Shadows in Bronze

XXV

We had come to meet a man. As usual in these circumstances we suspected he would lead us a merry dance then rob us blind. Since he was a plumber, it was a virtual certainty.

We found our way north past the Temple of Fortuna Augustus towards the water tower beside the Vesuvius Gate. The Pompeians provided sensible raised walkways but at the hour we turned up they were using all the pavement space themselves, so we three honest strangers traipsed through their rubbish in the road. While we concentrated on planting our sandals out of the stickiest mule dung it was difficult to inspect the street scenery, but from the back alleys we could glimpse the tops of trellises and walnut trees above high garden walls. Fine, spacious, two-storeyed houses faced onto the main thoroughfares, though there seemed to be a depression: so many were being converted into laundries and warehouses or let out piecemeal as apartments over shops.

Until the earthquake, the town's water system had relied on the aqueduct which brought water from Sermum to Neapolis, a handsome artefact with a subsidiary branch which came in here to a big square tower which had three arches of brickwork decorating its outer walls. Large mains used to lead off, one for the public fountains and two others for business premises and private homes, but the quake had cracked the cistern and broken up the distribution pipes. The man we wanted was tinkering with the reservoir halfheartedly. He wore the usual one-sleeved workman's tunic, two little warts beside his chin, and the whimsical, slightly tired expression of a man who is much brighter than his job requires.

'Been at it long?' I asked, trying to hide my amazement that in the country it took eight years to cement a leaky tank.

‘Still waiting for a town-council order.' He clanked down his basket of chisels and wrenches. 'If you're buying a house in Pompeii, sink a deep well in your garden and pray for rain.'

I owed our introduction to my brother-in-law the plasterer; it took the form of that death's head phrase, Just mention my name… His name was Mico. I mentioned it extremely cautiously.

‘Mico's name,' I admitted, 'sends even hard-bitten foremen with thirty years' experience rushing off to the nearest fountain to drown themselves – I dare say you remember him?'

'Oh, I remember Mico!' observed the plumber, through gritted teeth.

'I reckon,' suggested Petronius, who knew my cackhanded brother-in-law and despised him as we all did, 'that after enduring a riot and an earthquake, being visited by young Mico proves the proverb that disasters come in threes!'

Mico's plumber, whose name was Ventriculus, was a quiet, calm, honest-looking type who managed to give the impression that if he said you needed a new cistern it might almost be true. 'He was pretty bad,' agreed the plumber.

'Torture!' I said, starting to smile for the first time this trip. Heaping abuse on my brothers-in-law always cheers me up. 'A painter in Latium lost an eye when his brush bounced off a tumulus in Mico's bumpy skin. He received no compensation; the judge said, if he knew he was following Mico around he should have been prepared for hummocks.'

I stopped, then we all grinned. ‘So you're a friend of Mico's?'

'Isn't everyone?' murmured Ventriculus, and we all grinned again. Mico is convinced anyone who meets him loves him. The fact is, they just stand there trapped by his awful great-heartedness while he buys them drinks (he does buy the drinks – he buys plenty; once Mico gets you stuck in a tavern he keeps you squirming there for hours). 'Why,' Ventriculus teased me, 'would any loving brother give his sister to this Mico?'

'My sister Victorina gave herself!'

I could have added that she gave herself to anyone with the bad taste to have her, usually behind the Temple of Venus on the Aventine, but that cast a slur on the rest of the family which we did not deserve.

The thought of my relations was upsetting me so badly that I launched into what I wanted Ventriculus to do. He listened with the mild demeanour of a man who had waited eight years for his town council to draw up a specification for emergency repairs. 'We do have spare capacity; I can take on a foreigner…'

So we all trooped back through Pompeii and out to the port. The plumber plodded along in silence, like a man who has learned to be polite to lunatics through dealing with civil engineers.

Thinking about my nephew, I had forgotten to check my ship's arrival, but when the Emperor says a vessel will be moved from Ostia to the Sarnus you can reckon that the sailors will set off immediately and not stop to dice for any sea nymphs on the way.

The ship called the Circe was waiting in the harbour. This was one of the Tarentum galleys built for Atius Pertinax – a huge, square-sailed merchantman, thirty foot deep in the hold, with two great steering paddles either side of a high stern which curled up and over like the slim neck of a goose. She was sturdy enough to have braved the Indian Ocean and float back with sweet cargoes of ivory, peppercorns, gum tragacanth, rock crystal and luminous sea pearls. But since her maiden voyage she had led a harder life; Pertinax had been using her last year to thrash round Gaul. Now she was laden to the gunwales with a cold Atlantic shipment – long, four-sided ingots of British lead.

Ventriculus whistled admiringly when we all piled on board.

'I told you what they were,' I said as he inspected the ingots in amazement.

'I do hope,' he queried bluntly, 'these are not lost Treasury stocks'

'Just separated out from the system,' I replied.

'Stolen? '

'Not by me.'

'What's their history?'

'They were part of a fraud I investigated. You know how it is. They might have been useful for evidence so they were parked in a yard while the higher-ups all wondered whether they wanted a court case or a cover up.'

'What's the decision?

'Nothing; interest faded out. So I found them still lying around… There's no documentation attached to them, and the Treasurer at the Temple of Saturn will never spot the loss.' Well; probably not.

'Any silver still in these?' Venticulus asked, and he looked disappointed when I shook my head.

Petronius was gazing into the open hold with the grey face of a man who bitterly remembered being posted to a frontline fort in a province at the end of the world: Britain, where whichever way you turned, somehow the filthy weather always met you in the face. I saw him square his shoulders, as if they still felt damp. He hated Britain almost as much as I did. Though not quite. He still reminisced about the famous east coast oysters, and his eye sharpened keenly after women with red-gold hair.

‘Does Vespasian know you've palmed this stuff?' he muttered in an anxious tone. He had a responsible job with a respectable salary; his wife liked the salary almost as much as Petronius loved his job.

‘Special franchise!' I assured him cheerfully. 'Vespasian enjoys making a quick denarius on the side.'

‘Did you ask him to chip in with you?'

'He never said no.'

'Or yes either! Falco, I despair of you-'

‘Petro, stop worrying!'

‘You've even pinched the ship!'

'The ship,' I stated firmly, 'is due to be returned to the indulgent millionaire who bought it for his son; when I've finished I'll inform the old duller where his nautical real estate is berthed. Look, there's a fair weight to be shifted here; we had better get on… Oh, Parnassus! Where's that lad?'

With a sudden pang of fright I sprang out on deck, scanning the harbour for Larius, who had disappeared. Just then the half-baked lunatic came roaming along the quayside with his characteristic lope and a vacant expression, gawping at the other ships. I caught sight of him – not far from a wrinkly stevedore with what looked like ninety years of sunburn lacquering his features, who was sitting on a bollard watching us.