Poseidon s Gold

XXXII

My next task was trickier: I went to see my mother to ask about the knife.

She was being extremely vague on the subject. I learned no more than she had already told Petronius. 'Yes, it looked like mine. I really can't be expected to remember where something disappeared to when I probably haven't seen it for twenty years:'

'Somebody must have walked off with it,' I told her grimly. 'Allia's the prime candidate.'

Ma knew my sister Allia was always popping into someone else's house to borrow half a loaf or a set of loom weights. She was famous for not bothering to have her own possessions while there was anybody else she could count on to supply her needs.

Not that I was suggesting Allia was implicated in the soldier's death.

'I suppose you're right.' Whilst apparently agreeing, Ma managed to put mysterious doubts into her tone.

Under strain, I could hear myself getting annoyed. 'Well, will you ask all the family what they know about this thing? It's important, Ma!'

'So I gather! I heard you were arrested, but you let yourself be bought out!'

'Yes, my father released me,' I answered patiently.

'Last time you were in prison, I was good enough to bribe the jailer!'

'Don't remind me about that.'

'You ought to have more pride.'

'Last time had been a stupid mistake over nothing, Ma. This time a murder-court judge happens to have a pressing case against me. The position is rather different. If they haul me in front of a jury, your precious boy may be lost. The surety cost heavily, if that's any consolation. Geminus will be feeling the gap in his purse.'

'He'll feel it even more if you run off!' My mother clearly saw me as even more of a ruffian than Pa. 'So how are you getting on?'

'I'm not.'

Ma gave me a look as if she thought I had deliberately arranged my arrest to escape having to exert myself on my brother's behalf. 'So where are you dashing off to now?'

'A wine bar,' I said, since she already thought the worst of me.

It was true, anyway.

Finding a seedy bar I had visited only once before, five years earlier, at the end of a long night's entertainment, when I was depressed and drunk, took time. I spent nearly an hour roaming alleys round the Caelian. When I finally came across the Virgin, Gaius Baebius was already there. He looked tired, but smug.

'Ho there, my travel-stained amicus! How did you manage to arrive so promptly? I've been wearing myself out looking everywhere. Do you know this place?'

'Never been here, Falco.'

'How did you find it so quickly then?'

'I asked someone.'

After working off his breakfast and working up another appetite with his mad gallop to Ostia, he was tucking into a substantial lunch. He had bought and paid for it; there was no offer to include me. I called for a small flagon and decided to eat later on my own.

'The records still exist,' mumbled Gaius, chewing happily. 'It will take a few months to wade through them.' He was a slow worker. I could speed him up, but I knew in advance it would frustrate me.

'I'll help if they will allow me in. Can I look at them with you?'

'Oh yes. Any citizen with a legitimate reason can inspect the shipping lists. Of course,' he said, 'you have to know the procedures.' From Gaius Baebius this was a message that he was doing me a favour, and would remind me about it in future at every opportunity.

'Fine,' I said.

My brother-in-law started making elaborate arrangements for meeting me tomorrow, while I groaned inwardly. I hate people who complicate life with unnecessary paraphernalia. And I was none too pleased at the prospect of spending days in his dreary company. Lunch was bad enough.

I was looking around. The place was as grim as I remembered. Gaius Baebius sat eating his bowlful of beef and vegetables with the impervious calm of an innocent. Maybe my eyesight was better. I was filled with unease by the dark corners and sinister clientele.

We were in a dank cellar, a hole cut half into the Caelian Hill, more a burrow than a building. Beneath its filthy arched roof stood a few battered tables lit by tapers in oily old jugs. The landlord had a lurching gait and sported a viciously scarred cheek, probably acquired in a bar fight. His wine was sour. His customers were worse.

Since my last visit one of the rough-cast walls had acquired a crudely drawn pornographic picture in wide swathes of murky paint. It involved some mightily furnished manly types and a shy female who had lost her guardian and her clothes but who was gaining some unusual experience.

I summoned mine host. 'Who did your striking art work?'

'Varga, Manlius and that mob.'

'Do they still come in here?'

'On and off.' That sounded useless. It was not a den where I wished to hang around like a critic or a collector until these flighty artists deigned to appear.

'Where can I look them up while I'm in the neighbourhood?'

He made a few desultory suggestions. 'So what do you think of our frescos?'

'Fabulous!' I lied.

Now that the wall-painting had been drawn to his attention, Gaius Baebius was staring at it so fixedly I felt embarrassed. My sister would have been seriously annoyed to see him studying it so closely, but she would be more furious if I abandoned him anywhere so dangerous. Out of brotherly regard for Junia I had to sit there fuming while Gaius slowly finished his lunch-bowl as he perused the brothel scenes.

'Very interesting!' he commented as we left.

Shedding my inane relation, I followed up the landlord's suggestions for finding the fresco painters, but had no luck. One place the man had sent me was a rented room in a boarding-house. I could go back there at a different time and hope for better results. Any excuse was welcome. Needing food fairly urgently, I took myself off somewhere that by comparison was highly salubrious: back on the Aventine, to Flora's Caupona.