Shadows in Bronze

XXII

Crossing the Plain of Capua we had one of our emergencies.

By then my friend Petronius Longus the watch captain had remembered that the last time we went on holiday he had said never again. I was working, using Petro's brood for cover. One of my numerous nephews, Larius, who was just turned fourteen, had been sent with us because his mother said he was going through a difficult phase. My sister thought he needed supervision. He was unlikely to get it. My view was that the seaside existed to let me act irresponsibly.

I had made that quip in front of Arria Silvia, Petro's wife; one of several mistakes already, and we were still ten miles from the sea…

The atmosphere was becoming more coastal. Both Petronius and Silvia assumed we were headed for Baiae, the best resort on the Bay, but Baiae was further north than I needed to be. I was wondering when I could safely mention this.

We had already skirted Capua. The white-scarred crags of the Apennines continued on our left, but the rain-soaked hills on the right had petered out. Up ahead, the flat-based valley merged into a low grey oceanic horizon. We were watching for Mount Vesuvius to separate from the main range near Neapolis.

Petronius had the reins. I did my whack, but he enjoys driving and since it was his family swarming in the back it seemed natural for him to be in charge. We had come in an ox cart: three adults, three little girls, hampers, plenty of amphorae, enough clothing for a six months' tour, several kittens at the springy, exploratory stage, my dismal lad Larius, and a fifteen-year-old neighbour Silvia had brought to help. This teenager was a lumpen creature, given to wild sobbing moods. Her name was Ollia. She was a maid with a dream, but she could not decide what it was.

I had warned Silvia that Ollia was bound to be seduced on a beach by some wily fisherboy. Silvia only shrugged. She was tiny and tough. Petronius endured her with his easy good temper, but she terrified me.

Petronius Longus had acquired his wife five years before. She was a copper-beater's daughter. As soon as we came home from Britain I had watched Silvia and her father settle on Petro like two old women in a market selecting a flesh sprat for their festival treat. I said nothing. There was no point upsetting him. He had always been attracted to dainty girls with flat chests and scornful voices who ordered him about.

So far the marriage was a peculiar success. Silvia's father had set them up in a way that showed how grateful he was to be rid of her. (Petronius, who was a scoundrel in his quiet way, had all along been eyeing up the copper-beater's cash.) The two of them must have quarrelled, but they kept it to themselves. When they produced Petronilla, Silvana and Tadia in rather short order there was no evidence that Petro had only done it to gain the honours of a three-times father to improve his civic rights. He adored his children; I had a hunch he even felt romantic towards his wife. But although Silvia thought the world of him in some ways, to her he was always just a sprat.

Petro's approach to fatherhood was pretty calm; he carried on with whatever he wanted to do while his rumbustious tots mountaineered all over him. The two eldest were scrambling up his powerful back, then slowly sliding down again, murdering his tunic braid. Tadia, the littlest, was viewing the countryside from my lap. Since she knew she ought not to be sucking her thumb she was gnawing-one of mine. Private informers are iron-jawed, hard-hearted brutes who treat women like casual flotsam, but Tadia was only two; she did not yet appreciate that her friendly Uncle Marcus would pick up any pretty girl and play with her, then toss her aside as soon as the next one smiled at him…

Petronius had stopped the cart.

Tadia had a wide-eyed, panicky, whimpering look. Her father reproached me coldly, 'She obviously wants a lavatory, so why can't you mention it?'

Petro's Tadia was famous for enduring miseries in silence; just the sort of woman I longed to acquire but never could.

By then we were all tired, and all starting to wonder if this trip was a wise idea.

'Well, I've stopped,' announced Petronius. (He was a single-minded driver who resented interruptions, though with three children under five we had had plenty of those.)

No one else moved. I volunteered to put her down.

The Plain of Capua has no public facilities. Still, no one was going to mind if a two-year-old in trouble watered their crops.

Petronius Longus waited with the ox cart while Tadia and I stumbled about the local scenery. We were in the most fertile region of Italy, whose thriving vineyards, neat market gardens and well-gnarled olive groves extend from the great Vulturnus River to the sweet Lactarii Mountains, where the flocks of sheep run to six hundred ewes at a time. We might as well have been in the deserts of Arabia Petrae. We had to look for a bush. Our immediate location offered only thin scrub. At two, Tadia was a woman of the world, which meant she refused to attempt a public performance so long as anyone within a five-mile radius might be buried in a foxhole watching her.

Finding Tadia's camouflage took us so far we could hardly see the road. It was rapturously peaceful. A cricket scraped at us from a sprig of flowering broom and there was a woozy scent of warm, bruised thyme underfoot. Birds were singing everywhere. I would have liked to dawdle and enjoy the countryside but Petronius held the rigid view that a family on a journey has to rush on.

Tadia and I gave her bush a thorough dousing, then emerged.

'Hmm! Tadia Longina, that's a pretty butterfly; let's wait here and watch him -'

Tadia watched the butterfly, while I stared nervously towards the road.

I had glimpsed a dark, surly flurry. Men on horseback flooded round our companions like sparrows mobbing a crust. Then the slight figure of Arria Silvia stood up in the cart, apparently delivering Cato the Elder's speech to the senate on the need to destroy Carthage… The riders galloped off, somewhat hastily.

I seized Tadia, sprinted back to the road, recaptured a loose kitten, then vaulted up beside Petronius, who started the ox.

Silvia sat in pinched silence while I tried to betray no excitement as Petronius drove on. He was steering as he always did, except when he spotted a narrow bridge ahead, or some squabble among his children was making him tense. He held the reins loosely in his left hand, leaning forwards on one knee, while his right arm lolled on his diaphragm. He looked as if he was nursing the first murmur of a heart attack, yet it was just how he relaxed.

'What was all that about?' I murmured discreetly.

'Oh.' He stretched his shoulders slowly before he spoke. 'Half a dozen foul-mouthed countrymen in armour- plated helmets looking for some idiot who had stamped on their toes. They pawed our kit and threatened us all until Silvia gave them a piece of her mind -' Sampling Arria Silvia's mind was as tricky as letting a midge fly up your nose. 'I pretended I was just a Roman tourist who had stopped beside the highroad for an argument with his wife-' I wondered what they were arguing about; knowing them, probably me. 'They rattled off towards Capua. The sour green cloak in charge said I was the wrong man anyway…'

'Who did they want then?' I meekly enquired.

'Some stupid bastard called Falco,' Petronius growled.