Shadows in Bronze

LXXVII

I wanted to see Helena, but a small knot of doubt had started tightening inside me.

It was still evening when I took my travel-grimed body for a bathe. The gymnasium I often went to stood near the Temple of Castor; its clients were mostly dining at this hour – decent men who did not object strongly to eating in with their families, or whose idea of entertainment out was a plain three-course meal among old friends with light music and pleasant talk. Glaucus the proprietor would be at home himself by now. I was glad, because Glaucus would certainly make free with snide comments about the havoc two months in Campania had wreaked on my physique. As soon as he saw me he would want to bash me back into shape. I was too tired to let him start tonight.

The bath-house usually stayed open until after dinner time. It was well lit, with pottery lamps lining all the corridors, yet at this time of night the place assumed a certain eeriness. There were attendants lurking somewhere who would scrape you with a strigil if you wanted to shout out for them, yet most people who came at dusk managed alone.

Many clients were middle-class grafters with proper jobs of work. Designers of aqueduct systems and harbour engineers who sometimes worked late at emergencies on site. An academic type who had lost all sense of time in the library at the Portico of Octavia and then come here stiff and bleary-eyed. Men in trade, arriving from Ostia after an afternoon tide.

And one or two offbeat, freelance freaks like me, whose weapons training Glaucus personally supervised and who worked at odd hours for reasons which his other customers politely never asked about.

I left my clothes in the changing room, hardly glancing at the stuff on other pegs. I had a good scrape in the hot room, swilled off, then pushed through the heavy retaining door to relax in the dry steam. Someone else was already there. I nodded. At this hour it was traditional to pass in silence, but as my eyes became accustomed to the humidity I recognized the other man. He was in his fifties, with a pleasant expression. He too was slumped in private thought, but knew me just as I took in his vibrant eyebrows and spiked, boyish hair: Helena's papa.

'Didius Falco!'

'Camillus Verus!'

Our greeting was unforced. He took an affectionate view of my rough-and-ready attitude, and I liked his shrewd good humour. I realigned my exhausted frame alongside.

'You've been in Campania, I heard.'

"Just got back. You're late, Senator!'

'Seeking refuge,' he admitted, with an honest grin. 'I'm glad I've seen you here tonight.'

I lifted an eyebrow, with a definite feeling I was waiting for bad news. 'Something special, sir?'

'Didius Falco, I am hoping,' declared the Senator with significant formality, 'you can tell me who has done me the honour of making me a grandfather.'

A long trickle of perspiration had already started from the damp curls at my hairline; I let it run, slowly across my left temple, then with a sudden rush past my ear, down my neck and onto my chest. It splashed off, onto the towel across my lap.

'Do I take it this is news to you? The Senator asked levelly.

'True.'

My reluctance to believe that she could keep back something so vital clashed against vivid memories of Helena fainting; unwell; turning back from climbing Vesuvius; worried about money… Helena crying in my arms for reasons I had never found out. Then other memories, more intimate and more intense. 'Evidently not my business to know!'

‘Ah,' said her father, accepting this bleakly. ‘I'll be blunt: my wife and I assumed it was.' I said nothing. He began to look more doubtful. 'Are you denying that it is possible?

'No.' I never doubted that Camillus Verus had guessed my feelings for his daughter early on. I adopted professional banter as a temporary defence; 'Look, a private informer who leads a lively social life is bound to find women who want more from him than he bargained for. So far I never had any difficulty persuading a magistrate they were vexatious claims!'

'Be serious, Falco.'

I drew a harsh breath. 'I don't suppose you want me to congratulate you, sir. I don't imagine you are congratulating me…' If I sounded irritable, that was because I was starting to burn with a furious sense of injustice.

'Would it be so terrible?

'Just terrifying!' I said, which was the truth.

The Senator gave me a stressful smile. I already knew he thought enough of me to think that if I was what his daughter wanted, the two of us were capable of managing, even without the usual domestic trappings of money to pay the baker or parental support… He dropped a hand onto my ann. 'Have I upset you?'

‘Frankly, I'm not sure.'

Camillus then tried to draw me in as his ally. 'Look, there is no point me trying to protest my senatorial rights like some old-fashioned censor. This is not illegal-'

'And it's not helpful!' I exclaimed.

'Don't say that! There was enough harm done when Helena was married to Atius Pertinax; that was a mistake which I have promised myself never to repeat. I want to see her happy.' He sounded desperate. Of course he loved his daughter more than he should – but then, so did I.

'I can't protect her from herself!' I stopped. 'No, that's unfair. She never ceases to amaze me with her clear-eyed good sense -' Her father started to protest. 'No, she's right, sir! She deserves a better life than she could ever have with me. Her children deserve better; as a matter of fact, so do mine! Sir, I can't discuss this.' For one thing, she would hate to know we were doing it. 'Can we change the subject? There is something else we need to consider urgently. You mentioned Atius Pertinax, and he's the crux of it. Have you heard what the situation is?'

He let out an angry expression; Camillus Vents had no time for his son-in-law. Most fathers feel that, but in his case he was right: his daughter was too good for the man, who was contemptible.

He knew Pertinax was still alive; I warned him that the fugitive might have transferred himself to Rome.

'With hindsight, sending Helena here was none too wise. But I know your views, sir. Until I can apprehend him, will you ensure she stays safe at home?'

'Of course. Well… as far as I can. But her condition should stop her rushing about,' he reminded me unavoidably.

I paused. 'Is she well?'

‘No one tells me anything,' her father complained. When he spoke of his womenfolk Camillus Verus always adopted a downtrodden pose, as if they took the traditional view of a pater familias: someone who was there to pay the bills, make a lot of noise no one listened to – and be led by the nose. 'She looks peaky.'

'Yes, I noticed that.'

We exchanged a tense glance.

We finished our bath together, went through to the changing room and dressed. At the top of the gymnasium steps, we clasped hands. If Helena Justina's father was as shrewd as I suspected, he could tell from my face how bitter I felt.

He hesitated awkwardly. 'Will you be coming to see her?'

'No.' One way or the other, that made me out a sewer rat. A lonely occupation. 'But tell her-'

'Falco?'

'Forget it. Better not.'

The father of his future grandchild should be the happiest man in Rome. What price the pathetic candidate who had it made plain he was not required to acknowledge his position?

Well be reasonable. Nobody could expect such a high-born Roman lady – father in the Senate, two brothers on active service, adequate education, passable face, property worth a quarter of a million by her own right – to own up that she had allowed herself a dalliance with a low-bred, uncivilized brigand from the Aventine like me.