Shadows in Bronze

XLIX

The master of ceremonies started to apologize.

‘Forget it. I'm just her harp teacher; no need to fiddle with your seating plans again-'

He promised to squeeze me in, but I told him when I was ready for any squeezing I would do it myself.

It was almost eating time, but I slipped out through the late-corners to scrutinize the flotilla of fabulous barges which had clustered against the spacious platform on the villa's seaward side. The Isis Africans took only a moment to find; she had been moored aloof from this nautical scrimmage, on her own, slightly out in the Bay. She was lying dark, as if everyone had already disembarked.

It was hardly a function where the host hovered on the doorstep in his best boots, waiting to shake hands; some of the hands he had invited were too clammy to touch. But Crispus must be in the house by now. I re-entered from the terrace to sneak an early look at him if I could.

I walked through the atrium. It was mainly red, painted with a mock colonnade of fluted yellow columns, through which massive double doors appeared, decorated with emblematic figures and set with azure studs, among distant perspectives of fanciful scenery, religious objects and triumphal shields. A connecting room brought me into a peaceful enclosed garden – live plants plus horticultural landscapes on the inner walls. Beyond that lay the grand saloon, which opened through two majestic pillars straight into the main gardens – a wonderful, typically Campanian effect. Most of the couches for visitors of quality had been set up in the saloon, so when I looked in, noise and warmth and the perfume from scores of fresh garlands were spilling out into the summer night. Smaller reception rooms contained table space for the lower sort. None of this was what I wanted. Fighting back through the scrum, by a lucky guess I found the lavish kitchen suite; with, as I expected, the master dining room stationed alongside.

The triclinium at the Villa Poppaea was approached through two pillars where winged centaurs crouched on guard. It was a small room, painted in the ethereal architectural style which characterized the villa, and included a fine mural of a mock courtyard gate with winged sea horses writhing on its architrave below a shrine to some patron god. On the back wall a particularly vivid painting of a bowl of figs caught my eye.

Tonight the room was piquant with fine, scented oils. The standard nine places, in couches of three, lay under graceful swags of embroidered cloth, beneath peacock feathers arcing over tall floral displays; peacocks in full display were also a motif in the decor of the house. I made a few mental notes of these gracious touches, in case I ever gave a dinner party at home.

I had arrived too early; Crispus was not there yet. The place of honour on the central couch still lay unoccupied.

I did see Aemilia Fausta, looking pleased with herself though tense, tearing at grapes on the left-hand couch – not quite the most exalted place. Two senators I failed to recognize were positioned more prominently, on either side of their host's empty place. A couple of women were flashing heavy jewellery, and there were two younger men fashionably arrayed in circular cheesecloth dinner gowns. One was our blond god Rufus, standing at the top of the room, talking to one of the senators. He had dumped the famous floozie on her own at the end of the table, just in front of me.

I knew her the minute I saw her. I gulped in a good eyeful before she turned and realized: long, pale feet, kicking each other fretfully as she was ignored by the magistrate; then a body that was slender and full at the same time, sheathed in some fine silvered cloth which looked as if it would slide wonderfully under a man's hands if he risked taking hold of her. Half a fortune in lapis lazuli beads circled her throat. Dark shining hair, curled at the front, then its heavy mass battened under a round gold net. That neat, deep-blue necklace and the close, golden cap made her look younger and sweeter; compared to the unashamed flamboyance all around, she had a compact, understated elegance. Tonight she was the best-looking woman in Campania, but people in Campania have garish taste and I was probably the only man who knew.

A slave tidied her sandals at the foot of her couch so she twisted round to thank him and saw me. I was lolling in the doorway with Fausta's instrument under my left arm and my right hand in her abandoned almond bowl. Until Helena looked back I had been munching my way methodically through the nuts.

Eyebrows I would have recognized across the width of the Circus Maximus shot up as the magistrate's escort glued her bonny brown eyes on me. I mouthed a silent, admiring whistle. The Senator's golden-capped daughter turned away (supplying an overhead view of a gorgeously haughty shoulder), with what she meant to be an expression of utter disdain.

She ruined the effect by preceding it with a distinctly sultry wink.

There was a flurry which heralded Crispus' approach, then I was hustled out. I shed the harp onto a slave as I went, ordering him to stow it at the back of Fausta's couch. (I had no intention of carting round someone else's cithara all night.) Accepting the situation, I let myself be pushed off to the public rooms. I would have liked to identify Crispus, but good timing is a crucial part of my work. Now, with his favoured guests chomping at the manger, was not the time to draw the big man's attention to my Emperor's communique.

I glanced into the saloon again but the appetizer course was already proceeding formally and although there were one or two free places they were beside men who looked unfriendly or women with fat fingers and false hair. I ducked round a file of waiters shouldering trays of dressed endive, then foraged among the lower orders until I flopped down with relief between Silvia and Petronius.

‘Avoid the mussel dumplings!' Silvia advised, hardly bothering to greet me. ‘Lucius saw them half an hour ago, congealing well.' She shared my mother's views on serving food. And I was not surprised to find she had sent our lad into the kitchen even here. 'The top table are having ostrich but there won't be enough for us-'

‘What's it going to be then, Lucius?' I asked in some hilarity. I did know his name was Lucius, though I only called him that if we were sensationally drunk. 'One of those doss where a clever chef makes a ton of rock salmon look like forty different cuts of meat?'

Petro chuckled, before opening his mouth and dropping in Colymbadian olives; they were superb – huge fruits from Ancona, swum in amphorae Ion and herbs until they became infused with a fragrance you never find in the small, hard, brine-soaked Halmadian sort people normally eat.

Petronius assured me they had caught so many sea bass and lobster for this evening, the water level had sunk two inches in the Bay. Two annoying Campanian revellers were boasting about Baian oysters; we watched in silence, both of us remembering the oysters they dredge up in Britain from the cold, murky channel between Rutupiae and Thanet, and their dusky brothers from the north banks of the Tamesis Estuary… Petro tucked into the dinner wine with a wry face. It seemed fine to me, though I could tell he despised it. He had been tasting local vintages while I was away from Oplontis and enthused educationally about sparkling whites and robust young reds while I tackled the hors-d'oeuvres, feeling jealous of having given up his company.

I was really missing Petro. This morose pang reminded me I had work to do. The sooner I did it, the sooner I could escape from Herculaneum back to my friends.,.

If the hired waiters were hoping to get ready, they hoped wrong. The invitees were planning on a long night. The plebs displayed cautious manners but the senators and knights and their ladies were piling into the viands, all eating twice as much as they would at home since this was free. The noise and the scents of sizzling wine sauces must have blown on the breeze to Pompeii, three miles away. The liquor slaves were skidding on the wet soles of their bare feet as they rushed round with refills, barely bothering to show the charcoal to the hot wine scuttles or measure the spice. There was no doubt Crispus was achieving what he wanted. It was the sort of ghastly communal occasion that everyone would remember later as a wonderful time.

After a couple of hours the Spanish dancing troupe arrived. Those of us around the bottom table redoubled the cheer we were just putting up as our main course dishes hove in sight. The waiters were doing their best, with gristly good temper, but it was a job and a half feeding such a throng, and there were the usual aggravating women who ordered up veal medallions in fennel sauce – without the fennel, please!

I guessed that the entertainers were timed to suit the nobs in the triclinium, who had their own swift fleet of carvers and carriers under supervision of a wily major-domo. Sure enough, when I went to ask the winged centaurs how matters were progressing, a great silver platter with one forlorn cinnamon pear was just coming out after the dessert course as a table tray of finger bowls swept in. I could hear the furious clack of Hispanic castanets, while one of those singers with no voice but a great deal of bravado was expressing anguish loudly in ferocious Spanish style. Through the portals I glimpsed a fiery girl with floor-length blue-black hair and not much in her clothes coffer striking attitudes which demonstrated her nakedness most attractively. I was so busy admiring her formidable fandango I forgot to look out for Crispus. Lackeys staggered past me under cornucopiae of fresh fruits, some so exotic I was unsure what their names were, then the doors slamined, and I was shooed away again.

I rushed back and in an undertone told Petro about the dancer, he whistled enviously at this bonus of my job.

Silvia had organized a main course for me. I managed to cram in a gingered duck wing, a potted salad, and a few mouthfuls of roast pork in plums, then I nipped back to the triclinium hastily. Things had moved on faster than I wanted. The host and most of his private party had dispersed. The two women with the jewellery were talking about their children, ignoring one of the younger men, before whom a different dancer with hypnotic stomach muscles was spiralling majestically.

Judging by the care with which the catering had been ordered, I reckoned my man had emerged now for some heavy social mingling. Making himself agreeable, as Helena Justina called it. Once they had eaten his dinner, people would feel even better about him if they saw him putting himself out to compliment them on their dress sense and enquire after their elder sons' careers. He would be moving round doing good work for himself; Aufidius Crispus was an operator on a determined scale.

I ducked out and started searching through the reception rooms, asking flushed waiters to point out Crispus if he was in sight. A perfume-sprinkler sent me to look for him in an inner peristyle garden, but no luck.

No one was there – except a quiet, solitary woman on a stone seat, looking as if she was waiting for someone. A young woman, in a stint dress and not much jewellery, with fine, dark hair fastened under a round gold net…

It was her own business if she had managed to fix up a treat for herself. I was not about to interfere and spoil her assignation. They only reason I hung around was that a man appeared. He clearly thought she was waiting there for him, and I thought the same. So I stopped, to see who he was.

I didn't know him. But after I had decided that, I stayed there anyway because Helena Justina was giving the impression that neither did she.