One Virgin Too Many

XXIV

I went over to Ma's house to tell her what I thought about the new house. (Helena came too, to hear what I said.) Trouble was waiting: the damned lodger was at home.

"Don't make a noise! Anacrites is off-color. The poor thing is having a wee snooze."

That would have been fine, but warning us woke him up. He emerged eagerly, knowing that I would rather have left without seeing him.

"Falco!"

"Oh look; every perfect day has its low point, Helena."

"Marcus, you're so rude! Good evening, Anacrites. I am sorry to hear that your wounds have been troubling you."

He did look drawn. He had been suffering from a near-deadly head blow when he went out to Tripolitania, and the sword slashes he took while playing the fool in the arena were a further hindrance to his recovery. He had lost far too much blood in Lepcis; it had taken me hours to bind him up, and all through the trip home I had expected to find myself chucking his corpse over the side of the ship. Well, a boy can hope.

Ma fussed around him now while he tried to look brave. He managed; I was the one who nearly threw up.

He had forced himself to come off his couch still in his siesta wear-a bedraggled gray tunic and battered old slippers like something Nux might bring me as a treat. It was far from Anacrites' normal sleek gear: a hideous glimpse of the man behind the public persona, as unsuitable as a domesticated lynx. I felt embarrassed being in the same room as him.

He scratched his ear, then beamed. "How is the new house?"

I would have given a good chest of gold to prevent him knowing my potential new address. "Don't tell me you had your sordid operatives tail us there?"

"No need. Your mother always keeps me up to date." I bet the bastard knew about the house before I did. Loyal to Helena, I bit that back.

Ma was bringing him invalid broth. At least that meant we all got some. It was stuffed with the vegetables she had pinched from the market garden yesterday.

"I am so well looked after here!" Anacrites exclaimed complacently.

I gritted my teeth.

"Maia was here today," said Ma, as I wielded my spoon morosely. I saw Anacrites take an interest. Perhaps he was just being polite to his landlady. Perhaps he wanted to upset me. Perhaps he did have an eye on my newly available sister. (Dear gods!) Ma pursed her lips. "I heard all about this plan you cooked up with your confederate."

I decided not to mention that buying the tailor's business was my hated confederate's plan. My mother had guessed, I could tell. Whether she also knew it was Pa's money buying it for Maia I dared not even contemplate.

"It seems an ideal solution." Helena backed me up firmly. "Maia needs an occupation. Tailoring is what she knows, and she will thrive on the responsibility."

"I'm sure!" said Ma, sniffing. Anacrites was keeping quiet in such a tactful way I could have rammed his broth spoon down his throat. "Anyway," my mother went on with great satisfaction, "nothing may come of it."

"It's all fixed, as far as I know, Ma."

"No. Maia refused to agree unless she was given time to consider it. The contract was not signed."

I put down my spoon. "Well, I tried. The children need a future. She ought to consider that."

Ma relented. She was a fierce defender of her grandchildren. "Oh, she's intending to do it. She just wanted to make it clear she does not jump when your father orders it."

It was so rare for my mother to mention my father that we all fell quiet. This really was embarrassing. Helena kicked me under the table, as a signal for us to leave.

"I say, Marcus." Anacrites interrupted the awkward silence suddenly. "I did find out what that lad you sent was asking."

I replaced my backside on the bench from which I had lifted it tentatively. "Someone I sent? What lad?"

"Camillus, what's his name?"

I glanced at Helena. "I know two lads called Camillus. Camillus Justinus helped me rescue you from your due fate in Lepcis Magna-Anacrites, I presume not even you are so ungrateful as to forget him-"

"No, no. The other, this must be."

"Aelianus," Helena said coldly. Anacrites looked disconcerted. He seemed unaware that both Camilli were Helena's younger brothers and that he himself had actually cultivated Aelianus as a useful contact once. His head wound had affected the patterns of his memory.

I was annoyed. "I never sent him or anyone else to see you, Anacrites."

"Oh! He said you did."

"Playing at mystery men. Have you forgotten you do know him? For some reason you and he were cuddled up like long-lost cronies last year at that dinner for the olive oil producers-the night you took your big crack on the head."

Now Anacrites had definitely lost his bumptiousness. He chewed his lower lip. I had established in previous discussions that he remembered nothing about the evening he was battered. This troubled him. It was rather pathetic. For a man whose career involved knowing more about other people than they chose to tell even their mistresses and doctors, losing part of his own memory was a terrible shock. He tried not to show it, but I knew he must lie awake at night, sweating over the missing days of his life.

I had not been too cruel. He knew something about that night, because I had told him: he had been found unconscious, was rescued by me and taken to a safe house-Ma's-where he lay semi-comatose for weeks while she nursed him. But for her, he would be dead. You could say-though I was carefully too polite to do it-he also owed his life to me. I had made sure his jealous rival at the Palace, Claudius Laeta, could not find him and help him into Hades. I had even tracked down those responsible for attacking him and, while Anacrites still lay helpless, I had brought them to justice. He never thanked me much for that.

"So I know him," mused Anacrites, struggling to recover some feel for the past contact.

"You had been talking to him about what was going wrong in Baetica." Helena took pity on him. "At the time my brother had been living there, working with the provincial governor. He was only a passing contact of yours. You cannot be expected to recall it particularly."

"He didn't remind me." Anacrites still had a dark, disturbed look. He had held a discussion with a man who failed to disclose their previous relationship. There must seem a frightening lack of logic in that. I knew the reason, as it happened: Aelianus wanted to cover up a serious error of judgment on his own part. While delivering a document to the intelligence chief, he had let it fall into the wrong hands and be mangled. Anacrites had never found out, but once he saw that the Chief Spy had forgotten him, Aelianus would have happily played the stranger.

"Young tease!" I let Anacrites see me smirking. "He's playing games," I condescended to explain. "I imagine he told you that one of the Arval Brethren has died in ghastly circumstances. Aelianus is annoying the cult by looking for a conspiracy."

The conspiracy might be real, but if so I was annoyed that the young fool had alerted Anacrites. Aelianus and I were playing this game-and the spy would have to ask very nicely indeed before I let him join in.

"So what did Aelianus want?" Helena put to him.

"A name."

"Really?"

"Stop acting, Falco," Anacrites snorted. He was Chief Spy, as I had found out when we worked on the Census, because he did have some discernment.

I grinned and gave way. "All right, partner. I suppose he asked if you know who the dead Arval Brother is?"

"Right."

"You have an identification?"

"None, when Aelianus raised it. The secretive Brethren had succeeded in keeping their loss under wraps. I was impressed!" he admitted, for once mocking himself gently.

"And did you and your cunning trackers then find out?"

"Of course." Smug bastard.

"Well then?"

"The dead man was called Ventidius Silanus." I had never heard of him. "Mean anything?" prompted Anacrites, warily watching me.

I decided against bluff. I leaned back and threw open my hands frankly. "It means absolutely nix."

It was his turn to grin. "Same here," he confessed, and he too gave every appearance of speaking with a rare burst of honesty.