Poseidon_s Gold

XIII

Maia lived on the Aventine, not two streets from Mother. Not far away was another group of my relatives whom I needed to visit; my dead sister Victorina's household. It was unlikely to help my enquiries, but as nominal head of our family it was my duty to pay my respects. With a murder sentence hanging over me, I went along as soon as possible, feeling like a man who might soon be arrested and deprived of the chance.

Victorina and her depressing husband Mico had made their nest on one side of the Temple of Diana. Victorina, with her long career of dirty assignations at the back of the Temple of Isis, had never appeared to realise that living next to the chaste huntress might be inappropriate.

As addresses go, it occupied a glamorous site, but had few other selling-points. They existed in two rooms among a warren of dingy apartments at the back of a large copper shop. The constant clanging of mallets on metalware had left the whole family slightly deaf. The tenement they rented had slanting floors, frail walls, a rotten ceiling and a strong odour from the giant vat of urine in the stairwell which the landlord never emptied. This polluting dollium leaked slowly, which at least made room for refills. Hardly any light could penetrate to the apartments-an advantage, since seeing their homes too clearly might have led to a long queue of suicides on the Probus Bridge.

It was some time since I had needed to pay a visit to my sister's place. I could not remember exactly where she lived. Treading gingerly because of the leaky dollium, I made a couple of false attempts before I identified the right apartment. Hastily avoiding the neighbours' curses and lewd propositions, I dived through what remained of a coarsely woven curtain and found my destination. There could have been no greater contrast than that between the neat apartment where Maia was successfully bringing up her children and the humid hole, with its fragrance of cabbage and children's damp tunics, in which this other feckless family lived.

Mico was at home. Inevitably, he was out of work. As a plasterer my brother-in-law had no skill. The only reason he was allowed to remain in the Plasterers' Guild was pity. Even when contractors were desperate for labour, Mico was the last man they called in.

I found him attempting to wipe honey from the chin of his youngest but one. His eldest daughter, Augustinilla, the one we had been looking after in Germany, glared at me as if the loss of her mama was all my fault, and stalked from the house. The six-year-old boy was systematically hitting the four-year-old with a small clay goat. I prised the baby off a distinctly grubby rug. He was an antisocial tyke who clung to his perch like a kitten putting out its claws. He burped, with the evil relief of a child who was choosing his moment to throw up now that a visitor had provided a respectable cloak for him to throw up on.

In another corner of the room a slack bundle of flab clothed in unappealing rags cackled at me amiably: Mico's mother. She must have slid in like fish oil the minute Victorina died. She was eating half a loaf but not bothering to help Mico. The women in my own family despised this placid old dame, but I saluted her without rancour. My own relations were born interferers, but some folks have the tact to sit by and merely act as parasites. I liked her style. We all knew where we were with Mico's mother, and it wasn't being harried out of doors by a broom or having our guilty consciences probed.

'Marcus!' Mico greeted me, with his usual effusive gratitude. I felt my teeth set.

Mico was small and swarthy. He had a pasty face and a few black teeth. He would do anyone a favour, provided they were prepared to accept that he would do it very badly and drive them wild with incessant chat.

'Mico!' I cried, slapping him on the shoulder. I reckoned he needed stiffening. Once his balance was upset for any reason, depression set in. He had been a long river of gloom even before he acquired the excuse of five motherless children, his mother at home, no work, no hope, and no luck. The bad luck was his real tragedy. If Mico tripped over a bag of gold bits on his way to the baker's, the bag would split open, the aurei would scatter-and he would watch every one of them drop down a manhole into a sewer at full flood.

My heart fell as he drew me aside with a purposeful air. 'Marcus Didius, I hope you don't mind, but we held the funeral without you…'

Dear gods, he was a worrier. How Victorina ever stood him I don't know. 'Well of course I was sorry to miss the formalities…' I tried to look cheerful since I knew children are sensitive to atmosphere. Luckily Mico's tribe were all too busy pulling at each other's ears.

'I felt terrible about not allowing you a chance to do the eulogy…' Apart from the fact I was delighted to be spared it, this idiot was her husband. The day they married, Victorina had become his charge in life and death; it was Mico's duty to dredge up something polite to declaim at her funeral. The last thing I would have wanted was for him to step aside in my favour as some misplaced compliment to me as head of the Didius family. Besides, Victorina had had a father living; we all did. I was just the unhappy soul who had had to shoulder the responsibility when our shirking, self-seeking father chose to do a moonlight flit.

Mico invited me to a stool. I sat, squashing something soft. 'I'm really happy to have this chance for a chat, Marcus Didius…' With his normal unerring judgement he had chosen as a confidant a person who could hardly bear to listen to five words from him.

'Pleased to help…'

Things went from bad to worse. Mico assumed I had come to hear a full commentary on the funeral. 'A really good crowd turned out for her-' Must have been a quiet day at the racecourse. 'Victorina had so many friends…' Men, mostly. I can never understand why fellows who have tangled with a good-time girl acquire such peculiar curiosity if she passes on. As Victorina's brother I would have resented it.

'Your friend Petronius was there!' Mico sounded surprised. I wanted to be surprised myself. 'Such a decent fellow. Good of him to represent you like that…'

'Lay off, Mico. Petronius Longus is on the verge of locking me up in jail!' Mico looked concerned. I felt a renewed surge of my own anxiety about Censorinus and my deadly predicament. 'How are you managing?' I changed the subject abruptly. Mico's nasty-tempered baby was kicking my left kidney. 'Is there anything you need?' My brother-in-law was too disorganised to know. 'I've some New Year presents from Germany for the children. They're still packed, but I'll bring them round as soon as I can get at them. My apartment's wrecked-'

Mico showed a genuine interest. 'Yes, I heard about your rooms!' Great. Everyone seemed to know what had happened, yet not one of them had tried to do anything about it. 'Do you want a hand putting things straight?' Not from him, I didn't. I wanted my old place to be liveable, and by next week not next Saturnalia.

'Thanks, but you have enough to think about. Make your ma look after the children while you get out a bit. You need some company-you need some work, Mico!'

'Oh something will come up.' He was full of misplaced optimism.

I gazed around the sordid room. There was no sense of absence, no silence left by Victorina's loss. It was hardly surprising. Even in life she had always been off somewhere else having her own idea of a good time.

'I see you're missing her!' Mico remarked in a low voice.

I sighed. But at least his attempts to comfort me seemed to cheer him up.

Since I was there I decided to get a few questions in: 'Look, I'm sorry if this is not the right time, but I'm making some enquiries for Mother and I'm seeing everyone about it. Did Festus ever say anything to you about a scheme he was involved in-Greek statuary, ships from Caesarea, that sort of thing?'

Mico shook his head. 'No. Festus never talked to me.' I knew why that was. He would have had more luck trying to dispute the philosophy that life is a bunch of whirling atoms with a half-naked, barely sober garland girl. 'He was always a pal, though,' Mico insisted, as though he thought he might have given the wrong impression. I knew it was true. Festus could always be relied on to throw crumbs to a stranded fledgling or pat a three-legged dog.

'Just thought I'd ask. I'm trying to find out what he was up to on his last trip to Rome.'

'Afraid I can't help you, Marcus. We had a few drinks, and he arranged a couple of jobs for me, but that's all I saw of him.'

'Anything special about the jobs?' It was a forlorn hope.

'Just normal business. Plastering over brickwork…' I lost interest. Then Mico kindly informed me, 'Marina probably knows what deals he had on. You ought to ask her.'

I thanked him patiently, as if the thought of speaking about Festus to his girlfriend had never occurred to me.