Saturnalia (18 page)

Straightening, I sought Petro's gaze. This was a disaster. The last thing I wanted was those elderly social misfits carrying off a raid to capture Quintus, so they could use him to entice Veleda to them. The mere attempt was bad news for Rome. Bad news for them too, if they got on the wrong side of Anacrites.

I cursed. 'Petro, Nero's retired German guards have been unsettled since Galba disbanded them. Now they're planning a revival we can do without. If they ever get to control Veleda it will be a nightmare. If they bring this off, we're stuffed. I have to stop them.'

'You'd better get to the Spy's house before the Germans do,' said Petro, with rather too much interest. I wondered how much
he
had drunk this evening. More than I had thought, apparently. He looked ready to rob temples of their treasure, if some bright maniac suggested a romp. He was up for anything.

All the same, I had no intention of stopping him, if he was prepared to help. We thought about the situation. That is, we both thought but only for the time it took to close our eyes and groan.

'You could just warn Anacrites.'

'And party on? How civic.' I knew 'civic' would be an insult to Lucius Petronius.

'Rats. Are you on, Falco?' You might imagine I had to beg him for help, but Petronius, that madcap adventurer, had already decided to involve himself and was checking with me.

I buried my surprise. 'Pity to miss the lads' night out.'

'Oh don't worry.' Petro appeared to do calculations. 'The night is young. We should have time to manage it: gather some back-up, break into the Spy's house, grab Camillus, hide him somewhere private--and still get back to the party before the wine runs out.'

XXXIV

Anacrites' house lay in darkness, apparently. A small group of us assembled silently in the street below the Palatine and surveyed the area. For once the Forum, behind us, seemed deserted. No lights showed at the house; the gates were barred. It looked the same as when I came here before in the dead of night, though that was no guarantee that the Spy was away from home. It was not essential that he should be out tonight, but it would be safer for us if he was.

As we walked here, I had suggested we devise a plan. No need: Petronius Longus already had one. My mend was a man of surprises. I could not even remember telling him that Anacrites was holding

Juscinus, and why, but Petro seemed to know all about it. When I had discussed this situation with the senator and with Helena, I had decided it was easiest to leave Justinus here, reading endless Greek plays. But since the German guards were trying to lift the prisoner, Petronius saw there was a need for radical action. His plan was: pretend the vigiles had smelt smoke at the house, cry 'Fire!', then use their legal authority to march in, conduct a search for human life, find Justinus, and haul him out.

'Rescue him like a house fire victim. Simple, eh?'

'You mean, thought up by a simpleton? It will never work.' 'Watch us,' said Petro, giving the nod to Fusculus and whistling a signal to some of his lads.

The first stage went as I expected. A couple of vigiles were given a leg-up; they climbed over the high wall, taking a covered lantern they had conveniently brought with them. Deep-throated guard dogs started barking almost at once, then abruptly fell silent. The lads returned unscathed and said they had set fire to some piles of leaves. I was puzzled by what happened next: Petronius let out a loud whistle, of the kind the watch use to signal for reinforcements when they detect a fire during their night rounds. Instead of rushing straight to the front door, we just settled unobtrusively into the shadows and kept quiet. 'Aren't we going in?'

'Shut up, Falco!'

After a while, when nothing happened, Petro muttered derisively then whistled again, louder. This time we heard swiftly marching feet. A regular bunch of vigiles came around a corner, heading for our location. Petronius stepped out into the light of their flares. 'Oh officers, I am so glad to see you. I was just on my way to a party with a group of friends when we smelt smoke. It seems to be coming from that house over there...'

'Have you roused the household, sir?'

'Can't get any answer. They probably think we are drunks causing trouble and don't realise we are public-spirited citizens.'

'Well, thank you. You can leave it to us now. Don't worry, sir; we'll soon have it sorted-'

Petronius grinned to me. 'Sixth Cohort. We're in their jurisdiction. There are rules, you know, Falco.' In fact I knew he was not fond of the Sixth and would cheerfully implicate them in what was to follow, rather than his own cohort--just in case things went wrong. The men he had spoken to knew exactly who he was. Somehow he had persuaded the gullible Sixth to do him a favour.

Loud bangs on the door produced household slaves, whose protests that there was nothing wrong were brushed aside in the usual kindly vigiles manner--that is, the slaves were knocked to the ground, kicked into submission, and pinned down on suspicion of being arsonists. The Sixth then rushed inside to search the building, as fire-fighters were entitled to do whenever the alarm was sounded. The household slaves were now going nuts, perhaps because they realised this would entail the customary 'check on valuables'; they may have feared that afterwards there would not be quite so many valuables in their master's possession as he had owned when the fire started. The slaves knew Anacrites would blame them for any losses and they knew how spiteful he could be.

By now there really was a fire. Apparently when Petro's men kindled a damp pile of leaves for a false alarm, it led to shutters blazing and showers of sparks in roof spaces, all in a matter of minutes. Perhaps they had been over-enthusiastic, Petronius commented gravely. At any rate, Anacrites' house was now filled with thick smoke. Heavily equipped members of the Sixth Cohort were running around with the buckets, ropes and grapplers they always carried. With commendable speed, their siphon engine turned up in the street; any owner of property would be overjoyed to receive such a fast response to his emergency--a privilege few actually receive. But we were in the Palatine and Circus Maximus sector, where many buildings are state owned and even private houses tend to belong to men who know the Emperor personally. A cart laden with esparto mats also appeared--so laden it could hardly teeter along.

'It's almost as if the Sixth were expecting this fire!' I muttered. Petronius shot me a reproving look.

Then--was there a signal?--he grabbed my arm and ran towards the house. I followed as he dashed into the building. The smoke was real, choking us as we plunged down corridors. Ahead of us the vigiles had thrown open doors to check rooms for occupants. Coughing slaves were still being hustled out past us by members of the Sixth, who were shouting at them loudly and pushing them around; it was a tactic to subdue and confuse them. We ran on. Nobody interfered with us.

We passed through formal areas with subdued black and gold paint, a tiny courtyard with a bubbling fountain, then suddenly we were among decadent rooms in the interior, with frescos depicting intertwined couples and threesomes that would not be out of place in a brothel. We reached a narrow passageway where a vigilis was battering at a locked door while being harassed by two large baying dogs; the man kicked at them in annoyance, then hurled a hatchet at the door panels hard enough to split the wood and gain a purchase. Petronius picked up a small marble-topped table and bashed a bigger hole with that. Splintered panels soon gave way to shouldering.

The room contained a collection of the kind of art men keep in private salons with the door locked 'so as not to excite the slaves'. Thereby making secret pornography sessions more exciting for themselves.

There was less smoke in this part of the house. When we turned away in disgust from the art collection, we were able to see the young man who opened a door further down the corridor and looked out to investigate the commotion. It was Camillus Justinus.

At once, according to the vigiles' rules of duty, he was taken hold of roughly, knocked semi-conscious when he protested, then passed from hand to hand in a businesslike fashion as far as the exterior of the building where--in circumstances that were later vague--he vanished.

Among many rumours that circulated later about the fire at the Chief Spy's house, I did hear that when the Sixth Cohort came to pack up their esparto mats for return to their patrol house, they discovered someone had filched the mat-cart. And it was said, no doubt mischievously, that towards the end of the incident, Anacrites turned up and was outraged to receive a report on the damage to his house from a man dressed as a five-foot carrot. The Sixth Cohort indignantly denied all knowledge of this vegetable.

Anacrites became so angry he ordered the carrot's arrest, but it made a quick getaway when everyone was busy confronting the arrival of a suspicious group of elderly men, thought to be of German nationality, who tried to break into the Spy's house at the back, even though the Spy was standing right there at the front. The tribune of the Sixth (an officer who had been drawn to the scene by an urgent report that a VIP was apoplectic) soothed things down, and passed off the Germans' assault as a stupid escapade carried out by overenthusiastic seasonal revellers. He ordered the be-whiskered Rhineland relics to be put in the lock-up until they sobered up. Unfortunately, when Anacrites went along next morning intending to interrogate them, someone had misunderstood the tribune's orders and released them without charge into the care of younger relatives who just happened to turn up offering to keep the old fellows out of further trouble. Sad really, everyone agreed. Ancient citizens with previously unspotted reputations for imperial service, letting themselves down by having one flagon too many... When Anacrites tried to find them, it was said they had all gone home to Germany for a late winter holiday.

And where was his prisoner? No idea who you are talking about, insisted the Sixth Cohort. We handed back all the slaves we found and made sure we got a receipt.

Safe. Safe and hidden.

XXXV

Anacrites' pathetic brain must be churning like a waterwheel after a thunderstorm. His first jump on the night of the fire was obvious: it did not take him long to work out that any scam involving the vigiles must relate to me and my friend Petronius. Faster than we expected, he tracked down the Fourth Cohort's party, which by then was riotous. Marcus Rubella had somehow remained sober enough to curb his antagonistic instincts when Anacrites turned up, supported by some Praetorian Guards. After all, Rubella's known ambition was to join the Guards himself Though by now unable to speak, Rubella gravely waved them in to search the place as best they could. This would not be easy. Many of the Fourth Cohort were lying on the ground for a rest; some were upright but flopping over in all directions like weeds in the sun, others were standing rigid in their boots and offering to fight their own shadows. The Praetorians were impressed by these wild scenes; they soon forgot their orders and joined in the conviviality. I tipped Junia the wink to give them whatever they wanted.

'Anything but my body!' she giggled. I shivered at this fantastical thought.

Anacrites marched around on his own, staring at faces. Among the intoxicated this is not best practice. Several vigiles offered to floor him, furious at his attitude. Everyone he asked swore that Petronius and I had been there all night. He soon stopped asking; he was not stupid.

The atmosphere had deteriorated, to the bemusement of my brother-in-law Gaius Baebius, who never had any sense and who had turned up with his three-year-old son, aiming to wait around eating free pies until Junia needed an escort home. She had other ideas, insofar as her thinking processes still worked. Although Junia always claimed she never drank, she had reached a happy point where she saw no reason ever to leave the party (a situation Gaius may have foreseen, if he knew her better than I thought). I wanted her to leave. She was showing signs of becoming more belligerent than any of the woozy men around her, and it took the form of shouting out remarks about Anacrites and our mother which the Spy would consider slanderous. Ma would not be too pleased either. She was the important one. I wondered if killing your forty-year-old daughter would still count as infanticide.

Meanwhile some of the green boughs in the roof had been set on fire by the strings of lights. Little Marcus Baebius, who could hear none of the tumult so he was less frightened than he might have been, sat gazing around at the magical scene, and was the first to raise the alarm, delightedly pointing out to his father the flames in the dry pine boughs.

'I say!' exclaimed Gaius loudly. The vigiles' response was sillier than their fire-fighting manual orders. Of those who noticed, most took the traditional public service view that any action was the responsibility of somebody else. Some raised wine cups and cheered.

'A little child is in danger!' Junia screamed, wobbling on her feet. This only elicited guffaws of 'How many vigiles does it take to put out a fire?' To which the standard answer is: four hundred and ninety nine to give the orders and one to piss on the blaze. Then a spark landed on Rubella, so he finally weighed in. He rounded up a group to drag out the burning branches to the street where they would only bum down houses, not the warehouse that had been so expensively hired with cash from the entertainment kitty.

When people rushed outside to watch the bonfire, a space cleared and Anacrites stumbled upon Petronius and me. He squeezed his expensive tunic through a tightly knotted group that included the man dressed as a turnip, whose friends were holding him down and pouring cups of wine into him (through his topknot of leaves) as if it was some kind of dangerous dare. Barely aware of what they were up to, the furious Spy elbowed them aside. 'I'm looking for you two!' He got no sense out of us. We were far too drunk, sitting on a platform, with our arms around each other's necks, singing meaningless hymns, while Apollonius the waiter hopelessly begged us to go home.

Anacrites was then nearly knocked face down by the man dressed as a turnip. This crackpot was bumping the Spy from behind while his companions feebly tried to restrain him. His costume was sewn on a frame of heavy wooden hoops. The Spy was picking up bruises every time he got belted. We saw that Anacrites was about to remonstrate. 'We in the Fourth Cohort know how to give a turnip a good time!' burbled Petro, with an infectious burp; he collapsed into giggles.

Safely distracted, the Spy turned back, furious with us now. I raised my arm as if to make a declaration, forgot what I had intended, then lay down and pretended I'd passed out cold.

Anacrites let out a hiss of disgust. Fortunately the fighting turnip had been dragged away by friends. Doing his best to assemble the Praetorians he came with, Anacrites made a censorious exit. Reviving, we watched his departure with cold eyes. We now knew that where most people spend their evenings with a bowl of nuts while warming their feet on the dog, or at least warming their feet on the wife, he went into a secret room alone and gloated over a statue of a naked hermaphrodite displaying its wares as if fascinated by its own array of mixed organs. The disconcerting bisexual in his private cabinet was surrounded by shelves of vases; they were painted with scenes of group sex--thrusting lovers in action, piled up in triples and quadruples like limpets, while sinister bystanders watched these antics salaciously through half-open doors.

Anacrites also owned the biggest statue group of the ripe god Pan copulating with a goat on heat that I had ever seen. And I am the son of an antique-dealer.

We transferred Camillus Justinus to a safe house as soon as it was safe. Petronius had let him come to the party first because there wasn't time to secure him while we were dodging Anacrites; it let us read him a stem lecture on playing dead before we installed him in our secret apartment. Justinus hated Anacrites; he promised to behave. Good behaviour had become a fluid concept. It was no joke getting the silly beggar up six flights of stairs to his hideaway, and there were difficult scenes when we reached the top. Only those who have tried putting to bed a man-sized, extremely drunken turnip will appreciate what Petro and I went through.

Afterwards, we two sat out on the balcony together for a while, calming down and contemplating Rome. The night was still and very cold but we had been heated by manipulating Quintus upstairs. A few faint stars appeared and disappeared through fast-moving clouds. The breeze was chilly on our faces as we breathed hard and let our hearts slow after our exertions. We shared an old stone bench and absorbed the night sounds.

From streets below came the last bursts of Saturnalia revelry, but most homes were dark and silent now. A few carts were making late night deliveries, though all commerce had slacked off for the festival period, when schools and the courts were in recess and most trades closed down. When wheels did trundle along a street, the sounds carried the more clearly because the normal background racket was absent tonight. Closer to hand, dry leaves scratched on pantiles as they bowled across surrounding roofs. Other noises came to us from far across the city. Mule hooves and dog barks. The lazy
tonkle-tonk
of rigging equipment on ships moored beside the Emporium. A gust of cheering from a fight under the arches. The occasional scream of a raucous woman pretending to resist sexual advances, amidst cackles of encouragement from her ribald friends.

Petro and I were without wine for once. There had been plenty of times when we carried on carousing on this balcony all night, but we were grown up now. Or so we said, and so Maia and Helena hoped. I thought there was a still a chance we might end up picking the locks at Petro's apartment as we used to do back in the old days, when his wife, Arria Silvia, had locked him out and I had to help him gain admittance in search of a bed. That was on nights when we didn't just fall over and lie in the street...

Somewhere in the city below must be Veleda. Did she sleep, tossing and moaning in fever? Or in the city of her enemies was she plagued by wakefulness, dreading the moment when her gods or ours would reveal her destiny? She had come from the endless forests, where a self-sufficient loner could ride for days without human contact, to this teeming place where nobody was ever more than ten feet away from other people, even if a wall stood in between. Here in Rome, whether a hovel or a palace was sheltering her, both luxury and poverty would be her close neighbours. Even outside the mad period of Saturnalia, noise and contention dominated. Some people had everything; many had not enough to live as they wanted; a few simply had nothing. Their struggles to live created what we who were born here called our city's character. We were all either grappling for improvement or striving to hold on, lest what we had--and with it any chance of happiness--should slip away. It was hard work and involved failure and despair for far too many, but to us, this was civilisation.

Veleda had once tried to destroy it. Maybe if the old German guards had managed to find her and control her as a figurehead, she could have tried again. Maybe she did not need them, but would try to defeat us by herself.

'What would we do, Lucius, if the barbarians really were at the gates?'

'They will be.' Lucius Petronius Longus had a morose streak. 'Not in our day, not in our children's day, but they will come.'

'And then?'

'Either run away or fight. Alternatively,' suggested Petro, sounding like a lad again, and interested in any dangerous concept: 'you become one of the barbarians!'

I thought about that. 'You wouldn't like it. You're too staid.' 'Speak for yourself, Falco.'

We remained there a while longer, with our arms crossed against the cold, listening and watching. Around us our city slumbered, except where desperate souls slunk through its shadows on unspeakable errands, or the last few fearless party-goers were making their way home shrieking--if they could only remember where home was. Petronius, who had lost two of his children to fatal disease, seemed despondent; I knew he never forgot them but Saturnalia, the damned family festival, was when he remembered Silvana and Tadia most keenly. December is never my favourite month either, but I was riding it out. It comes; if you manage to endure it without killing yourself, January follows.

Petronius and I knew how to pace ourselves, and not only with wine. Endeavour and action also have moments of high energy and recovery. We took some rest, here on the balcony of a decrepit apartment which held so many memories. This was a lonely place, a sordid place, a noisy, half-derelict, heartbreaking location--several blocks of filthy tenements around a clutch of cheating neighbourhood shops, a place where free men learned that freedom only counts if you have money, and where people who saw that they would never become citizens totally lost hope. But in this backstreet byway a man who lay low could be ignored by the world. That was our hope for Justinus. We had stashed our treasure as discreetly as we could.

I stood up, working my spine stiffiy. It was time to go. Petronius stretched his long legs, kicking against the baluster with the great hard toes of his heavy boots. Since I paid the rent on this bolthole, I stood aside with a host's polite gesture to let him leave first through the wonky folding doors that led to the dreary interior. On his feet, Petronius had a last awkward stretch of his shoulders, then persuaded his tired limbs to move.

I stopped him. A sound had caught my attention, somewhere in the tangle of filthy alleys that twisted together like drab wool skeins in an old basket, six storeys beneath us.

Petronius thought I was a time-waster. Then he heard it too. Someone down there in the darkness played a few lonesome notes on a flute.