One Virgin Too Many

II

Let's go back a day and get things straight.

Helena and I had just returned from Tripolitania. It was a rushed sea trip, hastily taken after Famia's ghastly death and funeral. My first task after the journey had to be breaking the bad news to my sister. She must have expected the worst from her husband, but his being eaten by a lion in the arena would be more than even Maia could have foreseen.

I needed to hurry, because I wanted to tell Maia quietly myself. Since we had brought back with us my partner Anacrites, who was lodging with my mother, Ma was bound to discover what had happened pretty quickly. My sister would never forgive me if anyone else heard the news before she did. Anacrites had promised to maintain silence on the subject for as long as he could, but Ma was notorious for worming out secrets. Anyway, I had never trusted Anacrites.

Burdened by my responsibilities, I rushed off to my sister's house immediately we arrived in Rome. Maia was out.

All I could do then was slink back home, hoping I could find her later. As it turned out, Anacrites was removed from any danger of gossiping with Ma because both he and I were sent messages summoning us to a meeting on the Palatine to consider the Census results. By coincidence, I later discovered that Maia herself was missing from home because she too was attending a function with a royal connection-not that I would ever have expected it from my soundly republican sister-though her fancy do was at the Golden House on the other side of the Forum, whereas we went in search of the narrow pleasures of bureaucracy at the old imperial offices in the Palace of the Claudian Caesars.

The reception that Maia was attending would be relevant to all that happened subsequently. It would have been handy for me to have warned her to do some eavesdropping. Still, you rarely know that in advance.

For once, I was visiting Vespasian in full confidence that he had nothing to complain about.

I had worked on the Census for the best part of a year. It was my most lucrative employment ever, and I had myself identified the opportunity. Anacrites, previously the Emperor's Chief Spy, had been my temporary partner. This had proved an oddly successful arrangement-given that he had once tried to have me killed, and that I had always hated his profession in general and him in particular. We had been an excellent team, screwing cash out of lying taxpayers. His meanness complemented my skepticism. He took a filthy line with the feeble; I charmed the tough. The Secretariat we reported to, not realizing how good we would be, had promised us a substantial percentage of all underpayments we identified. Since we knew the Census had a short time scale, we had worked flat out. Laeta, our contact, tried to renege as usual, but we now possessed a scroll confirming that Vespasian loved what we had done for him, and that we were rich.

Somehow, at the end of our commission Anacrites and I had ended up without killing each other. Even so, he had done his best to come to a sticky end. In Tripolitania, the idiot had managed to get himself nearly killed in the arena. Fighting as a gladiator for real would damn him to social disgrace and harsh legal penalties if anyone in Rome ever found out. When he recovered from his wounds, he had to face life knowing I had acquired a permanent hold over him.

He had reached the meeting ahead of me. As soon as I entered the high, vaulted audience chamber, I was annoyed to see his pale face. His pallor was natural, but there were bandages under the long sleeves of his tunic, and I, in the know, could see him holding his body very carefully. He was still in pain. That cheered me up.

He knew I was supposed to be visiting Maia that day. Had I missed the palace messenger, I wondered whether dear Anacrites would have kept me in the dark about this meeting.

I grinned at him. He never knew how to take that.

I made no effort to join him across the room. He had plonked himself alongside Claudius Laeta, the papyrus bug we had out-flanked over our fee scale. Now our Census work was over, Anacrites wanted to edge himself back into his old job. Throughout this meeting, he stuck close to Laeta; they continually exchanged little pleasantries in an undertone. In reality, they were locked in a struggle for the same top position. Outside the individual offices where they plotted against one another, they put on an urbane act as best friends. But if either ever followed the other down a dark alley, one would be found dead in the gutter next day. Fortunately, perhaps, palaces tend to be well lit.

The meeting room had been set out in a square with cushioned thrones for the Emperor and his son Titus, the two official Censors; there were scroll-armed seats, which meant we were expecting senators, and hard stools for the lower orders. Scribes lined the walls, standing up. Most of the large assembly had bald heads and bad eyesight. Until Vespasian came in with Titus, who was in his thirties, Anacrites, Laeta, and myself stood out, younger even than the secretaries on the sidelines. We were among hard-bitten Treasury of Saturn types, the wizened mixtures of priestliness and money-collecting who had now gleefully counted the Census revenue into ironbound strongboxes in the basement of their temple. Jostling them were envoys of senatorial status who had been sent to the provinces to extract taxes from the loyal members of the Empire overseas who had so gratefully accepted Roman rule and so reluctantly agreed to pay for it.

Later in his reign Vespasian openly called these envoys his "sponges," placed abroad to soak up money for him, with the implication that he did not care too much what methods they used. No doubt they had balanced their natural inclinations to use bullying and brutality against his clear wish to be known as a "good" emperor.

I knew one of the envoys-Rutilius Gallicus, assigned to arbitrate in a land dispute between Lepcis Magna and Oea. I met him out there. Somehow, between his first conversation with me and his departure he augmented his title until he was no longer a mere desert land surveyor but the Emperor's special agent of the Census in Tripolitania. Far be it from me to suspect this noble fellow of engineering his remit. Obviously, as an ex-consul, he was well in at the Palace. In Lepcis, we had enjoyed the close social bonds of two Romans trapped far from home among tricky foreigners, but now I felt myself starting to regard him cautiously. He was more influential than I had previously realized. I guessed his rise had nowhere reached its zenith. He could be a friend-but I would not bank on it.

I saluted him unobtrusively; Rutilius nodded back. He was sitting quietly, not attached to any particular group. Knowing that he came to Rome as a first-generation senator from Augusta Taurinorum in the despised north of Italy, I sensed that he carried the outsider's whiff. I reckoned it did not bother him.

Being a new man, sneered at by the patrician class, no longer served as a handicap since Vespasian, the ultimate rustic upstart whom nobody had ever taken seriously, had surprised the world and made himself Emperor. He now entered the chamber with the air of a curious sight-seer, but he went straight to his throne. He wore the purple on his solid frame with visible enjoyment, and without making any effort he dominated the room. The old man took his place centrally, a sturdy figure, forehead lined as if with a lifetime's effort. That was deceptive. Satirists could make sport with his constipated appearance, but he had Rome and the whole Establishment just where he wanted them, and his grim smile said that he knew it.

At his side eventually was Titus, similarly thickset but half his father's age and twice as cheerful. He delayed taking his seat as he gave affable greetings to those who had only recently returned to Rome from the provinces. Titus had a reputation as a nice softhearted darling-always a sign of a nasty bastard who could be bloody dangerous. He was providing the new Flavian court with vigor and talent-and with Queen Berenice of Judaea, an exotic beauty ten years his senior who, having failed to entrap Vespasian, had turned her blowsy charms on the next best thing. After only one day back in the Forum, I already knew that the hot news was that she had recently followed her handsome plaything to Rome.

Titus himself was supposed to be overjoyed by this dubious good fortune, but I was damned sure Vespasian would handle it. The father had built his imperial claim on high-minded traditional values; a would-be empress with a history of incest and interference in politics could never make a suitable portrait for the next young Caesar's bedroom wall, not even if she sat for the artist sucking a stylus and looking like a stay-at-home virgin whose only thoughts were of kitchen inventories. Somebody should tell her: Berenice would get the push.

Titus, friendly fellow, smiled benignly when he noticed me. Vespasian noticed Titus smiling and scowled. Being a realist, I preferred the scowl.

The details of the ensuing meeting are probably subject to official rules for secrecy. The results are fully visible anyway. At the start of his reign, Vespasian had announced he needed four hundred million sesterces to put Rome on its feet. Shortly after concluding the Census, he was building and rebuilding on every plot in sight, with the astonishing Flavian Amphitheatre at the end of the Forum to set the seal on his achievements. That he achieved his huge fiscal target is hardly news.

Even with a chairman who hated dawdling and the smartest officials in the world to steer the agenda through, the budget for an empire is extensive. It took us four hours to appraise all the figures.

Vespasian never appeared to notice that he had grounds for extreme satisfaction with his new funds, though Titus raised complimentary eyebrows a couple of times. Even the Treasury men looked relaxed, which was unheard of. Eventually the Emperor made a short, surprisingly gracious speech thanking everyone for their efforts, then he was gone, followed by Titus.

The meeting was over, and I would have been out of there at a fast march had not a spruce slave shuffled Anacrites and me into a side room unexpectedly. There we kicked our heels and sweated among a group of nervous senators until we were shunted on to a private interview with Vespasian. He should have been lying down for a nap like a respectable pensioner; instead, he was still hard at work. We finally grasped that rewards were being handed out.

We had ended up in a much smaller throne room. Titus was missing, but, as we had joked during our wait, Titus looked tired; Berenice must be sapping his strength. Vespasian used both his sons as public props, but that was to accustom the public to their pink little imperial faces for when he passed on; he never really needed a sidekick. He could certainly manage a few brisk thanks for a pair of low characters like Anacrites and me.

Vespasian made it seem as if he was genuinely grateful. In return, he said, he was adding both our names to the equestrian list. This came out so casually I nearly missed it. I had been watching a wood louse scurry along a painted dado and only woke up when I heard Anacrites express an unpleasantly suave murmur of gratitude.

To be bumped up to the middle rank required land holdings worth four hundred thousand sesterces. Do not imagine our trusty old emperor was donating the collateral. He pointed out with a snort that we had screwed so much money from him in fees that he expected us to put aside the qualifying amount; he just bestowed on us the formal right to wear the middle rank's gold ring. There was no ceremony; that would have required gold rings for Vespasian to hand out. He of course preferred people to buy their own. I did not intend wearing one. Where I lived, some thief would steal it the first time I went out.

In order to make a distinction between me, the freeborn conniver, and Anacrites, a publicly employed ex-slave, Vespasian then told Anacrites that he was still valued in intelligence work. I, on the other hand, was honored with the kind of horrible sinecure that the middle ranks traditionally crave. While working on the Census, I had prevented a fatal accident to the Sacred Geese on the Capitol. As a reward, Vespasian had created for me the post of Procurator of Poultry for the Senate and People of Rome.

"Thanks," I said. Smarming was expected.

"You deserve it," the Emperor said, grinning. The job was rubbish, we both knew that. A snob might be thrilled to be associated with the great temples on the Capitol, but I hated the idea.

"Congratulations," said Anacrites, smirking. In case he planned to annoy me anymore, and to remind him I could ruin him, I gave him the traditional gladiators' salute. He fell silent. I let it go there; he was already enough of an enemy.

"Was I recommended for this position by some kind friend, Caesar?" Antonia Caenis, the Emperor's long-term mistress, had before her death given me a hint that she might ask him to look again at my prospects. His gaze was direct. After forty or fifty years of respecting Antonia Caenis, past advice from her would always count with Vespasian.

"I know your worth, Falco." Sometimes I wondered whether he ever remembered that I held some damning evidence against his son Domitian. I had never yet tried blackmail, though they knew I could.

"Thanks, Caesar!"

"You will go on to worthy things."

I was hamstrung, and we both knew it.

Anacrites and I walked from the Palace together in silence.

For him, there was probably little change in store. He was expected to continue his career in state service, simply enhanced by his new rank. It might do him some good materially. I had always suspected that after a career in spying Anacrites had already stashed away a secret fortune. He owned a villa in Campania, for one thing. I had learned of its existence from Momus, a carefully cultivated nark.

Anacrites never discussed his origins, but he was undoubtedly an ex-slave; even a freedman at the Palace only acquired a luxury villa legitimately as a reward for an exceptional lifetime's service. I had never worked out his age, but Anacrites was not looking at retirement yet; he was vigorous enough to have survived a head wound that ought to have finished him, he had quite a few teeth left and most of his sleeked-back black hair. Well, the other way Palace slaves collected pretty things was straightforward: bribery. Now he was in the middle rank, he would expect the bribes to be bigger.

We parted still in silence. He was not the type to offer a celebratory drink. I could never have swallowed it.

For me, the future looked dreary. I was freeborn, but plebeian. Today I had risen above generations of rascally Didii-to what? To being a rascal who had lost his natural place in life.

I left the Palace, exhausted and gloomy, knowing that I now had to explain my terrible fate to Helena Justina. Her fate too: a senator's daughter, she had left her patrician home for the thrills and the risks of living with a low-down rogue. Helena might seem reserved, but she was passionate and self-willed. With me, she had faced danger and disgrace. We had struggled against poverty and failure, though we were for the most part free to enjoy our lives in our own way. It was a bid for independence that many of her status might envy but few would dare to choose. I believed she had been happy. I know I had been.

Now, after being promised equestrian status for the past three years, I had finally acquired it-together with all its restrictions. I would have to engage in refined branches of commerce, the lower reaches of local priesthoods, and the less well remunerated administrative posts. With the approval of my social equals and a nod from the gods, my future was settled: M. Didius Falco, former private informer, would have three children, no scandals, and a small statue put up in his honor in forty years' time. Suddenly that did not sound much fun.

Helena Justina was stuck with permanent, boring, respectable mediocrity. As a source of scandal, I had definitely failed her.