Shadows in Bronze

LXXV

At the Villa Marcella I was met by Gordianus.

‘I thought you were on funeral duty, sir.'

'Too anxious to relax. Where's Milo?'

'Herculaneum; incarcerating the sea captain. What's the situation here?'

'Caprenius Marcellus has had a stroke-'

‘Don't believe it! As an invalid that old man is as genuine as a reluctant wife claiming a headache-'

'It's true, Falco; the doctor says another will finish him.'

'Pertinax?'

'No sign. But his father is convinced he will come.'

'Just you and me then, sir, sitting at the Villa Marcella, waiting it out…'

Us, waiting for him at the villa. And Pertinax out there somewhere, waiting for the grain ships to arrive from Alexandria.

Strokes were something I knew. My Great-uncle Scam, an eccentric old rascal, not least for being fond of me, had several (though in fact my amiable uncle died from choking on home-made false teeth). I went in to inspect Marcellus for myself.

The diagnosis was correct. It's grim to see an intelligent man so drastically struck down. The worst aspect was that his slaves were terrified. So he was not only paralysed and robbed of proper speech; he had the added indignities of being treated like an idiot and seeing his servants afraid to deal with him.

I had nothing else to do, so I set about interpreting. At least when he wanted a drink or his pillows raised he could be made comfortable more quickly. I sat with him; read to him; even – since I was handy and it saved fuss – helped the poor old devil to his sickbed commode. The range of my work never failed to amaze me. Here I was: a trireme smash yesterday; a dogfight today; now a consul's nurse.

‘You're doing well!' Gordianus commented, looking in.

‘I feel like his wife. Next thing, I'll be complaining about my dress allowance and the Consul here will call my mother an interfering witch.'

‘What's he saying now?'

‘Ah, he wants to change his will.'

The Consul dribbled agitatedly. 'Helena… Gnaeus!'

I asked, 'You want to leave your estates to Helena, so she can hand them on to Gnaeus?' He lay back, satisfied. I folded my arms, letting him see I was unimpressed. 'Lucky you trust the lady! Most of them would snatch your money, then run off with the nearest low-rank muscleman who has a hint of disreputable promise in his smile-'

He started mouthing anxiously again. I let Gordianus calm him. Anyone who tried to use Helena to help Pertinax lost my sympathy.

After Gordianus left us I sat looking fiercely at Marcellus, while he glared indignantly at me. I said conversationally, 'Helena Justina will never remarry your son!'

Caprenius Marcellus continued his bleak, accusing stare. I could see he knew now just what I was telling him.

The ex-Consul had finally realized which sturdy member of the gutter-clogging classes had managed to subvert his daughter-in-law.

We waited four days. Then a discreet message from Bassus in Positanum informed me that enough corn transports had assembled to initiate the next stage of my plan.

I went down to Oplontis for a friendly chat with the driftwood-featured father of Ollia's fisherboy. That evening I watched the tuna boats sail out with their bobbing lanterns, in the knowledge that wherever they were casting their nets the word would spreadAulus Curtius Gordianus, a distinguished priest (we all know priests!) who had inherited his brother's maritime villa on the cliffs near Surrentum, was celebrating his legacy with a private party for his masculine friends. It was supposed to be a closely guarded secret; there was talk of a specialist dancer with extraordinary proportions being brought specially from Valencia – and he was laying in few quantities of wine.

The specialist dancer never progressed beyond a promise, but in other respects Gordianus threw himself into this enterprise with a flair which suggested he must have had unlikely adventures in his youth. It was a starlit night, but he laid on tremendous bonfires so that any gate-crashers could find him more easily. When the loud trierarchs of the Misenum fleet made land with their commander, the good Gordianus merely sighed like a man who preferred to avoid trouble, and let them find their own way to his casks.

There was just enough food to make people persuade themselves they could tolerate more drink than their real capacity. There were fine wines and heavy ones, new wines and vintages which Gordianus reckoned his brother had been maturing for as much as fifteen years. There appeared to be no organization; anyone could get at it… A host who was so careless, instead of trying to fend the happy trierarchs away from his liquor, caught them off guard: they gave themselves philosophical advice about how to avoid getting headaches – then for once even the navy drank itself insensible.

An hour before dawn I left the disgusting proceedings and climbed slowly up the path behind the house until the lights of the party had disappeared behind. Straining my eyes northwards and out across the ocean, I thought I could just make out huge ghostly shapes, like windmills walking on the water, tacking immeasurably slowly to and fro beyond Capreae. I knew they were there, and I hoped I really had seen them. Either way, I could relax: a good consignment of the fifteen billion bushels that were needed to feed Rome next year was safely going home.

I went back to Oplontis straightaway.

While the old man was still sleeping I searched the house and grounds. Pertinax was nowhere to be seen. I found Bryon, and told him I had thwarted the young master's plan.

When I had slept off part of my hangover, I prowled round to the stables again; they seemed even more deserted now. Missing Bryon, I stood still in puzzlement, then I risked letting slip a shout. Faint thuds started up in the livery stable block. I hared inside and soon found the trainer, fastened up in a tack room.

'Oh, gods, what happened to you?' Big as he was, Bryon had received a thorough pounding. He had a split mouth he could hardly croak through, and bruises it hurt to contemplate. The cruelty was familiar. ‘Don't tell me: Pertinax.' He enjoyed doing that…

I helped Bryon outside, wetted his neckerchief in a trough, and applied it where the damage looked worst.

'Caught him in the loft – told him what you had said about his plan-'

'And he turned on you? Bryon, count yourself lucky you escaped alive. Where is he now? In the house with the old man?

'He's gone, Falco.'

I doubted that; Pertinax was too desperate for cash. I dragged Bryon with me and hurried indoors. But the attendants assured me no one had visited Marcellus. I strode into the sickroom, making Bryon come too.

'Tell the Consul what happened to you, Bryon!'

For a moment this vigorous outdoor type hung back in the presence of an invalid; then he rallied. 'I came on the young master and warned him the Emperor's agent had scuppered whatever he had planned. I told him he should stop running and face the charges against him-'

'So he jumped you, battered you, and then locked you up? Did he ask about his father's health?'

'No. But I told him the Consul had had a bad attack, and I told him,' stated Bryon in the same level voice, ‘the Consul had been calling out for him.'

'You made sure he knew – but he left?'

'Oh yes,' said Bryon quietly, not looking at the Consul. 'He left. I've heard him clatter off in a fury on that roan of his often enough.'

I rounded on the bed where the Consul lay motionless, with his eyes closed. 'Better face facts, sir! Atius Pertinax has given up on you. Give up on him!'

Seeing him lying there, we lost all sense of his immense height. His commanding presence seemed to fade even as I watched. Even his huge nose shrank from its ludicrous domination of his old, lined, suffering face. He was one of the wealthiest men in Campania, but everything he valued had now gone. I signalled to Bryon, and we quietly left the room.

The ex-Consul would make no more attempts to redeem Pertinax. Illness and betrayal had succeeded where I had failed.

Pertinax was an excellent rider, and he knew this location. I took a horse out myself to warn the magistrate's searchers to watch closely for the roan, but he must have already slipped through. We had no idea when he might be heading – Tarentum possibly. We had lost him. I returned to the house.

When your nearest relations are spiking you so callously, the last thing you want and the first thing you get is inquisitive neighbours on a social call. Aemilius Rufus was now in with Marcellus, paying his respects. His sister, who had come with him, was walking on the terrace.

She was wearing black, with heavy veiling folded back while she patrolled the colonnade alone and gazed sadly out to sea.

'Aemilia Fausta! I'm sorry about Crispus. I would tell you it ought never to have happened, but that makes the tragedy worse. There was nothing I could do.'

I felt she had expended all her grief on her reluctant lover while he was alive; now he was dead she accepted my condolences decisively. I said in a low tone, 'In future, when you read some court poet's bucolic account of how the crowds at Misenum and Puteoli turn out every year to cheer the incoming grain ships, you can smile to remember what no one ever says: in the consulship of whichever two nobles are holding office this year, the transports' annual arrival went unmarked…'

'Is it all over?'

'Ships in the night! There may be stragglers still to come, but Vespasian can look after them once I've made my report.'

She turned to me, as she drew her black mantle into a closer frame for her fair-skinned face. 'Crispus was a man with special gifts, Falco. You will be proud to have known him.'

I let that pass. After a moment I smiled, 'Strong colours suit you.'

'Yes!' she agreed, with her new capable laugh. 'Didius Falco, you were right. My brother offends me, I won't live with him now. Perhaps I shall marry a rich old man, and when he's gone enjoy myself as a widow, in strong, dark colours, being over-demanding and shouting at people – or playing the cithara very badly by myself '

I suppressed the thought that this honourable lady had been strolling here in the Consul's stately portico reckoning up the value of his fabulous estate.

'Aemilia Fausta,' I responded gallantly, 'on my word as a harp teacher, you play very well!'

'You always were a liar, Falco,' she said.

She married the ex-Consul; we arranged it the next day. Curtius Gordianus took the auguries and concocted the usual lies about 'good omens for a long contented partnership'. Grief and ill health made Caprenius Marcellus incoherent so it was me who interpreted his marriage vows. No one was so impolite as to ask what occurred on the wedding night; nothing, presumably. Naturally the bridegroom altered his will, leaving everything to his new young wife, and any children they might have. I helped him write his will too.

I never saw Aemilia Fausta again, though I heard of her from time to time. She lived a blameless, vigorously happy life as a widow, and died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Before then Fausta had nursed Marcellus devotedly. He managed to live long enough to know that his estates and the honour of his famous ancestors were both secure: nine months after they were married Aemilia Fausta gave birth to a boy.

I saw her son once, years later. He had survived the volcano and grown into a strapping youth. Someone pointed him out. He was in a chariot, leaning on the front rail with one elbow while he waited patiently for a hold-up in the road ahead to clear. For someone with more money than anyone deserves, he looked a decent lad. He had brown hair, a broad, calm brow and an untroubled expression which seemed vaguely familiar.

His mother had named him Lucius; after Crispus, I suppose.

There was one other event which I cannot omit. It was Bryon who broke the bad news to me. The day after the wedding, I was preparing to leave when Bryon confessed. 'Falco, I know where Pertinax may be.'

'Where? Spit it out!'

'Rome. We had Ferox and the Sweetheart entered in their first race, at the Circus Maximus-'

'Rome!' Rome: where I had sent Helena Justina to be safe.

'I had a word with the new mistress,' Bryon went on. 'She seems to know her mind! Ferox is still to be sent for the race. She also told me, the Consul is making a special bequest to you; he likes you, apparently-'

'You amaze me. What's the gift?'

'Little Sweetheart.' I never have much luck in life, but that was ridiculous. 'Her ladyship says, will you please take him with you when you go?'

Every citizen has the right to decline inconvenient legacies. I nearly declined this.

Still, I could always sell the nag for sausage meat. For all his faults of character, he was well fed and free from visible disease; there were plenty of hot-piemen selling worse things from trays along the Via Triumphalis and in front of the Basilica.

So I kept him and saved my fare home, struggling all the way up the Via Appia on this cock-eyed, knock-kneed, self-willed, pernickety beastie who now was my own.