‘Rome!’ Rome: where I had sent Helena Justina to be safe.
‘I had a word with the new mistress,’ Bryon went on. ‘She seems to know her mind! Ferox is still to be sent for the race. She also told me, the Consul is making a special bequest to you; he likes you, apparently-‘
‘You amaze me. What’s the gift?’
‘Little Sweetheart.’ I never have much luck in life, but that was ridiculous. ‘Her ladyship says, will you please take him with you when you go?’
Every citizen has the right to decline inconvenient legacies. I nearly declined this.
Still, I could always sell the nag for sausage meat. For all his faults of character, he was well fed and free from visible disease; there were plenty of hot-piemen selling worse things from trays along the Via Triumphalis and in front of the Basilica.
So I kept him and saved my fare home, struggling all the way up the Via Appia on this cockeyed, knock-kneed, self-willed, pernickety beastie who now was my own.
Part Six
THE HOUSE ON THE QUIRINAL
ROME
August
‘That men of a certain Dr should behave as they do is inevitable. To wish it otherwise went to wish the fig-tree would not field its juice. In any case, remember that in a very little while, both you and he will be dead, and your very names will be quickly forgotten…’
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
LXXVI
Rome: the mere hum of the city convinced me Pertinax was here.
Even in August, with half its citizens absent and the air so hot that taking a breath braised your liver and lungs, my return to Rome brought the thump of real life to my veins after Campania’s debilitating glare.
I soaked in its vivid atmosphere: the temples and fountains, the astonishing height of the gimcrack apartments, the arrogance of the sophisticated slaves who barged along the highroad, the drips on my head where my road dived under the gloom of an aqueduct - stale garments and fresh tempers, a sweet tang of myrrh among the sour reek of brothels, a fresh hint of oregano above the old and indelible reek of the fish market.
I throbbed with childish delight to be back in these streets I had known all my life; then I grew more subdued as I recognized the sneer of a city which had forgotten me. Rome had lived through a thousand rumours since I left, none of them concerning me. It greeted my reappearance with the indifference of a slighted dog.
My first problem was disposing of the horse.
My brother-in-law Famia was a horse doctor with the Greens. I won’t call it lucky, because nothing that sodden sponge Famia ever did was good news. The last thing I wanted was being forced to beg a favour from one of my relations, but not even I could keep a racehorse in a sixth-floor apartment without arousing adverse comment from other people in the block. Famia was the least obnoxious of the husbands my five sisters had inflicted on our family, and he was married to Maia, who might have been my favourite if she had refrained from marrying him. Maia, who in other respects was as sharp as the copper nails priests bang into temple doors at the new year, never seemed to notice her own husband’s disadvantages. Perhaps there were so many she lost count.
I found Famia at his faction’s stables, which like all of them were in the Ninth district, the Circus Flaminius. He had high cheekbones with slits where his eyes should be, and was as broad as he was tall, as if he had been squashed from above by a bushel weight. He could tell I was after something when I let him rant for ten minutes about the poor performance of the Blues, whom he knew I supported.
After Famia had enjoyed himself slandering my favourites, I explained my little problem and he inspected my horse.
‘He a Spaniard?’
I laughed. ‘Famia, even I know Spaniards are the best! He’s as Spanish as my left boot.’
Famia brought out an apple which Little Sweetheart guzzled eagerly. ‘How does he ride?’
‘Terrible. All the way from Campania he’s been chaffing and chomping, even though I tried to give him a gentle time. I hate this horse, Famia; and the more I hate him, the more affectionate the clod-hoofed fool pretends to be-‘
While my horse was eating his apple and belching after it, I took a good look at him. He was a dark-brownish beast, with a black mane, ears and tail. Across his nose, which was always poking in where it wasn’t wanted, ran a distinctive mustard band. Some horses have their ears up spry and straight; mine constantly flickered his lugs back and forth. A kind man might have said he looked intelligent; I had more sense.
‘You rode him from Campania?’ Famia asked. ‘That should harden his shins.’
‘For what?’
‘Running, for instance. Why-what will you do with him?’
‘Sell him when I can. But not before Thursday. These is a beauty called Ferox running - worth a flutter, if you ask me-my fool was his stablemate. I’ve promised their trainer mine can go to the racecourse; they reckon he calms Ferox down.’
‘Oh! that old story!’ Famia responded in his dour way. ‘So yours has been declared too?’
‘What a joke! I suppose he’ll soothe Ferox as far as the starting gates, then be pulled out.’
‘Give him an outing,’ Famia encouraged. ‘What can you lose?’
I decided to do it. There was a good chance Atius Pertinax would turn up to see Ferox perform. Attending the Circus as an owner myself was one way to ensure I could gain access wherever I needed it behind the scenes.
I shouldered my luggage and set off for home. I hauled my stuff round the back of the Capitol, mentally saluting the Temple of Juno Moneta, patron of my much-needed cash. This brought me into the Aventine at the starting-gate end of the Circus Maximus; I paused, thinking briefly of my pathetic nag, and more seriously of Pertinax. By then my bags were dragging on my neck, so I stopped at my sister Galla’s house for a rest and a word with Larius.
I had forgotten Galla would be furious about my nephew’s future plans.
‘You promised to look after him,’ she greeted me ferociously. Fending off her younger children, four dedicated scavengers who could instantly spot an uncle who might have presents in his backpack, I kissed Galla. ‘What’s that for?’ she growled at me. ‘If you’re looking for dinner there’s only tripe!’
‘Oh thanks! I love tripe!’ Untrue, as all my family knew, but I was ravenous. Tripe was all there ever was at Galla’s house. Her street possessed a tripe-and-trotter stall, and she was a lazy cook. ‘What’s the problem with Larius? I sent him home fit, sane and happy, in possession of a fat little girlfriend who knows what she wants from him - plus a famous reputation for saving drowning men.’
‘A fresco painter!’ Galla jibed in disgust.
‘Why not? He’s good at it, it fetches in the money, and he’ll always be in work.’
‘I might have known if there was a chance of him being pushed into something stupid, I could rely on you! His father,’ complained my sister pointedly, ‘is extremely upset!’
I gave my sister my opinion of the father of her children, and she mentioned that if I felt like that I was not obliged to loaf on her sun terrace eating her food.
Home again! Nothing like it. Spooning in the unctuous oral, I smiled quietly to myself.
Larius turned up, not before I was ready for him, and helped me with my luggage the rest of the way: a chance to talk. ‘How was the journey, Larius?’
‘We managed.’
‘Petronius find it hard going? Is he all right?’
‘You know him; he never makes a fuss.’
My nephew seemed rather tightlipped. ‘What about you?’ I persisted.
‘Nothing worries me either. Are you going to ask about your lady-love?’
‘As soon as I have a rest and a trip to the bathhouse I intend to see my lady-love for myself. Why? If there is something I should know first, come out with it!’
Larius shrugged.
We had reached the Ostia Road. I was nearly back on my own midden. I halted in the loggia of a cold-meat sho
p; it was closed but the smell of smoked hams and preservative herbs lingered tauntingly. I screwed the neckbraid of my nephew’s tunic angrily round one hand. ‘The word is, Pertinax may have come to Rome. Is it something about him that you don’t want to say to me?’
‘Uncle Marcus, nothing happened.’ He shook me off. ‘Helena Justina was unwell some of the time, but Silvia looked after her. Anyone can be a poor traveller-‘
I had once journeyed fourteen hundred miles in Helena’s calm, uncomplaining company; I knew exactly how good a traveller she was. I felt my mouth twist. I wondered what I had come home to. Then, before I let myself start guessing, I swung up my baggage and started down the narrow alley that led to the old familiar odours of Fountain Court.
After Larius left me, I stood out on my balcony. Our tenement stood halfway up the Aventine Hill, and its one great advantage was a fabulous view. Even when I closed my dry, tired eyes there was plenty to absorb: creaking carts and barking watchdogs; distant cries from river boatmen; leery wineshop choruses and wavering temple flutes; screams from young girls, from either terror or hysterical amusement, it was impossible to tell.
Down there, Rome must be harbouring plenty of fugitives. Men running from their mothers; their debts; their business partners; their own inadequacy. Or like Gnaeus Atius Pertinax Caprenius Marcellus: running from Fate.
LXXVII
I wanted to see Helena, but a small knot of doubt had started tightening inside me.
It was still evening when I took my travel-grimed body for a bathe. The gymnasium I often went to stood near the Temple of Castor; its clients were mostly dining at this hour - decent men who did not object strongly to eating in with their families, or whose idea of entertainment out was a plain three-course meal among old friends with light music and pleasant talk. Glaucus the proprietor would be at home himself by now. I was glad, because Glaucus would certainly make free with snide comments about the havoc two months in Campania had wreaked on my physique. As soon as he saw me he would want to bash me back into shape. I was too tired to let him start tonight.
The bathhouse usually stayed open until after dinner time. It was well lit, with pottery lamps lining all the corridors, yet at this time of night the place assumed a certain eeriness. There were attendants lurking somewhere who would scrape you with a strigil if you wanted to shout out for them, yet most people who came at dusk managed alone.
Many clients were middle-class grafters with proper jobs of work. Designers of aqueduct systems and harbour engineers who sometimes worked late at emergencies on site. An academic type who had lost all sense of time in the library at the Portico of Octavia and then come here stiff and bleary-eyed. Men in trade, arriving from Ostia after an afternoon tide.
And one or two offbeat, freelance freaks like me, whose weapons training Glaucus personally supervised and who worked at odd hours for reasons which his other customers politely never asked about.
I left my clothes in the changing room, hardly glancing at the stuff on other pegs. I had a good scrape in the hot room, swilled off, then pushed through the heavy retaining door to relax in the dry steam. Someone else was already there. I nodded. At this hour it was traditional to pass in silence, but as my eyes became accustomed to the humidity I recognized the other man. He was in his fifties, with a pleasant expression. He too was slumped in private thought, but knew me just as I took in his vibrant eyebrows and spiked, boyish hair: Helena’s papa.
‘Didius Falco!’
‘Camillus Verus!’
Our greeting was unforced. He took an affectionate view of my rough-and-ready attitude, and I liked his shrewd good humour. I realigned my exhausted frame alongside.
‘You’ve been in Campania, I heard.’
“Just got back. You’re late, Senator!’
‘Seeking refuge,’ he admitted, with an honest grin. ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you here tonight.’
I lifted an eyebrow, with a definite feeling I was waiting for bad news. ‘Something special, sir?’
‘Didius Falco, I am hoping,’ declared the Senator with significant formality, ‘you can tell me who has done me the honour of making me a grandfather.’
A long trickle of perspiration had already started from the damp curls at my hairline; I let it run, slowly across my left temple, then with a sudden rush past my ear, down my neck and onto my chest. It splashed off, onto the towel across my lap.
‘Do I take it this is news to you? The Senator asked levelly.
‘True.’
My reluctance to believe that she could keep back something so vital clashed against vivid memories of Helena fainting; unwell; turning back from climbing Vesuvius; worried about money… Helena crying in my arms for reasons I had never found out. Then other memories, more intimate and more intense. ‘Evidently not my business to know!’
‘Ah,’ said her father, accepting this bleakly. ‘I’ll be blunt: my wife and I assumed it was.’ I said nothing. He began to look more doubtful. ‘Are you denying that it is possible?
‘No.’ I never doubted that Camillus Verus had guessed my feelings for his daughter early on. I adopted professional banter as a temporary defence; ‘Look, a private informer who leads a lively social life is bound to find women who want more from him than he bargained for. So far I never had any difficulty persuading a magistrate they were vexatious claims!’
‘Be serious, Falco.’
I drew a harsh breath. ‘I don’t suppose you want me to congratulate you, sir. I don’t imagine you are congratulating me…’ If I sounded irritable, that was because I was starting to burn with a furious sense of injustice.
‘Would it be so terrible?
‘Just terrifying!’ I said, which was the truth.
The Senator gave me a stressful smile. I already knew he thought enough of me to think that if I was what his daughter wanted, the two of us were capable of managing, even without the usual domestic trappings of money to pay the baker or parental support… He dropped a hand onto my ann. ‘Have I upset you?’
‘Frankly, I’m not sure.’
Camillus then tried to draw me in as his ally. ‘Look, there is no point me trying to protest my senatorial rights like some old-fashioned censor. This is not illegal-‘
‘And it’s not helpful!’ I exclaimed.
‘Don’t say that! There was enough harm done when Helena was married to Atius Pertinax; that was a mistake which I have promised myself never to repeat. I want to see her happy.’ He sounded desperate. Of course he loved his daughter more than he should - but then, so did I.
‘I can’t protect her from herself!’ I stopped. ‘No, that’s unfair. She never ceases to amaze me with her clear-eyed good sense -‘ Her father started to protest. ‘No, she’s right, sir! She deserves a better life than she could ever have with me. Her children deserve better; as a matter of fact, so do mine! Sir, I can’t discuss this.’ For one thing, she would hate to know we were doing it. ‘Can we change the subject? There is something else we need to consider urgently. You mentioned Atius Pertinax, and he’s the crux of it. Have you heard what the situation is?’
He let out an angry expression; Camillus Vents had no time for his son-in-law. Most fathers feel that, but in his case he was right: his daughter was too good for the man, who was contemptible.
He knew Pertinax was still alive; I warned him that the fugitive might have transferred himself to Rome.
‘With hindsight, sending Helena here was none too wise. But I know your views, sir. Until I can apprehend him, will you ensure she stays safe at home?’
‘Of course. Well… as far as I can. But her condition should stop her rushing about,’ he reminded me unavoidably.
I paused. ‘Is she well?’
‘No one tells me anything,’ her father complained. When he spoke of his womenfolk Camillus Verus always adopted a downtrodden pose, as if they took the traditional view of a pater familias: someone who was there to pay the bills, make a lot of noise no one listened to - and be led by
the nose. ‘She looks peaky.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
We exchanged a tense glance.
We finished our bath together, went through to the changing room and dressed. At the top of the gymnasium steps, we clasped hands. If Helena Justina’s father was as shrewd as I suspected, he could tell from my face how bitter I felt.
He hesitated awkwardly. ‘Will you be coming to see her?’
‘No.’ One way or the other, that made me out a sewer rat. A lonely occupation. ‘But tell her—’
‘Falco?’
‘Forget it. Better not.’
The father of his future grandchild should be the happiest man in Rome. What price the pathetic candidate who had it made plain he was not required to acknowledge his position?
Well be reasonable. Nobody could expect such a high-born Roman lady - father in the Senate, two brothers on active service, adequate education, passable face, property worth a quarter of a million by her own right - to own up that she had allowed herself a dalliance with a low-bred, uncivilized brigand from the Aventine like me.
LXXVIII
It was late. It would soon be dark. I had the restless feet of a man who needed to visit his ladyfriend but could not bear to go. The obvious alternative was to plough into a wineshop and drink so deep I would only have to worry whether anyone good-natured would point me in a homeward direction afterwards, and if they did, whether I could stagger as far as my apartment or fall down dead drunk in the road.
I went to the Palace instead.
They kept me waiting. I was so angry at Helena’s secrecy that for once the last thing I wanted was time to think. I hunched on a couch, growing more and more devastated by the injustice, until I was in two minds to storm off home and get drunk on my own balcony. The moment I decided to do it a flunkey called me in. I could not even enjoy myself getting annoyed because as soon as he saw me Vespasian apologized.
‘Sorry, Falco. Matters of state.’ Chatting with his concubine, no doubt. ‘You look glum!’
Shadows in Bronze Page 33
