Shadows in Bronze

VII

A warm May night in Rome. We paused on the doorstep, and sniffed the air. A faint spattering of tiny stars hung above the twin peaks of the Capitol. An aroma of hot forcemeat sausage made me suddenly ravenous. Music sounded in the far distance, while the night was alive with the laughter of men who had nothing to regret.

Anacrites and I set off down the Vicus Longus briskly, to deter unwelcome night trade. We passed the Forum on our right and entered the Palatine complex via the Clivus Victoriae. Above us the official suites looked cheerfully lit, though if the Emperor or his sons had been entertaining, their banquets had already broken up; our painful new dynasty kept its state in respectable style.

At the Cryptoporticus, Nero's grand galleried entrance, the Praetorians let us through with a nod. We went up. The first people we encountered, and the last I wanted- to see, were the Senator Camillus Verus and his daughter Helena.

I swallowed, with one cheek tightening; Anacrites smiled understandingly (rot him!) and made a swift exit.

The Senator had a fluffed-up, formal, newly laundered look. I winked at his daughter affectionately, even in front of him; she gave me a faint, rather troubled smile. Strong looks and a strong character: a girl you could take anywhere – so long as the people who lived there did not mind being told frankly what was wrong with their lives. Helena was austerely swathed in grey, her feet kicking at the heavy, flounced bent of a woman who had been married, her dark head topped by a pointed plain gold diadem. The scroll which Camillus was carrying said they had been here to petition the Emperor, and I could guess their plea: Camillus Verus was a stalwart supporter of Vespasian; he had had a brother who had not been. The brother conspired against the new Flavian dynasty; was exposed, killed, and left to lie where he felt. I had been wondering how long it would take for the Senator to decide his brother's soul was his responsibility. Now I knew: eleven days. He had come to ask Vespasian for the warehouse corpse.

'That's Falco!' I heard Helena say, chivvying her father. 'He'll find out for us-'

The Senator's wife was a supportive woman but I could see why it was his daughter he brought today. Beneath her quiet public front Helena-Justina always meant bunion. Luckily she was still preoccupied after their mission in the throne room and barely reacted to meeting me. Her father planned their present; he said to me the Emperor was being difficult (not surprisingly); then Helena waded in, wanting me to investigate.

'That rather cuts, saves me working for the Palace-'

'When did that stop you? Camillus himself assaulted me cheerfully; I grinned, but let their proffered commission drop.

'Sir, if your brother has been bundled into oblivion by a gang of off-duty Praetorian will it really make you feel better if you know?' Helena fell ominously silent. It boded ill for somebody; I guessed who. I tried not to remember the sordid details of her uncle’s end, in case she read my face.

I gestured in the direction Macias had taken, implying urgent business elsewhere. Camillus asked me to remain with Helena while he organized their transport. He rushed away.

We two stood there, in one of those Palace corridors that was so wide it was almost a room in itself, while occasional officials passed to and fro. I had no intention of ending our tender relationship beneath the tawdry glitter of a Neronian reception hall, so I looked tough and said nothing.

'You know!' Helena accused levelly, while she was still watching her father out of earshot.

'If I do, I'm not allowed to say.'

She glanced at me with a look that would wither the spines on a porcupine.

While the subject died quietly between us I enjoyed myself surveying her. The cumbersome folds of her matronly stole only emphasized the warm curves they were meant to disguise, and which I had found myself possessing so unexpectedly two weeks before. Her presence tonight had enveloped me with the familiar same that we both knew each other better than we would ever know anyone else (and yet neither of us had discovered the half of it…).

'This is how I like you,' I teased. 'All big brown eyes and blazing indignation!'

'Spare me the disreputable dialogue! I imagined,' her ladyship informed me in a taut voice, 'I might have seen you before this.'

She had on her sweet look of wariness in public places, which always made me step closer protectively. With one finger I stroked very gently from the soft hollow of her temple to the fine contour of her jaw. She allowed it with a stubbornness that implied complete indifference, but her cheek whitened beneath my touch. 'I was thinking of you, Helena.'

'Thinking of dropping me?' It had taken me ten days to make up my mind not to see her again – and ten seconds to decide not to leave. 'Oh I know!' she continued angrily. 'This is May. That was April. I was the girl in last month's adventure! All you wanted-'

'You know damn well what I wanted!' I cut in. 'It's another thing I am not supposed to tell you,' I said more quietly. 'But believe me, lady, I thought the world of you.'

'And now you've forgotten,' Helena argued bitterly. 'Or at least, you want me to forget-'

Just as I was about to demonstrate how much I remembered and how little I intended either of us to forget, the brisk figure of her illustrious father hovered into view again.

'I'll come and see you,' I promised Helena in an undertone. 'There are things I need to talk about-'

'Oh there are some things you can say to us?' She deliberately let her father overhear. Camillus must have seen we were quarrelling, a fact he treated with a nervous diffidence which belied his true character. When occasion demanded he was forceful enough.

Before Helena could forestall me I told him, 'Your brother's soul was taken care of with the necessary reverence. If the underworld really exists, he is lounging on the grass in Hades, throwing sticks for Cerberus. Don't ask how I know.'

He accepted it more readily than Helena did. I parted from them tersely, making it plain I had to work.

I rejoined Anacrites, to wait outside the Emperor's room with that tension no one quite loses when visiting a highly important man; being the bugs in favour can easily change. Anacrites groomed a fingernail between his teeth. I felt dismal. Vespasian liked me. He usually showed it by confronting me with impossible tasks for which I earned hardly any cash.

We were called in. Court chamberlains avoided us as if we carried the sores of an Eastern disease.

Vespasian was not one of your spindly, stringy-necked aristocrats, but a burly General. His lavish purple tunic sat on him as casually as brown country frieze. He had a reputation for struggling to power on mortgages and credit, but he loved showing off as Emperor, throwing himself into the work with a grasp no Caesar since Augustus had shown.

'Camillus Verus has been here!' he exclaimed at me. And that daughter of his!' The Emperor sounded snappy; he knew my involvement with the lady, and disapproved. 'I said I had nothing to tell them.'

‘So did I, I assured him, ruefully.

He glared at me, as if our predicament was my fault, then settled down. 'What's to report?'

I left Anacrites the subtle pleasure of fibbing to the lord of the world. 'Making progress, sir!' He sounded so efficient my stomach rebelled.

'Found any evidence yet?' crackled Vespasian.

'A denunciation of Pertinax Marcellus by his ex-wife-'

I was furious to see my private information about Helena being paraded, but the Emperor leapt in first 'Leave the Camillus girl out of it!' (I had not told Anacrites Vespasian and Helena's father were on such friendly terms; he had not asked.)

'Very good, sir.' The spy adjusted his tone. 'After Nero, new Emperors rattled out like barroom dice; I imagine these misguided souls underestimated your staying power--'

'They want a snob with fancy ancestors!' Vespasian scoffed caustically. He was famous for his down-to-earth attitude.

'And a few touches of madness,' I murmured, ‘to increase the Senate's confidence!' Vespasian pressed his mouth together. Like most people, he thought my republican passions indicated a cracked brain. A difficult moment prickled us all.

Eventually the Emperor remarked, 'What I will not excuse, is the fact that these triton tried to seduce my younger son!' It was hard to credit serious contenders with trying to make young Domitian Caesar a puppet emperor; to Domitian, however, who had a popular and virile elder brother, usurping the natural order always seemed a brilliant idea. He was twenty; there were decades of disruption in him yet.

Anacrites and I stared down at the floor. Superior workmanship and oozing with good taste: Alexandrian mosaic – a big, bold, serpentine pattern in black and cream.

‘You cannot blame me for defending my own!' the fond father insisted. We shook our heads sombrely. He knew we both thought Domitian Caesar was a toad. The old man restrained himself. Neither Vespasian nor his first son Titus ever criticized Domitian in public with so much as a sour look (though it's, my belief they roughed him up fairly frankly behind closed doors).

The fact that Atius Pertinax had been in league with the Emperor's precious son was why Anacrites was tweaking over his papers with silver tongs. For one thing, if we found any evidence against his boy, Vespasian wanted it destroyed.

‘So!' he exclaimed, growing bored with speculating. 'The plot's dead: forget it.' The tone of the briefing changed. ‘Rome is stuck with me! My predecessor resigned with good grace-'

That was one view of it. The last Emperor Vitellius had been murdered by the Forum mob, his legions surrendered, his son was a babe in arms, and his daughter was swiftly married off by Vespasian with an enormous dowry that would tie her husband up for years, gratefully counting it.

Vespasian sucked his teeth in an angry mood. 'This fiasco has left me with four empty seats in the Senate. The rules are clear: senators must reside in Rome! Faustus Ferentinus has sailed away to drink julep with some ancient aunt in Lycia. I've sent him permission, in deference to the aunt -' Never imagine that his respect for elderly ladies meant Vespasian was soft; beneath that approachable exterior, a powerful will grumbled dangerously.

‘Three other clowns are absenting themselves in the country; Gordianus and his brother Longinus have jumped into distant seaside priesthood! And Aufidius Crispus is sunning himself in the Bay of Neapolis on a yacht. If anyone wishes to greet my accession by retiring into private life,' Vespasian announced, 'I shall not object. But senators must account for themselves! Curtius Longinus has been recalled to Rome to give me an explanation, then I suppose I'll be obliged to grant him a favour he can’t forget-' This seemed to be a secret Palace code word that had never been explained to me. 'He's lodging with the priests of the Little Temple of Hercules Gaditanus overnight and being interviewed tomorrow. Anacrites, I want you there-'

What I hated most about working here was finding myself excluded from whatever was really going on. Scowling, I scuffed my boot heel on the fine Alexandrian floor; then I decided to make my presence felt. 'We may have a problem, sir.'

I mentioned to the Emperor how I had been attacked in the warehouse, how I tailed Barnabas, and that I thought this link with the Pertinax household could be significant.

The Chief Spy shifted. 'You never mentioned this, Falco!'

‘Sorry; slipped my mind.'

I enjoyed watching Anacrites torn between his irritation at me taking the initiative, and wanting to appear the kind of spy who was bound to have found out anyway. 'Just some crack-brained freedman thinking he owes his dead patron a gesture,' was his opinion, dismissing it.

'Could be,' I agreed. 'Bit I'd like to know whether anything in the Pertinax documentation has pointed to a gambit involving corn chandlery.'

'No,' Anacrites said crisply. 'And I won't commit expensive Palace resources on the word of a Transtiberina barmaid!'

'You have your methods, I'll have mine.'

'Which are?'

'Knowing that riverbank watering holes and Transtiberina wineshops can be the first places to catch the news!'

'Both of your methods are valid,' Vespasian broke in. 'That's why I'm employing you both!'

During our quarrel, the Emperor's brown eyes had grown very still. Anacrites looked embarrassed, but I was angry. Here we stood, discussing treason like trade figures from Cilicia or the price of Celtic beer, but Vespasian knew what I thought. He knew why. Six hours after I fumbled with that sagging corpse, I still had the stench of the dead man's body fat curdling my lungs. My hands seemed to reek still from handling his finger rings. His cadaverous face swam into my memory whenever I let myself relax. Today I had done the Empire no small favour, yet apparently I was only fit for disposals – work that was too sticky for manicured hands.

'If you're spending your time in wineshops, watch your liver!' warned Vespasian with his sardonic grin.

'No point,' I snapped. 'I mean, sir, there's no point me risking my health and innocence in cut-throat bars, collecting information no one will ever act upon!'

'What innocence? Patience, Falco. I'm reconciling the senate as my priority – and you're no diplomat!' I glared, but held my peace. Vespasian relaxed slightly. 'Can we lay hands on this fellow Barnabas?'

'I've arranged for him to see me at the Pertinax house, but I'm beginning to suspect he may not come. He's holed up near a tavern called the Setting Sun south of the Via Aurelia-'

A chamberlain broke into the room like a man who has had a good breakfast trotting out to the penny latrines.

‘Caesar! The Temple of Hercules Gaditanus is on fire!'

Anacrites began to move; Vespasian stopped him. ‘No. You get yourself down to the Transtiberina and apprehend this freedman. Put it to him plainly that the conspiracy has been broken up. Find out whether he knew anything, then let him go if you can – but make sure he grasps that stirring up any more sludge in the duckpond will not be well received.' I was suppressing a satirical vision of Vespasian as a great frog on a lily pad when he turned to me. ‘Falco can go fire watching.'

Arson's a dirty business; it does not require diplomacy.