‘Dear gods, the poor thing! I hope Orontes will be allowed to let her out of it?’
‘Hmm! I don’t want to make sordid suggestions,’ I mumbled, ‘but I strongly suspect that when my ghastly parent gets bored with discussing theories of art, he will arrange that Orontes has enough wine to knock him senseless-then Geminus may surreptitiously let out the model himself.’
Helena pretended she had no idea what sordid suggestions I meant.
‘So what next, Marcus?’
‘Next,’ I promised her with intense relief, ‘you and I and my happy father, and the sculptor, and his luscious model if he wants to bring her, are all going home… I wonder if Smaractus will have bothered to fix the roof?’
Helena was silent again. Maybe she was contemplating sharing a trip home with Rubinia. Maybe she was worrying about our roof.
I had plenty to think about as well, and none of it was cheerful. Somehow I had to devise a scheme to punish Carus and Servia. Somehow I had to avoid us paying out to them half a million sesterces which we had never owed them anyway. To keep myself from exile I had to solve a murder that was beginning to look inexplicable. And somehow I had to explain to my mother that her beloved son the national hero may have been no more than a failed entrepreneur who took a long stride into oblivion simply because the pressure of his bungled business commitments was growing too much for him.
‘What time is it?’ asked Helena.
‘Jupiter, I don’t know! The middle of the night-tomorrow, probably.’
She smiled at me. It had nothing to do with anything we had been discussing. I knew that, even before she said gently, ‘Happy birthday, then!’
My birthday.
I had known it was coming. I thought no one else here with me had realised. Ma would be thinking about me with her own scornful reverence, but she was in Rome, so I had escaped the nostalgia and damson cake. Pa had probably never known his children’s anniversaries. And Helena… well. A year ago, Helena had been with me on my birthday. We had been strangers then, resisting any hint of attraction between us. All the same, I had given myself a brief birthday treat and kissed her, with unexpected results for both of us. From that moment I had wanted more of her; I had wanted it all. I had started the sequence that ended with me falling in love with her, while a small, dark, dangerous voice began whispering that it might be a challenge to make this unattainable creature love me.
It was a year since the first time I held her in my arms, assuming then that it would be the only occasion she ever let me come near her. A year since I saw that look in her eyes when I risked it. A year since I fled from her, stunned by my own feelings and misunderstanding hers, yet knowing that somehow I would have to hold this woman in my arms again.
‘Remember?’
‘I remember!’
I took a long slow breath against her hair, absorbing the sweet natural scent of her. Without moving, I enjoyed the now familiar shape of her body, cosseted against mine. Her fingers moved against my shoulder, tracing patterns that raised goose-pimples. ‘Here we are in another stinking inn… I could never have dreamed I would still have you near me.’
‘Oh Marcus, you were so angry with me.’
‘I had to get angry before I dared touch you.’
She laughed. I could always make her laugh. ‘You laughed me into adoring you!’ she commented, as if I had spoken.
‘Not that night! You locked yourself in your room, and refused to speak to me.’
‘I was too terrified.’
‘Of me?’ I was amazed.
‘Oh no! I knew that when you stopped playing iron-jawed demigods you would be a complete sweetheart… Of myself,’ confessed Helena. ‘Frightened of how much I wanted to be in your arms, how much I wanted you to go on kissing me, how much I wanted more than that-‘
I could have kissed her then. Her dark eyes were soft and inviting; she was willing me to do it. But it was more fun to lean back so I could see her, and just think about it while she smiled at me.
No year of my life would ever bring me so much change. No trick of fate would ever give me anything so precious.
I put out the light so I could forget our dismal surroundings; then I ignored all the debts and disasters that were oppressing me. A man must have some comfort in his life. I said, ‘I love you. I should have told you that right at the start a year ago-and this is what I should have done about it straight away…’
Then I let my thirty-first birthday begin with a celebration in the noblest Roman style.
LV
Our carriage-horse was still lame, so we hired a couple of litters, went across to the coast and took a ship home from Puteoli. I will pass over it briskly, though the journey seemed interminable. I spent most of it lying under a leather sail. The only times I poked my head out were when I needed to be ill.
That was often enough.
I believe the others found the weather fair, the sea air invigorating, and their various fellow passengers an enthralling mixture of types. Helena and my father got to know each other better, while they had the tact to keep the cheating sculptor and his blowzy mistress well away from me.
Even though I knew my taxes had paid for it, no sight was ever so welcome to me as the great lighthouse at Portus, the new complex at Ostia, unless it was the colossal statue of Neptune. When we sailed under Neptune’s knees I knew our ship was inside the basin, and about to berth. We had to wait about before disembarking while the usual nautical business took precedence over passengers’ eagerness to land. I managed to send a message ashore to the customs post, so the first sight that greeted us when our feet hit the quay was Gaius Baebius, my brother-in-law.
‘You might have spared us!’ muttered Father under his breath.
‘I’m hoping to cadge a free ride home in official transport if we tag along with him.’
‘Oh smart boy! Gaius Baebius! Just the man we were hoping to see…’
My brother-in-law was full of something-something and nothing, needless to say. He was reticent in front of strangers-and even before Helena, since a customs-clerks supervisor’s attitude to women tends to be traditional, and Gaius Baebius had had seventeen years of living with my sister Junia to teach him to keep his mouth shut. Junia had the strong-willed woman’s traditional attitude to men: she thought we were there to be told we were idiots and made to keep quiet.
Leaving Helena disconsolately guarding the baggage (which was our idea of what women were for), Father and I got Gaius on his own in a wine bar and set about grilling him. Freed from female supervision, out it poured: ‘Listen, listen, I’ve had some luck!’
‘Won at the races, Gaius?’ Pa chivvied. ‘Don’t tell the wife then! Junia will whip it out of your hand before you can take breath.’
‘Olympus, Marcus, he’s worse than you for looking on the dark side… No. I’ve found something you were looking for-‘
‘Not a trace of the Hypericon?’
‘No, not that. I’m sure she really sank.’
‘Don’t you keep a list of lost vessels?’ Pa demanded.
‘Why should we?’ Gaius Baebius gave him a scornful look. ‘There’s no money for the state in seaweed and silt.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Father carried on. ‘I’d like to know for certain that the Pride of Perga really hit bottom-‘
‘So what have you discovered, Gaius?’ I insisted, as patiently as I could while I was tossed between this squabbling pair.
‘Festus!’
I felt a sickly qualm. I was not yet ready to talk to any member of the family on that subject. Even Pa fell silent.
Gaius Baebius noticed I had lost my appetite; he lunged eagerly to grab my bowl.
‘Give!’ urged my father, trying not to sound subdued. ‘What about Festus?’ His eyes had fallen on a second spoon, with which he fought Gaius Baebius for what was left of my food.
‘I found-‘ Gaius had his damned mouth too full of my snack to talk. We waited for him to masticate with the ponderous thoroughness th
at characterised his life. I could have kicked him. Rather than have to endure his pained reproach if I attacked him, I restrained myself, though the restraint was precarious. ‘I found,’ he let out meticulously after a long wait, ‘the note of what Festus paid in excise dues when he came ashore.’
‘When? On his last leave?’
‘Exactly!’
My father’s eyebrows, which had retained more blackness than his rampant hair, shot up his brow. He looked down that long, straight nose of his. ‘Festus came home on a stretcher in a military supply ship!’
‘Yes, he came home on a stretcher, but he damned soon hopped off it!’ Gaius Baebius risked a slightly critical note. All my sisters’ husbands had looked askance at my brother, as in fact they still did at me. Gaius Baebius would be full of himself if he ever found out that Festus had thrown himself into his heroic death in order to escape some bullying creditors-not to mention the messy detail that unknown to my brother the creditors were criminally fraudulent.
Having to face people like my brothers-in-law with this depressing tale was the main trial ahead.
‘So Festus, despite being wounded, managed to bring something home with him on which duty was payable?’ I sounded as pedantic as Gaius himself; it was the only way to squeeze sense from him.
‘You’re with me!’ cried Gaius triumphantly. ‘You’re not so dumb!’ The man was unbearable.
Father rescued me before I exploded. ‘Come on, Gaius! Don’t keep us in suspense. What was he importing?’
‘Ballast,’ said Gaius Baebius.
He sat back, satisfied that he had baffled us.
‘Hardly seems to rate paying duty,’ I commented.
‘No. The tax was a small debit.’
‘Sounds to me as if Festus may have made a payment to somebody at the customs post in order to get his item described as valueless!’
‘That’s a slur on the service!’ said Gaius.
‘But it makes sense,’ answered Pa.
My father had a way of sounding sure of himself that could be intensely irritating. I only endured it because I thought he must be holding out on Gaius Baebius, who annoyed me even more. ‘Father, we can’t even guess what this import was-‘
‘I think we know.’
I assumed Geminus was bluffing, but he looked too calm. ‘Pa, you’ve lost me-and Gaius Baebius is a thousand miles behind!’
‘If this “ballast” is what I reckon it might be, then you’ve seen the stuff, Marcus.’
‘I take it we don’t mean a load of fancy gravel for rich people’s garden paths?’
‘Bigger,’ said Father.
Another mystery that had long been lying at the back of my memory found its moment to rush to the fore. ‘Not those blocks of stone I was shown in the store by drippy Uncle Junius?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Have you seen old Junius? How is he?’ flapped Gaius Baebius, with his normal fine grasp of priorities.
‘So what are these blocks?’ I asked my father, ignoring the interruption.
‘I have some ideas.’
That was all he would say, so I sprang the thrill for him: ‘I’m not short of ideas myself. I bet the ship that Festus came home in discovered a sudden need to call at Paros, the Marble Isle.’
Pa chortled. He agreed with me. ‘I wonder how our canny lad persuaded the captain to stop off for him?’
Gaius Baebius was squirming like a child left out of adult secrets. ‘Are you talking about Festus? What would he want marble for?’
‘Having something made, no doubt,’ I replied offhandedly.
‘Could have been anything,’ Father murmured, smiling to himself. ‘Copies of statues, for instance…’
My own thoughts exactly. Festus would reason, Why sell only one half-million Phidias, when a sculptor like Orontes could be making you quadruplets?
‘Oh that reminds me!’ uttered my sister’s bright spark. ‘The ballast was not all he had to pay duty on. I nearly forgot to mention-there was some sort of statue as well.’
LVI
We came up from Ostia by river. It was a cold, slow trip. We made a silent party, all lost in contemplating the mystery that Gaius Baebius had handed us.
It had stopped raining, but when we reached Rome the sky was full of unshed showers. The roads were glistening. Pools of water lapped over the pavements where careless stall-holders and frontagers had let cabbage leaves and old brick-ends block gullies. Roofs dripped occasionally. The air was damp with Tiber fog, through which our breath wreathed extra moisture trails.
As we disembarked, one of Petro’s men who had been keeping an eye on the river barges came up. ‘Falco!’ he coughed. ‘Petronius has us all looking for you.’
‘I haven’t skipped bail. I was with my surety-‘ My laughter died. ‘Problem?’
‘He wants a word. Says it’s urgent.’
‘Mars Ultor! What’s up?’
‘That other centurion who’s connected with the stabbed legionary made himself known. The boss interviewed him once, but he deferred a final judgement while we checked the man’s story.’
‘Am I cleared, or did he come up with an alibi?’
‘Don’t they always? Better hear it from Petro. I’ll run up to the guardhouse and say you’re back.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be at Fountain Court. Any time Petronius wants me, I’ll make myself available.’
‘You sound like one of his women!’ remarked the trooper mysteriously.
We met at Flora’s. I found Petronius Longus sitting over his lunch while he talked to the waiter and one of his own men, Martinus. Martinus stepped outside when I turned up. Another meal, previously ordered by my courteous friend, appeared at once in front of me. Epimandos served us with great diffidence, a mark of respect for Petronius, presumably.
I noticed that alongside Petro his thick brown cloak lay folded neatly on a pile of gear that I recognised as the dead soldier’s kit. I ignored it politely for the time being. Epimandos, who may also have recognised the stuff, walked around that part of our bench as if the watch captain had brought a witch’s cauldron into the bar.
Petronius was as placid and unperturbed as usual. ‘You look depressed, Falco. Do I blame the caupona broth?’
‘Blame Festus,’ I confessed. He laughed briefly.
I had known Petronius long enough to tell him the worst. He listened with his usual impassivity. He had a low opinion of people with artistic interests, so the Carus deceit came as no surprise. He had a low opinion of heroics too; hearing that my brother’s demise might not have been so glorious as we had all been pretending left Petro equally unmoved.
‘So when were the civic crowns ever awarded to the right men? I’d sooner your Festus snapped one up than some bugger who happened to know the faces in a war council.’
‘I suppose you have a poor opinion of the Didius family anyway?’
‘Oh, some of you can be all right!’ he replied with a faint smile.
‘Thanks for the recommendation!’ We had covered enough formalities. I could broach business now. ‘So what’s with the centurion?’
Petronius stretched his long legs. ‘Laurentius? Seems a straight sucker who happened to have palled up with an unlucky one. He came to the guardhouse, saying he had only just heard the news, what could I tell him about it, and could he take charge of Censorinus’s effects?’ Petro patted the kitbag in acknowledgement.
‘You’ve arranged to meet him here? What’s the idea?’
‘Well, probably nothing. A vague hope of unnerving him with the scene of the crime,’ Petro grinned. ‘It might work if he did it-if not, you and I are poisoning ourselves with Epimandos’s broth for nothing, as usual!’
‘You don’t think he did do it.’ I had deduced this from his tone. ‘What’s his story?’
‘They both had leave. Censorinus was supposed to be staying with a “friend’s family”. I haven’t let on so far that I know you all. Laurentius is Roman-born, so he was at his own sister’s house.’
/>
‘You checked that?’
‘Of course. It matched.’
‘And where was Laurentius when the murder occurred?’
‘Laurentius, plus sister, plus sister’s four children, were all staying with an aunt at Lavinium. They went for a month.’
‘And you’ve now been to Lavinium?’ I asked him gloomily.
‘Would I fail you? I did my best, Falco! But everyone at Lavinium from the town magistrate downwards confirms the tale. The actual night in question was somebody’s wedding, and I can’t even make out that the centurion could have slipped away unnoticed and come back to Rome secretly. He was much in evidence at the festivities, and until halfway through the next morning he was lying in a kitchen, nicely drunk. The whole wedding party can vouch for him-except the bridegroom, whose mind was on other things. Laurentius didn’t do it,’ Petro confirmed in his steady voice. He picked his teeth with a fingernail. ‘Actually, having met him, he is just not the type.’
‘Who is?’
‘Well…’ Petronius graciously accepted that hard and fast theories, like instinctive judgements, only exist to be disproved. But I knew what he was saying. He had liked the centurion. That meant I would probably like him too-though his easily proven innocence unfortunately left me the much harder task of proving my own. I was starting to feel gloomy again-once more a suspect under threat.
I leaned my chin in my hands, staring at the filthy table. Stringy the cat jumped up onto it, but walked around my patch as if its greasy condition was too disgusting for an animal to tolerate. Petronius stroked him absently, while signalling Epimandos to bring more wine.
‘Something will turn up, Falco.’
I refused to be consoled.
We were drinking in silence when Laurentius arrived.
As soon as he leaned on the outdoor counter I could see what Petro meant. He may well have killed in his professional capacity, but this was no casual murderer. He was about fifty, a calm, wry, sensible type with a small-featured, intelligent face and neat strong hands that were used to practical work. His uniform was well cared-for, though the bronze studs were not ostentatiously buffed. His manner was rational and quiet.
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