The general import man just liked travel, he told me. A few hints led me to think he might have left quarrels behind him. Or perhaps some personal tragedy made him want a new start; he was old enough to have lost a treasured wife, say. He found Britain exotic and untried and was willing to negotiate any commodities that were in demand. He had even found a girl, a Briton; they were planning to settle… So if my theory was right, he was a second-time romantic, choosing new happiness in a changed environment.
In another situation I would have been fascinated with these far-flung travellers – especially the fellow from Palmyra, where it so happened I had been. But neither appeared to be 'preying' on this province in the way Silvanus had complained about. They had found avenues to explore, but that was to their credit. They posed no threat. They would be earning a living, providing sought-after goods, and offering the local people welcome opportunities.
The fact was, my questions would not be answered here. These were the wrong kind of men – far too legitimate. As usual, it was my task to delve among the dirtier layers of humanity. I would not find my culprits cosying up to the governor. Racketeers never register their presence openly.
I could be wasting my time anyway. However bad the scene shaping up behind the Londinium waterfront, it might be irrelevant to the Verovolcus killing. I did not even know that Verovolcus had run up against any extortionists. It was just a hunch.
Aelia Camilla was leaving the party. To her husband, she merely signalled her intention to withdraw. She and Gaius were traditionalists; they shared a bedroom, without doubt. Later, they would exchange opinions of tonight's party, discussing their guests. They would probably note my late arrival and speculate where I had been all day.
On me, now a nephew by marriage, Aelia Camilla bestowed a few words and a goodnight kiss on the cheek. I told her briefly about Helena's scavenger (it seemed wise; by tomorrow the girl might have laid waste to the household).
Aelia Camilla pulled a face. But she made no complaint; she was loyal to Helena. 'I am sure we can cope.'
'Please don't blame me for this.'
'Well, you do want a new nursemaid, Marcus.'
'But I would rather place my children in the care of someone who has known a happy life.'
'This girl may have one,' disagreed Helena's aunt. '- If Helena Justina takes to her.'
I sighed. 'Helena will turn her around, you mean?'
'Don't you think so?'
'She will try hard… Helena makes it her business. She turned me.'
Then Aelia Camilla gave me a smile of enormous sweetness, which to my surprise seemed genuine. 'Nonsense! Marcus Didius Falco, she never thought there was anything about you she needed to change.'
It was all getting too much for me: I went to bed myself.
XIII
Next day, 'Helena's wild girl' quickly became an object of attention for the children in the house.
Mine were too young to take much interest, though Julia was seen toddling up to stare. She was good at that. She came and stared at me sometimes, with an expression of private wonder that I preferred not to interpret.
It was Maia's bunch and the procurator's darlings who adopted Albia. Their interest was almost scientific, especially among the girls, who solemnly discussed what was best for this creature.
Clothing was found. 'This dress is blue, which is a nice colour, but the dress is not too expensive to look at,' Maia's Cloelia explained to me gravely. 'Then if she runs away back to her life, she won't attract the wrong kind of attention.'
'She eats very quickly,' little Ancus marvelled. He was about six, himself a faddy little boy who was always in trouble at mealtimes. 'If we take her food, she eats it straight away, even if she has only just had something.'
'She has been starved, Ancus,' I explained. 'She never had a chance to push her bowl away and whimper that she hates spinach. She has to eat what she can get, in case there is never any more.'
'We don't make her have spinach!' Ancus answered quickly.
Flavia, the procurator's eldest, was talking to the girl. 'Does she ever seem to understand you, Flavia?' I asked.
'Not yet. We are going to keep speaking to her in Latin and we think she will learn it.' I had heard the children naming household items as they towed Albia around with them. I even heard the eloquent Flavia describing me: 'That man is Marcus Didius, who married our cousin. His manner can be abrupt, but that is because he has plebeian origins. It makes him uncomfortable in ornate surroundings. He is more intelligent than he lets on, and he makes jokes that you don't notice until half an hour afterwards. He does work that is valued by the highest people, and is thought to have as yet under-explored qualities.'
I failed to recognise this creature. He sounded grim. Who in Olympus had Flavia been listening to?
It was difficult to say what the scavenger made of it. She had been plunged into this enormous residence, with its painted frescos, polished floors and high coffered ceilings, full of people who never screamed abuse at each other, who ate regularly, who slept in beds – the same bed every night. It was possible that her original parentage entitled her to some of those things, but she knew nothing of that. It seemed best not to suggest it. Meanwhile the girl must have wondered, as others of us did, how long her stay in the residence would last.
The slaves were contemptuous of course. A street foundling was lower even than them. They at least had a point of reference in the family who owned them. They were well fed, clothed, housed, and in the Frontinus and Hilaris menages they were treated with kindness; if ever freed, they would legally join their owners' families, on pretty equal terms. Albia had none of those advantages, yet she was nobody's property. She represented in the worst degree the adage that the freeborn poor live far less well than slaves in wealthy households. This cannot have comforted anyone. If the children had not been making such a pet of the creature, she would have had a hard time of it from the slaves.
The household ointments were not healing her grazes. Maia's children muttered among themselves about whether it was ethical to invade Petro's room and borrow something from his medicine chest. It was famously well stocked. 'Uncle Lucius forbade us to touch it.'
'He is not here. We can't ask him.'
They came to see me. 'Falco, will you ask him for us?'
'How can I do that?'
Crestfallen, Marius the elder boy explained, 'We thought you would know where he is. We thought he must have told you how to contact him.'
'Well he didn't tell me. But I can look in his box. Because I am an adult -'
'I have heard that doubted,' stated Cloelia. All Maia's children had inherited a rude trait, but apparently dear Cloelia was being merely factual.
'Well, because I am his friend then. I shall need the key -'
'Oh we know where he hides the key!' Great. I had known Petronius Longus since we were eighteen and I had never spotted where he stashed that key. He could be very secretive.
When I went to his room, we were all disappointed; his medicine chest was missing. I checked around more carefully. There were no weapons left behind either. He would never have left Italy without a decent armoury. It must be quite some drinking bout he was indulging in, if he took a full chest of remedies and a sword.
I went out later, on observation back in the riverside area. Marius came with me. He was tiring of the endless nurture of Albia. We both took our dogs for a walk. 'I don't mind if you sell Arctos!' Maia yelled after Marius. She must have heard about that dogman Helena and I encountered. 'Your pup's big and strong; he would make a lovely investment for somebody. Or a good meat stew,' she added cruelly.
A stalwart boy, Marius pretended he had not heard. He loved his dog and appeared fairly fond of his mother; brought up by my strict sister and her slapdash drinking husband, he had long ago learned diplomacy. At eleven, he was turning into a caricature of a good little Roman boy. He even had a small-sized toga my father had bought for him. Pa had totally neglected the rites of passage of
his own sons – mainly because he was away from home with his paramour. Now he thought he would treat his grandsons traditionally. (The polite ones, that is. I had not noticed him spoiling the gutter tykes.) I told Marius he looked like a doll; I made him leave the top at the residence. 'We don't want to stand out as foreign prigs, Marius.'
'I thought we had to teach the Britons how to live like proper Romans.'
'The Emperor has sent a judicial administrator to do that '
'I haven't seen such a man.' Marius was a literal boy, who tested everything.
'No, he's out and about in the British towns holding citizenship classes. Where to sit in a basilica; what body-parts to scrape with your strigil; how to drape your toga.'
'You think if I parade about togate on the streets of Londinium, I'll be laughed at.'
I thought it a possibility.
Being inconspicuous was difficult with Arctos and Nux dragging at their leads. Arctos was a boisterous young beast with long matted fur and a wavy tail, whose father we had never traced. My dog Nux was his mother. Nux was smaller, madder, and much more proficient at nosing in filthy places. To the locals both our pups were piteous. Britons bred the best hunting dogs in the Empire; their speciality was mastiffs, so fearless they were a good match for fighting arena bears. Even their lapdog-sized canines were tough terrors, with short stout legs and pricked up ears, whose idea of a soft afternoon was to raid a badger set – and to win.
'Is Nux going to help you track a criminal, Uncle Marcus?' Nux looked up and wagged her tail.
'I doubt it. Nux just gives me an excuse to wander about.' I then thought it worth trying: 'Marius, old pal, did Petronius say anything to you about what he was up to, before he went off?'
'No, Uncle Marcus.'
The boy made it sound convincing. When I stared at him, he looked me in the eye. But even in Rome, a city crammed with the world's worst confidence tricksters, the Didius family had always bred a special brand of sweet-faced liars.
'You grow more like your grandfather every day,' I commented, to let him know I was not fooled.
'I hope not,' quipped back Marius, pretending to be one of the boys.
We spent a couple of hours trailing round the downtown district, with no luck. I discovered that the baker whose business burned down was called Epaphroditus, but if anybody knew where Epaphroditus had his bolthole, they were not telling me. I tried asking about the Verovolcus killing, but people pretended they had not even heard that it happened. I found no witnesses who had noticed Verovolcus in the locality while still alive; nobody saw him drinking in the Shower of Gold; no one knew who had killed him. Finally I mentioned (because I was growing desperate) that there might be a reward. The silence continued. Evidently the judicial administrator had failed, in his citizenship classes, to explain how Roman justice worked.
We found a booth that passed for a pie-stall and treated ourselves. Marius managed half of his, then I helped him finish, making up for my lack of grub yesterday. He had slathered his pie in fish pickle sauce from the encrusted communal jug at the stall. I would have done the same at eleven, so I said nothing.
'All these people you have been talking to seem rather law-abiding and dull.' Most of my nephews had a dry wit. 'You would think a man head-first down a well would cause more fuss.'
'Maybe murders occur more often here than they should, Marius.'
'Well maybe we should nip off out of here then!' Marius grinned. Among my nieces and nephews I was viewed as a clown, though one with a hint of danger attached. His face clouded. 'Could we get into trouble?'
'If we upset someone. You can get into trouble anywhere if you do that.'
'How do we know what to avoid?'
'Use good sense. Be quiet and polite. Hope that the locals have been paying attention to the section about manners in their toga-folding lessons.'
'And always keep an escape route when entering an enclosed area?' Marius suggested.
I raised my eyebrows at him. 'You have been listening to Lucius Petronius.'
'Yes.' Marius, who was quiet by nature, hung his head for a moment. Bringing four young children all across Europe to their mother, Petro must have resorted to strict drill, for everyone's safety. In Maia's offspring he would have found intelligent listeners, keen to learn when plied with army and vigiles lore. 'Lucius Petronius was good to be with. I miss him.'
I wiped my mouth and my chin with the back of my hand, where the pungent fish pickle had dripped from his pie. 'So do I, Marius.'
XIV
We were not the only ones missing Petronius. A letter had arrived for him from Rome.
Flavius Hilaris had the letter, and he made the mistake of mentioning it to me when we were all at lunch. 'If anybody sees your friend, it would be helpful to say I have this -'
'Is it from a lover?' demanded young Flavia, unaware of the ripples her remark caused. With Petronius there were quite a few women in that category. Most were long in the past as far as I knew. Many would be too easygoing to correspond; some probably could not write. Petronius had always had the knack of staying on good terms with the flighty ones, but he also knew how to break free. His liaisons meant little; they ran their course, then usually petered out.
'His exciting love, the gangster's wife perhaps,' jeered Maia. Petro's stupid affair had been no secret anywhere on the Aventine. Balbina Milvia did try to stick, but Petro, with his domestic life in tatters and his job threatened, had shed her. He knew that dallying with Milvia had been very dangerous.
'A gangster!' Flavia was greatly impressed.
'Please, all of you be serious.' Hilaris was more pinched than usual. 'This letter comes from the vigiles. It is written by a tribune, Rubella. But it is passing on a message to Petronius from his wife.'
'Ex-wife.' I did not look at my sister.
As I said it, I realised that aspects of this letter, which clearly bothered Hilaris, were odd. He would deny that his province practised censorship of correspondence, yet he had obviously read the letter. Why not simply hang on to it until Petro reappeared? Why was the letter from a tribune? Arria Silvia could write if she wanted to bother – unlikely, given the state of things between them; but she would hardly ask Petro's superior to pass on her usual complaints about their three girls growing out of their clothing and how the slump in sales of potted salads caused her new boyfriend problems…
Neither could I imagine any vigiles tribune, especially the hard-bitten Rubella on the Aventine, scribbling a fond note to wish Petro a wonderful holiday.
How did Silvia know he was in Britain, anyway? How did Petro's tribune know? If he were taking leave, he would consider his destination his own business.
'Give the letter to me, if you like,' I offered.
Hilaris ignored my offer to take custody of the scroll. 'It was forwarded by the Urban Prefect.'
'Official channels?' I stared. 'The Prefect is so close to the top, he is virtually hung on the belt of the Emperor! What in Hades is going on?'
He bent his head, avoiding my eyes.
'What's up, Gaius?'
'I really don't know!' Hilaris was frowning, and sounded slightly annoyed. He had given his working life to Britain and he expected to be kept informed. 'I thought you knew, Falco.'
'Well, I don't.'
'Someone has died, Marcus,' interrupted Aelia Camilla, as if imposing sense on us. So her husband had been sufficiently perturbed to discuss the letter's contents with her.
'I didn't know Petronius had much family.' Helena glanced quickly at me. He had some flat-footed relatives in the country, whom he hardly saw. An aunt in Rome. He did have contact with her, but who gets letters from estranged wives sent urgently half across the world – about an aunt? His Auntie Sedina was elderly and overweight; it would be no surprise if she passed away.
Helena must have read in my face a reflection of her own fears. 'Oh not one of his children!' she burst out.
Aelia Camilla was upset. 'I'm afraid it is worse – it is two of them.'
Everyone was horrified. The message from the tribune was curt bureaucracy: L. Petronius Longus was to be informed with regret that two of his children had succumbed to the chickenpox.
'Which two?' Helena demanded.
'It does not say -' Hilaris at once faced a barrage of female anger.
'You must send a signal urgently,' his wife commanded. 'We have to be able to tell this poor man which of his daughters has survived!'
'Are they all daughters?'
'Yes, he has three daughters; he speaks of them very fondly. Gaius, you cannot ever have been listening.'
Maia, my sister, had remained silent, but she met my eyes with horror. We knew that Petronius had been laid up with the chickenpox himself, no doubt caught from his children, as he travelled here through Gaul. All of Maia's brood had it at the same time. Any of them might have died. If it had been Petro who succumbed, the four young Didii would have been stranded. Maia would have been bereft. I saw her close her eyes, shaking her head slightly. That was all the comment she could ever make.
I was aware of her eldest, Marius and Cloelia, watching us with their eyes wide. We adults avoided looking at them, as if talking amongst ourselves conferred some kind of privacy.
Thinking of the three Petronius girls, those of us who knew them were stricken. All three had always been delightful. Petro had been a solid father, romping with them when he was at home, but insisting on regular discipline. They were his joy: Petronilla, the sensitive eldest, a father's girl who had taken her parents' separation harder than the rest; sweet, neat Silvana; adorable round-faced, barely school-age Tadia.
We were realists. To bring three children into the world was the Roman ideal; to keep them alive was rare. Birth itself was a risk. A whisper could carry off an infant. More precious children died at less than two years old than ever marked the formal passage out of infancy at seven. Many slipped away before ten and never entered puberty. The Empire was filled with tiny tombstones, carved with miniature portraits of toddlers with their rattles and pet doves, their memorials full of exquisite praise for best-loved, best-deserving little souls, snatched away from grieving parents and patrons after lives of heart-rending brevity. And never mind what the damned jurists say: Romans make no distinction between boys and girls.
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