The Silver Pigs

XII

It was an ingot of lead.

It weighed two hundred Roman pounds. I tried to explain once to a woman I knew, how heavy that was:

"Not a lot heavier than you. You're a tall girl, quite a solid piece. A bridegroom could just about heave you over his threshold and not lose his silly smile…" The wench I was insulting happened to be a substantial armful, though by no means overweight. It sounds unkind, but if you've ever tried picking up a well fed young lady you'll appreciate the comparison was fairly exact. In fact, lifting this dense grey slab before we knew what we were doing had left two of us with bad backs.

Petronius and I gazed at the silver pig like an old, and not entirely convenient, friend.

"Whatever is it?" Sosia demanded. I told her. "Why do you call them pigs?"

I explained that when precious ore is being refined, molten metal runs away from the furnaces into a long channel where moulds for the ingots lead off down each side, like sucking piglets beside their mother sow. Petronius stared at me sceptic ally while I said this. Sometimes Petro seems amazed by the things I claim to know.

This valuable porker was a long dull block of metal, about twenty inches long by five wide and four deep, slightly bevelled at the sides, with the Emperor's name and the date on one long edge. It looked nothing, but a man who tried to carry it would soon find himself bent double. Twenty-four ladles of molten ore to each standard mould, not quite too heavy to handle, but difficult to steal. Worth it though, if you could. The silver yield from Mendips ore is remarkably high, on average a hundred and thirty ounces to the ton. I wondered whether the silver had already been extracted from the bauble on the table.

The government claims a monopoly of precious ore.

Wherever it came from, this belonged in the Mint. We rolled it, and banged it topside up, looking for an official stamp.

It was stamped all right: TCL TRIP, some new piece of nonsense, not once but four times, then EX ARC BRIT the old familiar mark we half hoped and half dreaded to find. Petronius groaned.

"Britain; a perfect signature! Someone must be sweating."

An uncomfortable feeling struck us both at the same time.

"Better move," Petro suggested. "Shall I tidy this away? Our usual place? You take the girl?"

I nodded.

"Falco, what's happening?" Sosia demanded excitedly.

"He's putting the silver pig somewhere smelly where felons will be too sensitive to look," I said. "You're going home. And J need an urgent chat with your Uncle Decimus!"