The Silver Pigs

LXV

I went to the Embankment. Up past the shuttered shapes of the puppeteers' booths onto the deserted promenade.

This was where I walked once with Helena Justina. It was a place where I went sometimes, by myself. Now it was dark, but I wanted the dark. I hunched into my toga, listening to Rome at night, fighting back my panic at what I had done.

I stood completely alone in that high place above Rome. A wind was blowing chilly. From the distance came intermittent strains of music, the stamping of sentries' feet, wild gusts of laughter and occasional sinister cries.

When I was calm again, which was when I was very, very cold, I came down.

I went back to the Palace. I asked to see Titus again. It was now very late. In the corridors tall shadows veered, while the few attendants I could find were gossiping and looked up, startled, when disturbed by my white-faced ghost.

No one seemed to find my presence odd. No one seemed to mind. Sometimes it is like that in official places when the night squad comes on duty; so little happens normally that they are glad of a change in routine.

They passed me in through various apartments dripping with drapery to a rather plain anteroom I had never seen before. Someone went into an inner room where I heard my name spoken in a low, incurious voice. After a moment a cheery old cove came out in his slippers, followed at a placid amble by the man who had brought me in, who then disappeared. The old cove scrutinized me.

"Both the young Caesars are tucked up in bed. Will I do?"

He wore a rumpled purple tunic, with no belt. He was a big, solid man about sixty years old, square-built and healthy, with a deeply lined forehead and an open stare. Somehow his very lack of ceremony lent his presence weight: over the years he had grown used to carrying men with him through sheer personality. He did it well. Damn the bastard from his great toes to the thin hair on his head, I liked him at once.

I knew who he was; the Emperor, Vespasian.

I thought it was best to answer politely that he would do.

He gazed at me with amused indulgence, then motioned me in. He had been working in a small area, made cosy with well-placed lamps. There were two neat piles of correspondence undergoing his attentions. It looked a disciplined scene. It was the sort of office I should like to work in myself.

"So you're Falco. You look a bit pea ky Want a cup of wine?"

"No thanks. I'm just a bit cold. Please don't trouble."

"Oh it's no trouble!" he roared cheerfully. There are unlimited cup-bearers and flagon-pourers waiting up the corridor for a chance to show off their stuff I still shook my head. Rather to my surprise he continued rattling on. "Bringers-in and takers out Each of them some sort of exalted specialist. If you want one, they can probably produce a slave to pick the fluff out of your navel, complete with a fluff-picker's apron and a pearl handled fluff-picking tool!" He seemed to have settled down.

"Nice relaxing retirement, sir," I chivied him gravely, "coming into all that!"

"I stopped relaxing when I saw the wages bill," Vespasian said bitterly.

He turned those deep eyes on me and I realized, I could have handled Titus, but not him.

"I heard about your antics over the fee!"

"I did not mean to insult you, sir."

Vespasian was silent. It seemed to me the look of strain for which he was so famous could easily be the effect of years in public places trying not to laugh. He was not, however, laughing now.

"What you insult is your own undoubted intelligence!" I like a man to be frank. Just as well. "So what," enquired the Emperor more mildly, "is this latest piece of pantomime about?"

So that was when I explained to Vespasian what I had come here hoping to achieve.

I told him the tale and I said I was sorry; I begged for a second chance as a clerk. He asked why; I said her; he said no.

I said what? Then he said no again.

This was not what I expected, not what I expected at all. After that Vespasian offered me a job. It was my turn to say no. I pointed out he disliked informers and I disliked Emperors; we were hardly well matched. He explained that he did not dislike the informers as such, only the work that they did. I confided that I felt much the same about Emperors.

He looked at me for a long time, though did not seem particularly upset.

"So this visit is about the Camillus girl?" I said nothing. "Falco, I don't believe in unsuitable liaisons across the ranks. A senator's daughter has a duty to respect the honour of her family. I'm considered old-fashioned," the Emperor commented.

I could hardly avoid knowing, since it was the talk of Rome, that Vespasian himself had kept house for years with a freed slave who had first been his mistress forty years ago. It was said, though it seemed unlikely, he had even brought this loyal old body to the Palace with him now.

"Sir, with due respect, I won't interrogate you on these matters, so I don't expect to have to answer for myself."

I think he was offended this time but after a second he grinned. "Titus says she seems a sensible wench!"

"I thought so," I snapped back, "until she tangled with me!"

"My old friend Hilaris," Vespasian protested, refuting this, "would strongly disagree. I never argue with Gaius; it leads to too much paperwork. He thinks well of you. What am I to tell him now?"

I looked at the Emperor and he stared at me. We reached an agreement; it was my own idea. He just sat there with his arms folded until I came out with it. He would put me on the list for the second rank; he would do it when I produced the qualifying money myself.

I had committed myself to earning and saving four hundred thousand pieces of gold.

Before I left I insisted on one other thing.

"I want you to see this."

I took out the inkwell I found in the saffron vault; it came from my pocket in a scatter of peppercorns. The Emperor turned it over in the palm of his great hand. It was an ordinary inkwell, a simple shape with a retaining ledge inside to prevent spills. On the base was neatly scratched: T FL DOM, the initials of Vespasian's younger son.

Before he could speak, I took it back.

"Since it won't be needed in court, I'll keep this as a memento of the case."

To do Vespasian justice, he did let me take the thing away.

I went home.

As I descended from the Palatine, Rome in the dead of night lay all round me, like a series of deep black pools between the faint lights on the ridges of the Seven Hills. So I turned my footsteps through the sleeping streets and at last came back into the familiar squalor of my own places, and the grim apartment where I lived and to which I had once brought a girl called Sosia Camillina.

It was the worst day of my life, and when I walked into my office I realized that it had not ended yet. The folding door opposite stood open. As I entered, a shaft of cold air moved subtly within the room. There was somebody out on my balcony lying in wait.