Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery)

by Lindsey Davis

  There are unsettling moments when he and Falco are equals, such as their frightening descent into the Cloaca Maxima in Three Hands in the Fountain and their necessarily hasty search of the dead gladiator’s room in Two for the Lions. Then, Falco admits they respect one another. How Anacrites would manage in a real tussle, without a bank of torture irons and a set of pervertedly inventive assistants, was less clear. I suppose somehow I trusted him. Maybe he even had some faith in me. [TFL] It emphasises that Anacrites could have chosen Falco’s virtuous path. Being treacherous is deliberate.

  ‘This is a filthy job.’ For once Anacrites and I spoke the same language.

  I agreed with him. ‘Sometimes I have nightmares that just by being involved in scenes like this some of the filth might rub off on me.’

  ‘You could leave it to the vigiles.’

  I gave Anacrites a rueful grin. ‘I could have left it to you!’

  Holding up the torches, he returned the wry look. ‘That wouldn’t be you, Falco. You do have to interfere.’

  For once the comment was dispassionate. Then I felt horrified. If we shared many more foul tasks and philosophical interludes, we might end up on friendly terms. [THF]

  Work is critical to understanding Anacrites. He liked to see himself as an expert at dealing with tricky characters in dangerous locations, but the truth was he led too soft a life and had lost the knack. [LAP] This explains his fear of Falco as an imperial favourite; it explains, though it does not excuse, Anacrites’ long series of attempts to eliminate Falco. The spy’s mixture of envy and mimicry will take him from landing Falco in prison over the lead ingots, through trying to have Falco killed in Nabataea, yet obsessively worming his way close to Falco’s family. Anacrites’ head wound makes their relationship more fraught: his life is saved by Falco and Ma. Anacrites is torn between resentment and his obligation to Falco and pitifully wanting to be one of the family. In Two for the Lions their tetchy partnership increases his envy and his yearning to enjoy freedoms he sees Falco enjoying.

  His attentions to Maia fail. When, to our relief, she dumps him, his reaction is vindictive and shocking. By the time I wrote this episode, Anacrites had finessed himself into having a reader fan club, who begged me to give him a ‘happy ending’; the violence wreaked on Maia’s home in A Body in the Bath House deliberately restated his danger. His overtures are sinister. When thwarted he is vicious. In Nemesis, we will learn that the wrecking incident could have had even worse consequences.

  Falco reluctantly tries to live with the situation, though he never forgets. In Nemesis we will discover the secrets in Anacrites’ background and genes.

  ‘Falco,’ said Anacrites plaintively, ‘I thought that was what you would have done yourself’.

  Dear gods, the madman wanted to be me. [TFL]

  Momus

  Momus never really changes from his off-putting debut in Shadows in Bronze: a typical slave overseer: shorn head to deter lice, wine gut, greasy belt, grubby chin, croaky voice from the diseases of his trade, and tough as an old nail stuck in wood. He was clearing out the personnel … He was crooked, filthy, slapdash and devious – a pleasantly clear-cut type. Eventually he works at the Palace: Anacrites always thought Momus had been put on the same corridor so he could report on him to his superiors, or to watch him for Claudius Laeta. Momus encouraged this fear by giving himself increasingly dark titles, such as Inspector of Audit Inspectors. (This also upset Internal Audit). [SA]

  Falco associates with him occasionally; in Nemesis he seeks Momus’ advice about the hold criminals have over Anacrites. Momus helps Falco and Petronius deal with an unwanted suspect, but he is as uncooperative as Laeta over the real problem.

  Perella

  With Perella I take delight in overturning Falco’s preconceptions. She is a short, stout, surly blonde [DLC], a dancer, but one of mature age: as a companion in a wine bar she might be cracking good fun. She was of an age where you could rely on her having a fair old amount of experience – in almost anything. In fact she is a merciless state assassin. Perella looked like a housewife with a headache on the bad day of the month. She was the deadliest intelligence agent I had ever met. [OB] She is most dangerous in A Body in the Bath House, where she continues her role as Anacrites’ field agent, bloodily eliminating a fraudulent architect, though her real mission is to persecute and perhaps attack Maia for the spy.

  Here we see Perella’s method most closely. Falco says Perella will station herself near her quarry, working as a dancer in some sour dive. There she would listen, watch, make herself known in the district until nobody thought twice about her presence. All the time she was planning her move … When Perella found her victims, she took them out, fast and silently. A knife across the throat from behind was her favourite method. Without question, she had others. [BBH]

  Her dance, a grand scene, is heart-stopping. It sums her up: she looks insignificant, but she is very, very good. Perella danced at first with such restraint of motion it seemed nearly derisive. Then each fine angle of her outstretched arms and each slight turn of the neck became a perfect gesture. When she burst forth abruptly into frantic drumming of her feet, whirling and darting in the confined spaces available, gasps turned to stricken silence. [BBH]

  As a woman, Perella has to fight for her position; even Falco steals the credit for a job she had wanted in A Dying Light in Corduba. While she finds it convenient, Perella works for Anacrites, though there must be an element of doubt about her loyalty, and in Nemesis she admits she wants his job. Aware of Anacrites disgracing himself at Lepcis Magna, she claims she won’t interfere in Falco’s hoped-for revenge on the spy.

  The Melitan brothers

  They sidle into the series gradually, first seen watching Falco’s house: A couple of shady characters in bum-starver cloaks were lurking on the Embankment outside … [AC] He calls them short hairy idiots and beetle-browed, then jeers at Anacrites: I see you’re still employing top quality! [SA]

  They start as minor characters. Then, as you do in a series, I pick them up and make them significant. They are not from Malta.

  Other Regular Characters

  I don’t have space to talk about every character. These are people who appear in more than one book:

  Julius Frontinus

  In The Silver Pigs, Falco meets this hard-bitten Praetorian, a friend of his late brother Festus. The purpose of the scene is threefold: to show that Falco has wandered into a new and frightening milieu; to gain new facts in the plot; and to show him as a detective in that archetypal situation, being forced to get very, very drunk with a witness who won’t talk otherwise.

  Poor Frontinus then gets stuck with the task of helping Falco dispose of the revolting ten-day-old corpse in Shadows in Bronze.

  If I had been more familiar with historical figures then, I would have given him another name. You learn.

  Apollonius

  We meet Apollonius as an elderly beggar failing to obtain alms on a barrel outside Flora’s Caupona. He has been an unsuccessful teacher at the infant school Falco and Maia were sent to: 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 … [PG]

  At first pedantic, Apollonius settles in with a veneer of culture; he is prone to disappearing out the back to read, so nobody can get served. He gives Falco advice; in Poseidon’s Gold, he is an early advocate of Falco aiming high, even though Helena Justina is a senator’s daughter.

  Placing a cup two inches from my elbow and following it with a neat little dish of exactly twenty nuts. [PG]

  As he gains confidence he acquires a nice cynical wit. He copes well with having Junia in charge, though Falco says in Scandal Takes a Holiday that Apollonius fiddles the figures and cheats her of profits. He has little appearances right through to Nemesis.

  Lenia

  Falco’s friend, ally and bugbear at the Eagl
e Laundry, Fountain Court, Lenia is nosy, frequently tipsy, with no discernment in men. Briefly – very briefly – she becomes wife to the landlord Smaractus, as a ploy to grab his money. Their marriage takes several books to occur, a fortnight to disintegrate after a flaming first night, and several more books to conclude in divorce (has it even happened?).

  I found her in the corner she used as an accounting room, sitting in her greasy slippers while she sipped mint tea. Until this pitiful ninny decided to invest in real estate (and real misery) by planning to marry our landlord Smaractus, she had been one of my shabby friends; once I could persuade her to ditch the brute she would be again. Lenia was a sagging drab about five times stronger than she looked, with startling snaggles of henna-red hair which constantly worked free of a limp scarf around her head … she had sickly eyes and a voice like forty dried peas rattling in a pannikin. [SB] She does not improve. Her face was white, her deportment unstable. She surveyed me with eyes that needed an oculist … [PG] Or later: She was a wild-eyed, snaggle-haired fury who carried too much weight but was otherwise pretty muscular. Her hands and feet were swollen and red from being in warm water all day. She had a voice that could have carried half way to the Palatine, with all the sweetness of a one-note trumpet giving the orders to a military parade … [THF]

  From time to time we catch a frightful glimpse of Lenia’s sassy staff. They tease Falco whenever they see him and are based on traditional spirited factory girls who live hard lives and stand up for themselves. They were sweethearts as singletons but together they turned into a hooting, foul-mouthed obscene little clutch. If you saw them coming, you wouldn’t just cross to the other pavement, you’d dive into a different street. Even if it meant getting mugged and your money pinched. [THF]

  Smaractus

  Just a blotch of local slime … [SP] the most stinking, greedy, heartless and degenerate Aventine landlord. [TFL]

  Until Falco moves to live above the basket weaver’s, he constantly dodges his landlord, whom we therefore don’t meet in person until Time to Depart on the eve of his wedding to Lenia – during which festivities we also learn he has a doughty mother. He is wary of Falco: I was lean and hard and I hated his guts. [TTD]

  His half-starved enforcers come from a seedy gymnasium he runs for the lowest type of gladiator – all black eyes and dirty bandages. [SP] He took them around for protection; I mean to protect the rest of the populace from what these idiots might get up to if Smaractus left them unattended … Smaractus himself was perfectly capable of forcing his debtors to turn out their purse if he caught them in. [TFL] Smaractus nonetheless dreams of greater things for his fighters, especially in Two for the Lions, where he fondly hopes to cash in when the Flavian amphitheatre opens.

  His name, which you can spit well, causes great difficulty to the BBC radio drama actors, who cite this as unfair treatment.

  Rodan and Asiacus

  The two gladiators from the landlord’s gym whom we met. They were ill-fed, unhealthy specimens, kept on short rations by Smaractus’ meanness. He had owned them for years. They were slaves, of course, pallid bruisers in leather skirts and with their arms wrapped in dirty bandages to make them look tough. They fought even more dirtily than the Roman crowd liked. [TFL]

  Rodan was the one with the broken nose. A tenant had hit him in the face with a mallet when Rodan tried to forestall a moonlit flit. Asiacus was the rude one with the pustular skin complaint. [TFL]

  Cassius

  The baker at Fountain Court; his produce is excellent and he is sympathetic to Falco. His wood store causes the fire that disrupts the wedding night of Lenia and Smaractus.

  Ennianus

  Another Fountain Court regular: he rents a shop to sell baskets, though he lives out on the Campagna; Falco and Helena rent a room above his shop in Time to Depart, rent-free in return for watching his lock-up.

  Appius

  The barber’s shop serves as a refuge when Falco thinks his apartment may be visited by undesirables. Appius was fat, florid, and had the worst head of hair between here and Rhegium. Thin, greasy strands were strung over a flaking scalp. He hardly ever shaved himself either. [THF]

  The barber’s boy can be useful, though he is somewhat vague.

  Glaucus

  Glaucus, my trainer, was as sharp as a kitten’s claw. A short, wide-shouldered Cilician freedman … he knew his regulars better than they knew themselves. Probably none of us were at all close to him. After twenty years of listening to other people revealing their secrets while he worked on their muscle tone, he knew how to avoid that trap. But he could tease out embarrassing information as smoothly as a thrush emptying a snail shell. [THF] Clearly an excellent trainer, he does not spare his clients. For a steep fee, Glaucus would give you a lesson that was almost as uncomfortable as being ridden down by murderous tribesmen galloping on wild horses. [AC] He teaches Anacrites Trainer’s Cheat, the move that saves him in the Lepcis arena.

  Unfortunately!

  [MDF]

  In See Delphi and Die Falco is entrusted with his beloved son, the obsessed athlete Young Glaucus, for their trip to Greece. Glaucus falls for Albia, but she brushes him off.

  Marponius

  A judge in the murder court, he is an irritant to Petronius Longus, interfering in investigations and agitating to be chosen for trials; he also runs up against Falco several times. In Poseidon’s Gold he arrests both Falco (on suspicion of killing Censorinus) and Helena (as an accessory); they have to be rescued and bailed by their fathers. He loves being a judge, is fascinated by crime, and boasts to Helena Justina that he is ‘a man of ideas’.

  Ambitious, nasty, narrow-minded and famous for spouting bigoted drivel, [AC] he has a flat-topped head and a lather of light, curly hair, receding each side of his rather square brow. His backside was too large, so he tended to strut like a pigeon with too much tail … [PG] He is a ‘New Man’, who has made his money selling copies of encyclopaedias.

  A childless widower, Marponius lives austerely in a detached town villa just off the Vicus Longus, where Falco and Petronius speculate rudely about his rather solitary life. Though the rabbit pie gives him indigestion, he is an habitué of somewhere called Xero’s pie shop: His special haunt when he wanted to look like a man of the people (and to overhear, incognito, the public’s views on how he ran his case). [AC] He is a man with a mission – to clean up Rome. But he comes good for Falco because of their shared background: We both grew up in the shadow of the Temple of Ceres, we both played in the gutters under the Aqua Marcia, we had the same mud on our boots and we recognised one another for lowborn tykes with equal disadvantages and the same points to prove. If the senatorials tried to be too clever, Marponius would side with me. [AC]

  Thalia

  She was a big girl. By which I mean … nothing. She was big, all over; she was young enough to be described as a girl without too much irreverence; and I was able to see that her assets were entirely in proportion to the height of her. Her attire was what the well-dressed artiste was wearing that month: a few stars, a couple of ostrich feathers, a skimpy drape of transparent stuff – and a necklace. [VC]

  I soon saw the potential of this sparkling character. Originally intended only as a colourful witness, she reappeared in Last Act in Palmyra as a client, who becomes a friend, after saving Helena’s life when she is bitten by a scorpion. In Two for the Lions, she dispenses salves and inside knowledge of the arena business. I thought I liked her, says Falco. It seemed the best attitude to take. By now she has progressed from being a down-at-heel exotic dancer, though she continues to perform; inheriting the circus business from Fronto, who was eaten by a panther, she has become an experienced manager – a role she will reprise in Alexandria.

  Thalia’s relaxed sexual lifestyle has tricky results. A liaison struck up during Alexandria – it is uncertain which liaison – ends in her becoming pregnant. This is a surprise to everyone, and in Nemesis I hint at a lifetime of problems to come. She manages to lumber Falco with it.


  Jason, Thalia’s python

  The necklace might pass for coral, until you observed that its jewelled folds sometimes shuddered with a sluggish allure … Every time she moved, that creature perked up and started inspecting if I was properly shaved and whether I had nits behind the ears … [VC]

  Of modest size but gigantic curiosity, Jason’s favourite trick is to panic Falco. He is like a dog that knows you are afraid of it, or a cat fixing on me when I don’t want it on my lap. Jason liked to curl up right in the exit to a tent where he could look up people’s tunic skirts. He wasn’t even pretending to be asleep. He was staring right at me, daring me to approach … [TFL]

  Thalia has a much larger python called Zeno, and briefly she owns a cobra too.

  Davos

  Encountered as a leading actor in Last Act in Palmyra, Davos knows Thalia and we leave them apparently about to go into partnership, both business and private. We have not seen him since, however!

  Davos had a square face with quiet, regretful eyes. Short, no-nonsense black hair topped his head. He was built like a cairn of Celtic rocks, basic, long-lasting, dependable, broadly based; not much would topple him. His view of life was dry. He looked as if he had seen the whole spectacle – and wouldn’t waste his money on a second entrance fee … [LAP]

  The only certain thing about Thalia’s pregnancy is that Davos cannot be the father.

  ‘Love of my life,’ Thalia assured me. ‘I can’t get enough of his thundering virility or the way he picks his teeth …’ [AL]

  Byrria

  In Last Act in Palmyra, Byrria is a young, very beautiful actress, aware of her own talent and trying to make a career. She had a triangular face with green eyes like an Egyptian cat set wide above high cheekbones and a thin, perfect nose. Her mouth had a strange lop-sided quirk that gave her an ironic, world-weary air. Her figure was as watchable as her face, small and curvaceous, and hinting of unrevealed possibilities. To finish the business she had a dramatic knack of looping up her warm brown hair with a couple of bronze hairpins, so it not only looked unusual but stayed in place, showing off a tantalising neck. Her voice seemed too low for such a neat person; it had a huskiness that was completely distracting when combined with her experienced manner. [LAP]