slowly finished his lunch-bowl as he perused the brothel scenes.
‘Very interesting!’ he commented as we left.
Shedding my inane relation, I followed up the landlord’s suggestions for finding the fresco painters, but had no luck. One place the man had sent me was a rented room in a boarding-house. I could go back there at a different time and hope for better results. Any excuse was welcome. Needing food fairly urgently, I took myself off somewhere that by comparison was highly salubrious: back on the Aventine, to Flora’s Caupona.
XXXIII
Flora’s was in a greater state of misery than usual: they had the decorators in.
Epimandos was hovering outside, robbed of his kitchen but making an attempt to serve drinks and cold snippets to people who did not mind lunching in the street.
‘What’s this, Epimandos?’
‘Falco!’ He greeted me eagerly. ‘I heard you had been arrested!’
I managed a grunt. ‘Well I’m here. What’s going on?’
‘After the problem upstairs,’ he whispered tactfully, ‘the whole place is being done up.’
Flora’s had been there for at least ten years and never seen a painter’s brush before. Evidently a murder on the premises was good for trade. ‘So who ordered this? Not the legendary Flora?’
Epimandos looked vague. He ignored my enquiry and burbled on. ‘I’ve been so worried about what was happening to you-‘
‘So have I!’
‘Are you going to be all right, Falco?’
‘I’ve no idea. But if I ever catch up with the bastard who really did kill Censorinus, he won’t be!’
‘Falco-‘
‘Don’t flap, Epimandos. A whimpering waiter kills the lively atmosphere!’
I looked for a seat. Outside they were limited. The objectionable cat, Stringy, was sprawled over one bench displaying his revolting belly fur, so I perched on a stool beside the barrel where the beggar always sat. For once it seemed necessary to nod at him.
‘Afternoon, Marcus Didius.’ I was still trying to think of a polite way to ask if I knew him when he introduced himself resignedly: ‘Apollonius.’ It still meant nothing. ‘I was your schoolteacher.’
‘Jupiter!’ Long ago this hopeless soul had taught me geometry for six years. Now the gods had rewarded his patience by making him destitute.
Epimandos rushed up with wine for both of us, apparently pleased that I had found a friend to take my mind off things. It was too late to leave. I had to converse politely; that meant I had to invite the ex-teacher to join my lunch. He accepted my invitation timidly while I tried not to look too closely at his rags. I sent Epimandos across the road to fetch me a hot meal from the Valerian, and another for Apollonius.
He had always been a failure. The worst kind: someone you could not help but feel sorry for, even while he was messing you about. He was a terrible teacher. He might have been a snappy mathematician, but he could not explain anything. Struggling to make sense of his long-winded diatribes, I had always felt as if he had set me a problem that needed three facts in order to solve it, but he had only remembered to tell me two of them. Definitely a man whose hypotenuse squared had never totalled the squares of his other two sides.
‘What a wonderful surprise to see you!’ I croaked, pretending I had not been ignoring him every time I had come to Flora’s over the past five years.
‘Quite a shock,’ he mumbled, going along with it as he devoured the broth I had supplied.
Epimandos had nobody else to serve, so he sat down by the cat and listened in.
‘So what happened to the school, Apollonius?’
He sighed. Nostalgia was making me queasy. He had had the same dreary tone when he was lamenting some stubborn child’s ignorance. ‘I was forced to give up. Too much political instability.’
‘You mean too many unpaid fees?’
‘Youth is the first to suffer in a civil war.’
‘Youth suffers, full stop,’ I answered gloomily.
This was an appalling encounter. I was a tough man doing a swinish job; the last thing I needed was a confrontation with a schoolmaster who had known me when I was all freckles and false confidence. Around here people believed I had a shrewd brain and a hard fist; I was not prepared for them to see me doling out free broth to this scrawny stick insect with his sparse hair and shaking, age-mottled hands while he flapped over my forgotten past.
‘How’s your little sister?’ Apollonius enquired after a time.
‘Maia? Not so little. She worked for a tailor, then she married a slovenly horse vet. No discernment. He works for the Greens, trying to keep their knock-kneed nags from dropping dead on the track. He has a nasty cough himself-probably from pinching the horses’ liniment.’ Apollonius looked puzzled. He was not in the same world as me. ‘Her husband drinks.’
‘Oh.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Very bright, Maia.’
‘True.’ Though not in her choice of husband.
‘Don’t let me bore you,’ the schoolmaster said courteously. I cursed him in silence; it meant I would have to carry on with the chat.
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‘I’ll tell Maia I saw you. She has four children of her own now. Nice little things. She’s bringing them up properly.’
‘Maia would. A good pupil; a good worker; now a good mother too.’
‘She had a good education,’ I forced out. Apollonius smiled as if he were thinking, Always gracious with the rhetoric! On an impulse I added, ‘Did you teach my brother and the other girls? My eldest sister, Victorina, died recently.’
Apollonius knew he should be saying he was sorry but lost himself answering the first question. ‘Some I might have done, from time to time…’
I helped him out: ‘The elder ones had a problem getting any schooling. Times were difficult.’
‘But you and Maia were always signed on every term!’ he cried, almost reprovingly. He was bound to remember; we were probably the only regular attenders on the whole Aventine.
‘Our fees were paid,’ I acknowledged.
Apollonius nodded fiercely. ‘By the old Melitan gentleman,’ he insisted on reminding me.
‘That’s right. He thought he was going to be allowed to adopt us. He paid up every quarter in the hope he was improving two shiny-faced heirs.’
‘Did he adopt you?’
‘No. My father would not hear of it.’
This set me off reminiscing. For someone who so clearly had little interest in children once he had produced them, my father could be a ferociously jealous man. If we misbehaved he would happily threaten to sell us as gladiators, yet he took pride in rejecting the Melitan’s pleading overtures. I could still hear him boasting that free-born plebeians got their children as a trial for themselves, and did not breed for others’ convenience.
The rows over sending Maia and me to school occurred not long before Pa lost his temper and left us. We felt it was our fault. We had the blame hanging over us; it made us a target for bullying from the rest.
After that fatal day when Papa left for an auction as usual but forgot his way home, Mother still strung the Melitan along-until even he finally twigged that no adoption would occur. He fell sick with disappointment, and died. With hindsight, it was rather sad.
‘Do I sense, Marcus Didius, that all was not well?’
‘Right. The Melitan caused some trouble.’
‘Really? I always thought you and Maia came from such a happy family!’ That just shows, teachers know nothing.
I cradled my winecup, caught up again in the anxieties the Melitan had imposed upon our house: Pa raging against him and all moneylenders (the Melitan’s occupation), while Ma hissed back that she had to have the lodger’s rent. Later Pa took to suggesting that the reason the old man was so keen on acquiring rights in Maia and myself was that we were his by-blows anyway. He used to roar this out in front of the Melitan as a hollow joke. (One glance at us disproved it; Maia and I had the full Didius physiognomy.) The Melitan was trapped in a stupid situation. Since he was so desperate for children, sometimes he even persuaded himself we were his.
Impossible of course. Ma, looking on like thunder, left us in no doubt.
I hated the Melitan. I convinced myself that had it not been for the anger he caused in my father, my Great-Uncle Scaro would have adopted me instead. Knowing about the quarrels that had already occurred, Scaro was far too polite to suggest it.
I wanted to be adopted. That is, if I was never claimed by my real parents. For of course I knew, as children do, that under no circumstances did I belong to the poor souls who were bringing me up temporarily at their house; someday my palace awaited me. My mother was one of the Vestal Virgins and my father was a mysterious and princely stranger who could materialise in moonbeams. I had been found on a river-bank by an honest old goatherd; my rescue from the toil and turmoil surrounding me had been foretold in a sibylline prophecy…
‘You were always the dreamy one,’ my old schoolmaster informed me. ‘But I thought that there was hope for you…’ I had forgotten he could be satirical.
‘Still the same academic assessments: cruel, but fair!’
‘You were good at geometry. You could have been a schoolteacher.’
‘Who wants to starve?’ I retorted angrily. ‘I’m an informer. It makes me just as poor, though I’m still being set puzzles, in different ways.’
‘Well that’s pleasing to hear. You should do work that suits you.’ Nothing disturbed Apollonius. He was a man you could not insult. ‘What happened to your brother?’ he mused.
‘Festus was killed in the Judaean War. He died a national hero, if that impresses you.’
‘Ah! I always supposed that one would come to no good…’ That dry humour again! I was expecting a long stream of anecdotes, but he lost interest. ‘And now I hear you’re contemplating a family of your own?’
‘Word flies round! I’m not even married yet.’
‘I wish you good fortune.’ Once again the force of other people’s premature congratulations was pushing Helena and me into a contract we had hardly discussed. Guiltily, I recognised that I was now committed both in private and in public to a plan that she saw quite differently.
‘It may not be that simple. She’s a senator’s daughter, for one thing.’
‘I expect your charm will win her round.’ Apollonius only understood the simplicity of shapes on a slate. Social subtlety eluded him. He had never grasped why my father, a Roman citizen, should be outraged by the thought of having two of his children taken over by an immigrant. And he could not see the immense pressures that now kept me and my lady apart. ‘Ah well, when you do have your own little ones, you know where to send them to learn geometry!’
He made it sound easy. His assumptions were too tempting. I was letting myself be won over by the pleasure of meeting somebody who did not see my marriage to Helena as utterly disastrous.
‘I’ll remember!’ I promised gently, making good my escape.
XXXIV
Back at the apartment I found Helena sniffing at tunics. They were ones we had worn for travelling, just fetched back from the laundry downstairs.
‘Juno, I hate winter! Things you send to be washed come back worse. Don’t wear those; they smell musty. They must have been left too long in a basket while damp. I’ll take them to my parents’ house and rinse them out again.’
‘Oh, hang mine over a door to air for a bit. I don’t care. Some of the places I’ve been in today were not fit for pristine whites.’
I kissed her, so she took the opportunity to sniff teasingly at me.
One way and another that kept us busy until dinner-time.
According to custom in our house, I cooked. We had half a chicken, which I sizzled in oil and wine, using a rattly iron skillet over a grill on the brick cooking bench. There were no herbs, because we had been away at the time when we should have been collecting them. Helena owned an expensive collection of spices, but those needed picking up from her parents’ house. All in all, things at the apartment were even more disorganised than normal. We ate sitting on stools, holding our bowls on our knees, since I still had to obtain a new table. My boast to Junia had been true: we did possess an impressive dinner service in glossy red Samian pottery. For safety I had stored it at Mother’s house.
Suddenly I felt overwhelmed by despair. It was thinking about the dinnerware that did it. Problems were building up all around me, and the prospect of having our only civilised possessions packed away, perhaps for ever, was just too much to bear.
Helena noticed how I was feeling. ‘What’s the matter, Marcus?’
‘Nothing.’
‘There’s something niggling you-apart from the murder.’
‘Sometimes I think our whole life is buried in straw in an attic, awaiting a future we may never arrange.’
‘Oh dear! It sounds as if I should fetch out your poetry tablet, so you can write a nice morbid elegy.’ Helena took a mocking view of the melancholy stuff I had been trying to write for years; she preferred me to write satires for some reason.
‘Listen, fruit, if I did manage to acquire four
hundred thousand sesterces, and if the Emperor was willing to include my name on the middle-rank scroll, would you actually be prepared to marry me?’
‘Find the four hundred thousand first!’ was her automatic response.
‘That’s me answered then!’ I muttered gloomily.
‘Ah…’ Helena put her empty bowl on the floor and knelt at the side of my stool. She wrapped her arms around me, spreading her warm red stole across my knees comfortingly. She smelled clean and sweet, faintly perfumed with rosemary, which she used to rinse her hair. ‘Why are you feeling so insecure?’ I made no reply. ‘Do you want me to say that I love you?’
‘I can listen to that.’
She said it. I listened. She added some details, which cheered me up slightly. Helena Justina had a convincing grasp of rhetoric. ‘So what’s wrong, Marcus?’
‘Maybe if we were married I would be sure you belonged to me.’
‘I’m not a set of wine jugs!’
‘No. I could scratch my name on a jug. And also,’ I continued doggedly, ‘you would then be certain that I belonged to you.’
‘I know that,’ she said, smiling rather. ‘Here we are. We live together. You despise my rank and I deplore your past history, but we have foolishly chosen to share each other’s company. What else is there, love?’
‘You could leave me at any time.’
‘Or you could leave me!’
I managed to grin at her. ‘Maybe this is the problem, Helena. Maybe I am frightened that without a contract to honour I might storm off in a temper, then regret it all my life.’
‘Contracts exist only to make arrangements for when you break them!’ Every partnership needs someone sensible to keep its wheels in the right ruts. ‘Besides,’ Helena scoffed, ‘when you do run off, I always come and fetch you back.’
That was true.
‘Do you want to get drunk?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe,’ she suggested, with a hint of asperity, ‘what you do want is to sit in your shabby apartment, alone, scowling over the unfairness of life and watching a solitary beetle climb up the wall? Oh, I do understand. This is what an informer likes. To be lonely and bored while he thinks about his debts, and lack of clients, and the scores of scornful women who have trampled all over him. That makes him feel important. Your life is too soft, Marcus Didius! Here you are sharing a small but tasty dinner with your rude but affectionate sweetheart; it obviously spoils your act. Maybe I should go, my darling, so you can despair properly!’
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