Shadows in Bronze (18 page)

XXXVI

The beach at Oplonna was the usual litter of dank seaweed, broken amphorae, snaggles of stiffened fishing net and scarves left behind by girls who were intent on other things. Wasps homed in on half-gnawed melon rind. Walkers risked deadly hazards from rusty daggers and dress brooches. There was the usual left boot which always looks just your size and perfect, but when you trudge across to have a look has half its sole missing. If people managed to fend off the cynical urchins touting overpriced fishing trips, a jellyfish that was not as dead as it was pretending would sting them instead.

Now it was early evening. A subtle diminution in the brash daytime light, an imperceptible cooling of that glorious heat, and shadows which suddenly ran out to ridiculous lengths were giving the atmosphere a magical tinge; it almost made being at the seaside acceptable. People who were tired of working stopped. Families who were tired of quarrelling left. Tiny dogs stopped terrorizing mastiffs and settled for raping any bitches they could manage to climb onto, afterwards running round in glorious circles to celebrate their productivity.

I looked back towards our inn. Larius had loped off to find Petronius, and Ollia was gone too, along with her brainy swain. The beach lay unusually empty. Apart from the dogs and me, a party of off-duty shop boys were making a lot of noise with a shuttlecock while their girlfriends dragged together driftwood for a barbecue fire. The fishermen who were normally cluttering the place had either sailed off with their lanterns to raid tuna shoals after dark, or had not yet returned from their more lucrative trade running tourists out to look at the rock on Capreae from which Emperor Tiberius had thrown people who offended him. All they left for me was a single skiff, upended above the tideline, growing silvery in the sun.

I am not a complete idiot. This broad-bellied cockleshell looked as if it had been lying here a long time. I did carryout a thorough inspection for stakes stuck through its planking, or bungholes with missing plugs. There was nothing wrong with my convenient coracle - or at least, nothing a highly cautious landlubber could see.

I found a spare oar leaning against someone's worm-eaten mooring post, then another paddle under the skiff when I managed to lever it right side up. I shouldered it down to the water's edge, helped by the shop boys' girlfriends, who were happy to fill time respectably before it grew dark and their lads started getting ideas. I tossed a last look back for Larius or Petro but there was no sign, so I climbed in, swayed on the prow with an effort at bravado, and let the girls shove me off.

It was a clumsy piece of carpentry. The clod who built it must have been feeling off colour that day. It bobbed in the wavelets like an intoxicated fruit-fly dancing at a rotten peach. It took some time to get the hang of keeping this mad thing pointing forwards, but in the end I began to make some progress from the shore. The breeze in my face was slight, though not helping much. My purloined oar had a bitten blade, and the other paddle was too short. The glare off the sea added a new glaze to my sunburn while it also made me squint. I didn't care. The reluctance Aufidius Crispus had demonstrated to facing an innocent interview fired my determination to get on board the kit and find out what the big mystery was supposed to be.

I dug deep and pushed out steadily until I had halved the distance from Oplontis to the ship. I congratulated myself on my spirit and initiative. Vespasian would be proud of me. I came near enough to read her name, painted high on the prow in angular Greek lettering . At about the same time as I grinned triumphantly, a completely different sensation impinged on me.

My feet were wet.

Almost as soon as I noticed the cold, I was standing in seawater up to the ankles and my luckless skiff was foundering. Once the Tyrrhenian Sea discovered it could seep through the dried planks, it rushed in on all sides and my vessel sank beneath me rapidly.

There was nothing I could do but shut my eyes, hold my nose, and hope some sea nymph with a nice nature would pull me out.

XXXVII

Larius pulled me out. Wallowing with a Nereid would have been more fun.

My nephew must have seen me set off and been on his way after me before I sank. Remember his father was a boatman; Larius had been dandled in the Tiber even before he was weaned. He could swim when he was two. He never used the smister, silent, Batavian crawl which the Army teaches. My nephew had a horrible style, though a thrashing turn of speed.

When I came round, with the feeling of having been violently engulfed then flailed against a concrete wall, I could tell how Larius had achieved my rescue by the agonies I had acquired as a result. I had a bruised throat where he had heroically gripped me, and a gashed ear where he had crashed my head against a mooring stage. The backs of my legs were raw from being dragged over the pumice up the beach, and I was being pumped back to life by Petronius Longus, applying his full bodyweight. Afterwards, I felt perfectly happy to lie still for a long time, considering my sore windpipe and puminelled flesh.

'Think he'll live?' I heard Larius ask; he sounded more curious than concerned.

'Reckon so.'

I let out a grunt to inform Petronius that he could now feel free to amuse himself with jokes at my expense. His unmistakable fist thumped my shoulder.

'He's been in the Army. Why can't he swim?' That was Larius.

'Oh... the week we did watersports in basic training, Marcus was confined to barracks on fatigues.'

'What had he done?'

'Nothing serious. We had a high-handed junior tribune who got the idea Marcus had been playing around with his girl.'

There was a pause. 'Had he?' Larius eventually enquired.

'Oh no' In those days he was much too shy!' Untrue. But Petronius does not believe in corrupting the young.

I rolled over away from them. I peered seawards for the Isis through swollen eyes, but she had gone.

The low evening sun savaged my legs and shoulders, as it came glancing through my lightly bloodstained marinade of brine. I lay face down on the beach thinking about death by drowning and other cheerful things.

Far away at the water's edge I could hear Petro's three young daughters shrieking with delight as they chased each other fearlessly in and out of the dreadful sea.

'Anyway!' Petronius chaffed Larius. 'How come you're always extricating this fool when disaster strikes?'

Larius blew his nose. He took his time answering but when he did I could tell he was enjoying it.

'I promised his mother I'd look after him,' he said.

XXXVIII

Next day my friends decided I must be taught to swim.

It was probably a bad idea for them to try giving lessons to someone who still went rigid at any possibility of going under with seawater filling his lungs. Still, they all took it seriously so I attempted to co-operate.

It was hopeless. Petronius could hardly hold me up by the back of my tunic as he did with his children, and when Larius tried making water wings from inflated wineskins he just wore himself out blowing them up.

Nobody laughed, however. And nobody condemned me when I climbed back out of the water, walked up the beach, and sat down alone.

I stayed by myself, morosely flipping pebbles at a hermit crab. I skimined them to miss, since I was not in the mood for outright cruelty; the crab found a shell of his own and started to build an extension to his house.

IXL

We were eating when Helena came.

We had left Ollia with the children, apart from Tadia who had been badly stung by a jellyfish so we brought her with us, still flushed and miserable (the poor mite had sat on it). Larius stayed with Ollia; I overheard the two of them discussing lyric poetry.

We ate at an open-air winery where they also served seafood. Petronius had inspected the kitchen at Silvia's behest; I won't pretend the proprietors welcoined him, but he had the knack of getting into places wiser men would have left alone, then being treated for ever as a friend of the management.

Helena had seen us and was out of her sedan chair by the time I came up. I heard her instruct the servants to amuse themselves with a flagon and come back for her later. They stared at me, but I had little Tadia half-asleep in my arms so I looked harmless.

'Personal delivery, ladyship?'

'Yes- I'm having a mad burst of energy -' Helena Justina sounded breathless, but that may have been the effort of extracting herself and my mother's new bucket from the sedan chair. 'If I were at home I'd be tackling those jobs everyone avoids, like spring-cleaning the pantry where we keep the fish-pickle jars. In someone else's house it seems impolite to suggest their kitchen amphorae may leak... She was dressed plainly in grey though her eyes were very bright. ‘So I may as well deal with you-'

'Oh thanks! Like a nasty sticky ring on a floor slab, waiting to be scrubbed away?' She smiled. I muttered grittily, 'When you smile you have beautiful eyes!'

She stopped smiling. But she still had beautiful eyes.

I looked away. Out to sea. Round the Bay. Up at Vesuvius - anywhere. I had to look back. Those eyes of hers finally met mine directly.

‘Hello, Marcus,' she said carefully, like someone humouring a down.

And I answered, 'Hello, Helena.' So sensibly she blushed.

When I introduced the Senator's daughter I tried to spare her embarrassment, but she was carrying a bucket and my friends were not the type to miss an eccentricity like that.

‘Brought your own feeding pail, young lady?' Petronius has a typically Aventine line in ribaldry. I caught his eye as he watched his curious wife inspecting Helena.

Arria Silvia had already twitched her whiskers at the prospect that my stately guest might be more than a business acquaintance. 'I'm very fond of Falco's mother!' Silvia stated regally when the bucket was explained (establishing that she and Petro knew me first).

‘Lots of people are,' I breezed. ‘So am I sometimes!' Helena gave Silvia a pale, commiserating smile.

Helena Justina became withdrawn in noisy public places, so she sat down at our table with hardly a word. We had been devouring shellfish; I had once come all across Europe with her ladyship, one Hades of a journey where we had had nothing to do but swap complaints about the food. I knew she liked to eat so I skipped asking and ordered her a crayfish bowl. I gave her my napkin and the way she accepted without comment may have been one of the clues Silvia sniffed out.

'What happened to your ear, Falco?' Helena could be pretty curious too.

'Got too friendly with a jetty.'

Petronius, looking relaxed as he winkled the legs off his prawns, related how I had tried to drown myself; Silvia added a few humorous details of my failure to get afloat today.

Helena frowned 'Why can't you swim?'

'When I ought to have been learning, I had been confined to barracks.'

'Why?'

I preferred to leave this open but Petronius helpfully passed on the tale he had spun Larius, 'We had a tribune who thought Marcus had been playing around with his girl.' 'True?' she grilled, adding scornfully, 'I suppose so!'

'Of course!' Petro gladly confirmed for her.

'Thanks!' I remarked.

Then Petronius Longus, being basically good-natured, swigged the juice from his bowl, stuffed a bread roll in his mouth, poured wine for us, left some money for the meal, gathered up his weary daughter, winked at Helena - and took himself off with his wife.

After this performance I cleaned my bowl slowly while Helena was finishing hers. She had turned up her hair the way I liked, parted in the centre then twisted back above her ears.

'Falco, what are you staring at?' I gave her a look that confessed I was wondering if I dared nuzzle her nearest ear lobe - so she shot one back which said I had better not try.

An uncontrollable grin took possession of my face. Helena's expression informed me that being flirted at by a love-them-and-leave-them gigolo was not her idea of a holiday treat.

I lifted my cup, gently saluting her; she sipped hers. She had taken more water than wine when I first served her, and had drunk very little when Petro refilled her cup. 'Had your ration up at the villa Rustica?' She looked surprised. 'Is your father-in-law a heavy drinker?'

'A glass or two at mealtimes to help him digest. Why?'

'That day I came, the flask he collected would have done duty at a gladiators' victory thrash.'

Helena considered it. 'Perhaps he likes to leave some on the table for the slaves who wait on him?'

'Perhaps!' Neither of us believed it, as both of us knew. Time to talk business, since flirting had been ruled out.

'If you've already been to Nola and back, you've had a busy day. So what's so urgent?'

She flashed a tired, rueful smile. 'Falco, I owe you an apology.'

'I expect I can bear it. What have you done?'

'I told you Aufidius Crispus had never been to the villa - then the infuriating man arrived as soon as you left.'

I gloomily used my thumbnail as a toothpick. 'In a litter with a fancy gold prong on top, and slaves in saffron livery?'

‘You passed him!'

‘Not your fault.' She ought to have known by now that if I was ever annoyed she had only to expose me to that grave, apologetic look. I was not annoyed but she did know, judging by her expression, which was having a tricky effect on me. 'Tell me about it?'

'It appeared to be a sympathy call. I was told, he had come to talk to Marcellus about his son.'

‘Prior arrangement?'

'Looked like it. I think my father-in-law rushed his lunch with me so the men would be able to talk in private when Crispus arrived.' Modest women expect to be excluded from male get-togethers; Helena was openly annoyed.

'They took the flagon,' she acknowledged. 'You never miss much!'

I grinned, enjoying the flattery. I also enjoyed her secret glint as I let her manipulate me - then her swift, sweet, honest laugh when she noticed I knew. 'Don't suppose old Marcellus told you what they discussed?'

‘No. I tried to hide my interest. He passed the visit off with a comment about Crispus making himself agreeable... Ask me why I went to Nola with Marcellus?'

I leant closer with my chin on my hands and requested obediently, 'Helena Justina, why did you go to Nola?'

'To buy you a bucket, Falco – and you've never even looked at it.