Three Hands in The Fountain mdf-9

by Lindsey Davis

  'Give me some room here. Don't stand in my way.' 'You're taking charge,' I accused him. 'It's my business, but you're pushing in.'

  'That's what a Partner is for,' grinned Petro.

  I told him I had another appointment somewhere else. 'Push off then,' he murmured, completely absorbed in his task.

  For my next appointment a formal escort had been provided: my girlfriend, the baby, and Nux the dog.

  I was late. They were sitting on the steps of the Temple of Saturn. It was a very public place, at the north end of the Forum on the Palatine side. They were all hot. The baby wanted feeding, the dog was barking at everybody who passed, and Helena Justina had applied her extra-patient face. I was in for it.

  'Sorry. I called at the Basilica to put the word around the banisters that I was back in town. It may bring in the odd subpoena delivery.'

  Helena thought I had been at a wineshop. 'Don't worry,' she said. 'I realise that registering your firstborn child takes a low priority in your busy life.'

  I patted the dog, kissed Helena's warm cheek, and tickled the baby. This overheated, irritable little group was my family. All of them had grasped that my role as the head of their household was to keep them waiting in uncomfortable locations while I pottered around Rome enjoying myself.

  Luckily Helena, their tribune of the people, was saving up her comments until she had a complete set to blast me with. She was a tall, well-rounded, dark-haired dream with rich brown eyes whose most tender expression could melt me like a honeycake left on a sunny window sill. Even the scathing glance I was meeting now rattled my calm. A fiery tussle with Helena was the best fun I knew, outside of bedding her.

  The Temple of Saturn lies between the Tabularium and the Basilica Julia. I had guessed Helena Justina would be waiting at the Temple, so when I left Petro I had dodged round the back on the Via Nova to avoid being seen. I hate barristers, but their work might make the difference between survival and going under. Frankly, my financial situation was desperate. I said nothing, so as not to worry Helena; she squinted at me suspiciously.

  I tried to climb into my toga in public view, while Nux leapt at the cumbersome folds of woollen cloth, thinking this was a game I had organised just for her. Helena made no attempt to help.

  'I do not need to see the child,' sighed the Censor's clerk. He was a government slave, and his lot was gloomy. Faced with a constant stream of the public through his office he had a continual cold. His tunic had first belonged to a much larger man, and he had been dealt a rough throw of the dice by whoever shaved his beard. His eyes had a Parthian squint about them, which in Rome cannot have won him many friends.

  'Or the mother, I suppose?' snorted Helena.

  'Some like to come.' He could be tactful, if it helped avoid verbal abuse.

  I placed Julia Junilla on his desk, where she kicked her legs and gurgled. She knew how to please the crowd. She was three months old now, and in my opinion starting to look pretty cute. She had lost the squashed, shut-eyed, unformed look with which the newborn frighten first-time parents. When she stopped dribbling she was only one stage away from adorable.

  'Please remove your baby,' mouthed the clerk. Tactful, but not friendly. He unravelled a scroll of thick parchment, prepared an inferior one (our copy), and applied himself to filling a pen from a well of oakgall ink. He had black and red; we were favoured with black. I wondered what the difference was.

  He dipped the pen then touched it to the lip of the well to release unnecessary ink. His gestures were precise and formal. Helena and I cooed over our daughter while he steadily wrote the date for the entry that would confer her civic status and rights. 'Name?'

  'Julia Junilla -'

  He looked up sharply. 'Your name!'

  'Marcus Didius Falco, son of Marcus. Citizen of Rome.' It did not impress him. He must have heard the Didii were a swarm of quarrelsome roughnecks. Our ancestors may have caused trouble for Romulus, but being offensive for centuries doesn't count as a pedigree.

  'Rank?'

  'Plebeian.' He was already writing it.

  'Address?'

  'Fountain Court, off the Via Ostiana on the Aventine.' The mother's name?' He was still addressing me. 'Helena Justina,' the mother crisply answered for herself. 'Mother's father's name?' The clerk continued to aim his questions at me, so Helena gave in with an audible crunch of teeth. Why waste breath? She let a man do the work. 'Decimus Camillus Verus.' I realised I was going to be stuck if the clerk wanted her father's father's personal name. Helena realised it too. 'Son of Publius,' she muttered, making it plain she was telling me in private and the clerk could go begging. He wrote it down without a thank you. 'Rank?'

  'Patrician.'

  The clerk looked up again. This time he let himself scrutinise both of us. The Censor's office was responsible for public morals. 'And where do you live?' he demanded, directly of Helena.

  'Fountain Court.'

  'Just checking,' he murmured, and resumed his task. 'She lives with me,' I pointed out unnecessarily. 'Apparently so.'

  'Want to make something of it?'

  Once again the clerk raised his eyes from the document. 'I am sure you are both fully aware of the implications.'

  Oh yes. And in a decade or two there would no doubt be tears and tantrums when we tried explaining them to the child.

  Helena Justina was a senator's daughter and I was one of the plebs. She had married once, unhappily, at her own level in society, then after her divorce she had had the luck or the misfortune to meet and fall for me. After a few false moves we decided to live together. We intended to make it permanent. That decision made us, by strict legal definitions, married.

  In real social terms we were a scandal. If the excellent Camillus Verus had chosen to make trouble over my theft of his noble daughter, my life could have been extremely difficult. Hers too.

  Our relationship was our business, but Julia's existence called for a change. People kept asking us when we intended marrying, but there was no need for formality. We were both free to marry and if we both chose to live together that was all the law required. We had considered denying it. In that case our children would take their mother's social rank, although any advantage was theoretical. As long as their father lacked honorific titles to cite on public occasions, they would be stuck in the mud like me.

  So when we came home from Spain we had decided to acknowledge our position publicly. Helena had stepped down to my level. She knew what she was doing: she had seen my style of life, and faced up to the consequences. Our daughters were debarred from good marriages. Our sons stood no chance of holding Public office, no matter how much their noble grandfather the senator would like to see them stand for election. The upper class would close against them, while the lower ranks would probably despise them as outsiders too.

  For the sake of Helena Justina and our children, I accepted my duty to improve my position. I had tried to achieve the middle rank, which would minimise awkwardness. The attempt had been a disaster. I was not intending to make a fool of myself again. Even so, everyone else was determined that I should.

  The Censor's clerk surveyed me as if he were having second thoughts. 'Have you completed the Census?'

  'Not yet.' I would be dodging it if possible. The point of Vespasian's new Census was not to count heads out of bureaucratic curiosity, but to assess property for tax. 'I've been abroad.'

  He gave me the old they all say that expression. 'Military service?'

  'Special duties.' Since he did not query it, I added tantalisingly, 'Don't ask me to specify.' He still didn't care. 'So you haven't reported yet? Are you head of a family?' 'Yes.'

  'Father dead?'

  'No such luck.'

  'You are emancipated from your father's authority?' 'Yes,' I lied. Pa would never dream of doing anything so civilised. It made no difference to me, however.

  'Didius Falco, are you to your knowledge and belief, and by your own intention, living in a valid state of marriage?'

  'Y
es.'

  'Thanks.' His interest was cursory. He had only asked me to cover his own tracks.

  'You should ask me the same question,' Helena sniped.

  'Heads of household only,' I said, grinning at her. She regarded her role in our household as at least equal to my own. So did I, since I knew what was good for me.

  'Name of the child?' The clerk's indifference suggested that mismatched couples like us turned up every week. Rome was supposed to be a moral sink, so perhaps it was true – though we had never encountered anyone else who took the same risks so openly. For one thing, most women born into luxury cling on to it. And most men who try to lure them away from home get beaten up by troops of very large slaves.

  'Julia Junilla Laeitana,' I said proudly.

  'Spelling?'

  He looked up in silence.

  'L,' said Helena patiently, as if aware that the man she lived with was an idiot, 'A-E-I-T-A-N-A.'

  'Three names? This is a girl child?' Most females had two names.

  'She needs a good start in life.' Why did I feel I was having to apologise? I had the right to name her as I chose. He scowled. He had had enough of whimsical young parents for one day.

  'Birthdate?'

  'Seven days before the Kalends of June -'

  This time the clerk flung his pen down on the table. I knew what had upset him. 'We accept registrations on the naming day only!'

  I was supposed to name a daughter within eight days of her birth. (It was nine days for boys; as Helena said, men need longer for everything.) Custom decreed that a family trip to the Forum for a birth certificate would be made at the same time. Julia Junilla had been born in May; it was August now. The clerk had his standards. He would not permit such a flagrant breach of the rules.

  VI

  It took me an hour to explain why my child had been born in Tarraconensis. I had done nothing wrong and this was nothing unusual. Trade, the army and imperial business take plenty of fathers abroad; strong-minded womenfolk (especially those who regard foreign girls as a walking temptation) go with them. In summer most births in self-respecting families occur at fancy villas outside Rome in any case. Even being born outside Italy is perfectly acceptable; only parental status matters. I did not intend my daughter to lose her civic rights because the inconvenient timing of an investigation for the Palace had forced us to introduce her to the world at a distant port called Barcino.

  I had taken all the steps I could. Various freeborn women had been present at the birth and could act as witnesses. I had immediately notified the town council at Barcino (who ignored me as a foreigner) and I had made a formal declaration within the proper time limit at the provincial governor's residence in Tarraco. I had the bastard's seal on a blurred chit to prove it.

  There was an obvious cause for our problem today. Public slaves receive no official stipend for their duties. Naturally I had come equipped with the usual ex gratia offering, but the clerk thought that if he made things look difficult he could garner a more spectacular tip than usual. The hour's argument was needed to persuade him that I had no more money.

  He started weakening. Julia then remembered she wanted to be fed, so she screwed up her little eyes and screamed as if she were practising for when she grew up and wanted to go to parties that I disapproved of. She received her certificate without further delay.

  Rome is a masculine city. Places where a respectable woman can feed her young child modestly are rare. That is because respectable nursing mothers are supposed to stay at home. Helena disapproved of staying at home. Perhaps it was my fault for not providing a more alluring habitat. She also despised suckling the baby at the women's latrines, and seemed in no mood to proffer an entry to the women's baths. So we ended up hiring a carrying chair, making sure it had window curtains. If there was one thing that grated on me more than paying for a chair, it was paying for it to go nowhere.

  'That's all right,' Helena soothed me. 'We can take a trip. You don't have to stand on guard outside feeling embarrassed.'

  The child had to be nourished. Besides, I was proud of the fact that Helena was high-mindedly feeding Julia herself. Many women of her status praise the idea but pay a wetnurse instead. 'I'll wait.'

  'No, ask the men to carry us to the Atrium of Liberty,' Helena ordered decisively.

  'What's at the Atrium?'

  'It's where they store the overflow archive of the Censor's records office. Including notices of the dead.' I knew that.

  'Who's died?' I had guessed what she was up to, but I hated being shoved into things.

  'That's what you have to find out, Marcus.'

  'Pardon me?'

  'The hand that you and Petro found? I'm not suggesting you will be able to trace its owner, but there must be a clerk who can at least tell you the procedure when a person disappears.'

  I said I had had enough of clerks, but we were all carried off to the Atrium of Liberty anyway.

  Like funeral directors, the clerks in the death notice section were a chirpy lot, a bright contrast to their surly colleague registering births. I knew a couple of them already, Silvius and Brixius. Informers are often sent to the Atrium archives by heirs or executors of wills. It was the first time I had shuffled into their office with my stately girlfriend, a sleeping baby, and a curious dog, however. They took it well, presuming that Helena was my client – a pushy one who insisted on supervising my every move. Apart from the fact that I would not be sending her an invoice, that was close.

  They worked in the same cubicle, swapping bad jokes and scrolls as if they had no idea what they were doing; on the whole I thought they were efficient. Silvius was about forty, slim and neat. Brixius was younger but favoured the same short hairstyle and elaborate tunic belt. It was pretty clear they had a sexual relationship. Brixius was the soppy one who wanted to dandle Julia. Silvius, putting on a show of tart annoyance, dealt with me.

  'I'm seeking general information, Silvius.' I explained about the discovery of the hand, and that Petronius and I were now curious. 'Looks like a blind alley. If a person goes missing, and it's reported to the vigiles, they keep a note, but I wouldn't like to speculate how long the scroll stays active. Whether they pursue the issue depends on a lot of things. But that's not the problem. This relic is in no condition to be identified. It may be ages old, too.'

  'So how can we help?' asked Silvius, suspiciously. He was a public slave. He spent his life trying to think up novel ways of referring requests for information to a different department. 'Our records relate to whole personalities, not unpleasant portions of their anatomy.'

  'Suppose we had found a whole body, then. If it was nameless, and stayed so, would it be recorded here?'

  'No. It could be a foreigner or a slave. Why would anyone want to know about them? We only register the extinction of known Roman citizens.'

  'All right; consider it from the other end. What if somebody goes missing? A citizen, one of the three ranks? When their anguished relatives reach the point where they are forced to assume the person is dead, do they come to you?'

  'They might. It's up to them.'

  'How?'

  'If they want a formal record of their loss, they can ask for a certificate.'

  'It's not needed for any official purpose, though?'

  Silvius consulted Brixius with a glance. 'If the missing person was a head of household, the certificate would confirm to the Treasury that he had ceased to be liable for taxation, by virtue of paying his debts in Hades. Death is the only acknowledged let-off.'

  'Very droll.'

  'A formal certificate is not relevant for the will?' Helena put in.

  I shook my head. 'Executors can decide to open the will whenever it seems reasonable.'

  'What if they make a mistake, Marcus?'

  'If a false report of a death is made to the censors deliberately,' I said, 'or if a will is knowingly opened before time, that's a serious offence: theft and probably conspiracy, in the case of the will. A genuine mistake would be viewed len
iently, I imagine. What would you do, lads, if a person you had listed as dead turned up unexpectedly after all?'

  Silvius and Brixius shrugged, saying it would be a matter for their superiors. They regarded their superiors as idiots, of course.

  I was not interested in mistakes. 'When people come to register, they don't have to prove the death?'

  'Nobody has to prove it, Falco. They make a solemn declaration; it's their duty to tell the truth.'

  'Oh honesty's a duty!'

  Silvius and Brixius tutted at my irony.

  'There doesn't have to be a body?' Helena was particularly curious because her father's younger brother, who was certainly dead but had been given no funeral as his body had disappeared.

  Trying not to remember that I personally had dropped the rotting cadaver of Helena's treacherous uncle down a sewer to avoid complications for the Emperor, I said, 'There could be many reasons for not having a body. War, loss at sea -' That was what had been given out by the family about Helena's Uncle Publius.

  'Vanishing among the barbarians,' trilled Silvius.

  'Running off with the baker,' supplied Brixius, who was more cynical.

  'Well, that's the kind of case I'm talking about,' I said. 'Someone who disappears for no known reason. They may be an eloping adulterer – or they may have been abducted and murdered.'

  'Sometimes people deliberately choose to vanish,' said Brixius. 'The pressure of their lives becomes intolerable, and they flit. They may come home one day – or never.'

  'So what if a relative actually admits to you that someone is not stiffening on a bier but only missing?'

  'If they really believe the person is dead they should just report that.'

  'Why? What do you do to them otherwise?' smiled Helena.

  He grinned. 'We have ways of making life extremely difficult! But if the circumstances seem reasonable, we issue a certificate in the normal way.'

  'Normal?' I queried. 'What – no little stars in the margin? No funny-coloured ink? No listing in a special scroll?'

  'Ooh!' shrieked Silvius. 'Falco wants a squint at our special scroll!'