The Silver Pigs

LIX

Publius and Helena held a lamp each. Beyond these tiny orbs, which glowed upon their faces with sick translucency, gloomed a black rectangular mass.

"So you're here!" Camillus Meto exclaimed, with the mild astonishment of a man who had imagined a young girl would want to watch the Triumph. From the acoustics as he spoke I gathered they were in a small chamber, densely packed. "Did I startle you?"

Neither seemed particularly alarmed; I was. I could hear my heart knocking like an airlock in a narrow bronze water pipe

Helena Justina had been standing quite still in the underground room as if lost in thought. She must have heard her uncle's footsteps, but she showed no surprise. She spoke to him cheerfully, like any relative. "Look at this! The saffron vault keeps a good secret. I wondered if the soldiers would have found it. Obviously not!"

"You knew about this place? Did Pertinax bring you here?"

"To show me the perfumes, several times. We were married then, of course. His dry cellar, with a secret door, where the most costly spices could be locked away. Such a simple trick, having the entrance in the lane outside I never believed him when he said it was safe… I've found some other lamps " She began lighting them with a spill, then they both stared.

It was a low vault, with slabs of rough-hewn stone forming shelves where ceramic jars and glass vessels stood like elixirs in an apothecary's shop. Here, apart from the dried saffron filaments from bright Bithynian crocuses which gave the cavern its familiar name, Pertinax and Publius Meto had secured their precious oils, safe from the excise and from any light-fingered warehousemen of their own. You could not smell the saffron for the much more concentrated perfumes which haunted the place with their enclosed, ambrosial scent. But Helena and her uncle did not notice those. Filling most of the floorspace was a sombre block, chest-high, which chilled the memory of an ex-lead-mine slave: silver ingots by the score stood stacked in the gloom, as regular and tight as turf blocks built into a military wall.

I could see Camillus Meto was watching his niece.

"Is Falco here with you?"

"No." Her voice was hard.

He laughed shortly, with an implication I objected to. "Cast you off?"

Helena ignored the remark. "A down payment on an Empire!" she marvelled in her old, bitter way. "Falco would have liked to see this. Such a pity he found out that three quarters of this eerie booty no longer contains any silver at all."

"Clever old Falco!" Publius said quietly. "I can't see the Praetorians knocking at seaside villas in Pompeii and Oplontis, trying to sell them cheap lead water pipes!" He seemed more positive than I remembered him before. "What were you doing here all alone when I came in?"

"Thinking." She sounded sad. Thinking about Sosia, I wondered if this vault was where she died. She knew it was here; she visited once with Gnaeus and me. She may have come, knowing that it was a secret place"

With an abrupt movement Sosia's father set his lamp on a shelf and folded his arms, gazing round bleakly as lines deeply incised his face.

"It's too late to make any difference!" he stated, in a strained voice. He wanted to stop her. For his sake, so did I. He could not stand here and face it. His voice had the harsh break I remembered from Sosia's funeral, as if he were still fretting to avoid the fact of her death, brusquely rejecting anyone who reminded him.

Helena sighed. "Fair, reverent and dutiful; father read me your eulogy. He was so upset"

"He copes!" Publius rapped.

"Not so well as he did. Father said to me recently, he felt he was drowning in a whirlpool now I see this I understand!"

"What?" I saw Publius' head come up.

Helena Justina demanded almost impatiently but with a tinge of bitterness, "Isn't it obvious?" She straightened her shoulders, then declared in the taut voice I had only heard her use when insulted to the heart by me, "Pertinax may have provided the warehouse with its secret vault, but he had not the brains to devise a plot so devious. I assume it is my father who organized all this."

As she gestured angrily towards the bank of ingots, Camillus Meto stared at her. They and I contemplated the consequences of what she had suggested. In a Roman scandal none of the family escapes. Unborn generations, judged by the honour of their ancestors, were already condemned by this act against the state. The disgrace of a senator would drag down all his relations. His loss of honour afflicted the respectable and the innocent too, including his brother and his sons. Publius would be permanently scarred. The good-hearted lad I had met in Germany with Helena would find his career blighted before it was under way; his brother in Spain too. Far away in Britain this curse would fall unhappily on Aelia Camilla; through her marriage, even onto Gaius. And here on Helena.

Her uncle threw back that oddly ordinary head and commented in a heavy voice, "Oh Helena, Helena! I knew of course; I had known for a long time. I was not sure whether you had realized!"

I thought, if he was in the plot himself this man was acting extraordinarily well. If he was, Helena must know. But in that case, the lass was lucky I was here. Facing up to him alone was desperately dangerous…