Shadows in Bronze

LIX

I rode downhill for three minutes at a steady pace. As soon as the track widened, I reined in the donkey and drove him back again.

Helena Justina was exactly where I left her, with her face out of sight. Nothing had attacked her: only me.

When my heart steadied I walked over, then reached down and rubbed the top of her head gently with my thumb.

'I thought you had left me,' she said in a muffled voice.

'Is that likely?'

'How should I know?'

'I thought I had left you,' I admitted. 'I'm the sort of fool who would think that. If you just stay in the same place so I can find you, I shall always come back.' She choked on a sob.

I dropped on my haunches and wrapped both arms round her. I held her tight but after a few hot tears had trickled away under the neck of my tunic she grew quieter. We sat there, perfectly still, while I sent my strength flowing into her, and the strain I had been feeling for so long it had come to seem natural went running away too.

Eventually Helena mastered her misery and looked up. I hooked two fingers into her neekchain and pulled out my old silver ring. She coloured faintly. 'I used to wear it…' She tailed off in embarrassment.

With both hands I snapped the cham apart; Helena gasped and caught the little circle of silver as it fell into her lap. I glimpsed the inscription: anima mea, 'my soul'. I grasped her left hand and replaced the ring myself. 'Wear it! I gave it to you to wear!'

Helena seemed to hesitate. 'Marcus, when you gave me your ring to wear – were you in love with me?'

That was when I realized how serious things were.

'I made myself a rule once,' I said.

‘Never fall in love with a client -' She rounded on me in distress, then saw my face. ‘Sweetheart, I've made a lot of rules, and broken most of them! Don't you know me? I am frightened you will despise me, and terrified other people will see you doing it – but I'm lost without you. How can I prove it? Fight a lion? Pay my debts? Swim the Hellespont like some lunatic?'

'You can't swim.'

'Learning is the hard part of the test'

'I'll teach you,' muttered Helena. 'If you fall into any deep water, I want you to float!'

The water was pretty deep here. I stared at her. She stared at the ground. Then she confessed, 'That day you left for Croton, I was missing you so badly I went to your apartment to look for you; we must have passed one another in the street.

Overcome, she ducked her head onto her knees again. I cackled with laughter, bitterly. 'You should have told me.'

'You wanted to leave me.'

'No,' I said. My right hand was cradling the back of her head, exploring a hollow which seemed purposely made to fit the ball of my thumb. 'No, my darling. I never wanted that.'

‘You said you did.'

'I'm an informer. All talk. Mostly inaccurate.'

'Yes,' she agreed thoughtfully, raising her head again. 'Didius Falco, you do say stupid things!'

I grinned, then I told her some more.

Above the Bay, the sun broke free of that vaporous cloud cover, and a band of light ran swift as silk across the coastal plain and up the mountain where we were. Warmth flooded over us. The elegant ellipse of the coastline brightened; at its open end the Island of Capreae emerged as a dark smudge complementing the folds of the Lactarii range. Below us the small, white, red-roofed buildings of Herculaneum, Oplontis and Pompeii crouched along the shore, while on the linenfold slopes of the distant hills villages and farms tantalized the eyesight among the natural rocks…

'Hmm! Just the sort of spectacular vista where you bring a beautiful woman, and never once look at the view…'

As the sunlight hit us, I levelled Helena on her back and stretched myself alongside, beaming down at her. She started stroking my ear as if it was something wonderful. My ear could take more of that; I realigned my head so it was more readily available while I basked in her scrutiny. 'What are you looking at?'

'Oh, a thatch of black curls which never look combed -' I happened to know Helena liked my curls. 'One of those long, straight, superior noses off an Etruscan tomb painting. Eyes that keep moving, in a face which never reveals what they have seen. Dimples!' she scoffed (driving her little finger into one of them).

I jerked my head; trapping the finger in my teeth, then pretended to eat it.

'Excellent teeth!' she added crossly, as an afterthought.

'What a wonderful day!' I had always liked warm weather. I had always liked Helena too. It was hard to remember there had ever seemed much point pretending otherwise. 'My best friend's happy getting drunk with his wife, so I can forget him. I'm lying in the sunshine up here, with you all to myself, and in a moment I shall be kissing you…' She smiled up at me. A shiver ran all down my neck. Alone with me now, she seemed completely at peace. I too had relaxed to the point where I was ceasing to relax… Helena began to reach for me, just as I gathered her closer and kissed her at last.

Many seconds later I looked up gravely at the sky. 'Thank you, Jove!'

Helena laughed.

The green dress she was wearing was light enough to show that she was wearing nothing else. It was fastened along each elbow-length sleeve with five or six mosaic glass buttons twisted through embroidered loops. I undid one to see what would happen; Helena combed my curls with her fingers, smiling. 'Shall I help?'

I shook my head. The buttons were stiff, but stubbornness and other factors had taken hold by then so I winkled off three, working upwards; then I explored her arm, and since she seemed to like it I carried on unbuttoning to the top of the sleeve.

My hand slid from her wrist to her shoulder then down again, no longer on her arm. Her cool soft skin which never saw the sun shrank, then rose to my touch at her intake of breath; I had to fight to stop my fingers quivering.

'Is this leading somewhere, Marcus?'

'I hope so! Don't imagine I could get you on your own at the top of a mountain and not make the most of the chance.'

'Oh I never thought that!' Helena assured me quietly. 'Why do you think I wanted you to come?

Then, being a practical woman, she undid all the buttons on the other sleeve herself.

A long time afterwards, when I was utterly defenceless, a wild boar strolled out of the undergrowth.

"Grrr!' said the Senator's daughter amiably, over my naked shoulder.

The wild boar snuffled, then turned round with a disapproving snort and ambled off.