Just before he did so, Quintus looked up at me. 'That barman's wife in the Transtiberina may have seen Nobilis. She said he had peculiar eyes.' He spoke with the same throwaway manner Helena would use in company, tossing me something to think about, for discussion later. I said nothing, but I looked – - then I drew the same conclusions.
We left the body there. We were exhausted. Dragging it back up the ravine would have finished us. If his siblings wanted to collect Nobilis for burial, let them.
'Myself, I like to go to law,' said Silvius, back in Antium. 'A quick show trial, and a bloody execution. Deterrent to others. Suicide-by-cohort never works the same.'
Since the Urban was in a vengeful mood, he then let on that Claudius Probus was to remain in custody.
'What happened to his get-out clause?'
'Ah, Falco, I just remembered! I am not empowered to offer it. Immunity from prosecution is reserved to the Emperor – - and he, I gather, never intervenes in criminal cases… So it's thanks for the help, Probus – - but tough luck!'
The surviving twin, Virtus, was also in trouble, potentially. Despite his insistence that he kept aloof from his brothers' activities, Justinus had remembered something: 'When we picked him up at their shack in the marshes, I noticed his wife, Byrta, was wearing a good quality scarf in a dark red material. Silvius, if you can ever find any of the runaway slaves who belonged to Modestus and Primilla, you must show them that scarf. Primilla was wearing something like it when she left home.'
Piece by piece, we were linking the Claudii to their victims. We also had the unusual chain that Nobilis must have given to Demetria; I was confident that belonged with the cameo taken from the Rome courier on the Via Triumphalis. Petro would send the cameo for comparison; Silvius would take it to the Dioscurides workshop for absolute confirmation.
We asked both Probus and Virtus about their connection with Anacrites. Both blanked us. In my view, now Nobilis was dead, they were afraid they would bear the full burden as public scapegoats, but they believed the spy would extricate them. I thought they were wrong. 'No; he will distance himself now. I know him. He will sacrifice the Claudii to save his own career.'
'I thought they could put pressure on him?' said Silvius.
'We still don't know what – though Justinus and I have a theory we intend to check. I suggest you process Probus and Virtus here in Antium. Do it fast, Silvius. But if you can, please give me a couple of days, before you send word to Rome about Nobilis.'
'What's the plan, Falco? I can see you have one.'
'Let me keep it to myself. Silvius, you don't want to know.'
Silvius and the Urbans stayed in Latium to process the survivors' trial. I and mine set off for home. Lentullus was bringing Nero and the ox-cart for Petronius, which meant the usual maddening slow progress. It took us a day to reach Bovillae. Next morning, Justinus and I left Lentullus to drive in without us, while we rode on ahead up the Via Appia.
We passed through the necropolis where the corpse of Modestus had been found. After that came the Appian Gate, then a long straight run through garden suburbs until we hit the dark shade of two leaky aqueducts at the Capena Gate. I excused myself, and left Quintus to pass on greetings to his parents and his wife. We arranged that he and his brother would come to my house the next day, for a catch-up meeting.
I moved on, reached the southern end of the Circus Maximus, where I veered left. Since I had a mule to do the hard work, I pressed him up the hill. He carried me uncomplainingly to the crest of the Aventine, with its snooty ancient temples on the high crags, around which beetled the vibrant plebs of this place where I was born.
After life on the coast, I felt assailed by the busy racket. More shops and workshops were crammed together on this one hill out of seven than traded in the whole of Antium. The crowds were loud – singing, shouting, whistling and catcalling. The pace was fast. The tone was coarse. I drew in a deep breath, grinning with joy to be home again. In that breath I tasted a strange brew of garlic, sawdust, fresh fish, raw meat, marble dust, new rope, old jars and, from the dark doorways of ill-kept apartment blocks, the reek of uncollected sewage in flabbergasting quantities. My mule was jostled, insulted, barked at and cursed. Two hens flew up in our faces as we wove a passage through garland girls and water carriers, ducked out of the way as a burglar dropped down off a fire porch with his clanking swag, turned off a narrow road into one that was barely passable. At the end of that lay the disguised entrance of the sour alleyway called Fountain Court.
A pang of nostalgia hit me like last night's undigested Chicken Frontinian. The street was not much wider than the ravine where Nobilis killed himself. The sunny side was shady and the shady side was glum. A deplorable smell rose and wavered around like a bad genie outside the funeral parlour, while a fierce fight about a bill was spilling on to the pavement by the barber's. To call it a pavement was ridiculous. The customer who was threatening to kill Appius, the barber, was sliding on molten mud. To call it mud as it oozed in through gaps in his sandal straps was optimistic. I rode by without making eye contact, though my sympathy was with the barber. Anyone so stupid as to patronise a tonsure-teaser who had the sad comb-over Appius gave himself should expect to get fleeced. Even a quadrans was too much to pay.
I dismounted stiffly at the Eagle Laundry and tied up the mule among the wet flapping sheets in what passed for a colonnade. Lenia, the laundress emerged nosily: a familiar figure, all frenzied red hair and drinker's cough, tottering on high cork heels, unsteady after her afternoon bevvy. She winked heavily. She knew why I was here. I gave her a wave that passed for debonair, and as she snorted easy insults, I set off up the worn stone stairs. My rule was, three flights then take a breather; two more then pause a second time; take the last flight at a run before you collapsed among the woodlice and worse things that littered your path.
The doorpost of my old apartment still had the painted tile that advertised my name for clients. An old nail, carefully bent about ten years ago, was still hidden in a pot on the landing; as a spare latch-lifter it still worked. I put the nail back, pushed open the door very gently in case someone jumped me; I went in, feeling an odd patter of the heart.
It looked empty. There were two rooms. In the first stood a small wooden table, partly eaten away as if it were fossilised; two stools of different heights, one missing a leg; a cooking-bench; a shelf that once held pots and bowls but was now bare of fripperies. In the second room was just a narrow bed, made up neatly.
I called out that it was me. I heard pigeons flutter on the roof.
There was a folding door from the main room to a tiny balcony. I jerked the door with a special hitch that was needed to move it. Then I stepped out through the opening into the old, incongruously glamorous view over Rome, now bathed in warm afternoon sunlight. For a moment I soaked up that familiar scene, out over the northern Aventine to the Vaticanus Hill beyond the river.
Albia was basking on the small stone bench. Coming from Britain, she adored the sun. The building was so badly maintained by its landlord Smaractus that one day the whole balcony would fall off, taking the bench and anyone who was sitting on it. For the moment it held. It had held for the six or seven years that I lived here, in view of which it was easiest to continue to have blind faith than to try and make the unbearable Smaractus carry out repairs. The kind of builders he used would only weaken it fatally.
My fosterling wore an old blue dress, tight plaits, a simple bead necklace. She sat with her fingers linked, pretending to be happy, calm, and unafraid. There was no chance she was afraid of me. I was her father, just a joke. But she must know her situation. Someone else had terrified her.
'I thought I would find you here.' She made no answer. 'You had better stay until I have a chance to straighten things out with Anacrites. Are you all right, Albia? Do you have food money?'
'Lenia gave me a loan.'
'I hope you fixed a good rate of interest!'
'Helena came. She settled up.'
&
nbsp; 'Well, I'll send you an allowance until it's safe to come home.'
'I won't be coming,' Albia informed me suddenly and earnestly. 'I have something to say, Marcus Didius. I love you all, but it cannot be my home.'
I wanted to argue but I was too tired. Anyway, I understood. I experienced deep sadness for her. 'So we failed you, sweetheart.'
'No.' Albia spoke gently. 'Let's not have a family argument, like other tiresome people.'
'Why not? Arguments are what families are for. You have a family now, you know that. You're stuck, I'm afraid. Try not to be estranged from us, the way I was from my father.'
'Do you regret that?'
I grinned abruptly, even laughed out loud. 'Never for one moment – nor did he, the old menace!… Have you told Helena this big idea of yours? Striking out on your own?'
'She was upset.'
'She would be!'
Albia turned to me, her face pale, her blue-grey eyes dark with panic despite her attempted bravado. 'You gave me a chance; I am grateful. I want to stay in Rome. But I am going to make myself a life, a life that is suitable and sustainable. Don't tell me I cannot try.'
Huffing gently, I squashed in on the bench beside her. Albia moved up, grumbling on principle. 'So let's hear about it?'
Uncertain of my reaction, she confided, 'I cannot have the life you hoped to give me. Adoption only half works. I stay provincial – - if not a barbarian. Someone who hates us might find out where I came from. In this city, spiteful rumours could damage you and Helena.'
'Anacrites?'
'He intends to do it.' Albia spoke quietly; all self-confidence had drained out of her.
I wondered how he had so badly crushed her spirit. 'And what about you? Did he try something on?'
'No.' Albia was inscrutable. She had made up her mind not to tell me. If Anacrites had seduced or raped her, she would spare me incandescent anger; she would protect Helena, too, from the pain of knowing. But even the fact that Anacrites had lured her into danger gave me motives to pursue him.
'You sure?' Pointless question.
'He was not the same. He had changed – - or at least had stopped hiding what he is really like. You were right about him: he looked lecherous. I decided straight away I must escape. Then I found Claudius Nobilis.'
'Did he lay hands on you?'
'No. He meant to. But Anacrites barged in and said "leave her to me".' Albia shuddered, looking older than her years. 'Repulsive man!'
'Don't you think we are all the same?' I teased, alluding to her opinion of Camillus Aelianus.
To my surprise, Albia smiled sweetly and replied, 'Not quite all of you!'
'So, Flavia Albia, you are leaving home. What are you planning?'
'To live here. Do what you did.'
'Right.'
'No argument?'
'No point. So you want to be an informer? Well, that could work.' I put my head back against the rough surface of the wall, remembering the experience. Part of me was envious, though I hid it. 'Start small. Work for women. Don't accept any job that comes along – - gain a name for being picky, then folks will feel flattered if you take them on. It's a hard life, depressing and dangerous. The rewards are few, you can never relax, and even when you achieve success, your miserable cheating clients will not thank you.'
'I can do this,' Albia insisted. 'I have the proper attitude – the right bitterness. And I have sympathy for desperate people. I have been orphaned, abandoned, starved, neglected, beaten, even in the clutches of a violent pimp. There will be no surprises,' she concluded.
'I see you have convinced yourself! Nothing scares you – - even when it should.' The romantic in me wanted to have faith in her. 'You are too young. You have too much to learn,' I warned, as the father in me took over.
'I have been pushed into it before I'm ready, so it's not ideal,' replied Albia coolly. She had spent several days here, thinking up answers to thwart me. Then, because Helena Justina's teaching had made an impression, she added demurely, 'But I shall have you to teach me, Father.'
My throat went raw. 'First time you ever called me that!'
'Don't get overexcited,' Flavia Albia answered matter-of-factly. 'You have to earn it, if you want it permanent.'
'That's my girl!' I exclaimed proudly.
I stood up, easing my stiffback. I needed to see Glaucus at the gym, get back in shape. Before I left the apartment, I made a few adjustments to the old potted rose trees, pinching off dead wood from spindly branches. 'Professional question, Albia: when you encountered Nobilis – did you notice his eyes?'
She jumped up eagerly. 'Yes! I wanted to tell you – -'
'Save it. Come down to the house tomorrow. It will be a good exercise in moving around Rome unrecognised.'
'What for?'
'Family conference. We need to talk about Anacrites.'
LX
I awoke late. I was alone, Helena's side of the bed long cooled. I could hear the house thrumming with movement and casual noises, everyone going about their business without me, as they must have done while I was absent, as they would do if I stayed dozing. I was the master, but expendable. However, a wet snuffle under the door from Nux waiting patiently outside told me the dog was aware of my homecoming last night.
I let her in, endured a quick greeting (she was a polite dog), then allowed her to jump on the bed, which was her real purpose. The whiskery fright was not allowed on beds or couches; that made no difference. Nux curled up and went to sleep. I washed my face, put a comb through my curls, dived into a favourite tunic. I was ill-shaven, hungry, stiff from travel and subdued. I had no casework I was aware of and would have to look for clients. In most respects I could have been back in the life I once led in Fountain Court. Once again, I felt mournful and bereft of my youth.
Downstairs, slaves saluted me with only mild disdain. A good breakfast and my alert assistants were waiting. My wife came in and kissed me. My children appeared in the doorway, made sure it was me, then ran off back to their games. A buffet slave refilled the bread basket with warm rolls as soon as I took a serving, poured hot water on to honey for me, cut smoked ham slices. The napkin laid upon my lap was fine linen. I drank from a smooth Samian beaker. When I came to rinse my hands again, scented water in a silver bowl was immediately offered to me.
I had forgotten I was rich. Helena saw my reaction; I noticed her amusement. 'Jupiter!'
'You'll get used to it,' she said, smiling.
My new status brought responsibilities. Clients were lined up, awaiting favours shamelessly.
I dealt briskly with Marina, wanting money of course, then ignored a message from my sister Junia about the caupona needing a refurbishment. Helena said there were queries at the auction house, not urgent; I could attend to them when I visited the Saepta. Next came another, much more serious, family problem. The usher (I now required one, it seemed) ushered in Thalia.
She was visibly pregnant, puffing slightly. It had not persuaded her to wear less revealing clothes. The two Camilli, waiting for me to be free for our planned meeting, exchanged startled glances. Arrayed in a few wafts of gauze and long strings of semiprecious beads, Thalia patted the bump that was supposed to be Pa's offspring. 'Not long now, Marcus!'
'How are you feeling?'
'Terrible! The python knows; he's off colour, poor Jason.'
'Still dancing?'
'Still dancing! Are you hoping exertion will bring on a miscarriage?'
'That would be irresponsible.'
'Gods! Money has made you so sanctimonious! – - Now listen, I need to talk to you.'
'Well, make it quick. I'm about to begin a business meeting.'
'Stuff that,' replied Thalia. 'A little child's life is at stake here. We've been let down, Falco, this poor baby and me. I've had words with that scheming shark, Septimus Parvo – your devious father's utterly useless lawyer.'
'He seemed competent.' Thalia's annoyance was cheering me up now.
'You would say that. He tells me
he has looked into things further and the will's rotten. It won't hold up. My poor little one has been cheated – and he is not even born yet!'
'I don't know what you mean, Thalia.'
'According to Parvo,' she enunciated with high distaste, 'if a legacy is given to a posthumous infant, the child must be born of a legal marriage.' Thalia was a tall woman of majestic stature; as she rounded on me fiercely, I felt some alarm. 'Geminus said Parvo would sort everything out for me. I know what's gone on here. This is a fiddle. You bastard, Falco – you must have put him up to it!'
Not for the first time since my father died, my first thought was to lay wheat cakes on a divinity's altar and exclaim, Thank you, for my good fortune!
Aulus leaned forward, his face serious. 'Parvo is quite right, if you don't mind me saying so.'
'My brother Aelianus,' Helena told Thalia helpfully. 'He has had legal training.'
'I don't trust him then!' Thalia scoffed. Aulus took it well.
'There can be no doubt, I'm afraid, Thalia.' What an excellent fellow Aulus had turned out to be. 'Didius Favonius remained married to his wife of many years, the mother of his legal children.' Helena may have discussed all this with Aulus. He was a better scholar than we expected, but only with advance warning. He must have looked up the law specifically. 'Everyone at Geminus' funeral saw Junilla Tacita taking her place as the widow. She was acknowledged as such by all those friends, family and business colleagues who knew her deceased husband. Moreover,' Aulus continued relentlessly, 'to become an heir, the child must be referred to in the will itself. I do not believe a codicil will count.'
'All that is as may be!' Thalia could be worryingly firm. 'I am here to make arrangements. Things have to be set up properly.'
I gulped nervously.
'Here is the deal, Marcus Didius. When this child is born, it has to be looked after. Don't expect me to do it. I can't take a baby on tour with the circus! My animals -would be dangerously jealous, it's not hygienic, and I don't have the capacity.'
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