A dying light in Corduba

III

As I caught up with Laeta, I had to make my way through an odd roomful. I had hoped I would have no reason to take a professional interest tonight, but my suspicions of the Chief Secretary's motives in inviting me had kept me on the alert. Besides, it was automatic to size up the company. Whereas Laeta had first led me among a hardcore group 'of regular eaters and drinkers, these men seemed almost like strangers who had reclined together just because they spotted empty couches and were now stuck with making a night of it. I sensed some awkwardness.

I could be wrong. Mistakes, in the world of informing, are a daily hazard.

This salon had always been designed as a dining room – the black and white mosaic was plain beneath nine formal, matching, heavyweight couches, but boasted a more complex geometric design in the centre of the floor. Laeta and I were now crossing that square, where the low serving tables were currently set but the dancer would be performing in due course. We were approaching a man who occupied the pivotal position like some grand host. He looked as if he thought he was in charge of the whole room.

– 'Falco, meet one of our keenest members – Quinctius Attractus!'

I remembered the name. This was the man the others had complained about for bringing in a troupe of real Baeticans.

He grunted, looking annoyed with Laeta for bothering him. He was a solid senator in his sixties, with heavy arms and fat fingers – just the right side of debauchery, but he obviously lived well. What was left of his hair was black and curly and his skin was weathered, as if he dung to old- fashioned habits: prowling his thousand-acre vineyards in person when he wanted to convince himself he stayed close to the land.

Maybe his collateral lay in olive groves.

I was clearly not obliged to make conversation, for the senator showed no interest in who I was; Laeta himself took the lead: 'Brought another of your little groups tonight?'

'Seems an appropriate venue for entertaining my visitors!' sneered Quinctius. I agreed with the man in principle, but his manner was off-putting.

'Let's hope they will benefit!' Laeta smiled, with the serene insolence of a bureaucrat making a nasty point.

Not understanding the sniping, I managed to find amusement of my own. When I first came in Anacrites had been enjoying himself. Now when I looked back in his direction I could see he was lying straight and very still on his couch. His strange light grey eyes were veiled; his expression unreadable. From being a cheerful party guest with slicked-back hair and a meticulous tunic, he had become as tense as a virgin sneaking out to meet her first shepherd in a grove. My presence had really tightened his screw. And from the way he was staring – while pretending not to notice – I didn't think he liked Laeta talking to Quinctius Attractus like this.

I quickly glanced around the three-sided group of couches. It was easy to spot the Baetican interlopers whose invasion had annoyed Laeta's colleagues. Several men here had a distinct Hispanic build, wide in the body and short in the leg. There were two each side of Quinctius, forming the central row in the most honoured position, and two more on the side row to his right. They all wore similar braid on their tunics, and dinner sandals with tough esparto rope soles. It was unclear how well they knew one another. They were speaking in Latin, which fitted the prosperous weave of their garments, but if they had come to Rome to sell oil they seemed rather restrained, not displaying the relaxed confidence that might charm retailers.

'Why don't you introduce us to your Baetican friends?' Laeta was asking Quinctius. He looked as if he wanted to tell Laeta to take a one-way trip to the Underworld, but we were all supposed to be blood-brothers at this dinner, so he had to comply.

The two visitors on the right-hand row, introduced rapidly and rather dismissively as Cyzacus and Norbanus, had had their heads together in close conversation. Although they nodded to us, they were too far from us to start chatting. The nearer pair, those on the best-positioned couches beside Quinctius, had been silent while Laeta spoke to him; they overheard Laeta and the senator trying to outdo one another in urbane unpleasantness, although they hid their curiosity. An introduction to the Emperor's Chief Secretary seemed to impress them more than it had done the first two. Perhaps they thought Vespasian himself might now drop in to see if Laeta had tomorrow's public engagement list to hand.

'Annaeus Maximus and Licinius Rufius.' Quinctius Attractus named them brusquely. He might be patron to this group, but his interest in them hardly took a paternal tone. However he did add more graciously, 'Two of the most important oil producers from Corduba.'

Annaeus!' Laeta was in there at once. He was addressing the younger of the two, a wide-shouldered, competent- looking man of around fifty. '- Would that make you a relative of Seneca?'

The Baetican assented with a head movement, but did not agree the connection with enthusiasm. That could be because Seneca, Nero's influential tutor, had ended his famous career with an enforced suicide after Nero grew tired of being influenced. Adolescent ingratitude at its most extreme.

Laeta was too tactful to press the issue. Instead he turned to the other man. 'And what brings you to Rome, sir?'

Not oil, apparently. 'I am introducing my young grandson to public life,' answered Licinius Rufius. He was a generation older than his companion, though still looked sharp as a military nail.

'A tour of the Golden City!' Laeta was at his most insincere now, feigning admiration for this cosmopolitan initiative. I wanted to crawl under a side table and guffaw. 'What better start could he have? And is the lucky young man with us this evening?'

'No; he's out on the town with a friend.' The Roman senator Quinctius interrupted with ill-concealed impatience. 'You'd best find a perch, Laeta; the musicians are tuning up. Some of us have paid for them, and we want our money's worth!'

Laeta seemed satisfied that he had made his mark. He had certainly annoyed the senator. As we picked our way back across the room through the slaves who were lifting the food tables in order to clear a central space, Laeta muttered to me, 'Unbearable man! He throws his weight about to a degree that has become quite unacceptable. I may ask you, Falco, to help me with my endeavours to deal with him…'

He could ask as much as he liked. Keeping members of dining societies in order was not my work.

My host had not yet finished bopping upstarts on the nob. 'Anacrites! And who amongst our refined membership has deserved your attentions?'

'Yes, it's a working supper for me -' Anacrites had a light, cultured voice, about as unreliable as a dish of over-ripe figs. I felt bilious as soon as he spoke. 'I'm here to watch you, Laeta!' To do him justice, he had no fear of upsetting the secretariats. He also knew when to thrust his knife in quickly.

Their warfare was pretty open: the legitimate administrator, who dealt in manipulation and guile, and the tyrant of the security forces, who used blackmail, bullying and secrecy. The same force drove them; both wanted to be the dunghill king. So far there was not much difference between the power of a well-honed damning report on first-quality papyrus from Laeta, and a snide denunciation whispered by the spy in the ear of the Emperor. But one day this conflict was bound to reach a head.

'I'm quaking!' Laeta insulted Anacrites by using nothing worse than sarcasm. Do you know Didius Falco?'

'Of course.'

'He should do,' I growled. Now it was my turn to attack the spy: 'Anacrites may be disorganised, but even he rarely forgets occasions when he sends agents into hostile territory, then deliberately writes to let the local ruler know to look out for them. I owe this man a great deal, Laeta. But for my own ingenuity he might have had me tied out on a rock in the Nabataean desert for all the crows of Petra to pick clean my bones. And in the case of unwelcome visitors I don't believe the cruel Nabataeans bother to kill you first.'

'Falco exaggerates,' Anacrites smirked. 'It was a regrettable accident.'

'Or a tactical ploy,' I returned coolly.

'If I was at fault, I apologise.'

'Don't bother,' I told him. 'For one thing you're lying, and for another, it's a pleasure to continue hating your guts.'

'Falco is a wonderful agent,' Anacrites said to Laeta. 'He knows almost everything there is to know about tricky foreign missions – and he learned it all from me.'

'That's right,' I agreed mildly. 'Campania, two years ago. You taught me all the mistakes and bungles. All the ways to upset local sensitivities, trample the evidence and fail to come home with the goods. You showed me that – then I went out and did the job properly. The Emperor still thanks me for learning to avoid your mistakes that summer!'

Laeta took a turn: 'I'm sure we all profit from your mutual past relationship!' He was letting Anacrites know I was working for him now. 'The entertainment is starting,' Laeta smiled in my direction. The general noise in the room had dropped in response to signs of impending action from the dancer. Laeta patted me on the shoulder – a gesture I found highly annoying, though I made sure Anacrites did not see me react. 'Stay and enjoy yourself, Falco; I'd like to hear your opinion in due course…' It was obvious he was not talking about the musicians. He wanted Anacrites to think something was going on. Well, that suited me.

Only two vacant couches remained, at each end of the side rows on opposite sides of the room. I had decided my preference, but just at that moment someone beat me to it. It was a man I found hard to place – a fellow in a subdued oatmeal tunic, about my age. He dropped on to the couch as if it had been his place previously and was soon leaning on his elbows to watch the dancer, with his muscular legs sprawled behind him. He had an old scar down one forearm and bunioned feet that had done their share of tramping pavements. He spoke to no one but appeared sociable enough as he tossed grapes into his mouth and grinned at the girl who was about to perform.

I grabbed a wine refill to brace myself, then took the final couch – the one which was already partially occupied by my amphora of fish-pickle, alongside Anacrites.