A Body In The Bath House

XIII

helena came with me from Noviomagus for the project presentation. On arrival at the palace, we wandered around the scaffolded part and looked at the roof where poor Valla must have fallen to his death.

It was a straightforward case of sending a man aloft, on his own, too high up, with inadequate protection. Apparently.

We had time in hand. Turning back, we surveyed what they called the old house. Togidubnus' palace, his reward for allowing the Romans into Britain, must have stood out in the land of hill forts and forest hovels. Even this early version was a gem. His fellow-kings and their tribesmen were still living in those large round huts with smoke holes in their pointed roofs, where several families would cram in festively together along with their chickens, ticks and favourite goats; but Togi was fabulously set up. The main range of the royal home comprised a fine and substantial rornanised stone building. It would be a desirable property if it stood on the shores of the lake at Nemi; in this wilderness it was an absolute cracker.

A double veranda gave protection from the weather, opening onto a large colonnaded garden. It was well tended; someone enjoyed this amenity. Set slightly apart from the living suite for safety, the unmistakable domed roofs of what might well be the only private bath house in this province lay on the seaward side. Gentle smoke from the furnace told us Vespasian did not need to send the King a civilisation trainer to teach him what the baths were for.

Helena dragged me to explore. I made her take care, for some architectural features were in the process of being stripped by the builders. This included the colonnaded pillars around the garden; they had highly unusual, rather elegant capitals, with extravagant rams' horn volutes, from between which worrying tribal faces wreathed in oak leaves peered out at us.

"Too wild and woody for me!" Helena cried. "Give me simple bead and dart tops."

I agreed with her. "The mystical eyes seem to be an outdated tad. I gestured at the columns being dismantled. "Pomponius starts a client's refit by tearing down everything in sight." I noticed that these columns were coated with stucco, "which in some places was peeling as the stone beneath flaked. Weathering had forced hideous cracks in their render. "Poor Togi! Let down by tacky Claudian tat. See; this apparently noble Corinthian pillar is just a composite- thrown together on the cheap, with a lifespan of less than twenty years!"

"You are shocked, Marcus Didius," Helena's eyes danced.

"This is no way for the Golden City to reward a valued ally- nasty chunks of old tile and packing material, thrown together and surfaced over."

"Yet I can see why the King likes it," said Helena. "It has been a fine home; I expect he's very fond of it."

"He's fonder still of expensive fiddling."

A window flew open. No tat this; it was a tightly carpentered hardwood effort with opaque panes, set in a beautifully moulded marble frame. The marble looked conspicuously Carraran. Not many of my neighbours could afford the genuine white stuff. I felt my sell growing envious.

Wild ginger dreadlocks flailed; around a fleshy bull neck I recognised the heavy electrum torque that must be nearly choking its excited owner.

"You are the man!" shrieked the King's representative in stilted Latin.

"The man from Rome," I corrected him firmly. I like to pass on colloquial phrases when I travel among the barbarians. "Gives a better tone of menace."

"Menace?"

"More frightening." Helena smiled. The tribesman let himself be charmed by this refined vision in white; she was wearing earrings with rows of golden acorns and he was a connoisseur of jewellery. There were not many women on site. None would match mine for style, taste and mischief-making. "His name is Falco."

"Falco is the man." We gazed at him. "From Rome," he added lamely. Education claimed another demoralised victim. "You have to come, man from Rome- and your woman." Leering, he waved an arm, resplendent in checked wool, towards an entrance. We were amenable to the hospitality of strangers. We agreed to go.

It took us some time to find him indoors. There were quite a few rooms, furnished with imported goods and all ornamented strikingly. Blue-black dados had dashing floral designs, painted with a sure hand and dramatic brushwork; friezes were divided into elegant rectangles, set off either with white borderlines or with faux fluted pilasters; a perspective painter had created mock-cornices so well they looked like real mouldings bathed in an evening glow. Floors were restrained black and white, or had those cut work stones in multi colours – a calm geometry of pale wine-juice red, aqua blue, dull white, shades of grey, and corn. In Italy and Gaul these are considered old-fashioned. If his interior designer "was alert to trends, the King would undoubtedly change them.

"I am Verovolcus!" The client's representative had at least mastered that language lesson where he learned to say his name. "You are Falco." Yes, we had done that. I introduced Helena Justina, by her full name and with her most excellent father's details. She managed not to look surprised by this ludicrous formality.

I could see Verovolcus liked Helena. That's the trouble with foreign travel. You spend half your time trying to find edible food, and the rest fighting off men who profess extravagant love to your female companions. I'm amazed how many women believe outright lies from foreigners.

This could become embarrassing. I was primed to be a perfect diplomat in Britain- but if anybody laid a hand on Helena, I would sock him in the finer parts of his woad pattern.

I wondered what Maia was up to. She had elected to remain in town, along with Hyspale. Hyspale had just discovered there was nowhere in Noviomagus where she could go shopping. I was saving up the news that there were no decent emporia anywhere in Britain. Next time she really annoyed me, I would lightly drop word that she was now completely out of range of ribbons, perfumes and Egyptian glass beads. I was looking forward to seeing her reaction.

"You like our house?" Verovolcus had mastered some playboy's chat-ups. They always do.

"Yes, but you are having a new one built," Helena responded with a regal smirk. "The architect is to tell Falco all about it."

"I will come with you!" Oh Jupiter, Best and Greatest, we were lumbered.

There was worse. Verovolcus led us to a room where a man whose wild hair had paled to grey some years earlier now sat in an upright magistrate's chair waiting for people with complaints to rush in and plead for his benevolent counsel. Since the Atrebates had not yet learned that among civilised people complaining was a social art, he looked bored. Easily sixty, the fellow had been play-acting a Roman of rank for generations. He had the proper way of lounging, all boredom and a nasty attitude: arms apart on the supports, knees apart too, but booted feet together on his footstool. This tribal chief had studied Roman authority at close quarters. He was wearing white, with purple borders, and probably had a swagger stick stashed away under his throne.

Now we were seriously lumbered. It was the Great King.

Verovolcus launched into rapid chatter in the local language. I wished I had brought Justinus; he might have made something of it, even though his knowledge of Celtic linguistics derived from German sources. I myself had been in the army, mostly in Britain, for about seven years, but legionaries representing Rome despised native argots and expected all the conquered world to learn Latin. Since most ethnic people were trying to sell us something, this was a fair attitude. Traders and prostitutes soon mastered the necessary verbals to cheat us in our own language. I had been a scout. I should have acquired a smattering of their tongue for safety reasons, but as a lad, I had thought that lying under a furze bush in the pouring rain was enough punishment for my system.

I caught the name of Pomponius. Verovolcus turned to us triumphantly. "The Great King Togidubnus, friend of your Emperor, will come to hear about his house with you!"

"Jolly nice!" I had kept any ruefulness or satire out of my tone, which was just as well. Helena looked at me sharply, but it passed unnoticed. Verovolcus seemed thrilled, but had no time to answer my platitude.

"It would be rather fun to hear a progress report," replied the Great King on his own account. In perfect Latin.

I thought this man must have something seriously expensive that he wants to sell to Rome. Then I remembered he had sold it already: a safe harbour and a warm welcome to Vespasian's men, thirty years ago.

"Verovolcus is assigned the task of monitoring events for me," he then told us, smiling. "Pomponius will not be expecting me." That, we gathered, would enhance the fun. "But please don't let me be a nuisance, Falco."

Helena turned to me. "King Togidubnus knows who you are, Marcus Didius though I did not hear Verovolcus telling him."

"And you are the perceptive, sharp-witted Helena Justina," the King interrupted. "Your father is a man of distinction, friend of my old friend Vespasian and brother to the wife of the procurator Hilaris. My old friend Vespasian holds traditional views. Does he not yearn to see you married to some noble senator?"

"I don't believe he expects that to happen," she replied calmly. She had flushed slightly. Helena had a true Roman matron's respect for her own privacy. To be the subject of imperial correspondence made her teeth set dangerously. The daughter of Camillus Verus was considering whether to give the Great King of the Britons a black eye.

Togidubnus surveyed her for a moment. He must have grasped the point. "No," he said. "And having met you, with Marcus Didius, neither do