Enemies at Home

30

I continued back to the Esquiline, considering how I could formally explain the position to Faustus. I thought he would probably accept it, causing me less of a headache than I got from my own bad mood. I cannot deal well with failure.

Dromo was dodging about behind me, looking at stalls and shops. I needed to keep an eye out all the time, in case I lost him. Faustus had taught him one route to and from the Aventine but our path from the undertaker’s was new, while Dromo’s grasp of the Roman map was limited. If we separated, I did not trust him to find his own way to the apartment. Besides, he was supposed to guard me.

The weather had warmed up. It was a long hot walk. I should have paid for a chair, but I chose not to sting the aedile with a hefty fare at the moment when I was dropping his case. If I did, as soon as the carriers set off, Dromo was bound to be left behind. How often have you seen women leaning out of chairs and helplessly calling slaves’ names, shouting themselves hoarse while their difficult entourage pretends not to hear?

I needed Dromo; I was going to the apartment to collect my personal belongings and Faustus’ property, so Dromo would have to transport it all on his handcart. While I could rely on Polycarpus to return these things eventually, he had no incentive to be prompt and it was foolish to suppose every item would reappear. Even a good steward could not prevent messengers picking out choice goodies for themselves.

As it turned out, asking Polycarpus to organise it was not an option.

Close to heat exhaustion, we passed the Market of Livia but I did not go in. If I was leaving the apartment, I had no further need for provisions. I could not face the crowds, nor the barracking shopkeepers. You have to be feeling confident to cope in a Roman market. I was too demoralised.

When I reached the part of the Clivus Suburanus where Aviola had lived, I looked around carefully from the shelter of a doorway, telling Dromo to stand close and not draw attention to himself. He knew what had happened to Camillus Justinus, so was prepared to follow orders temporarily. But the butterfly-brain would not keep still for long.

I carefully checked for gangsters, though identified none.

Everyone appeared to be going about their normal business. It was just a street. Elderly women muttering abuse after young men who had barged into them; young men staring at young women as if they had never seen anything female before; one girl and her mother brushed mud off their skirt hems where they had accidentally stepped in a gutter puddle. Overhead, someone invisible inside an apartment pulled a cross-street washing-line hand over hand as they hung wet clothes out. A clean tunic fell off into the same puddle, followed by a magnificently inventive torrent of screaming curses. A door slammed. A couple of pigeons lifted themselves laboriously from a sill, flew in a half-hearted circle and landed in fluffed lumps, to continue their midday drowsing.

A dopey-looking boy stood outside the leather shop, which was closed for lunch. A couple of feet away from him sat a very hairy black dog. It had fleas. I could tell from here, by the intent way it was scratching among its long matted fur. It was loose, so could have belonged to anyone or no one, but kept looking at the boy as if it half hoped for a titbit and half feared a kick.

‘Cosmus,’ said Dromo, catching the direction of my gaze.

‘Who is he?’

‘Their lamp boy yesterday. And Panther.’

‘His dog?’ Constans had told me that the boy went home to see his dog.

‘Right. You’re good at this,’ Dromo declared, mock-admiring. ‘Have you thought about making guessing-games your career?’

‘No. I’m too busy thinking, when shall I get around to beating you for cheek?’

The last thing I wanted today was careers advice.

Panther might be the beast I had heard barking when I called at Polycarpus’ apartment. His wife, Graecina, had said ‘the boy’ took the dog out for a walk, so at the time I assumed she meant their son. Cosmus must be about fourteen, quite a lot older than the child I had heard wailing when I visited. Graecina must have meant ‘boy’ in the other sense. As a freedman, Polycarpus was entitled to possess slaves. Mind you, someone who had been a slave himself ought to know how to buy better. It’s one thing for an adolescent son to loaf about the streets looking for trouble but a slave ought to be kept better occupied. This one looked impervious to training.

Graecina came down from their apartment. She spoke to Cosmus, though I could not hear what was said. He hunched up and stayed put by the leather shop, looking lethargic. Graecina waited a moment, then she walked to one of the other retail outlets. It was where Polycarpus had pulled open a shutter to produce Mucia’s chair for me yesterday.

The shutter was obviously not locked but now it refused to move freely. As best she could, Graecina hauled on it then said something, as if someone — Polycarpus presumably — was inside. It looked like a routine exchange between a wife and her husband. He might be continuing the process of cleaning up the seat cushion, and she might be calling him upstairs for lunch.

I was intending to exchange greetings as I went into the apartment. As I came closer, Graecina spoke again, more impatiently. Seeming on the clumsy side with physical mechanics, she failed to apply her weight properly so could not heave the heavy folding door any further open. I went forwards to help. Giving up, Graecina squeezed through anyway, muttering. It was a tight fit. She was a fleshy woman. She would have acquired bruises.

I reached the shutter; I was standing on the threshold when, within the dim interior, the steward’s wife let out a shriek.