In view of his surly answer, I decided a man-to-lad talk would be unprofitable tonight. We started to walk again but after another ten paces, he heaved a dramatic sigh and fetched out, ‘Let’s get it over with; I promise to cooperate!’
‘Oh thanks!’ I was trapped. Casting round in despair I asked him conventionally, ‘What does your schoolmaster think of you?’
‘Not much.’
‘That’s a good sign!’ I heard his head turn doubtfully. ‘So what’s causing your mother all this grid?’
‘Didn’t she tell you?’
‘She was well-primed for a torrent but I didn’t have three days to spare. Tell me yourself.’
We must have marched on for half a minute. ‘She caught me reading poetry,’ he admitted in the end.
‘Good gods!’ I burst out laughing. ‘What was it - rude verses from Catullus? Men with big noses, vindictive whores in the Forum, grubby lovers chomping at each other’s private parts? Believe me, there’s more pleasure, and much better nourishment, in a decent lunch of goat’s cheese and bread rolls…’ Larius shuffled. ‘Your mother may have a point,’ I murmured more kindly. ‘The only person Galla knows who scribbles elegies in notebooks is her peculiar brother Marcus; he’s always in trouble, short of cash, and usually has some scantily clad rope dancer in tow… She’s right, Larius: forget poetry. It’s just as disreputable, but much more remunerative, to sell green-tinted love potions or become an architect!’
‘Or be an informer?’ Larius jibed.
‘No; being an informer rarely brings in cash!’
Out in the Bay other faint lights were bobbing, as the night fishermen uncovered their lamps to lure their catch. Much nearer at hand a single ship had appeared unnoticed while we walked; she must have come from the direction of Surrentum, hidden in the twilight as she hugged the shore below the Lactarii Mountains, but now she emerged proudly into the centre of the Bay. We could just make her out. She was much smaller than the Circe, altogether a different craft from Pertinax’s huge merchantman. This was the sort of toy every rich man who owned a villa at Baiae kept tied up to his landing stage - like the other pleasure boat I had in my life at the moment, the one the conspirator Crispus had fled aboard so conveniently.
Larius and I both slowed our steps. Gliding in silence the ship made a lovely, slightly melancholy sight. We watched, enthralled, as this slender vision crossed the Bay - no doubt some plump young barrister proud of his senatorial ancestors was bringing home a dozen high-class girls with low-grade morals from a beach party on the Positanum coast; his expensive hull was sliding gracefully with a silver wake back towards one of his coastal properties…
My nephew exclaimed with a thrill of speculation he could hardly keep in, ‘I wonder if that’s the Isis Africans?’
‘And what,’ I asked him levelly, ‘is the Isis Africans?’
And still bursting with the prospect, Larius piped up: ‘She belongs to that man Aufidius Crispus. It’s the name of the yacht you’re looking for..?
XXVII
We quickened our pace again, our eyes still following the boat, but it grew darker and she was lost from us out in the Bay.
‘Very clever!’ I scoffed. ‘I owe this to your tar-stained nark on the quayside, I presume?’ Larius ignored me. I tried to contain my anger. ‘Larius, we ought to have tipped him a denarius to stop him warning the owner that we asked.’ We kept striding on. I made an attempt to restore peace. ‘I apologize. Tell me I’m an ungrateful, bad-tempered swine.’
‘You’re a swine… It’s just his age; he’ll grow out of it!’ Larius announced to the ocean balefully.
I laughed, ruffling his hair.
‘Being a private informer,’ I confided, twenty paces later, ‘is less glamorous than you think - it’s not all hard knocks and easy women, but mostly bad dinners and ruining your feet!’ Fresh air and exercise were doing the boy good, but I felt-glum.
‘What shall we do when we find her, Uncle Marcus?’ he fetched out unexpectedly. I had no idea what had brought us back on friendly terms.
‘The Isis Africana? I shall have to decide my tactics when I’ve had a quiet look. But this Crispus sounds tricky-‘
‘What’s tricky about him?’
‘Big ideas.’ I had done my homework before I left Rome. ‘The illustrious Lucius Aufidius Crispus is a senator from Latium. He owns estates at Fregellae, Fundi, Norba, Formiae, Tarracina - good growing land in famous areas - plus a huge villa at the Sinuessa spa where he can sit in the sun and tot up his accounts. In his career in public service he landed jobs in all the wrong provinces: Noricum, for heaven’s sake! You’ve been to school; where’s Noricum?’
‘Go up to the Alps and turn right?’
‘Could well be - anyway, when Nero died and Rome came up for auction, nobody had heard of Noricum and nobody had heard of him. Despite that, Crispus sees imperial purple in his horoscope. What would be tricky is if he persuaded Fregellae, Fundi, Norba, Formiae and Tarracina to glimpse it too.’
‘Local boy making good?’
‘Right! So he’s dangerous, Larius. Your mother will never forgive me if I let you become involved.’
Disgust silenced him briefly, but he was too inquisitive to sulk for long. ‘Uncle Marcus, you always called politics a fool’s game-‘
‘It is! But I was tired of helping bad-tempered women divorce feeble stationer clerks, and working for the clerks was even worse; they always wanted to pay me in bottom-grade papyrus you wouldn’t use to scribble a curse. Then I was invited to drudge for the Palatine. At least if the Emperor honours his commitments, there should be good pickings.’
‘For the money then?’ Larius sounded puzzled.
‘Money is freedom, lad.’
If he had not been too soft to take the knocks and too shy to handle the women, this Larius would have made a good informer; he could persist with a line of enquiry until the person he was questioning wanted to thump his ear. (Also, his outsize puppy feet were bearing up to the Oplontis road far better than mine; I had a badly sore toe.)
‘What do you want money for?’ he grilled me relentlessly.
‘Fresh meat, tunics that fit properly, all the books I can lay my hands on, a new bed with all four legs the same length, a lifetime’s supply of Falernian to guzzle with Petro-‘
‘A woman?’ he interrupted my happy flow.
‘Oh, I doubt it! We were talking about freedom, weren’t we?’
A vaguely reproachful silence ensued. Then Larius murmured, ‘Uncle Marcus, don’t you believe in love?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘There is a rumour you were smitten recently.’
‘The lady in question left me. Due to my shortage of cash.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Oh indeed!’
‘What was she like?’ He was not even leering; he sounded genuinely intrigued.
‘Marvellous. Don’t make me remember. Right now,’ I suggested, feeling older than my thirty years, ‘what I’d settle for is a big copper bowl full of piping hot water to soak my tender feet!’
We trudged on.
‘Was the lady -‘ persisted Larius.
‘Larius, I’d like to pretend I’d drag off my boots for her, and walk barefoot over a cinder path for another hundred miles. Frankly I stop feeling romantic when I get a bulging blister on my toe!’
‘Was she important?’ Larius finished stubbornly.
‘Not very,’ I said. (On principle.)
‘So not,’ persisted Larius, “she whom, through living, gives your life its sweet reason”…? Catullus,’ he added, as though he thought I might not know. (I knew all right; I had been fourteen myself once, and stuffed to the gills with dreams of sexual conquest and depressing poetry.)
‘No,’ I said. ‘But she could have been - and for your private information, that’s a Falco original!’
Larius murmured quietly that he was sorry about my sore toe.
XXVIII
As we app
roached the inn at Oplontis, I saw two skulking figures on the dark beach outside.
I said nothing to Larius, but led him round in the shadows to slip in through the stable block. We found Petro bedding down the ox. Poor Nero was almost asleep on his cloven feet; after hauling my lead he was too tired even to bend his neck to the feeding trough so Petronius Longus, the hard man of the Aventine watch, was enticing wisps of hay into the beast’s huge mouth with murmurs of loving encouragement.
‘Just a bit more, precious…’ we heard him coax, in his tone for spooning broth down a sad child. Larius giggled; Petro was unabashed. ‘I want to take him home in good condition!’
I explained to my nephew that Petronius and his brother (who was a tireless entrepreneur) had formed a syndicate to buy this ox with three of their relatives; it always caused bad feeling when Petro popped up at his country cousins’ farm to borrow his investment.
‘How is Nero meant to be shared then?’ Larius asked.
‘Oh, the other four tell me it’s a leg each for them, and I get his balls,’ Petronius replied gravely; the big-city innocent. He shoved in a last sheaf of hay then gave up.
Larius, who was sharp but not yet sharp enough, squatted down to check, then leapt up proclaiming, ‘He’s an ox! He’s been castrated; he hasn’t any-‘
Catching sight of our faces, he clammed up as the joke slowly dawned.
‘Anyway,’ I commented, ‘this ox must be four years old; what lunatic named him Nero while the Emperor was alive?’
‘I did it,’ Petronius answered, ‘when I picked him up last week; the others call him Spot. Apart from the fact he has a curly topknot and heavy jowls, whoever clipped his equipment bungled it, so he shares with our glorious late Emperor indiscriminate lechery: bullocks, heifers, five-barred gates; the fool will jump on anything-‘
Petronius Longus had fierce views on government; trying to keep public order among citizens who knew they were ruled by a mad lyre player had filled him with frustration, though this was the only open political gesture I had seen him make.
Trailing a long dribble of saliva, Nero, who hardly looked equal to jumping on anything, closed his dun-coloured eyelids and leaned against the stall; changing his mind, he lunged forward fondly towards Petronius. Petro jumped back, and we all jammed up the gate, trying to look nonchalant.
‘One bit of news,’ I told Petro. ‘Our ship is called the Isis Africa: - Larius has been using his initiative.’
‘Intelligent boy!’ Petro applauded, pinching his cheek (knowing Larius hated it). ‘And I’ve got something for you, Falco. I stopped by a turning to one of those upland villages-‘
‘What had you stopped for?’ Larius interrupted.
‘Don’t be nosy. Picking flowers. Falco, I was asking one of the locals about who is important hereabouts. Do you recollect that antiquated ex-consul we investigated in connection with the Pertinax conspiracy?’
‘Caprenius Marcellus? His father? The invalid?’
I myself had never met him but I certainly remembered Marcellus: one of Rome’s elderly senators, with seven previous consuls in his glorious pedigree. He had possessed an enormous fortune and no heir, until Pertinax caught his eye and was taken on as his adopted son. (Either he was very shortsighted, or being descended from consuls did not make a senator astute.)
‘I saw the old bird at Setia,’ Petro remmisced. ‘Good wine country! But he was rich as Crassus. He owns vineyards all over Campania - one up on Vesuvius.’
‘Officially,’ I mused, ‘Marcellus was cleared of conspiracy.’ Even though he owned the warehouse the plotters used for storing their bullion, having a good pedigree and a massive fortune had largely protected him; we had made routine enquiries, then respectfully backed off. ‘He’s supposed to be much too ill for politics - and if so he won’t be here; he couldn’t travel if the story’s genuine. His place might be worth a visit though-‘
It struck me that this villa Rustics could be harbouring Barnabas. In fact, a villa on Mount Vesuvius whose owner was ill elsewhere could provide a perfect hideaway. I was sure Petronius reckoned the same, though in his cautious way he said nothing.
Changing the subject, I mentioned the two secretive figures I had noticed earlier on the beach. Planting Larius behind us, Petro and I armed ourselves with a lantern and marched out to look.
They were still there. If they were lying in wait, they were completely unprofessional; a murmur of surreptitious voices met our ears. As our footfalls disturbed them, the smaller shadow detached itself and ran into the inn with a squeak. My nose twitched at rancid, second-rate rose-water, then I glimpsed a familiar top-heavy bosom and anxious, moon-shaped face. I thudded.
‘Ollin’s quick off the mark! She’s found her fisherboy!’
She had too. He sauntered up past us with the self-assured, curious stare these gigolos always possess. A dim girl’s dream. He had the lovingly tended haircut, short sturdy legs and brawny brown shoulders that were made for showing off to city girls as he practised hurling nets.
‘Goodnight!’ Petro called firmly, in the voice of a watch captain who can handle himself. The young lobster-catcher sloped off without answering. His features were not up to much by Aventine standards, and I guessed that as a boatman’s apprentice he was pretty slovenly.
We left Petronius in the courtyard: a man who took life seriously, strolling round to see that all was in order before he turned in.
As Larius preceded me up to our room, he turned back to whisper thoughtfully, ‘He can’t have a girlfriend, not with his family here. So who is he picking flowers for?’
‘Arria Silvia?’ I suggested, trying to sound neutral. Then my nephew (who was growing in sophistication daily) squinted down at me sideways, in a way that had me snorting with helpless laughter all up the stairs.
Arria Silvia was asleep. Through the tangled spread of her hair on the pillow her face looked flushed. She was breathing with the deep contentment of a woman who had been wined and dined, then walked home through the summer night and warmed up again afterwards by a husband who was famous for his thoroughness. Beside her bed she had a large bunch of dog roses, stuck in a dead fish-pickle jar.
As he came upstairs later we could hear Petronius humming to himself.
XXIX
Every householder knows the hazard; a man and a boy at the door selling something you don’t want. Unless you feel strong, these whey-faced inadequates land you with anything from false horoscopes or wobbly iron saucepans to a secondhand chariot with mock-silver wheel finials and a very small Medusa stencilled on the side, which you subsequently discover used to be painted crimson and had to have its bodywork remodelled after being battered to all Hades in a crash…
Larius and I became a man and a boy. Our load of black-market fitments gave us carts blanche to enter private estates. No one sent for the vigilantes. We shuffled round the coast, taking Nero up clinkered carriage-drives and sometimes back down them again five minutes afterwards; surprisingly often though, our visits took longer and our list of orders was longer when we left. Plenty of fine villas around the Bay of Neapolis now have British water pipes, and most did not acquire the goods as official ex-government stock. Several people took advantage of our cheap rates to renew their entire supplies.
I was not surprised; we had come knocking at the Corinthian portals of the rich. Their great-great-grandfathers may have filled the family coffers through honest toil in their olive groves or awards for political service (foreign booty, I mean), but subsequent generations kept themselves in credit by haggling for bargains kept under the counter after being smuggled into Italy without paying harbour-dues. They were matched in iniquity by their household stewards. These snooty rascals were getting new pipework for the price of cobnuts (and then creaming off a premium from their masters’ accounts), but they still tried to slip us old iron rivets and funny Macedonian small change when they paid.
After a few days completely tongue-tied, Larius found his voice and wor
ked up a sales pattern that sounded as though he had been born in a basket under a market stall; what was more, I could trust him with the arithmetic. Soon we were quite enjoying selling pipes. The weather stayed wonderful, Nero was behaving, and we sometimes managed to arrive at a friendly kitchen door just as they were serving lunch.
Information seemed harder to come by than corn-meal cakes. We had called at almost every maritime villa between Baiae and Stabiae. Even the friendly ones denied knowledge of Crispus and his boat. I had wasted hours allowing arthritic door porters to reminisce about marching through Pannonia with some low-grade legion led by a syphilitic legate who was later cashiered. Meanwhile Larius was sauntering along piers to look for the Isis and grinned; any day now some lad with a fishing line would suspect him of immoral overtures and push him in the drink.
Against such a negative background, huckstering lead began to pall. This was the dreary side of being an informer asking routine questions which never produced results; weasing myself out while I strongly suspected I had missed the real point. My work dragged. Because of it I could never relax and enjoy my friends’ companionship. My stomach felt queasy. All the mosquitoes in the Phlegraean marshes had discovered my presence and homed in for their seasonal treat. I missed Rome. I wanted a new woman, but although there were plenty available I never liked any I saw.
I was trying to keep cheerful in front of Larius, though his basic good nature was coming under strain. One day it rained as well. Even when the skies cleared, dampness seemed to hang around our clothes. Nero became bad-tempered; controlling him was such hard work we soon let him amble aimlessly.
In this way we found ourselves on yet another dusty Campanian road that led between lush vineyards and vegetable allotments. Healthy cabbages stood to attention in little hollows dug round them to conserve the dew. Distant labourers poked at the black soil with long-handled hoes. Nearby there was a trellised arch marking the entrance to an estate, with a flurry of brown hens around its feet, and an extremely pretty country maiden climbing out over a field gate in a way that showed us most of her legs and a lot of what went on higher up.
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