Jupiter Myth

XI

In Rome, a crowd would have gathered. In Londinium, only a few curious shadows lurked on the dark fringes of the street. Occasional bursts of flame lit their faces briefly. One overhead window creaked open and a woman's voice laughed. "Someone's had an accident! The dough dump's copped it…"

I wondered what to do. There were no vigiles here, ready to whistle for colleagues to start a bucket line; no esparto mats; no siphon engine with a full water tank to dump on the blaze.

The building was well alight. You could see it was a bakery because the frontage doors were open; beyond the red-hot counter, two full-height ovens showed up inside, open-mouthed like ancient gargoyles. The flames were not coming from the ovens, however, but leaped all around the walls. Perhaps a spark in a fuel store had started this.

I grabbed at a spectator. "Is anyone inside?"

"No, it's empty," he answered, quite unconcerned. He turned on his heel and walked away, joining a companion ten strides from me. They glanced back at the bakery, then one slapped the other on the shoulders; they were both grinning as they walked off. I recognized them then: the two heavies who had angered the waiters at our second wine bar. It was not the moment to pursue them. But I would know them again.

As if they had waited for the pair to leave, people now began to rally and douse the fire. It took some doing. I helped sling a few buckets. Someone must be fetching them from a well-another reused wine barrel? As we worked, one of the folding doors came away from its moorings and crashed down in showers of sparks. That should not have happened; it must have been damaged. Deliberately? It landed right up close to a group of panicking dogs, who had all been lashed to a pillar on individual strings. They kicked up a racket, frantic to escape. The door continued burning so it was impossible to approach the dogs. I tried, but they were too scared and they snarled too viciously.

One plunging hound had his coat on fire now. That caused him to yank his head even more violently, trying to free himself. The others became more alarmed as he clambered on top of them.

"Marcus, do something!"

"Hades-what?"

Someone ran past me, jerking my dagger from its sheath at my waist. I yelled. The slight figure darted in among the dogs, heedless of their teeth, and slashed at some master cord tying them to the pillar. Instantly they were off. Their rescuer still clutched hold of a central knot and was towed nastily along the rough ground. The group of barking canines raced two ways around another pillar, tangled crazily, then were apprehended by a man I recognized as the dirty dogseller. He grabbed the ties and took over. I cannot say his presence soothed the animals, but he was strong enough to hold them as he bent to inspect them for damage. Their barks subsided into whines.

Helena had gone to the rescuer; it was another familiar face: the pathetic scavenger. The dogman showed her no gratitude. He kicked and beat his hounds into submission, looking as if he would as soon kick and beat the girl too. She had been badly grazed through her rags and was crying. Averse to publicity, he soon went off into the darkness, muttering, leaning back against the undertow, amid a swarm of struggling hounds.

I retrieved my dagger from where it had fallen to the ground in the chase, then turned back to help with the fire again. I found we had professional help: some soldiers had arrived.

"The bakery's beyond saving-just protect the premises each side!" They dealt with matters briskly, seeming unsurprised by the blaze. Well, fires are commonplace in towns and cities. I had already observed that oil was readily available. Lamps and stoves are always a danger.

"Lucky you turned up," I complimented the officer in charge.

"Yes, wasn't it?" he returned. Then I felt their arrival was no coincidence.

Silvanus was not leading this troop; he probably still nursed a sore head from our drinking bout, and anyway they were the night patrol. Regulars on this patch, who clearly expected trouble. Detachments had orders to check these streets at intervals. Businesses might be attacked at any time. Weighing in to help the public had become routine.

Was it routine to stand by and let a blazing building go up, while ostentatiously protecting nearby premises? Were the military tiptoeing around the racketeers? They would only do that if they were heavily bribed.

Of course nobody would acknowledge what was going on. "Rogue spark," decided the officer. "No one at home to notice."

Why was nobody at home at live-in business premises? I could work that out. Somewhere in this town lurked a baker who had rashly stood out for his independence and now knew his livelihood was doomed. He must have made some gesture of defiance-then he wisely ran.

Rackets usually operate in specific areas. Bars were one thing; if a bakery had been threatened, it was highly unusual. If all the shops, in all the streets, were being targeted, that was real bad news.

The soldiers were pretending to take names and addresses of witnesses. It would be for the secret service lists, of course. Anyone who cropped up on a military rota too often (twice, say) would go down as a disruptive element. Britons seemed to have learned about that; the sightseers melted from the streets. That left me and Helena. I had to tell the boys in red who we were. Ever so politely, we were offered a safe conduct straight back to the procurator's residence: we were being shifted out of there.

Once, I would have objected. Well, once I would have given a false name, kicked the officer in the private parts, and legged it. I might even have done it for practice tonight, had I not had Helena with me. She saw no reason to run for it. Senators' daughters are brought up to be trusting with soldiers; though rarely caught up in a street interrogation, when it happens they always say at once who their daddy is, then expect to be escorted to wherever they want to go. They will be. Especially the good-looking ones. A senator's daughter with a harelip and saggy bust may simply be told to move along, though even then they probably call her madam and don't risk pinching her bum.

"I say we've had enough excitement for one night. Helena Justina, these kind men are going to see us home."

The quicker the better: Helena wanted to nurture the bleeding, weeping scavenger. "She's hurt. We can't leave her."

The soldiers gathered and watched me react. They knew that the hunched, whimpering creature was a street vagrant. They knew that if Helena took her in, we would be infected with fleas and diseases, lied to, betrayed on every possible occasion, then robbed blind when the skinny scrap finally upped and fled. They knew I foresaw this. They refrained from grinning.

Helena was crouching on her knees beside the mite. She glanced up directly at the soldiers, then at me. "I know what I am doing!" she announced. "Don't look at me like that, Falco."

"Know the girl?" I murmured to the officer.

"Always around. Supposed to be a survivor of the Rebellion."

"She only looks like a teenager; she must have been a babe in arms."

"Ah well… So she's a walking tragedy." I knew what he was saying.

I tried not to seem frightening. The girl cringed anyway. Helena was talking to her in a low voice, but the girl just shuddered. Apparently she spoke no Latin. I had not heard her talk at any time, in any language. Maybe she was mute. Another problem.

The officer, who had followed me over, offered helpfully, "They call her Albia, I believe."

"Albia!" Helena tried firmly. The girl refused to recognize the name.

I groaned. "She has a Roman name. Neat trick. One of us- orphaned." She was little more than a skeleton, her features unformed. She had blue eyes. That could be British. But there were blue eyes all across the Empire. Nero, for instance. Even Cleopatra. Rome was damn well not responsible for her.

"This is a poor little Roman orphan," the officer sympathized, digging me in the ribs.

"She looks the right age." Flavius Hilaris and Aelia Camilla had a daughter who was born close to the Rebellion: Camilla Flavia, now radiantly fourteen, all giggles and curiosity. Every young tribune who came to this province probably fell for her, but she was modest and, I knew, very well supervised. This waif looked nothing like Flavia; her pitiful life must have been quite different.

"It really does not matter whether her parentage was Roman," Helena growled up at me through gritted teeth. "It does not even matter that she was left destitute by a disaster that would never have happened if Rome had not been here."

"No, sweetheart." My tone was even. "What matters is that you noticed her."

"Found as a crying newborn in the ashes after the massacre," suggested the officer. He was inventing it, the bastard. Helena stared up at us. She was smart and aware, but she had a huge fund of compassion. She had reached her decision.

"People always adopt babes who are plucked alive from disasters." Now it was me speaking. I too had a dry edge. Helena's scornful gaze made me feel dirty but I said it anyway. "The wailing newborn lifted from the rubble is assured of a home. It represents Hope. New life, untouched and innocent, a comfort to others who are suffering in a stricken landscape. Later, unfortunately, the child becomes just another hungry mouth, among people who can barely feed each other. You can understand what happens next. A cycle sets in: neglect leading to cruelty, then violence, and the most corrupt kinds of sexual abuse."

The girl had her head down on her filthy knees. Helena was very still. I leaned down and touched Helena's head with the back of my knuckles. "Bring her if you wish." She did not move. "Of course! Bring her, Helena."

The officer clucked quiet reproof at me. "Naughty!"

I smiled briefly. "She takes in strays. She has a heart as big as the world. I can't complain. She took me in once."

That had started in Britain too.