The Silver Pigs (17 page)

XLIV

"That must have been a contest, brother!"

"Not all of life is a contest," Titus calmly said.

For Domitian, the courtesy title of Caesar seemed a fragile irony. He had the family curls, the creased Flavian chin, the bull neck, square body and stocky build. Somehow he failed to convince. He was ten years younger than Titus, which explained both his resentment and his brother's protective loyalty. He was twenty, his face still cherubic and soft.

"Sorry!" he exclaimed. My first impression was that he shared his brother's ability to disarm. My second impression was, he acted well. "What's this affairs of state?" I remembered how Domitian's role in the state had been terminated briskly by their imperial papa.

"Man called Didius Falco," Titus told him, sounding the general. "Relation of a decurion in my legion in Judaea."

It finally struck me that I owed this commission to my own brother. Vespasian and Titus knew Festus, so they trusted me. Not for the first time in my life, I viewed big brother with mixed feelings. Not for the first time in this case, I felt hideously slow.

As if it had been prearranged, a servant issued me with a sack of coin I could hardly lift. Titus declared in a measured voice, That is my personal gift to your mother, Didius Falco, as commander of the Fifteenth Legion Apollinaris. A small compensation for the support she has lost. Didius Festus was irreplaceable to both of us."

"You knew him?" I asked, not because I wanted to hear, but when I told my mother all this gilt-edged rubbish she would ask me.

"He was one of my soldiers; I tried to know them all."

Domitian broke in, with a laugh that sounded genuine: "We are both lucky, Didius Falco, having brothers with such well earned reputations!"

In that moment he enjoyed all the gifts of the Flavian house: grace, high intelligence, respect for the task in hand, sturdy wit, good sense. He could have been no less a statesman than his father or his brother; sometimes he managed it. Vespasian had shared his own talents with an even hand; the difference was, only one of his sons handled them with a truly sure grip.

Titus brought our interview to a close. Tell your mother to be proud, Falco."

I managed to keep my peace.

As I turned, Domitian stepped aside.

"Who's the lady?" he asked me openly, when Helena Justina slipped to her feet in a sparkle of gold and a whisper of silk. His shameless eyes raked her, implying the wander of decadent hands.

Her discomfort made me so angry, I retaliated: "The ex-wife of a dead aedile called Atius Pertinax."

And saw his flicker of anxiety at that name.

Titus had come down to us at the door, also putting his brother to the test: The aedile has left his lady a curious legacy. Now this fortune-hunter trails after her everywhere, keeping one eye on her interests at all turns..."

Domitian gave no further sign of nerves. He kissed Helena's hand, with the half-closed gaze of a very young man who imagines he is brilliant in bed. She stared at him stonily. Titus intervened, with a smoothness I envied, kissing her cheek like a relative as we reached the door. I let him. If she wanted, she was perfectly capable of stopping him herself.

I hoped she realized these two came from an old-fashioned Sabine family. Stripped of their purple, they were provincial and ordinary: close with their money, ruled by their women, and obsessed with work. They both had paunches already, and neither of them was as tall as me.

I had to leave Helena alone while I found someone to roust out her chair. The empty atrium seemed so vast I reeled, trying to take it in, but as soon as I returned I spotted her, a shaft of deep sea green sitting on a fountain edge. Overshadowed by the hundred-foot-high statue of Nero as the Sun God, she looked anxious and shy.

A man in a senator's wide purple stripes was addressing her; the type who leans back with his gut heaving over his belt. Her replies were abrupt. Her glance settled on me gratefully as I skipped across.

"Where else should I look for a naiad but in front of a water-splash? There's a delay finding our chair but it will come"

I planted myself alongside. Sir-in-the-stripes looked annoyed; I cheered up. She would not introduce us. After he took his leave I noticed her relax.

"Friend of yours?"

"No. Oddly enough, I'm a friend of his wife!"

"Well, just tip me a nod if you want me to disappear."

"Oh thanks!" she stormed bleakly.

I sat down beside her on the fountain bowl, musing, "Funny thing, divorce. Seems to hang a sign saying "vulnerable" round a woman's neck."

We hit one of those rare moments when she allowed me to see her under private strain.

"Is this common? I was starting to feel I must be odd!" I saw her chair coming, so merely smiled in reply. "Didius Falco, will you see me safe to the house?"

"Good gods, yes! This is Rome at night! Will your chair take me and my bag of gold?"

Dining out with the Caesars had given me extravagant ideas. Still she nodded, then coolly informed the bearers they were taking me as well.

We climbed aboard, both twisting diagonally to avoid bumping knees. The bearers set off, down the north side of the Palatine, going slowly because of the extra weight. It was not quite dark.

Helena Justina was looking so unhappy I had to say, "Don't think about what happened to Pertinax."

"No."

"And don't try to convince yourself he was sorry when you divorced him"

"No, Falco!" I leaned back in my corner of the chair, twisting my lip. In the near darkness she apologized. "You're so passionate when you give advice! Did your hero brother have a wife?"

"A girl and a child he never heard about."

"Marcia!" she exclaimed. Her tone changed. "I thought she must be yours."

"I told you not!"

"Yes."

"I don't lie to you!"

"No. I beg your pardon... Who looks after them now?"

"Me."

I sounded terse and I was shifting about, but it had nothing to do with anything we had said. We had descended as far as the Forum before I was sure: furtive footsteps were keeping pace with us, too level and much too close.

"What's the matter, Falco?"

"We're being shadowed. All the way from the Palace"

I banged on the roof, springing out as the chair stopped. Helena Justina slid after me almost before I offered my hand. I snatched up my mother's bag of gold, then I handed her ladyship straight off the open street and into the lighted doorway of the nearest dreadful dive, as if she were some bored socialite paying me to take her to see the low life of Rome at night.

In the lurid light of their entrance cubicle, she looked so highly strung I almost wondered if she wished she was.

XLV

There was a tip tilted head of Venus blowing her cheeks out beside a welcoming motto above the outside door, where a stupendous man extracted a stupendous entrance fee. It was a brothel. I couldn't help that. It took us off the streets; it was warm, dark, and no doubt confirmed her ladyship's abysmal opinion of me.

I would have to find the entrance money myself. Client or not, I could hardly ask the senator to excavate his bank box to pay for me taking his delicate daughter to a place as foul as this.

The proprietors here made a meagre living from the profits of fornication, and a small fortune from picking pockets and selling stolen clothes. There was one cavernous room, with hides hung on poles round the walls to form cubbyholes where fraud, theft or murder could take place in decent privacy. Other varieties of intercourse occurred in whatever patch of gloom the participants already occupied.

A torchlit floor show was in progress, enlivened by the clatter of fractured castanets. Three teenage girls with thin arms and amazing busts were cavorting together on a central mat wearing big fixed smiles and little leather thongs. Waiting on the sidelines they had a monkey; for what purpose, I refuse to speculate. At tables around the room dark figures with glassy faces drank overpriced liquor while they watched the show, from time to time exuding desultory cries.

A short stout hostess loomed at us in off-the-shoulder violet gauze, slashed from the waist to reveal a yard of varicose-veined leg. Her transparent attire made me long to see less of her not more, as she demanded with a remnant of tired allure, "Bang on my tambourine, centurion?"

Before I could stop her, the senator's daughter rapped briskly, "Don't cramp my style; his highness is with me!"

The woman revived at this exotic hint. (I revived slightly myself.)

"Ooh! It's two little gold pieces or four if you bring your own girl!" The man outside had charged me more than that, but I suppose both he and the monkey wanted a cut.

"Corkage!" marvelled Helena; I was shocked. Women exchanging ribaldry are so coarse.

"Don't be so unladylike! Hades, we were followed. Fine pickle you've lured me into here"

A phalanx of bulky shapes came sliding in through the entrance behind us with ominous intent. Protests from the doorman indicated they had not paid his fee; once they laid hands on us they were not intending to stay.

My companion muttered to her new friend, This clown's crossing his legs is there a..."

"Out the back, dear"

"Come on, Falco, I'll take you!"

She pulled me straight across the floor show. Hardly anyone noticed. Those that did, thought we were part of it as for one ludicrous moment we were. A writhing young amazon with no sense of direction backed into Helena's arms; she passed her to me like an unwanted bread roll. I gave the girl a smacking kiss, regretted it (she tasted of sweat and garlic only to be borne when you taste of the same), then I positioned her tidily on the nearest table where she disappeared under the lecherous clutch of a group of happy Corsicans who could not believe their luck. Rival foreign parties roared with jealousy. The table toppled over, pulling down a curtain to reveal some citizen's white backside rising like the Moon Goddess as he did his anxious duty by a maiden of the house; the poor rabbit froze in mid-thrust, then went into eclipse. A cheer went up. Helena giggled: "Hail and Farewell!"

By now outraged stokers and stevedores were swaying to their feet ready to spar with anyone, and not caring why. The monkey had been eating an apple while he waited until he was wanted. I clicked my fingers above his head, snatched his apple as he looked up, then drew back my arm like a javelin thrower to hurl the fruit at the gang who had followed us in. Baring his teeth, he leapt into their midst biting anyone whose face he could reach.

Helena Justina had found a low doorway; she ducked me out into the back alley before I could gasp. We never even had a drink.

Well, people don't go to a brothel for a drink.

The space between the buildings was half a yard at most. Dark balconies hung over our heads hiding the sky. There was a smell as strong as lion's piss and I banged my knee on an onion crate. Under my sandals I felt the soft slide of liquid mud which after a few steps welled up coldly between my naked toes.

As I limped bravely, the senator's daughter helped me to hurry with her sensible hand gripping my arm.

"Didius Falco, I didn't know you were shy!"

I glanced back over one shoulder, managing to mutter, "I didn't know you were not!" Our steps jarred on the lava blocks of a properly paved street. "Now that we've been to a brothel together, can I call you Helena?"

"No. The floor show looked amazing; I was sorry to miss that!"

"I thought we should leave; that mangy ape was giving you a funny look!"

"It was a chimpanzee," Helena Justina retorted pedantically. "And I thought he was rather taken with you!"

We slackened our pace but stumbled on until we came to a major street. Since we left the Palace the curfew had lifted and they were letting in the delivery carts. From all the gates of Rome ferocious vehicular activity converged on us; we covered our ears against the screeching of axles and cursing of carters. It was pitch dark, except where their lanterns bobbed. Suddenly there were shouts: we had been spotted. We were pursued by burly shapes. There was something about the way those shadows moved that convinced me they were soldiers. They came after us on unhurried feet, fanning down both sides of the highway, threading through the waggons like corks bobbing in a harbour, silently working their way through dark water into shore.

"More roughnecks! Better hitch a ride"

"Oh Juno!" Helena wailed in despair. "Falco, not a cart chase up and down the Seven Hills!"

The night came alive now. The streets clogged; queues; noise; spills and traffic jams. I put my foot on the back of a slow waggon, wriggled up then pulled Helena aboard. We cuddled a marble headstone for half a block, transferred to a manure cart, realized what it was, then stepped off hastily to share with some nets of cabbages instead.

I was trying to work south, where I knew the streets. The cabbage-carter stopped to exchange abuse with a competitor who had scraped into his cart, so we scrambled down.

"Mind your feet!"

I nipped backwards from a passing wheel. Thanks. In here We took advantage of a side less dray. "Try to look like an amphora of robust Latian wine"

I collapsed in mild hysterics as her sober ladyship obediently imitated a wine jar with her hands on her hips like handles and a face like a cracked chalk bung.

Six ox carts later the shadows were still gaining. It was quicker to walk. We slithered down again; my party sandals landed in something warm a donkey had left behind. I was still carrying mother's sack of swag from Titus, and worrying about not being able to concentrate on protecting Helena. I had been frightened of losing her: no chance of that! While I was exclaiming, she seized my free hand ready to run. In the light from a tavern, her eyes flashed. I had let myself enjoy the delusion that Helena Justina was a staid piece. That was nonsense. She was determined not to be beaten, yet chortling at herself as she caught my startled look. Equally exhilarated, I laughed and ran faster myself.

The waggons had carried us out of the Forum, across the Via Aurelia and further south. We dashed round the Circus Maximus at the starting gate end and scuttled east until we were level with the central Obelisk. When we approached the Twelfth Sector I drew to a halt, bolting into the shelter of an alley, as we both struggled for breath. I backed her ladyship against a windowless wall, flung one arm across in front of her, and stared about, frantically listening. After a time I let my arm drop and lowered my bag of gold silently to the ground. There was nothing but the low throb of general noise beyond the buildings round about. Where we were seemed suddenly peaceful. We stood in a discrete pool of quietness: me, the senator's daughter, the silhouette of an owl on a roof-tree, and the smell of old bean skins from a nearby rubbish dump. It might have seemed quite romantic to anyone with a passion for broad beans.

"Lost them!" I whispered. "Enjoying your trip out?"

She laughed, almost soundlessly in the back of her throat. "Beats sitting by a fountain watching slave girls sewing fringes onto frocks!"

I was about to do something well say something, anyway,

- when into the space where my words would have gone, some other villain spoke.

"Now there's a fine Etruscan necklace, lady! Dangerous running about the streets like that. Better hand your glitter over to me!"