The Silver Pigs (4 page)

IX

Pertinax was furious. I felt depressed. Her father looked weary. I offered to help him find her: I saw him snap.

"Stay away from my daughter, Falco!" he cried angrily.

Understandable. He could probably guess my interest. Keeping layabouts away from a daughter like that must occupy a lot of his time. I murmured, in a responsible tone:

"So I'm off the case"

"You were never on it, Falco!" the aedile Pertinax crowed.

I knew better than to argue with a touchy politician. Especially one with such a pained face and pointy nose.

Pertinax let his men rummage through my apartment for evidence. They found nothing: even the sardine plates had been washed, though not by me. Before they left, they rearranged my furniture into handy cordwood sticks. And when I protested, one of them smashed me in the face so hard he all but broke my nose.

If Atius Pertinax wanted me to think him a frowsty lout with the habits of a gutter rat, he was halfway home.

As soon as they had gone, Lenia rushed upstairs to see whether she could inform Smaractus that one of his tenants had expired. My wrecked belongings stopped her short.

"Juno! Your room and your face, Falco!"

The room was nothing special, but I had once been proud of my face.

"I needed a new table," I groaned wittily. "You can buy wonderful ones nowadays. Decent slice of maple six feet across, bolted on a simple marble stand, just right with my bronze candelabrum I used to light my room with a tallow-dipped rush.

"Fool! Your mother says"

"Spare me," I said.

"Suit yourself!" She flounced off with her I'm just the baggage who takes messages face.

Things were not going so well. Still, my brain was not completely pulverized. I was too keen on good health to ignore a message from my ma. No need to trouble Lenia; I knew what it would be. And regarding my lost moppet with the mellifluous brown eyes, I did have an idea where she was.

News travels fast in the Aventine. Petronius turned up, fussing and none too pleased, while I was still exclaiming in agony as I bathed my face.

"Falco! Keep your filthy-mannered civic friends off my patch--" He whistled. Then at once took the black pottery jug from my shaking hand and poured for me himself. It was like old times, after a bad night's brawling outside the centurions' dining club in Isca Dumnoniorum. At twenty nine it hurt much more than when we were nineteen.

After a while he propped up what remained of my bench on two bricks from my stove, then sat me down.

"Who did this to you, Falco?"

I managed to tell him, using only the left half of my mouth. "An overexcited aedile called Atius Pertinax. I'd like to open him out like a spatchcock chicken, completely boned, on a very hot grill!"

Petronius growled. He hates aediles even more than I do. They get in his way, they upset local loyalties, they take all the credit, then leave him to tidy up their mess.

He prised up my loose floorboard and brought me some wine, but it stung me too much, so he drank it himself. We both hate waste.

"You all right?" I nodded, and let him do the talking. "I've been checking on the Camillus family. The senator's daughter is away on travel leave. There are two sons, one doing his year in the army in Germany, one bashing a desk wiping the governor's nose in Baetican Spain. Your little girlfriend is some hushed up indiscretion of the senator's brother. He's not married don't ask me how he gets away with that! According to the Censor's office Sosia was recorded as the child of one of his slaves, acknowledged then adopted by him. Could just be her father is a decent type. Or could be her mother was someone more important than he can say."

"Met him," I squeezed out like a sour pip. "Bit thin-lipped. Why not in the senate too?"

"Usual story. Family could only buy in the political votes once: elder son was put into purple stripes, younger foisted into commerce instead. Lucky old commerce! Is it true that you've lost her?"

I tried to grin. What a failure. Petro winced.

"She's not lost. Come with me, Petro. If she's where I think, I need your support..."

Sosia Camillina was where I thought.

X

Petro and I ducked down a tiled entry between a cutler's and a cheese shop. We took the stairs before the elegant ground floor apartment that was occupied by the idle ex-slave who owned the whole block (and several other blocks too; they know how to live). We were in a flaky grey building behind the Emporium, not far from the river but not so near that it flooded in the spring. It was a poor neighbourhood, but there were green creepers wound round all the pillars on the street side, sleek cats asleep in window boxes summer bulbs brightening the balconies; someone always kept the steps swept here. It seemed to me a friendly sort of place, but I had known it a long time.

On the first floor landing we banged at a brick-red door, which I had under pressure painted myself, and were admitted by a tiny waif of a slave. We found our own way to the room where I knew everyone would be.

"Hah! Wine shops all closed early?"

"Hello, Mother," I said.

My mother was in her kitchen, supervising her cook, which meant the cook was nowhere in sight but ma was doing something rapid to a vegetable with a sharp knife. She works on the principle that if you want anything done properly, do it yourself. All around were other people's children, with their steely jaws clamped into loaves and fruit. When we arrived, Sosia Camillina sat at the kitchen table gorging a piece of cinnamon cake with a gusto that told me she was already well at home, as people in my parents' house tend to be.

Where was my father? Best not to enquire. He went out to a game of draughts when I was seven. Must be a long game, because he still hasn't come home.

I kissed my mother's cheek like a dutiful son, hoping Sosia would notice, and was whacked with a colander for my trouble.

Ma greeted Petronius with an affectionate smile. (Such a good boy; such a hard-working wife; such a regular well-paid job!)

My eldest sister Victorina was there. Petronius and I both withdrew into ourselves. I was terrified Victorina would call me Trouble in front of Sosia. I could not imagine why he looked so worried.

"Hello, Trouble," said my sister, then to Petronius, "Hello, Primrose!"

She was married now to a plasterer, but in some ways she had not changed since she tyrannized the Thirteenth when we were small. Petronius had not known the rest of us in those days, but like everyone for miles around he knew our Victorina.

"How's my favourite nephew?" I asked, since she was holding her latest pug-faced progeny. He had the wrinkled face and tearful gaze of a hundred-year-old man. He stared at me over her shoulder with visible contempt: barely crawling yet, but he could recognize a fraud.

Victorina shot me a tired look. She knew my heart belonged to Marcia, our three-year-old niece.

My mother sedated Petronius with a casket of raisins while she extracted impertinent facts about his relations with his wife. I managed to get hold of a melon slice, but Victorina's infant seized the other end. He had the grip of a Liburnian wrestler. We struggled for some minutes, then I gave way to the better chap. The wretch hurled the melon onto the floor.

Sosia watched everything with immense, solemn eyes. I suppose she had never been anywhere where there was so much going on in such good-humoured chaos.

"Hello, Falco!"

"Hello, Sosia!" I smiled, in tones that were meant to lap her body in liquid gold. My sister and mother exchanged a derisory glance. I put one foot on the bench beside Sosia and gazed down with a simmering leer until my mother noticed.

"Get your boot off my bench!"

I took my boot off the bench.

"Little goddess, you and I need a private talk."

"Whatever you need," ma informed me, "can be discussed right here!"

Grinning more than I thought necessary, Petronius Longus sat down at the table and leaned his chin on his hands while he waited for me to begin. Everyone knew that I had no idea what I wanted to say.

On several occasions before that, indignant females had described to me the expression on my mother's face when she met some painted madam with a scented skirt in my rooms. Sometimes I never saw them again. In fairness to my mother, my conquests had included bad mistakes.

"What's going on here?" my mother had rapped at Sosia when she discovered her during my enforced chat with Pertinax.

"Good morning," responded Sosia. My mother sniffed. She strode to the bedroom, flung aside the curtain, and weighed up the situation with the camp bed.

"Well! I can see what's going on! Client?"

"I am not allowed to say," Sosia said.

My mother replied that she would be the judge of what was allowed. Then she sat Sosia down and gave her something to eat. She has her methods. Pretty soon she had wormed out the whole tale. She demanded what Sosia's noble mama would think, so Sosia unwisely mentioned having no noble mama. My own sweet parent was appalled.

"Right! You can come with me!" Sosia murmured that she felt safe enough. Mother gave her a sharp look; Sosia went with my mama.

Now Petronius, bless him, weighed in to help me out.

"Time we took you home, little lady!"

I told Sosia how the senator had engaged me. From which she assumed rather too much.

"So he explained? I thought Uncle Decimus was being overcautious at first' She stopped, then rounded on me accusingly, "You don't know what I'm talking about!"

"Tell me then," I said very gently.

She was deeply troubled. Her great eyes flew towards my mother. People always trust my mother. "I don't know what to do!" she pleaded.

My mother answered huffily, "Don't look at me, I never interfere."

I snorted at this. Ma ignored it, but even Petro had let slip a stifled guffaw of amusement.

"Oh, tell him about your bank box, child. The worst he can do is steal it," mother said. Such wonderful faith! I suppose you can't blame her. My elder brother Festus for some peculiar reason made himself a military hero. I can't compete with that.

"Uncle Decimus is hiding something very important in my bank box in the Forum," Sosia muttered guiltily. "I'm the only person who knows the number to open the box. Those men were taking me there."

I stared at her with a set face, making her suffer. In the end I turned man-to-man to Petronius. "What do you think?" I had no doubt of his answer.

"Stroll along and look!"

Sosia Camillina was behaving very meekly, but she did pipe up to warn us we should need to take a handcart to carry the loot.

XI

The Forum was cooler and quieter than when I was here with Sosia before, especially in the long colonnade where moneychangers offered safe deposits for nervous citizens. The Camillus family banked with a grinning Bithynian who had invested unhealthily in excess body fat. Sosia whispered a number to identify her property; happy face unlocked her box. It was a large box, although what was inside turned out to be comparatively small.

The box lid fell back. Sosia Camillina stood to one side. When Petro and I peered in, her savings were even less impressive than mine. Her uncle hired her this strongbox as a sensible discipline, but she owned no more than ten gold coins and a few decent pieces of jewellery that her aunt thought she was too young yet to wear. (It was a point of view. She was old enough for me.)

Our object of enquiry was folded up in felt and roped around with hemp. Since the banker was watching us with frank Bithynian curiosity, Petronius gave me a hand to drag it out unwrapped. It seemed impossibly heavy. It was lucky we had borrowed a handcart from my brother-in-law the plasterer, who was out of work as usual. (My brother-in-law was not out of work because all the walls in Rome were sound and smooth. It was because people in Rome would rather look at bare slats than employ a cross-eyed, bone idle swine like him.) We staggered off with our trolley creaking under the weight. Petro let me do most of the work.

"Don't hurt yourself!" Sosia had the grace to exclaim.

Petronius winked at her. "Not as puny as he looks. Does secret weight training in a gladiators' gym. Use your muscles, blossom"

"You must tell me some time," I gasped in retaliation, "why my sister Victorina calls you Primrose!"

He said nothing. But he blushed, I swear he did.

Fortunately Rome is a sophisticated city. Two men with a girl and a handcart can crawl into a wine shop without causing comment. We moved down a shady side street and plunged indoors. I bagged a table in a dark corner while Petro laid on some hot pies. It took both of us to raise the precious object up onto the table with a thud. Cautiously we peeled back the felt.

"Shades of Hades!" Petronius let out.

I could see why Uncle Decimus did not want this new baby announced in the Daily Gazette.

Sosia Camillina had no idea what it was.

Petro and I knew. Both of us felt slightly sick. Petro, with his iron stomach, nevertheless leaned back on his joint-stool and snapped his teeth into a vegetable pie. Rather than surrender to unhappy memories, I bit into one too. Mine was basically rabbit, with chicken livers and, I think, juniper not bad. There was a plate of pork tit bits we let Sosia chew on those.

That lonely hole of a customs post," Petro reminisced in horror. "Stuck on the Sabrina Estuary the wrong side of the frontier. Nothing to do but count the coracles floating in the mist, and keep one eye open in case the dark little men came over the river on a raid. Oh dear gods, Falco, remember the rain!"

I remembered the rain. The long, drear rain in southwest Britain is unforgettable.

"Falco, whatever is it?" Sosia hissed.

I said, relishing the drama, "Sosia Camillina, this is a silver Pig!"

XII

It was an ingot of lead.

It weighed two hundred Roman pounds. I tried to explain once to a woman I knew, how heavy that was:

"Not a lot heavier than you. You're a tall girl, quite a solid piece. A bridegroom could just about heave you over his threshold and not lose his silly smile..." The wench I was insulting happened to be a substantial armful, though by no means overweight. It sounds unkind, but if you've ever tried picking up a well fed young lady you'll appreciate the comparison was fairly exact. In fact, lifting this dense grey slab before we knew what we were doing had left two of us with bad backs.

Petronius and I gazed at the silver pig like an old, and not entirely convenient, friend.

"Whatever is it?" Sosia demanded. I told her. "Why do you call them pigs?"

I explained that when precious ore is being refined, molten metal runs away from the furnaces into a long channel where moulds for the ingots lead off down each side, like sucking piglets beside their mother sow. Petronius stared at me sceptic ally while I said this. Sometimes Petro seems amazed by the things I claim to know.

This valuable porker was a long dull block of metal, about twenty inches long by five wide and four deep, slightly bevelled at the sides, with the Emperor's name and the date on one long edge. It looked nothing, but a man who tried to carry it would soon find himself bent double. Twenty-four ladles of molten ore to each standard mould, not quite too heavy to handle, but difficult to steal. Worth it though, if you could. The silver yield from Mendips ore is remarkably high, on average a hundred and thirty ounces to the ton. I wondered whether the silver had already been extracted from the bauble on the table.

The government claims a monopoly of precious ore.

Wherever it came from, this belonged in the Mint. We rolled it, and banged it topside up, looking for an official stamp.

It was stamped all right: TCL TRIP, some new piece of nonsense, not once but four times, then EX ARC BRIT the old familiar mark we half hoped and half dreaded to find. Petronius groaned.

"Britain; a perfect signature! Someone must be sweating."

An uncomfortable feeling struck us both at the same time.

"Better move," Petro suggested. "Shall I tidy this away? Our usual place? You take the girl?"

I nodded.

"Falco, what's happening?" Sosia demanded excitedly.

"He's putting the silver pig somewhere smelly where felons will be too sensitive to look," I said. "You're going home. And J need an urgent chat with your Uncle Decimus!"