'Why in Hades did she come to us?' I grumbled. 'She must have had some inkling what it would be like.'
'The girl is very fond of my daughter,' suggested Camillus Verus loyally. 'Besides, I'm told she believed you would provide the opportunity for travel and adventure in exotic foreign provinces.'
I told the excellent Camillus which ghastly province I had just been invited to visit and we had a good laugh.
Julius Frontinus, an ex-consul I had met during an investigation in Rome two years ago, was now suffering his reward for a blameless reputation: Vespasian had made him the governor of Britain. On arrival, Frontinus had discovered some problem with his major works programme, and he suggested I was the man to sort it. He wanted me to go out there. But my life was hard enough. I had already written and turned down his request for help.
III
The niggle from Julius Frontinus had refused to go away. Next, I was summoned to a light afternoon chat with the Emperor. I knew that meant some heavy request.
Vespasian, who had domestic problems of his own, now lurked frequently in the Gardens of Sallust. This helped him to avoid petitioners at the Palace – and to dodge his sons too. Domitian was often at odds with his father and brother, probably thinking that they ganged up against him. (The Flavians were a close family but Domitian Caesar was a squit, so who could blame them?) The elder and favourite son, Titus, acted as his father's political colleague. Once a wonder boy he had now imported Berenice, the Queen of Judaea, with whom he was openly conducting a passionate love affair. She was beautiful, brave and brazen and thus hugely unpopular. It must have caused a few spats over breakfast.
Anyway, Berenice was a shameless piece of goods who had already tried making eyes at Vespasian during the Jewish War. Now that his mistress of many years, Antonia Caenis, had recently died, he may have felt vulnerable. Even if he could resist Berenice, seeing his virile son indulging her may have been unwelcome. At the Palace Titus also had a young daughter who by all accounts was growing up a handful. Lack of discipline, my mother said. Having brought up Victorina, Allia, Galla, Junia and Maia – every one a trainee Fury – she should know.
Vespasian notoriously distrusted informers, but with that kind of private life, interviewing me may have seemed a peaceful change. I would have welcomed it too – intelligent chat with a self-made, forthright individualist – had I not been afraid he would offer me a bum task.
The Gardens of Sallust lie in the northern reaches of the city, a long, hot hike away from my area. They occupy a generous site on both sides of the valley between the Pincian and Quirinal Hills. I believe Vespasian had owned a private house out there, before he became Emperor.
The Via Salaria, still his route home to his summer estates in the Sabine Hills, runs out that way too. Whoever Sallust was, his pleasure park had been imperial property for several generations. Mad Caligula had built an Egyptian pavilion, packed with pink granite statues, to commemorate one of his incestuous sisters. More popularly, Augustus displayed some giants' bones in a museum. Emperors have more than a clipped bay tree and a row of beans. Here some of the best statues I had seen in the open air marked the end of elegant vistas.
As I searched for the old man, I strolled under the cool, calming shade of graceful cypresses, eyed up by basking doves who knew exactly how cute they were.
Eventually I detected various shy Praetorians lurking in the shrubberies; Vespasian had taken a public stand against being protected from madmen with daggers, which meant his Guards had to hang around here trying to look like gardeners weeding, instead of stamping about like bullies, as they preferred. Some had given up pretending. They were sprawled on the ground playing board games in the dust, occasionally breaking off to gulp from what I gently presumed were water flasks.
They had managed to corral their charge into a nook where it seemed unlikely any deranged obsessive with a legal grievance could burst through the thick hedge. Vespasian had piled up his voluminous purple drapes and his wreath on a dusty urn; he did not care how many snobs he offended with his informality. As he sat working in his gilded tunic, the Guards had a fairly clear view of his open-air office. If any high-minded armed opponent did rush past them, there was a massive Dying Niobid, desperately attempting to pluck out her fatal arrow, at whose white marble feet the Emperor might expire very tastefully.
The Praetorians tried to rouse themselves to treat me as a suspicious character, but they knew my name was on an appointment scroll. I waved my invitation. I was not in the mood for idiots with shiny javelins and no manners. Seeing the official seal, they allowed me through, making the gesture as offensive as possible.
'Thanks, boys!' I saved my patronising grin until I had marched into the safety of Vespasian's line of vision. He was seated on a plain stone bench in the shade while an elderly slave handed him tablets and scrolls.
The official name-caller was still flustering over my details when the Emperor broke in and called out, 'It's Falco!' He was a big, blunt sixty-year-old who had worked up from nothing and he despised ceremonial.
The boy's job was to save his elite master from any perceived rudeness if he forgot eminent people. Trapped in routine, the child whispered, 'Falco, sir.' Vespasian, who could show kindliness to minions (though he never showed it to me), nodded patiently. Then I was free to go forward and exchange pleasantries with the lord of the known world.
This was no exquisite little Claudian, looking down his thin nose on the coinage like a self-satisfied Greek god. He was bald, tanned, his face full of character and heavily lined after years of squinting across deserts for rebellious tribes. Pale laughter seams ran at the corners of his eyes too, after decades of despising fools and honestly mocking himself. Vespasian was rooted in country stock like a true Roman (as I was myself on my mother's side). Over the years he had taken on all the snide establishment detractors; shamelessly grappled for high-level associates; craftily chosen long-term winners rather than temporary flash boys; doggedly made the best out of every career opportunity; then seized the throne so his accession seemed both amazing and inevitable at the same time.
The great one saluted me with his customary care for my welfare: 'I hope you're not going to say I owe you money.'
I expressed my own respect for his rank. 'Would there be any point, Caesar?'
'Glad I've set you at your ease!' He liked to joke. As Emperor, he must have felt inhibited with most people. For some reason I fell into a separate category. 'So what have you been up to, Falco?'
'Dibbling and dabbling.' I had been trying to expand my business, using Helena's two younger brothers. Neither possessed any informing talent. I intended to use them to lend tone, with a view to wooing more sophisticated (richer) clients: every businessman's hopeless dream. It was best not to mention to Vespasian that these two lads who ought to be donning white robes as candidates for the Curia were instead lowering themselves to work with me.
'I am enjoying my new rank,' I said, beaming, which was as close as I would let myself come to thanking him for promoting me.
'I hear you make a good poultry keeper.' Elevation to the equestrian stratum had brought tiresome responsibilities. I was Procurator of the Sacred Geese of the Temple of Juno with additional oversight of the augurs' chickens.
'Country background.' He looked surprised. I was stretching it, but Ma's family came from the Campagna. 'The prophetic fowl get pesty if you don't watch them, but Juno's geese are in fine fettle.'
Helena and I had plenty of down-stuffed cushions in our new home too. I had grasped equestrianism rapidly.
'How is that girl you kidnapped?' Had the disapproving old devil read my thoughts?
'Devoted to the domestic duties of a modest Roman matron – well, I can't get her to weave wool traditionally, though she did commandeer the house keys and she is nursing children. Helena Justina has just done me the honour of becoming mother to my second child.' I knew better than to expect a silver birth-gift from this skinflint.
'Boy or girl?'
Helena would have liked the even-handed way he offered both possibilities.
'Another daughter, sir. Sosia Favonia.' Would it strike Vespasian that she was partly named after a relative of Helena's? A dear bright young girl called Sosia, who had been murdered as a consequence of the first mission I undertook for him, murdered by his son Domitian, though of course we never mentioned that.
'Charming.' If his eyes hardened briefly, it was impossible to detect. 'My congratulations to your -'
'Wife,' I said firmly. Vespasian glowered. Helena was a senator's daughter and should be married to a senator. Her intelligence, her money, and her child-bearing ability ought to be at the disposal of the half wits in the 'best' families. I pretended to see his point. 'Of course I explain to Helena Justina continually that the cheap appeal of an exciting life with me should not draw her from her inherited role as a member of patrician society but what can I do? The poor girl is besotted and refuses to leave me. Her pleas when I threaten to send her back to her noble father are heart-rending'
'That's enough, Falco!'
'Caesar.'
He flung a stylus aside. Watchful secretaries slid forward and collected a pile of waxed tablets in case he dashed them to the ground. Vespasian, however, was not that kind of spoiled hero. He had once had to budget cautiously; he knew the price of tablet wax.
'Well, I may want to put space between you two temporarily.'
'Ah. Anything to do with Julius Frontinus and the Isles of Mystery?' I preempted him.
The Emperor scowled. 'He's a good man. And he's known to you.'
'I think highly of Frontinus.'
Vespasian ignored the chance to flatter me with the provincial governor's opinion of me. 'There's nothing wrong with Britain.'
'Well, you know I know that, sir.' Like all subordinates, I hoped my commander-in-chief remembered my entire personal history. Like most generals, Vespasian forgot even episodes he had been involved with – but given time, he would recall that he himself had sent me to Britain four years ago. 'That is,' I said dryly, 'if you leave out the weather, the total lack of infrastructure, the women, the men, the food, the drink and the mammoth travelling distance from one's dear Roman heritage!'
'Can't lure you with some boar hunting?'
'Not my style.' Even if it had been, the Empire was packed with more thrilling places to chase wildlife across ghastly terrain. Most of the other places were sunny and had cities. 'Nor do I cherish a visionary wish to implant civilisation among the awe-struck British tribes.'
Vespasian grinned. 'Oh, I've despatched a bunch of lawyers and philosophers to do that.'
'I know, sir. They hadn't achieved much the last time you sent me north.' I had plenty more to say about Britain. 'As I recall, the pasty faced tribes had still not learned what to do with the sponge on the stick at public latrines. Where anybody had yet built any latrines.' Goose-pimples ran across my arm. Without intending it, I added, 'I was there during the Rebellion. That should be enough for anyone.'
Vespasian shifted slightly on the bench. The Rebellion was down to Nero, but it still made all Romans shudder. 'Well, somebody has to go, Falco.'
I said nothing.
He tried frankness. 'There is a monumental cock-up on a rather public project.'
'Yes, sir. Frontinus let me into his confidence.'
'Can't be worse than the troubles you sorted in the silver mines.' So he did remember sending me to Britain previously. 'A quick dash over there; audit the slapdash buggers; nail any frauds; then straight home. For you, it's a snip, Falco.'
'Should be a snip for anyone then, Caesar; I'm no demigod. Why don't you send Anacrites?' I suggested nastily. I always liked to think Vespasian reined in the Chief Spy because he distrusted the man's abilities. 'I am desolate to disappoint you, Caesar, though honoured by your faith in me-'
'Don't blather. So you won't go?' sneered Vespasian.
'New baby,' I offered as a let-out for both of us.
'Just the time to nip off.'
'Regrettably, Helena Justina has a pact with me that if ever I travel, she comes too.'
'Doesn't trust you?' he scoffed, clearly thinking that was probable.
'She trusts me absolutely, sir. Our pact is, that she is always present to supervise!'
Vespasian, who had met Helena in one of her fighting moods, decided to back off. He asked me at least to think about the job. I said I would. We both knew that was a lie.
IV
Jupiter, Juno and Mars – I had enough to do that spring. The house move was complicated enough – even before the day when Pa and I smashed up the bath house floor. Having Mico under my feet at the new riverbank place constantly reminded me how much I hated my relatives. There was only one I would have liked to see here, my favourite nephew Larius. Larius was a fresco painter's apprentice in Campania. He could well have repaid all my kind treatment as his uncle by creating a few frescos in my house, but when I wrote to him there was no reply. Perhaps he was remembering that the main thrust of my wise advice had been telling him that painting walls was a dead-end job…
As for that feeble streak of wind Mico, it was not just that he left plaster floats in doorways and tramped fine dust everywhere; he made me feel I owed him something, because he was poor and his children were motherless. Really, Mico was only poor because his bad work was notorious. No one but me would employ him. But I was Uncle Marcus the sucker. Uncle Marcus who knew the Emperor, flash Uncle Marcus who had a new rank and a position at the Temple of Juno. In fact I bought the rank with hard-earned fees, the position was literally chicken-shit and Vespasian only asked me over to the Gardens of Sallust when he wanted a favour. He saw me as a sucker too.
At least, unlike Mico, Vespasian Augustus did not expect me to buy rissoles all round as an end-of-week treat for his horrible family. With gherkins. Then I had to keep a pot handy, because gobbling the gherkins made Mico's awful toddler Valentinianus sick in my newly painted dining room. All Mico's children owned top-heavy names, and they were all villains. Valentinianus loved to humiliate me. His chief ambition currently was to vomit over Nux, my dog.
I now owned a dining room. The same week it was redecorated, I lost my best friend.
Petronius Longus and I had known each other since we were eighteen. We served together in the army – in Britain. We were naive lads when we joined up for the legions. We had no idea what we were taking on. They ted us, taught us useful skills and trained us to be well up in connivery. They also subjected us to four years in a faraway, undeveloped province that offered nothing but cold feet and misery.
The Great Rebellion of the Iceni came on top of that. We crept home no longer lads but men, and bonded like a laminated shield. Cynical, grimmer than the Forum gutter tykes and with a friendship that should have been unshakeable.
Petro had now spoiled everything. He fell for my sister, after her husband died.
'Petronius hankered for Maia a long time before this,' Helena disagreed. 'He was married, so was she. He played around but she never did. There was no point in him admitting how he felt, even to himself.' Then Helena paused, her dark eyes sombre. 'Petronius may have married Arria Silvia in the first place because Maia was unobtainable.'
'Cobnuts. He hardly knew my sister then.'
But he had met her and seen what she was like: attractive, independent and subtly dangerous. Such a good homemaker and mother (everyone said) and what a bright girl! That double-edged remark always implies a woman may be on the lookout. I myself liked a hint of restlessness in a woman; Petronius was no different.
Around the Aventine he was held up as a model of steady fatherhood and virtuous hard work; no one spotted that he liked to flirt with risk. There were girlfriends in passing, even after he married Silvia. He settled down to look like a good boy, but how real was that? I was supposed to be the feckless bachelor, an endless worry to my mother – so like my father! So unlike my brother, the dead hero (though our Festus had been a wreck, with a chaotic life). Meanwhile, Petronius L
ongus, diligent enquiry chief of the Fourth Cohort of the Vigiles, flitted quietly among the pretty flowers on the Aventine, leaving them happy and his reputation unbesmirched until he tangled with a serious gangster's daughter. His wife found out. It all became too public; Silvia felt this disgrace was too much. She had seemed utterly dependent but once she threw Petro out, she was off. She now lived with a potted-salad seller, in Ostia.
Petronius might have accepted this, had not Silvia taken their three daughters. He had no wish to enforce his custody rights as a Roman father. But he was genuinely fond of the girls, and they adored him.
'Silvia knows that. The damned woman flounced off to Ostia out of spite!' I had never liked Arria Silvia. It was not simply because she loathed me. Mind you, that was relevant. She was a prissy little piece; Petro could have done better with his eyes closed. 'Her loathsome boyfriend was quite happy selling his cucumber moulds in the Forum; she put him up to moving, to make the situation impossible for Petro.'
He was in a rotten position, though for once he refused to talk to me about it. We had never discussed Silvia anyway; it saved trouble. Then things grew worse. He started to face up to his attraction to my sister; she even began to notice him. Just when Petro thought they might make something of it, Maia suddenly stopped seeing him.
I had cursed when I found one of my sisters wanting to berth alongside my dearest crony. That can damage a male friendship. But it was far more uncomfortable when Petro was dumped.
He must have taken it hard. Helena had to tell me his reflex action: 'Marcus, you won't like this. Petronius has applied for a transfer to the vigiles cohort at Ostia.'
'Leaving Rome? That's madness!'
'There may not be a job there for him,' Helena tried soothing me.
'Oh rats, of course there will! It's an unpopular posting, who wants to be stationed downriver at the port, outwitting customs diddlers and duck-billed cargo thieves? Petro's a bloody good officer. The Ostia tribune is bound to jump at him.'
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