Shadows in Bronze

XXVII

We quickened our pace again, our eyes still following the boat, but it grew darker and she was lost from us out in the Bay.

'Very clever!' I scoffed. 'I owe this to your tar-stained nark on the quayside, I presume?' Larius ignored me. I tried to contain my anger. 'Larius, we ought to have tipped him a denarius to stop him warning the owner that we asked.' We kept striding on. I made an attempt to restore peace. 'I apologize. Tell me I'm an ungrateful, bad-tempered swine.'

‘You're a swine… It's just his age; he'll grow out of it!' Larius announced to the ocean balefully.

I laughed, ruffling his hair.

'Being a private informer,' I confided, twenty paces later, 'is less glamorous than you think – it's not all hard knocks and easy women, but mostly bad dinners and ruining your feet!' Fresh air and exercise were doing the boy good, but I felt- glum.

'What shall we do when we find her, Uncle Marcus?' he fetched out unexpectedly. I had no idea what had brought us back on friendly terms.

'The Isis Africana? I shall have to decide my tactics when I've had a quiet look. But this Crispus sounds tricky-'

'What's tricky about him?'

'Big ideas.' I had done my homework before I left Rome. 'The illustrious Lucius Aufidius Crispus is a senator from Latium. He owns estates at Fregellae, Fundi, Norba, Formiae, Tarracina – good growing land in famous areas – plus a huge villa at the Sinuessa spa where he can sit in the sun and tot up his accounts. In his career in public service he landed jobs in all the wrong provinces: Noricum, for heaven's sake! You've been to school; where's Noricum?'

'Go up to the Alps and turn right?'

'Could well be – anyway, when Nero died and Rome came up for auction, nobody had heard of Noricum and nobody had heard of him. Despite that, Crispus sees imperial purple in his horoscope. What would be tricky is if he persuaded Fregellae, Fundi, Norba, Formiae and Tarracina to glimpse it too.'

'Local boy making good?'

‘Right! So he's dangerous, Larius. Your mother will never forgive me if I let you become involved.'

Disgust silenced him briefly, but he was too inquisitive to sulk for long. 'Uncle Marcus, you always called politics a fool's game-'

'It is! But I was tired of helping bad-tempered women divorce feeble stationer clerks, and working for the clerks was even worse; they always wanted to pay me in bottom- grade papyrus you wouldn't use to scribble a curse. Then I was invited to drudge for the Palatine. At least if the Emperor honours his commitments, there should be good pickings.'

'For the money then?' Larius sounded puzzled.

'Money is freedom, lad.'

If he had not been too soft to take the knocks and too shy to handle the women, this Larius would have made a good informer; he could persist with a line of enquiry until the person he was questioning wanted to thump his ear. (Also, his outsize puppy feet were bearing up to the Oplontis road far better than mine; I had a badly sore toe.)

'What do you want money for?' he grilled me relentlessly.

'Fresh meat, tunics that fit properly, all the books I can lay my hands on, a new bed with all four legs the same length, a lifetime's supply of Falernian to guzzle with Petro-'

'A woman?' he interrupted my happy flow.

'Oh, I doubt it! We were talking about freedom, weren't we?'

A vaguely reproachful silence ensued. Then Larius murmured, 'Uncle Marcus, don't you believe in love?'

'Not anymore.'

'There is a rumour you were smitten recently.'

'The lady in question left me. Due to my shortage of cash.'

'Oh,' he said.

'Oh indeed!'

'What was she like?' He was not even leering; he sounded genuinely intrigued.

'Marvellous. Don't make me remember. Right now,' I suggested, feeling older than my thirty years, 'what I'd settle for is a big copper bowl full of piping hot water to soak my tender feet!'

We trudged on.

'Was the lady -' persisted Larius.

'Larius, I'd like to pretend I'd drag off my boots for her, and walk barefoot over a cinder path for another hundred miles. Frankly I stop feeling romantic when I get a bulging blister on my toe!'

'Was she important?' Larius finished stubbornly.

'Not very,' I said. (On principle.)

'So not,' persisted Larius, "she whom, through living, gives your life its sweet reason"…? Catullus,' he added, as though he thought I might not know. (I knew all right; I had been fourteen myself once, and stuffed to the gills with dreams of sexual conquest and depressing poetry.)

'No,' I said. 'But she could have been – and for your private information, that's a Falco original!'

Larius murmured quietly that he was sorry about my sore toe.