Jupiter Myth

XIV

No swords!"

"In the name of the governor; I have to search this place!"

I wanted to bathe. I wanted to shed my drenched garments, drop my weapon from my wet fist, peel off my leaden, sodden boots, then sit on a hot ledge, letting insidious steam wrap around me while I drowsed off If my conscience allowed me to give up, I could happily stay here for days.

"Is this official? Got a warrant?" No one had warrants in the provinces. Hades, no one had warrants in Rome. If the vigiles banged on anybody's door, anxious to have a look around, the proprietor would let the roughnecks in and start saving up to pay for breakages.

I waved my sword angrily. "This is my warrant. You want to argue, you can send a runner to the procurator's residence."

"What-in this weather?"

"Then shut up and show me around like a bathkeeper who wants to retain his license."

They were probably so keen to have bathhouses built in Britain that no license system operated either. Who would police it, if there were no vigiles? Legislation without enforcement is a bad principle.

Licensing of commercial premises was something we did have at home, with pompous baby senators prancing around as aediles, deadly keen to shift their togate backsides upward on the cursus honorum, and meanwhile concerning themselves with nosy checks on opening hours, plebeian licentiousness, and fire precautions. A bribe to their escort usually moved the irritation up the street to the next victim.

Here, where bureaucracy had yet to grow taproots, the simple power of language seemed to impress. I can't say I was led around like a hygiene inspector, but I was allowed to wander through the hot and cold rooms undisturbed.

My life as an informer seemed to be spent in constant searches of wet-floored baths; they were treacherous when one was in a hurry, wearing boots. It was hard to concentrate while skidding across slippery tiles face-first into a ridged wall that was shot through with hot-air tubes. At least the din of thunder from outside was muffled by thick masonry roofs. Here, apart from routine tricklings and gurgles, was a cocoon of warmth and silence.

Silence was not what I expected. This was a spacious suite of hot rooms, yet there were no customers. This dark establishment lacked the sociability the Roman baths are intended to offer. Nobody at all was debating philosophy, discussing the Games, swapping gossip, or biffing beanbags for exercise. It was another failure for the British judicial legate's citizenship lessons. Come to that, the body oils smelled rancid.

"Are you always deserted? This is a big place!"

"There is supposed to be a new fort coming."

"Who knows when! How do you make a living? Who uses your baths?"

"Soldiers mainly. They like the bar next door. They were in earlier. They all got called out on an exercise." That would be the governor, ordering the troops to search for Splice.

A thought struck me. The barkeeper who had helped me entertain the centurion, Silvanus-it felt about six weeks ago-had talked about fetching his water from a bathhouse. "Does a military drinking den use your water?"

The owner nodded. "We have a well with a treadmill and a water-wheel," he informed me proudly. "There is nothing like our system anywhere north of Gaul-"

"Indoors?"

He gestured in the direction I had come from. "We had to build the well where the water is."

"Oh, I saw your wellhead premises." That was behind me in the storm; I lost interest. "So which way is the bar?" I demanded.

"Right next door," replied the bathkeeper, as if surprised I did not know. "Caesar's. Same as us." Well, that saved the drunks having to remember two names.

I left Caesar's Baths and hurried a few strides through a large, spreading puddle, to Caesar's Bar. When I walked in, who should I see gloomily supping a flagon but my dear pal Lucius Petronius.

He half rose, looking anxious. Immediately all my pain over Chloris resurfaced. "You all right, Falco?"

"No."

He called for another beaker and pushed me onto a bench. "Grieve. Do it now." He meant while I was here with him, not with Helena. Bad enough that she had seen me distraught, red to the elbows with the blood and intestines of a past lover. I glanced down at my clothing. At least the rain had washed away some of the mess. As for grief, that decides its own timing.

Petronius had his elbows on a table, his boots off on the floor to dry, and his big bare feet in a towel. He looked depressed, yet oddly comfortable. He had lost his quarry in the teeming wet, and he had bunked off. I couldn't argue, because so had I.

"You found him, of course?" I challenged, shaking water from my hair.

"I will," Petro croaked: he was obsessive.

I drank, then wiped my mouth. "He looked a bit different! That was a shock. I remember him as a soggy lump with hangnails and lanky hair, dreaming he would open his own racing stable-which he never would have done."

"Power sharpened him up," growled Petro. "Now he goes for snappy clothes."

"Those bloody Parthian trousers!"

Petronius allowed himself a wry smile. If anything, he had more conservative taste than me. "The leg casings had a raffish style. They'd look quite good on a smelly muleteer in Bruttium."

"So would a goatbell around his neck… I noticed his equestrian ring was three times the size of mine." I spread my hand and looked at the slim gold band that signified I had been dragged into the middle class. Florius had worn a bar that covered a whole finger joint.

"The difference is," said Petro, "you wouldn't even wear one, from choice. Helena bought yours. She wants the world to know you are entitled to the honor, and you go along with her out of guilt."

"Guilt?"

"Being a scruff when she deserves better. But Florius-" Petro stopped; he did not bother to express his full contempt. I had seen Petronius once take the ring owned by Florius' gangster father-in-law and flatten it under the heel of his boot.

Glumly he poured more wine.

"Is Florius the brothel pimp?" I asked suddenly.

Petro leaned back. I could see this was no new proposition. "You mean 'the Collector'? Yes, that's him. The old gang always ran whores in Rome, don't forget. They had brothels both for their own sake, and for the crime that goes on in them. Not just manicure girls who talk to their friends all day and fortune-tellers who can't tell Cancer from Capricorn. I mean theft. Hustling. Illegal gambling. Contract killing. All on top of the usual depravity."

"And Florius rounds up new talent himself?"

"Then he gets first go," stated Petronius. We had both stopped drinking. "Every filly in the Florius stable has been personally deflowered by him."

"Raped?"

"Repeatedly, if needs be. To terrorize them, so they do as they are told."

"That girl of ours he grabbed is about fourteen."

"Some are younger."

"You've been watching and not doing anything to stop it?" I glared at him. "Did you realize you were directly watching Florius?"

"Not at first. As you say, he looks quite different."

"Your customs pal told me he uses the brothel as an office when he comes into town. So he hangs his boots up properly somewhere else?"

"I assumed the Old Neighbour rented out space to him," Petro confirmed. "He came and went right in front of me a few times, before I even realized that it was him. Then I soon worked out that he owned the place, that he was closely bound up in its activities."

"So where else does he hang out?"

"Downriver. He has a boat," Petro told me. "It was the boat that alerted me. Remember I saw someone standing in the prow that morning when the baker's corpse was being dumped?"

"You said something was bothering you."

"I couldn't work out what. I yelled out loud when I realized it was him. The way he was stationed there, doing not a lot…" Petro scowled. "He must have been watching his men dump the body over the side. Typical Florius. He enjoys observing. All the family are like that. They gloat over suffering, knowing they've caused it."

"The sense of power and the secrecy. I bet Florius spies on customers when they are with the brothel girls."

"Bound to."

We fell silent. We had lost Florius and the weather was too grim to endure. It would do no harm to sit quietly to reflect.

We were still considering things when the door blew in. After the newcomers managed to slam it shut again on the blast, the barkeeper told them helpfully, "No women."

Since it was Helena and Albia who had stumbled inside, Petronius grinned and told him these bedraggled mites were with us. The barman assumed they were drabs and we were buying their services, but we treated them courteously anyway. As soon as she saw me, Helena came over with the same concern that Petronius had shown. "Oh, Marcus!"

"I'm fine," I lied. Still standing, Helena put her arms around me; that nearly did it for me. I choked back tears.

"Her friends have taken her. There was nothing anyone could do. You know that."

When she released me, I steadied myself. She sat alongside. Albia had calmed down from her hysteria, and was now completely silent. Helena wrung out her hair, then her skirts. The girl just sat. Helena tucked Albia's straggling hair behind her ears and dried her face as best she could on Petro's towel.

"Florius?" asked Helena quietly.

Petronius topped up his beaker, looking bad-tempered. "We lost him. But this is a dead-end province at the end of the world. He has nowhere to go."

That was optimistic, in my opinion.

We all sat lethargically, wearied in our bones by the weather. If we stayed too long, we would all be chilled. Our soaked clothes were not drying, only becoming heavier and colder on us.

We did stay, because Helena Justina had an urgent project. She put her arm around Albia and spoke gently. "You were very upset when you recognized that man. I want you to tell me-now would be best, my dear- what you know about him."

"We know he runs that brothel called the Old Neighbour," Petronius supplied in a quiet tone, to get the girl started.

"Did you want to go there, in the first place?" asked Helena.

"I don't know" Albia sounded as if she feared being in trouble whatever she said or did. "I didn't know where he was taking me."

"Did you know who the man was?"

"No."

"You had never met him before?"

"No."

"So how did he approach you?"

"He came up and was nice when I was sitting where Falco left me." Albia paused, then admitted shamefacedly, "He said something to me, because I was crying."

I cleared my throat. "That was my fault. I had been angry. Albia may have thought that I had left her there and that I was not coming back."

"But you were, of course," said Helena, more to reassure the girl than to applaud my honest intentions.

"Maybe she didn't know me well enough to be sure."

"So Albia looked like a miserable young girl who had run away from home."

"The man asked me that," Albia piped up intensely. "I said I didn't have a home."

Helena pursed her lips. Strong feelings were affecting her. "Well, let's get this clear: I am offering you a home, if you want it, Albia."

Tears welled in the girl's blue eyes. Petronius dug me in the ribs, but I ignored it. Helena and I had held no private debate on the issue. Taking a wild child to Rome, and exposing our own daughters to an unknown influence, required thought. Even the impetuous Helena Justina was an advocate of traditional family councils. However, every Roman matron knows that domestic councils were devised by our foremothers purely so the views of the matron of a household may prevail.

I just went along with it. I knew how to be a patriarchal Roman male.

Helena leaned toward the girl: "Tell me what happened to you, after you went to the Old Neighbour with Florius."

There was a long silence. Then Albia spoke, surprisingly strongly: "The fat woman told me I had to work for them. I never thought I would come back to you and Marcus Didius. I thought I had to do what they said."

Helena managed not to react angrily, but I saw the muscles tighten around her mouth. "And what about the man?"

"He made me do what you have to do."

Helena was now holding the girl, half turned away from me. Petronius was gripping his hands, lest he smash something. I put my palm against Helena's back.

"Did you know about that already, Albia?" she murmured.

"I knew what people did."

"But it had not happened to you before?"

"No." The young girl suddenly began crying. Tears fell, almost without sobs. Her grief and desolation were heartrending "I made it happen-"

"No. Never believe that!" Helena exclaimed. "I cannot change what has been done to you, but you are now safe with us. I will help you tell this story to the governor. Then the man and the old woman can be stopped from hurting other girls like you. You will know-and it may help you, Albia-that you have fought back against him. Him and his kind." After a moment Helena added in a hard voice, "Men are not all like that, I promise you."

Albia looked up. She was gazing from Helena to me. "Men and women can be happy together," Helena said. "Never forget that."

Albia stared at me. This was the longest communication any of us had had with her, so what came next was understandable. She must have been brooding over it most of the time she had been with us: "You find people. Will you find my family?"

It was always the most painful question an informer could be asked. Either you cannot trace the missing ones, and you never stood a chance of doing so, or you do find them and it all goes badly wrong. I had never known a good outcome. I refused to handle such requests from clients anymore.

"I can only tell you the truth, Albia. I don't think that I can do it," I said. She let out a cry of protest.

Stopping her, I went on steadily: "I have thought about it for you. I believe that your family must all have died in the fighting and the fire when Queen Boudicca attacked Londinium. You must have been a baby then. If anyone had lived, they would have looked for you." Probably that was true. If they had run away and just abandoned the baby, it was best she never knew.

"They were lost, Albia," said Helena. "Love them-but you have to let them go. If you choose to come with us, we will take you far away, and you can forget all that has happened in between."

Her words made little impression. Albia was at her lowest ebb.

Petronius and I left Helena to take care of the girl as best she could. We went to the door, staring out at the rainstorm. He hopped on one foot, strapping back a boot.

"She will be scarred forever. You'll have your work cut out to save her."

"I know!" And that was even if Florius had not given her disease or pregnancy to contend with. Only time would tell us that. Helena would have to watch her carefully and tactfully.

Petronius Longus was lost in silence now. I had my own misery to preoccupy me. He, I knew, was thinking that somehow, somewhere, he would get Florius.