Shadows in Bronze

LXXVIII

It was late. It would soon be dark. I had the restless feet of a man who needed to visit his ladyfriend but could not bear to go. The obvious alternative was to plough into a wineshop and drink so deep I would only have to worry whether anyone good-natured would point me in a homeward direction afterwards, and if they did, whether I could stagger as far as my apartment or fall down dead drunk in the road.

I went to the Palace instead.

They kept me waiting. I was so angry at Helena's secrecy that for once the last thing I wanted was time to think. I hunched on a couch, growing more and more devastated by the injustice, until I was in two minds to storm off home and get drunk on my own balcony. The moment I decided to do it a flunkey called me in. I could not even enjoy myself getting annoyed because as soon as he saw me Vespasian apologized.

'Sorry, Falco. Matters of state.' Chatting with his concubine, no doubt. 'You look glum!'

'Oh, thinking about women, sir.'

'No wonder then! Want a cup of wine?' I wanted it so badly it seemed safest to decline.

'Enjoy your trip?'

'Well I still get seasick, and I still can't swim…'

The Emperor gave me a thoughtful look as if he could tell I was feeling cynical.

I was far too tired, and not in the mood; I made a bodge of narrating my report. Other people, more important people, had told him most of it anyway. Going over the sorry details of how Aufidius Crispus was pointlessly drowned felt like a waste of time.

'The Censor published the news as "an unfortunate boating accident",' the Emperor grumbled angrily. 'Who commanded the trireme that's in need of steering practice?'

'The Herculaneum praetor, sir.'

'Him! He turned up in Rome; I met him yesterday.'

‘Showing his profile round the Palace, in the hope of a fancy foreign post! Sextus Aemilius Rufus Clemens -' I proclaimed. 'Good old family and a wealth of mediocre public service to his name. He's an idiot, but how can he lose? Now Crispus is dead, when it comes awarding honours I assume this hasty-handed trierarch takes precedence over me?'

'Grit your teeth, Falco: I don't issue contract bonuses when senators get drowned.'

'No, sir. As soon as the ships crashed, I guessed I would be slapped down for it!'

'Rufus has been extremely helpful with advice about the fleet,' the Emperor reproved me with his fiercest growl.

'Oh, I can do that, Caesar, the Misenum fleet needs an overhaul: more discipline and less drink!'

'Yes. I had the impression Rufus fancies wielding an admiral's baton himself -' I was furious, until I caught the Emperor's glint. 'In future the Misenum fleet prefecture is reserved for trusted friends of mine. But I shall certainly give this fellow a chance to prove himself with the perils of command; he must be ready for a legion-'

'What? In a spectacular front-line province where his incompetence can flower more visibly?'

'No, Falco; we all have to accept that a public career involves serving a turn in dismal holes abroad…'

I started to grin. 'What have you dug up for Rufus, sir?'

'Somewhere landlocked; that should spare us the benefits of his nautical expertise: Noricum?'

'Noricum!' Crispus' old province. Nothing ever happens there. 'I think Crispus would approve of that!'

'I hope so!' smiled Vespasian, with deceptive gentleness. Our new Flavian Emperor was not a vindictive man. But one of his attractions was a private sense of fun.

'That all, Falco?'

'All I can hope for,' I croaked wearily. 'I would nag you for a bonus for coercing Gordianus, but we went through that-'

'Not at all. I put you down for it. Is a thousand enough?

'A thousand! That would be a good reward for an after- dinner poet who had coined a smooth ten-line ode! Rich pickings for a theatre lyre player-'

'Never believe it, Lyre players nowadays demand at least two thousand before they shift offstage. What does a man like you need money for?

'Bread and a bottle. After that my landlord mostly. Sometimes I dream of changing him. Caesar, even I might like a home where I can turn round to scratch myself without taking the skin off my elbow. I work to live – and my life at the moment distinctly lacks elegance!'

'Women?'

'People always ask me that.'

'I wonder why! My spies tell me,' Vespasian threatened jovially, 'you came back from Campania richer than you went.'

'One duff racehorse and a sacred goat! The goat has gone into retirement but next time you break a molar on a gristly meat rissole, say hello to Falco's horse – Rome is richer too,' I reminded him. 'By a good part of fifteen billion bushels that could have gone astray…'

He seemed not to hear me. 'Titus wants to know this horse's name.'

Brilliant. I had only been back in Rome six hours, but news of my ghastly windfall had reached the Emperor's elder son! 'Little Sweetheart. Tell Titus Caesar to save his stake! I'm only running the nag as a favour to the bookmakers, who say they have been short of laughs lately-'

'That's honest for a horse owner!'

'Oh, sir, I wish I had the nerve to steal and lie like other people, but conditions in jail are notorious and I'm frightened of the rats. When I want a laugh I tell myself my children will be proud of me.'

'What children?' whipped back the Emperor aggressively. 'O Caesar, the ten little Aventine urchins I cannot afford to acknowledge!'

Vespasian shifted his big, square-bodied frame while his brow creased and his mouth compressed in the way he was famous for. I always knew that when his mood altered and he stopped baiting we had reached the crux of the interview. The lord of the world tutted at me gently like a great cuddly uncle who was letting himself forget how much he disapproved of me.

'What you accomplished with the grain ships was excellent. The Prefect of Supply has been requested to report on a suitable level of reward -' I knew what that meant: I would never hear anything about it again. 'I shall give you a thousand for Gordianus – and I'll make that ten if you can also settle Pertinax Marcellus without publicity.'

Miserly; though on Vespasian's scale of public remuneration, madly generous. I nodded.

‘Pertinax is officially dead. There will be no need to announce it in the Daily Gawk again.'

‘What I would really like,' the Emperor suggested, 'is some proof of his guilt.'

‘You mean, it may have to come to trial?'

'No. But if we deal with him without a trial,' Vespasian commented drily, 'perhaps there is even more reason to have some evidence!'

I was a republican. Finding an Emperor with moral values always startled me.

At this late stage, proof against Pertinax was a near impossibility. The only one of his victims who had ever survived was Petronius Longus and even he had nothing to tell a court. That left as our only material witness Milo, the Gordianus steward. Milo was a slave. Which meant we could only accept his evidence if it was extracted under torture.

But Milo was the sort of stupid stalwart whose response to the challenge of a professional torturer would be to grit his teeth, brace his mighty muscle and die before he broke.

'I shall do my best to find something!' I promised the Emperor solemnly.

He grinned.

I was leaving the Palace, with the sardonic taste of this interview still pursing my mouth, when someone in a doorway greeted me derisively.

‘Didius Falco, you disreputable beggar! Thought you were wearing yourself out on the women around Neapolis!'

I wheeled cautiously, ever on my guard in the Palace environs, and recognized the grim presence. ‘Momus!' The slave overseer who had helped with the dispersal of the Pertinax estate. He seemed grubbier than ever as he grinned through half toothless gums. ‘Momus, the widespread assumption that I fill all my free time fornicating is beginning to get me down! Has somebody been saying something I might want to dispute?

'Plenty!' he chaffed. 'Your name seems to come up everywhere these days. Have you seen Anacrites?'

'Should I?'

'Keep your head down,' Momus warned. There was no love lost between him and the Chief Spy; they had different priorities.

'Anacrites never bothered me. Last I saw, he was demoted to book-keeping.'

‘Never trust an accountant! He keeps bouncing in saying he wants to examine you about a certain lost consignment of Treasury lead -' I groaned, though I made sure I did so under my breath. The word is that Anacrites has booked a pallet in the name of Didius Falco in a long-term cell in the Mamertine.'

'Don't worry,' I told Momus, as if I believed it. 'I'm in on it. Prison is just a ruse to escape the indignant fathers of all the women I have deceived…'

He grinned, and let me go. Pausing only to shout after me, 'By the way, Falco, what's this about a horse?'

'He's called Hard Luck,' I answered. ‘By Short Commons, out of Come to Grief! Don't bet on him; he's bound to break a leg.'

I strode out of the Palace on the north side of Palatine Hill. Half-way back to my own sector I passed an open winery. So I changed my mind, mined into it, and got drunk after all.