The Silver Pigs (13 page)

XXXIII

We had a long sea crossing, in a boat wallowing under a load of blue-grey British marble, to Gesoriacum in Gaul. Then overland to Durocortorum, where we turned off through Belgium into Germany and down the military corridor on the Rhine.

Use of the Imperial courier service is a dismal privilege. The special messengers on horseback cover fifty miles a day. We classed ourselves as a less urgent despatch and took an official carriage: four wheels on stout axles, high seats, change of mules every dozen miles, and after the double distance food and lodging all charged to the locals thanks to our pass. We were bitterly cold all the way.

We reached a professional understanding; we had to. It was too far to keep quarrelling. I was competent, she could see that; she could behave when she chose. Whenever we stopped she stayed within sight, and if she hardly ever talked to me, neither did she invite trouble from thieves, lechers, or tiresome inn landlords who tried to talk to her. Village idiots and beggars at bridges took one look at the set of her jaw, then slunk away.

All the couriers and drivers thought I slept with her, but I expected that. By her taut expression when she spoke to them I could tell she knew what they thought. She and I avoided the subject. Being viewed as the lover of Helena Justina was something I found difficult to pass off as a joke.

At the big military base of Argentoratum on the Rhine we met Helena's younger brother, who was stationed there. I got on well with him: those of us with ferocious sisters usually find common ground. Young Camillus organized a dinner that was the one bright spot on our appalling trip. Afterwards he took me aside and enquired anxiously whether anyone had thought to pay me for escorting her ladyship. I did admit I was already booking her twice. When he stopped laughing we rolled out to tour the nightlife of the town. He told me in confidence that his sister had had to endure a tragic life. I didn't laugh; he was a lad, he had a kind heart, and anyway the idiot was drunk.

She looked fond of her brother. That was fair enough. What tickled me was his affection for her.

At Lugdunum, where we picked up a boat down the Rhodanus, I narrowly escaped falling in. We had almost missed the boat altogether: it had already pulled in its gangplank and cast off, but the crew hooked the vessel to the river bank for us to leap across if we chose. I lobbed our baggage over the rail, then since none of the river men showed any sign of helping, parked myself with one foot on the deck and one on land to act as a human hand rope while her ladyship pulled herself aboard.

Helena was not a girl to betray doubts. I held out both my hands. While the boat bobbed almost out of reach, she grasped hold bravely and I passed her across. The boatmen lifted up their grappling hooks at once. I was left dangling. As the gap widened I braced myself for the shock of the icy Rhodanus until her ladyship glanced back, saw what was happening, then gripped my arm. For a second I hung spread-eagled; then she tightened her grip, I kicked off from land, and clapped down on the boat deck like a crab.

I was highly embarrassed. Most people would have exchanged a grin. But Helena Justina turned away without a word.

Fourteen hundred miles: long, bruising days, then nights in identical foreign rest houses full of what she rightly thought were quite appalling men. She never complained. Bad weather, spring tides, the couriers a contemptuous bunch, me: not a moan out of her. By Massilia I was mildly impressed.

I was also concerned. She looked tired; her voice sounded colourless. The inn was crammed and by now I knew how much she would hate the crush. I went to her room to collect her at dinnertime in case she felt nervous. She hung back, reluctant, pretending she was not hungry, but my cheery visage managed to lure her out.

"You all right?"

"Yes. Falco, don't fuss."

"Look a bit poorly."

"I'm all right." One of those days. She was human after all.

I tucked a shawl round her; I'd cos set a prickly porcupine if it was paying me twice.

Thank you."

"All part of the service," I said, and took her to dine. I was glad that she came. I did not want to eat alone. It was my birthday. No one knew. I was thirty years old.

We stayed at Massilia at an inn near the port. It was no worse and no better than the rest of Massilia; it was terrible. Too many strangers do a town no good. I was stiff from the road, and worried about my aching ribs. I felt a constant prickle as if we were being watched. I hated the food.

The acoustics in the dining hall were appalling. It was deafening. At one point I was called away by our ship's captain who wanted to make arrangements for embarkation. Quite straightforward: pay in advance, no frills, dawn start, bring your own baggage, find your own way to the docks or miss the boat. Thanks. What a wonderful town!

When I rejoined Helena she was driving off the innkeeper's lurcher who had his muzzle in my bowl. It being southern Gaul, where they know how to make strangers suffer, we were eating fish stew grainy stuff dyed red and full of broken bits of shell. I put my bowl on the floor for the dog. Few punishments match a birthday in Massilia, starving, and with a girl who regards you as if you had a niffy smell.

I persuaded Helena to sit out in the garden. That meant I went too, which was why I bothered to ask: I wanted some air. It was dusk. We could hear distant sounds of the port, there was running water and a fishpond with plopping frogs. No one else was about. Although it was cold, we sat on a stone bench. We were both tired, both allowing ourselves to relax slightly now Rome was only another sailing trip away.

"This is more peaceful! Feeling better now?"

"Don't fidget me," she complained, so I reproached her with my birthday.

"Bad luck," was all she said.

"Well, Marcus!" I mused. "Celebrating your feast day five hundred miles from home: gritty fish stew, filthy Gallic wine, a pain in your side, a callous client..." As I rambled on amiably, Helena Justina finally smiled at me.

"Stop grumbling. It's your own fault. If I'd known it was your birthday I'd have bought you a tipsy cake. How old now?"

"Thirty. Downhill to the dark boat across the Styx. Probably be sick over the side in Charon's ferry too... So how old are you?" This was daring, but she sounded almost sorry to have missed the tipsy cake.

"Oh... Twenty-three."

I laughed. Time yet to rope in a new husband..." Then I ventured in a casual voice, "My ladies usually like to tell me about their divorces."

"It's your feast day," Helena Justina snorted.

"So treat me... Where did you go wrong?"

"Fornication at the horse barracks!"

"Liar!" I didn't like her, but that had to be untrue. She was strict as a brick. That was probably the reason why I thought I didn't like her. "His fault then. What did he do? Too mean with the opal earrings or too free with the Syrian flute girls?"

She just said, "No."

"Beat you?" I risked. By now I was insatiably curious.

"No. If you really need to know," Helena declared, with an effort, "he was not sufficiently interested in anything about me to bother. We were married for four years. We had no children.

Neither of us was unfaithful She paused. Probably knew, you can never be sure. "I enjoyed running my own household but what was it for? So I divorced him."

She was a secretive person; I felt sorry I asked. Usually around this point they cry; not her.

"Want to talk about it? Did you quarrel?"

"Once."

"What about?"

"Oh... Politics."

It was the last thing I expected, yet utterly typical. I burst out laughing. "Look, I'm sorry! But you can't stop there do tell!"

I was glimpsing now what all the matter was. Helena Justina was brave enough not only to have brought her restlessness upon herself, but also to see how badly her present sense of despair affected her soul. Quite possibly the better life she was striving for did not even exist.

I wanted to reach out to squeeze her hand, but she was not that sort of woman. Perhaps that was how her husband had felt about her too.

She decided to tell me. I waited to be startled, for nothing she ever said was conventional. She began to speak, in a cautious tone; I listened gravely. Helena explained what had led to her divorce.

And as she told me, my mind returned in stunned disbelief to the silver pigs.

XXXIV

"In the Year of the Four Emperors," Helena began, "my family father, Uncle Gaius, me supported Vespasian. Uncle Gaius had known him for years. We all admired the man. My husband had no strong views. He was a trader Arabian spices, ivory, Indian porphyry, pearls. One day, some people at our house were talking about Vespasian's second son, Domitian. It was when he tried to involve himself in the German revolt, just before Vespasian came home. They convinced themselves this callow youth would make an ideal Emperor attractive enough to be popular, yet easy for them to manipulate. I was furious! When they left, I tackled my husband She hesitated. I squinted at her sideways, deciding it was best not to interrupt. In the twilight her eyes had become the colour of old honey the last dark scrape that lurks just out of reach of your finger in the bottom corners of the pot so you cannot bear to throw it away.

"Oh, Didius Falco, what can I say? This quarrel was not the end of our marriage, but it made me see the distance between us. He would not admit me to his confidence; I could not support him as I should. Worst of all, he would never even listen to my point of view!" A wild Cretan bull would not have made me declare the man feared she was right.

"On spices and porphyry he must have been well set up," I suggested. "You could have led a quiet life, no interference"

"So I could!" she agreed angrily. Some women would have thought themselves fortunate, taken a lover, taken several, complained to their mothers while they spent their husbands' cash. Reluctantly, I admired her single-mindedness.

"Why did he marry you?"

"Public life a wife was compulsory. And choosing me tied him to Uncle Publius."

"Did your father approve of him?"

"You know families. The undertow of pressure, built up over years. My father has a habit of doing what his brother wants. Anyway, my husband looked a perfectly normal man: overdeveloped sense of self-interest, undernourished sense of fun"

Not a lot a man could say! To calm her I asked a practical question: "I thought senators were not allowed to engage in trade?"

That was why he went into partnership with Uncle Publius. He provided the investment, all the documents were in my uncle's name."

"So your man was rich?"

"His father was. Though they suffered in the Year of the Four Emperors"

"What happened then?"

Ts this an interrogation, Falco?" Quite suddenly she laughed. It was the first time I heard that twist of private amusement, an unexpectedly appealing note that made me inadvertently giggle in return. "Oh well! When Vespasian announced his claim and blockaded the corn supplies at Alexandria to put pressure on the senate to support him, there were difficulties trading east. My husband and my uncle tried to explore new European markets Uncle Publius even visited Britain to investigate tribal exports from the Celts! Uncle Gaius was not altogether pleased," Helena added.

"Why not?"

They don't get on."

"Why not?"

"Different types."

"What does Aelia Camilla think? Did she side with her husband or her brother Publius?"

"Oh, she has a very soft spot for Uncle Publius for the same reasons he irritates Uncle Gaius."

Her ladyship was still amused. She had the kind of laugh I wanted to hear again. I nudged at it: "What's so funny? What reasons?"

"I won't say. Well, don't mock... Years ago when they lived in Bithynia, when my aunt was a child, Uncle Publius taught her to drive his racing chariot!" I could not imagine it. Aelia Camilla had appeared so dignified. "You know Uncle Gaius the nicest kind of man, often adventurous, but he can be rather staid." I had guessed. "Uncle Gaius complains that Aunt Aelia drives too fasti I'm afraid she taught me," Helena confessed.

I leaned back my head and sombrely tutted at the sky. "My good friend your uncle is quite right!"

"Didius Falco, don't be ungrateful. You were so desperately ill I had to hurry you were perfectly safe!"

Out of character, she raised her arm and pretended to box me round the ears. I blocked the movement, casually catching her wrist. Then I stopped.

I turned Helena Justina's hand palm upwards and wrinkled my nose, breathing in the perfume I had noticed. She had a firm wrist, bare of jewellery tonight. Her hands were cold, like mine, but the scent hummed something like cinnamon but much more deeply resonant. Made me think of Parthian kings.

"Now there's an exotic attar!"

"Malabathron," she told me, wriggling, but not much. "From India. An immensely expensive relic of my husband"

"Generous!"

"Waste of money. The fool never noticed it."

"Perhaps," I teased, "he had a cold he couldn't shift."

"For four years?"

We were both laughing. I would have to let her go. No opportunity appearing, I bent my head and enjoyed another sniff.

"Malabathron! Lovely. My favourite! Does it come from the gods?"

"No, it comes from a tree." I could feel her growing anxious, but she was too proud to tell me to let go.

"Four years, so you were a bride at what nineteen?"

"Eighteen. Quite old. Like my husband's cold difficult to shift!"

"Oh I doubt that!" I commented gallantly.

When they favour me with their stories, I always give them my advice. "You should laugh at him more."

"Perhaps I should laugh at myself."

Only a maniac would have tried to kiss her hand. I replaced it like a gentleman in Helena Justina's lap.

Thank you," I said quietly, in a changed voice.

"What's that for?"

"Something you once did."

We sat quietly. I leaned back, stretching my leg and folding one hand over my sorely aching ribs. I wondered what she was like, before the rich fool with the snuffle made Helena so venomous to other people and so wretched with herself.

While I was wondering, the evening star materialized among high rags of racing cloud. The noises from the inn behind us had become more subdued as the clientele told dirty stories in twelve languages during the lull between simple gluttony and drinking themselves sick. Carp in the pond broke surface with a greater urgency. It was a good time for thinking, here at the end of a long journey with nothing to do but wait for our boat. Here in a garden. Here, speaking to a sensible woman with whom a man who took a little trouble could so easily exchange thoughts.

"Mars Ultor, I came so close... I just wish I had managed to find how those ingots are shipped out!"

Fretting aloud. Hardly expecting answers.

"Falco," Helena began carefully. "You know I went to the coast. The day I came back angry"

I chuckled. "A day, like any other day!"

"Listen! There was something I never told you. They were loading shale. Lopsided pantry goods -beakers, bowls, candlesticks, smirking sea lion table legs. It's hideous stuff. Goodness knows who would ever buy it. It needs to be oiled or it crumbles away..."

I squirmed guiltily, remembering the tray I had given to my mother. "Oh lady! Something like that could be their cover. Did you think to ask"

"Of course. Falco, the man with this gimcrack export market is Atius Pertinax."

Pcrtinax! His was the last name I expected to encounter here. Pertinax, trading in poor quality kitchenware! Atius Pertinax: that pointy-nosed aedile who had me arrested when he was looking for Sosia, then beat me up and broke my furniture! I spat out a short word used by slaves in lead mines which I hoped Helena would not understand.

"There's no need to be disgusting," she replied in a still voice.

There's every need, lady! Do you know that twitchy tick?"

Helena Justina the senator's daughter, who constantly caused me such astonishment, recited in a voice which became uncharacteristically subdued, "Didius Falco, you're not very bright. Yes I know him. Of course I know him; I was married to the man."

Too much travelling finally overwhelmed me. I felt squashed and sick.