Shadows in Bronze

XC

When my own heart had stopped pounding I slowly stood up. Helena's garden.

One day, however long it took, I would give her another garden, where there would be no ghosts.

I dragged my feet to the street door, feeling stiff and sour-spirited. Fumbling, I got the key in the lock and fell out into the sunny glare of the street. A small curly dog with a stump of a tail was nosing the sheet which some neat-minded Quirinal steward had flung over the bodies of the two German mercenaries while the refined people of the district sat in their houses complaining.

I ducked at the little dog; he wagged his rump like a conspirator.

'Falco!'

A hired chair stood in the shade of a portico. Beside it, sitting on a step, was the barmaid Tullis.

'Good of you to wait!' Not entirely altruistic on her part: I still had her marriage certificate stuffed in my belt. I handed over the contract and told her I had left her new husband conveniently dead.

‘Take this document to my banker. The money I promised is a legacy left to his freedman Barnabas by Atius Pertinax; as the freedman's widow it's yours. If the banker should query the signature on the contract, just remind him slaves adopt their patron's names when they are liberated formally.'

'How much is the money?' Tullia demanded briskly. 'Half a million.'

'Don't joke about it, Falco!'

I laughed. 'Truth! Try not to spend it all the first week.'

She sniffed, with the wariness of a natural businesswoman. This petal would clutch her cash with a sure grip. 'Can I take you somewhere?'

'Corpse to dispose of-'

Tullia smiled gently, pulling me by the arm to her sedan chair. ‘I was his wife, Falco. Leave me to bury him!'

I let a small puff of laughter crease past my throat. 'Duty's a wonderful thing!'

She took me where I asked, to my gymnasium. She leaned out and kissed me goodbye.

'Careful – too much excitement will finish me, princess!'

I watched her settle back inside the chair, with all the gravity of a woman who knew exactly how she would order the remainder of her life. There would be, I thought, very few men.

She leaned out as the chair pulled away. 'Cashed your bets yet, Falco?'

'Ferox lost.'

'Oh, the bets were on Little Sweetheart!' Tullia informed me laughingly, drawing the curtains to hide her – now she was a wealthy lady – from the crowd.

I staggered in to let Glaucus patch me up, while I dismally remembered my last sight of those white bone disks…

‘What in Hades happened to you? demanded Glaucus, ignoring the sword cut and considering my glum face.

'1 just won a fortune – but my niece has eaten it.'

Glaucus my trainer was a sensible man. 'Then put the child on a chamberpot – and wait!'

We had a discussion about whether bone dissolves in stomach acids, but I won't bother you with that.

He got me clean, and promised I would keep upright if I went steadily. Then I hired a chair myself, as far as the Capena Gate. I sat, dreaming of the new apartment I could now afford if any of the betting tokens were retrieved from Marcia…

Nothing is ever easy. As I paid off the beards at the end of the Senator's street, I noticed a group loafing outside a cookshop: Anacrites' men. They had worked out that sooner or later I would try to see Helena. If I approached the house, my convalescence would be in a prison cell.

Luckily I was no slouch as a lover. I knew where to find the Senator's back gate.

When I crept in like a marble-thief, Camillus Verus himself was standing with his arms folded, staring at the carp in his gloomy pond.

I coughed. 'Nice evening!'

'Hello, Falco.'

I saw him making faces at the fish. 'I ought to warn you, sir, when I leave here I am liable to be arrested in the street.'

‘Give the neighbours something to talk about.' The tunic Glaucus had lent me only had one sleeve; Camillus twitched an eyebrow at my bandaging.

'Pertinax is dead.'

‘Tell me?'

'Some time before I can remember, I shall have to forget.' He nodded. A carp shoved his snout up to the surface but we had nothing to give him so we just stared back guiltily.

'Helena has been asking for you,' her father said.

He took me indoors, as far as the atrium. The statue I had sent him from the Pertinax house now had pride of place. He thanked me as we both gazed at her, with a peacefulness that would have been unlikely if we had been surveying the real thing.

'I still wonder,' mused Camillus, 'if I should have ordered marble-'

'Bronze is best,' I said. I smiled at him, so he would know it was intended as a compliment to his daughter: 'More warmth!'

‘Go and see her,' he urged. 'She won't talk, and she won't weep. See what you can do…'

Her mother and a gaggle of maids were crowding the bedroom. So was a man who must be the doctor. My roses were by Helena's bed, my signet was on her thumb. She was busy ignoring good advice with a set, stubborn face.

I leaned in the doorway like a professional, looking mean and hard. She saw me at once. Helena had a strong face, which took its softness from whatever she was feeling. Whenever that sweet face lit with relief, simply at seeing me walk into a room alive, the mean, hard look became difficult to sustain.

I went on helping the doorframe to keep itself upright, trying to find the sort of tasteless ribaldry she would expect. She spotted the bandages.

'Trust you,' she said, 'to turn up looking bloodstained when there's someone else's doctor to give you a free salve!'

I shook my head slightly, to say I was just scratched. And her eyes answered that whatever I had done to her, she was glad I was here.

Most of my work has to be done alone, but it would be good to know that when a job was over, I could come home to someone who would scoff at me heartily if I showed any tendency to boast. Someone who would actually miss me if I failed to make it home.

Remaining in the room while a lady was examined was obviously indelicate. Luckily the doctor was leaving. I blocked his path.

'The name is Didius Falco. I live off the Via Ostiana, above the Eagle Laundry in Fountain Court.' He looked puzzled. I said, 'Send your bill for professional services to me.'

Within the room, the women of the 'house fell suddenly still. They all looked at Helena. Helena was looking steadily at me.

The doctor was Egyptian in origin. He had a square head, with eyebrows that met in the centre above a straight, strong nose. He looked distinctive, but was very slow. 'I understood that the Senator-'

'The Senator,' I explained with forbearance, 'is the father of this lady. He gave her life, nourishment, education, and the good humour that smiles in her honey-brown eyes. But on this occasion, I will pay your bill.'

'But why-'

'Think about it,' I said gently.

I took him by the elbow and propelled him from the room. Think about it. No, don't think. The child was yours. Ours. Think. Think about that.

I held open the door. Amidst a flutter of female consternation, Julia Justa somehow drained the room of its irrelevant occupants. I was aware of hurried movement behind me; then the door closed.

Silence. Helena Justina, all eyes. Helena and me.

'Marcus… I was not sure if you would come again.'

I tipped my chin, in a travesty of my debonair normal self. 'I told you, fruit, just stay where I can find you, and I'll always come back… Just promise me,' I said quietly. 'Promise me, Helena, that the next time you will tell me.'

In this silence now were all the world's pain and grit Helena's eyes were finally filling with her unshed tears.

'I was working,' I went on carefully. 'I had a lot of things to think about. But I want it understood, Helena – if I had known you needed me, I would have dropped everything-'

'I know!' she said. 'I knew that. Of course.'

That was it then. Really I had known the reason all along.

'I thought,' she began after a moment, with her voice little more than a whisper so I knew she was almost unable to go on. 'I thought there would be plenty of time-'

'Oh my love!'

She was reaching for me even before I began to move. In three strides I had crossed the room. I set one foot on the step, twisting onto the high bed, then at last Helena was locked in my arms, so tight I could hardly feel the deep despairing sobs she so badly needed to release. When I finally loosened my grip to cradle her more kindly, Helena's hand spread protectively on me, where I was hurt. Neither of us spoke, but we both knew. Where her face was pressed to my scratchy cheek most of the tears were hers, but some were my own.