The Silver Pigs

LIV

Outside we heard an escort party assembling. Titus strode to the doorway and spoke. The agitation stilled; someone posted a guard.

My abdomen felt sore, as if I had been seriously bereaved.

Coming back, Titus seated me and took his own place on the same couch beside me, laying the tablet between us, face down.

"That poor little girl! Oh, Falco that whole poor family! Well, it has to be done. Tell me your reasoning, please."

"Sir, once you think of it, it seems horribly obvious. I'll go back to the start. When the first silver pig turned up in Rome, what happened to Sosia Camillina was deeply relevant; I have always thought that. Possibly Atius Pertinax, in his position as the praetor's aedile, had been able to tell the conspirators where the ingot was hidden. But I now believe that they knew that already and certainly it was someone close to her who realized that Sosia knew the number to the bank box. So, the speediest way to get into it was to take her there herself using ruffians to confuse the issue and prevent her recognizing anyone."

Titus nodded. "Anything else?"

"Yes. Just before she died, Sosia wrote to her cousin that she had identified the house of a man who was connected with the people who abducted her. I believe that is where she had found this list. The point is, at that time, for her own safety following the kidnap attempt she was confined at home that is, in the senator's house though I have no doubt that whenever she wanted, she would still have been given access to her own father's house next door." Titus shook his head in reluctant acceptance of what I said. "Caesar, from the moment I undertook this case for you, someone very close has been watching my progress and thwarting every turn. When Helena Justina and I came back from Britain, after months away, someone knew enough to ambush us that very day. I had in fact sent a message from the Ostia Gate to her family."

"And so you lost the letter from friend Hilaris?" Titus smiled affectionately as he spoke; honest Gaius, with his pedantic dedication to hard work, had that effect. I smiled too, though simply because I liked the man.

"Quite. I always assumed the two names Flavius Hilaris was sending to Vespasian were Domitian and Pertinax. He would not tell me though. I misunderstood; it's most unlikely the mining contractor Triferus would realize your brother was involved. Pertinax, the shipper, must be one of them, but Pertinax had been married to Gaius' own niece. And suppose the other was an even closer relation of his wife's! It must have been painful; no wonder if Flavius Hilaris preferred to stand aloof and let Vespasian decide what to do."

Without comment on that point, Titus suggested carefully, "Did you ever consider Hilaris might be implicated here?"

"Not once I met him!" I told him my joke about this case being one where only the public officers were straight; he laughed.

"All honour to the knights," he exclaimed, applauding the middle class. Then added, fully serious as far as I could tell, "You ought to consider aiming for higher rank yourself. My father is anxious to build up the lists with good men."

The property qualification for the second rank is land worth four hundred thousand sesterces; Titus Caesar could not have realized what a ludicrous observation he had made. In some years the Falco income was so low, I qualified for tokens to claim the corn dole for the poor.

Ignoring the imperial jest, I pointed out that for twenty years Flavius Hilaris had been Vespasian's friend.

"Falco, it's a sad fact that when a man becomes Emperor he has to look twice at his friends."

"When a man becomes Emperor, sir, his friends may look twice at him!"

He laughed again.

Outside the door subdued voices were murmuring insistently now. Titus was staring into space.

"Has Flavius Hilaris been asked to write again?" I asked.

"We sent out an urgent message by signal flare, but traffic is very heavy because of the Triumph. A reply should come back after tomorrow."

"Do you still need it?"

It was then he finally turned over Sosia's tablet so I could read what it said for myself.

"I'm afraid so," Titus said.

There were various scratches on the tablet's pale wood; my hunch had been right, Sosia was a heavy-handed scribe. I could trace clear marks, strokes, even individual letters, all the way down the page.

But it was impossible to decipher the missing name.