Alexandria

XX

I was ready for a rest. Help appeared to be at hand. When I left the Museion complex, I saw Uncle Fulvius' palanquin waiting to collect me. Aulus was standing beside it. 'Olympus, I'm whacked. Transport is welcome!' I said. Then distrust cut in. 'Nothing wrong, I hope? What's up?'

Aulus chuckled as he tucked me into the curtained conveyance. 'Oh, you'll find out!' He was staying behind. He had palled up with a group who were going to see Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

'It's all about sex!' I said, as if warning a prude.

I did not tell him it was about men being refused sex by stroppy wives. A twenty-eight-year-old unmarried man was too young to find out that could happen. Well, he wasn't going to hear it from me.

Aulus deserved a hiding. When he came across the bearers, they must have told him why Helena had sent the litter to speed me back home. Aulus, that jester, could have warned me.

The bearers deposited me at my uncle's house, though they made no attempt to move off again. I assumed Fulvius and Cassius needed the palanquin for another evening out with business cronies. All I wanted was a quiet night, with a good dinner and a peaceful woman to hear the story of my day and tell me what a clever boy I was.

The house was one of a group, arranged on a series of levels. There was no central atrium in any of them; all the buildings in the complex opened on to an enclosed courtyard that was shared communally. We came in through an outer gate with a porter then the bearers dropped me in the yard outside my uncle's personal doorway. For private outdoor space everyone used their flat roofs. Indoors, all the internal rooms opened off the stairs, as if whenever they ran out of space they just built upwards. I went up the doglegs slowly, aware from a hum of activity that everyone was gathered near the top. As I reached it, the salon door opened and young Albia slipped out. She must have been on the alert for me. She was about to speak, perhaps to give to me a chance to flee… Too late, the door whipped fully open. My children burst out: Julia was playing at crocodiles, with her arms stretched out ahead of her like snapping jaws. She was grappling Favonia, who was acting as some animal that roared and head-butted doors open.

'Come here nicely and give your father a kiss -'

Neither stopped. Julia twisted madly as she tried to subdue her sister, while Favonia sturdily kept on roaring.

I had been spotted from within. Ahead lay a warm glow of lamps, a blur of conversation. I heard a familiar voice, loudly deriding my commission on the Theon death: 'Murdered in a locked room? You mean Marcus has convinced himself someone got a trained serpent to slide in and stab the man, using an ivory-handled dagger with a strange scarab on its hilt?'

Helena spoke calmly: 'No, he was poisoned.'

'Oh, I get it! A trained ape crawled down a rope from the ceiling, bringing a curiously carved alabaster beaker of contaminated borage tea!'

I exploded. Albia winced and held her head in her hands. I strode in. It was him all right. That voice and attitude could not be disguised: wide-bodied, grey-haired and well into a winecup but still capable of obnoxiousness, without the grace of slurring. He was tanked up and tearing into it – but he did stop when he saw me.

'Uncle Fulvius has a new house guest, Marcus!' Helena cried brightly. 'Just arrived tonight.'

'When are you leaving?' I snarled at him.

'Hades!' Albia, at my heels, hated trouble.

'Don't be like that, my boy,' he whined. Marcus Didius Favonius, also known as Geminus: my father. The curse of the Aventine, the dread of the Saepta Julia, the plague of the antique auction porticoes. The man who abandoned my mother and all his offspring, then tried to snare us back to him two decades later, after we had learned to forget he existed. The same father I had strictly forbidden from coming to Alexandria while I was here.

And there was more.

We were going to a party. It was diplomatic, at the Prefect's residence, the kind no one can escape. Fulvius had accepted for me, so failure to show would be remarked upon. We were all going. Helena, Albia and me, Uncle Fulvius and Cassius – plus Pa. There was no chance that bastard would plead weariness after long travel, not when there was free food, drink, company and entertainment on offer, in a place where he could show off noisily, try to sell the wrong people dubious art, be indiscreet, upset the top man and amaze the staff – and above all, cause me irreparable embarrassment.