A dying light in Corduba

IV

There were two musicians, both with that deep black North African skin. One played the cithara, fairly badly. The other was younger and with more menacing, slanted eyes; he had a hand drum. He pattered on it in a colourful manner while the girl from Hispalis prepared to thrill us with the traditional gypsy display. I gave Anacrites a pleasant smile that was bound to annoy him as we waited to marvel at the suppleness of her hips. 'Diana looks hot stuff. Have you seen her before?'

'I don't believe so… What's our Falco been up to then?' I hated people who addressed me in that whimsical way.

'State secret.' I had just spent a winter delivering subpoenas for the lowest class of barrister and helping out as an unpaid porter at my father's auction house. Still, it was fun pretending that the Palace harboured a rival spy network, one run by Claudius Laeta over which Anacrites had no control.

'Falco, if you're working for Laeta, my advice is watch your back!'

I let him see me chuckle then I turned back to the dancer. She was giving us a few teasing poses with her golden bow and arrow: standing tiptoe on one foot with the other kicked up behind her while she pretended to shoot at diners, so she could lean back and show off her half-bared chest. Since this was Rome, it was nothing to cause a riot. Well, not unless any respectable equestrian went home and described her little Greek costume too graphically to his suspicious wife.

'I've been talking to young Camillus.' Anacrites had leaned across to whisper in my ear. I made a violent scratching movement as if I thought a beetle had landed on me. I just missed blinding him. He popped back on to his couch.

'Aelianus? That must have tried your patience,' I said. Just the other side of Anacrites Helena's angry brother was making sure he avoided my eye.

'He seems a promising young character. It's clear that he doesn't care for you, Falco.'

'He'll grow up.' The spy should have learned by now there was no future in baiting me.

'Isn't he your brother-in-law or something?' It was casually offensive.

'Or something,' I agreed calmly. 'What's he doing here? Don't tell me he heard there would be top men from the bureaucracy, and he's trying to worm his way into a sinecure?'

'Well, he's just back from Baetica!' Anacrites loved being obscure.

I loathed the thought of Helena's hostile brat of a brother hobnobbing here with the spy. Maybe I was getting overexcited, but the scenario had a whiff of plots being hatched against me.

The girl from Hispalis was now well into her routine, so conversation ceased. She was showy, but not outstanding. Dancing girls are a thriving export from southern Spain; they all seem to train in the same terpsichoreal school, one where the movement-coach needs retiring. This wench could roll her eyes, and various other parts of her anatomy. She threw herself about the floor as if she wanted to polish the whole mosaic with her wildly swinging hair. Once you've seen one snappy lass bent over backwards with her clackers in a frazzle, the attention may start wandering.

I was looking around. The room contained a disparate group. The world-weary, middle-class-looking pair of Baeticans on the other row of couches were as unreceptive as me to the girl's efforts; they still muttered among themselves. Quinctius Attractus, who had claimed to be paying for this, leaned on his elbow looking full of himself for the benefit of the more patrician pair of visitors either side of him. They watched politely, though the elder in particular looked as if he would normally be too aesthetic to indulge in this kind of show. All the Baeticans looked so polite it had to be forced, and I wondered why they thought they had been favoured here. Anacrites, the professional state meddler, appeared perfectly at home, though I could not believe Quinctius Attractus had intended him to join the group. Then there was Aelianus, too young to be a member of the dining club in his own right. Who had brought him? And who was the man in the oatmeal tunic at the end of the opposite row from me, who enjoyed himself in that seemingly sociable manner – yet actually spoke to nobody?

I nudged Anacrites. 'Who's that fellow?'

He shrugged. 'Probably a gatecrasher.'

The dancer ended a set, twanging away an arrow for real. It hit young Aelianus, who squeaked as if it packed more force than her toy bow suggested. She then let off a shower, most of which found a mark, causing me to make a note that if anybody died later of a slow poison, I would know who to pull in for questioning. As she retired for a breather she indicated, with eyes full of sluttish promise, that Camillus Aelianus could keep his pretty arrow as a souvenir.

I slid upright, walked around Anacrites, and deliberately seated myself on Aelianus' couch, forcing the brat to salute me. 'Oh you're here, Falco!' he said rudely. He was a thickset though physically undisciplined lad, with straight floppy hair and a permanent sneer. He had a younger brother who was both better looking and more likeable. I wished it were Justinus here tonight.

I fingered the arrow as if Aelianus were a schoolboy with some illegal toy. 'This is a dangerous memento. Better not let your parents find it in your bedroom; favours from performing artistes can be misconstrued.' I liked to worry him with threats that I might blacken his name in the way he always tried to blacken mine. My reputation had never existed, but he would be standing for election to the Senate soon, and had something to lose.

He snapped the arrow in two: an impolite gesture, since the girl from Hispalis was still in the room, talking to her musicians. 'She's nothing special.' He sounded sober as well as bored. 'She's relying on saucy eyes and a scanty outfit; her technique's very basic.'

'That so?' I know a snake dancer who says people only watch for the dress – or lack of it. 'So you're a connoisseur of Spanish choreography?'

'Anyone is, who has done a tour in the province,' he shrugged offhandedly.

I smiled. He must have known his youthful experience in peaceful Baetica would not impress an imperial agent who had specialised in working at the Empire's trickiest boundaries. I had crossed them too, when a risk was needed. 'So how did you enjoy Hispania?'

'Well enough.' He did not want to have to talk to me.

'And now you're placing your expert knowledge at the disposal of the Society of Baetican Olive Oil Producers! Do you know the ones over there with Quinctius Attractus?'

'Slightly. I was friendly with the Annaeus lads in Corduba.'

'What about the grandson of Licinius Rufius? He's here in Rome at the moment.'

'I believe so.' Aelianus was certainly not intending to discuss his friends. He could hardly wait to be rid of me.

'I gather he's out on the town tonight – I would have thought you would have been there.'

'I'm here instead! Do you mind, Falco; I want to see the dancer.'

'Nice girl,' I lied. 'I had a pleasant chat with her.'

It misfired: 'Of course; you must be going short,' Aelianus suggested unpleasantly. 'With my sister in her condition.' How Helena and I lived was our own affair. I could have told him that sharing our bed with several months of unborn offspring had not impeded a healthy lovelife, but merely set greater challenges. 'So now you're upsetting Helena by scurrying after entertainers. If anyone tells her maybe she will miscarry.'

'She won't!' I snapped.

I had just spent six months trying to reassure Helena (who had in fact lost one child in pregnancy, though her brother may never have been told of it). Now it was hard work convincing her that she would give birth safely and survive the ordeal. She was terrified, and I was not much happier myself.

'Maybe she'll leave you!' he speculated eagerly. That had always been a possibility.

'I see you really have her interests at heart.'

'Oh, I'm happy to see her with you. I think when I stand for the Senate I'll make my election platform denouncing your relationship – I'll be a man of such traditional rectitude I even criticise my own sister -'

'You won't succeed,' I told him. He might. Rome loves a pompous bastard.

Aelianus laughed. 'No; you're probably right. My father would refuse to finance the election.' Camillus Verus, father of my beloved and of this poisonous young ferret, always looked like an uncomplicated old buffer, but evidently Aelianus was sharp enough to realise that their parent loved Helena and understood that I did too; however much he regretted our relationship, the senator knew he was stuck with it. I had a sneaky idea he was quite looking forward to having a grandchild too.

'Jupiter, you must be really gloating, Falco!' Helena's brother's bitterness was even worse than I had realised. 'You've jumped up from nowhere and seized the only daughter of a patrician house -'

'Cobnuts. Your sister was glad to fly off her perch. She needed rescuing. Helena Justina did her duty and married a senator, but what happened? Pertinax was a disaster, a traitor to the state, who neglected and mistreated her. She was so miserable she divorced him. Is that what you want? Now she's with me, and she's happy.'

'It's illegal!'

'A technicality.'

'You could both be accused of adultery.'

'We regard ourselves as married.'

'Try that in the Censor's court.'

'I would. No one will take us there. Your father knows Helena made her own choice, and she's with a man who adores her. There is no moral objection the senator can make.'

Across the room the dancing girl with the limited technique shook out her waist-length hair. She seemed to know how to do that. I realised she had been watching us quarrelling. It gave me an uneasy qualm.

To end the fight I stood up, preparing to return to my own couch. 'So, Camillus Aelianus, what does bring you among the revered Society of Baetican Olive Oil Producers?'

The angry young man calmed down enough to boast: 'Friends in high places. How did you get in, Falco?'

'Much better friends, in even more select positions,' I told him crushingly.

Settling back the other side of Anacrites came almost as a relief. Before he tried to have me killed we had been able to work together. He was devious, but like me he had lived. He enjoyed a good wine, he was in control of his barber, and he had been known to crack the occasional joke against the Establishment. With an emperor who liked cost-cutting and hated too much security, Anacrites must be feeling beleaguered. He wanted me, for one, well out of his way. He had tried to discredit me, and he had planned to get me executed by a tricky foreign potentate. But even now, I knew where I was with him. Well, I knew it as much as you ever could with a spy.

'What's this, Falco? Is my young friend from the noble family pursuing vindictive claims against you?'

I said his young friend was about to get his nose pulled off. Anacrites and I resumed our usual hostility.

Gazing up, I fixed my eyes on a lamp. Burning with the clear, odourless flame of fine Baetican oil, it was in gleaming bronze and the shape of a flying phallus. Either this rude vessel was swinging more than it should, or the whole room had begun to manoeuvre in some swooning routine… I decided I had reached my full capacity for Barcino red wine. At the same moment, as so often happens, a slave poured more into my cup. I sighed and settled down for a long night.

I must have had yet more drink later, though I cannot provide a catalogue. As a result, nothing of interest happened – not to me, anyway. Others no doubt threw themselves into risk and intrigue. Someone presumably made an assignation with the dancer from Hispalis. It seemed the kind of party where traditional customs would be observed.

I left when the atmosphere was still humming. Nobody had noticeably fallen out, and certainly at that stage there was nobody dead. All I recall of my final hour are some tricky moments trying to shoulder my amphora; it was half as high as me and immovable to a man in my condition. The young fellow in the oatmeal tunic from the other row of couches was also collecting his cloak; he seemed relatively sober, and helpfully suggested I roust out some more slaves to lug the cumbersome container home for me on a carrying pole. I suddenly saw the logic of this. We exchanged a laugh. I was too far gone to ask his name, but he seemed pleasant and intelligent. I was surprised he had been at the dinner all on his own.

Somehow my legs must have found their way from the Palatine to the Aventine. The apartment where I had lived for some years was six floors up in a dismal tenement; the slaves refused to come up. I left the amphora downstairs, tucked out of sight under a pile of dirty togas in Lenia's laundry on the ground floor. It was the kind of night where my left foot set off in one direction and met my right one coming back. I have no recollection of how I persuaded them to co-operate and find their way upstairs.

Eventually I awoke from troubled blackness to hear the distant cries of market stallholders and the occasional clonk of a harness bell. I realised the activity in the streets below had been disturbing me for some time. It was the first day of April and the outdoor street life was hectic. Watchdogs were barking at chickens. Cockerels were crowing for the fun of it. Day had dawned – quite a few hours ago. On the roof tiles outside a pigeon cooed annoyingly. Light, with a painful midday intensity, streamed in from the balcony.

The thought of breakfast marched into my brain automatically – then receded fast.

I felt terrible. When I squirmed upright on the saggy reading couch where I had flung myself last night, one look around the apartment made everything worse. There was no point calling out to Helena, not even to apologise. She was not here.

I was in the wrong place.

I could not believe I had done this – yet as my head throbbed it seemed all too plausible. This was our old apartment. We did not live here any more.

Helena Justina would be in our new home, where she would have waited for me all last night. That's assuming she had not already left me on the grounds that I had stayed out partying. A fact which any reasonable woman would interpret as meaning I had stayed out with another girl.