Shadows in Bronze

LXVI

I decided to raid Poppaea's villa while Crispus was there.

Ideally I would have slipped inside the place on my own. My expertise as an informer would lead me straight to the diners at the moment when they concluded the sordid details of their plan; then, equipped with hard evidence, M. Didius Falco, our demigod hero, would confront them, confound them, and single-handedly clap neck-irons on the lot.

Most private informers will boast of such ideal episodes. My life had a crankier pattern of its own.

The first problem was that Helena, Petronius and Larius, who were all highly inquisitive, came too. We arrived like second-rate temple drummers, too noisy – and too late. As we stood on the terrace debating how best to get in, the supper party streeled out past us. There was no chance of extracting a confession from any of them – or the slightest sense.

Crispus himself led the exodus, feet first and face down; he knew nothing about anything. The dispassionate slaves who were bringing him to his skiff had simply lifted the dinner table he had fallen across, limbs akimbo, then bumped him outside on it like a finished dessert course, with tonight's limp wreath hung on one of the handles and his shoestraps through another. It would be a long time before his honour woke up, and he would not make a good subject for interview at that point.

His guests had been the commander from Misenum, plus a group of trireme captains. The navy was made of really stern stuff. During the recent civil wars we had had a bad outbreak of piracy in the Black Sea, but here on the west coast things had stayed peaceful since Pompey's day. The Misenum fleet had little to do but cope with the many claims on their social life. Round the Bay of Neapolis there were parties every night, so the navy spent most evenings infiltrating private functions in search of free drink. Their capacity was enormous and their expertise at steering a course home afterwards while singing jolly songs in fabulously obscene versions made sober men blench.

When they first emerged from the house, half a dozen trireme captains were pretending to be hunting dogs. They were nipping each other, yowling, yapping, begging with their front paws, panting with their tongues out, sniffing at the moon and at the insalubrious backside of whoever was in front. Their delight in their own silliness was a joy. Their fleet commander circled these splendid fellows on all fours, basing like a Lactarii sheep. They all milled around like Greek coinedians whose producer had failed to plot their moves on stage, then the situation somehow gelled of its own accord; they surged up a gangway with heavy arms on each other's shoulders, locked in a loving chain like blood brothers, lifting their knees as they danced. One nearly fell overboard, but at the summit of his arc over the water his comrades used centrifugal force to swing him back, chorusing a wildly soaring whoop. Trailing its gangplank, their transport disappeared.

The evening seemed more melancholy after they had gone. Petronius said his respect for the navy had trebled on the spot.

We were leaving when Helena Justina remembered her friend. I wanted to abandon Fausta, but was overruled. (One reason why an informer should work alone: to avoid being dragged into good deeds.)

The lady was lurking in the atrium, weeping copiously. She had been at the amphorae. This would only seem a good idea to a wine merchant with sinking profits (if such a man exists).

All around her the caterers were tidying up, ignoring the dishevelled spectre sobbing on her knees. I could see Helena stiffening. 'They despise her! She's a woman, behaving stupidly, but worst of all, she has no man to look after her-'

Silvia and Petro stepped back shyly, but Helena had already forced a slave to stop and explain. He said Fausta had made another indomitable foray into the villa, halfway through the meal. The banquet had been a racy one: all male, with all-female entertainment.

'And Aufidius Crispus,' cried Helena haughtily, 'was entwined with a Spanish dancing girl?'

‘No madam…' The slave looked sideways at Petro and me. We grinned. 'Two, actually!' He was happy to go into details but Helena hissed through her teeth.

Evidently Fausta had simply crumpled and withdrawn, in the kind of abject grief that was her well-known speciality; Crispus probably never even saw her. Now she was stuck out here in an unoccupied villa, while the caterers had pushed all the empty amphorae off a jetty into the sea and were about to leave.

Helena made a lively fuss until someone brought the lady's chair. Fausta's bearers tonight were an ill-matched set of Liburnian slaves, one with a limp and one with a set of venomous neck boils. 'Oh, we cannot leave these ninnies in charge of her!' Helena declared.

Without admitting liability, Larius and I managed to insert Fausta into her chair. The slaves lurched her as far as the inn at Oplontis, but while we were discussing what to do next she slipped off and scampered onto the beach proclaiming a curse on men, naming the parts which she wished to wither and drop off them in such detail that it made me queasy.

I had had enough of her whole family. But to please Helena, I agreed to waste more of what could otherwise have been a pleasant evening and somehow deal with her…

With luck, some bandit in need of a scullion to warm his broth would kidnap Fausta first.

I insisted on putting Helena in her own litter back on the road to the villa. This took quite a long time, for reasons that are nobody's business but mine.

By now most of the coast lay in darkness. When I returned to the inn Fausta had disappeared. Although it was so late, I found Larius talking poetry to the nursemaid Ollia on a bench in the inn courtyard; at least he had progressed from Catullus to Ovid, who has a better outlook on love and, more crucially, on sex.

I sat down with them. 'You been philandering, uncle?'

‘Don't be ridiculous. No senator's daughter would enjoy being bedded on the bare ground among a lot of curious spiders with a pine cone in her back!'

‘Really? asked Larius.

'Really,' I lied. 'What coaxed Aemilia Fausta away from the sand happers?'

‘A kind-hearted, off-duty watch captain. He hates to see noblemen's sisters sitting drunk on beaches.'

I groaned. Petronius Longus was always a soft touch for a sobbing girl. ‘So he threw her over his shoulder, stuffed her into the chair while she declaimed what a nice man he was, then he marched of her pathetic entourage to Herculanem himself?'

Larius laughed. 'You know Petro!'

'He won't even bother to ask for a reward. What did Silvia say?'

‘Nothing – very pointedly!'

It was a beautiful night. I decided to hitch up Nero and meet Petro with transport home. Larius decided to keep me company; then, because they were young and illogical, Ollia came as company for him.

When we reached the magistrate's house the door porter told us Petronius had arrived with the lady but since she was none too stable in her party shoes, had helped her indoors. Rather than risk fending off suggestions for fun with Aemilius Rufus, we waited in the cart.

Petro, who was a long time coming out, seemed surprised to find us there. We were all napping, so he swung into the front seat and took up the reins. He was the best driver among us anyway.

‘Watch that magistrate!' I warbled. 'His Falernian is decent but I wouldn't want to meet him behind a bath house pillar in the dark… His sister give you much trouble?'

'Not if you ignore the usual "Men are disgusting; why ain't I got one?" stuff.' I said some hard words about Fausta, though Petronius maintained the poor little thing was rather sweet.

Larius was nodding off on Ollia's comfortable shoulder. I had a better woman to think about than some louse of a magistrate's fool of a sister so I huddled in a corner and went to sleep too, lulled by the cart's gently creaking motion through the warm Campanian night.

Ever good-natured, Petronius Longus hummed to himself quietly as he drove us all home.