The Silver Pigs

VIII

A social at-home in a guard post courtesy of an aedile called Atius Pertinax. I was expecting to be hauled off to prison, the Tullianum, or even the Mamertine if my luck had completely run out. Instead, they trooped me all the way back east into the First. This startled me, since until that morning I had never done business in the Capena Gate Sector. I was astonished that I had offended the authorities in quite so short a time.

If there is one class of person I hate above all others, it is aediles. For the benefit of provincials let me say that in Rome the praetors govern law and order, senior senators elected six at a time, who divide the fourteen districts between them. Each has a junior to do all the legwork these aediles, brash young politicians in their first public posts, filling time before the better jobs that bring in bigger bribes.

Gnaeus Atius Pertinax was typical of the breed, a short-haired pup yapping up the political ladder, nagging butchers to sweep clean their shop fronts and beating the hell out of me. I had never seen him before. In retrospect I remember no more than a washed-out grey streak, half hidden by a shaft of dazzling sunlight. The greyness may be lost recollection. I think he had light eyes and a stiff nose. He was in his late twenties (just younger than me), his tight nature reflected in a constipated face.

There was an older man, no purple on his clothes not a senator who sat on the sidelines and said nothing. A bland unremarkable face and a bald unremarkable head. In my experience, men who sit in corners are the ones to watch. But first, pleasantries with Pertinax.

"Falco!" he commanded, after brisk preliminaries established who I was. "Where's the girl?"

I had a serious grudge against Atius Pertinax, though I did not know it yet.

I was wondering how to answer in a way that would be rude enough, when he ordered his sergeant to encourage me. I pointed out I was a freeborn citizen and that laying a fist on a citizen was an affront to democracy. It turned out neither Pertinax nor the bullyboys were students of political science: they set about affronting democracy without a qualm. I had the right of appeal directly to the Emperor but I decided there was not much future in that.

If I had thought Pertinax was being so violent out of affection for Sosia, it might have been easier to bear, but we shared no fellow feeling. The whole event troubled me. A senator might well have second thoughts, cancel our contract and report me to the magistrate, yet Decimus Camillus had looked a soft touch and he knew (more or less) where his missing miss was. So I braved it out, bruised but proud.

"I shall return Sosia Camillina to her family when they ask me, and do your worst, Pertinax – I shall return her to no one else!"

I saw his eyes travel to the middle ranker in the corner. The man had a lean, sad, tolerant smile.

"Thank you," this one said. "My name is Publius Camillus Meto. I am her father. Perhaps I can ask you now."

I closed my eyes. It was quite true nobody had actually told me the senator's relationship to Sosia. This must be his younger brother, the man who lived in the frosty house next door. So my client was only her uncle. All the rights of ownership would lie with her papa.

In response to further questioning, as they say, I agreed to take her father and his pleasant friends to fetch her.

Back at the laundry Lenia popped out, intrigued by the uncoordinated tramping of large numbers of feet. Seeing me under arrest caused no surprise.

"Falco? Your mother says Oh!"

"Out of the way, you filthy old bladder!" shouted the aedile Pertinax, flinging her to one side.

To spare him the indignity of being fruit-pressed to a pulp by a woman, I interceded gently: "Not the time, Lenia!"

After twenty years of wringing out heavily wet togas, she possessed deceptive strength. He could have been badly damaged. I wish that he had been. I wish I had held him down for Lenia while she did it. I wish I had damaged him myself.

By then the momentum of our arrival had carried us up the stairs. Their visit was brief. When we all burst into my apartment, Sosia Camillina was not there.