The Silver Pigs

XX

If you ever want to go there, I advise you not to bother.

If you simply cannot avoid it, you will find the province of Britain out beyond civilization in the realms of the North Wind. If your maps king has grown ragged at the edges you will have lost it, in which case so much the better is all I can say. Getting away from Britain must be the reason why old Boreas keeps blowing his fat cheeks out, tearing off south.

My cover ran that Camillus Verus had despatched me to bring home his daughter Helena Justina from the visit to her aunt. Actually he appeared to be more fond of his youngest sister, the British aunt. When we spoke, he had murmured, "Falco, escort my daughter if she agrees, but I leave you to decide the details with Helena herself."

From the way he said it, I deduced the young woman had a mind of her own. He sounded so uncertain I asked him bluntly, "Will she disregard your advice? Is your daughter a difficult customer?"

"She has had an unhappy marriage!" her father exclaimed defensively.

"I'm sorry to hear it, sir." I was too wrapped up in my own grief for Sosia to want to involve myself in other people's problems, but perhaps personal misery made me more compassionate.

"The divorce was for the best," he said briefly, making it plain that his noble daughter's private life was not for discussion with the likes of me.

I had made a mistake; he was fond of Helena, but looked honestly afraid of her though even in those days, before I achieved it myself, I thought fathering a girl might make any man crack. From the moment the leering midwives place that crinkled red scrap between your hands and demand that you pronounce a name for it, a lifetime of panic drops on you like a blight…

I had coped with headstrong females before. I assumed that a few firm words from me would bring this Helena under control.

I went to Britain overland. Although I hated myself, I could never send anyone the whole distance by sea, between the Pillars of Hercules and out into the wild Atlantic round Lusitania and Tarraconensian Spain. Crossing direct from Gaul is bad enough.

Everything had been done to smooth my outward journey: abundant cash and a special pass. I threw away the money on cloak pins and nutmeg custard. The pass carried a signature so like the Emperor's it caused sleepy dogs in border posts to sit up publicly and beg. My main worry was losing my apartment, but it turned out that during this high-flown mission I could charge a retainer. The senator's smart Greek accountant would organize things with Smaractus – a confrontation I was sorry to miss.

My mother sniffily informed me that if she had known I was going back, she would have kept the tray I brought her as a present from Britain the first time I was there. This item had been carved of a soapy grey shale from the mid-south coast. Apparently the stuff needs constant oiling. I never knew that, so I never told her and the object had disintegrated. Ma thought I ought to find the peddler and demand my money back.

Petronius lent me a pair of socks from his old British gear. He never throws anything away. I had chucked mine down a well in Gaul. If I had known about this unhappy trip, I might have jumped down after them.

On the way there was a lot of time for thought.

But thinking took me no further. Plenty of people could want to depose Vespasian. Changing Emperors had been fashionable for the past two years. After Nero's numbing concerts finally lost their appeal for the tone-deaf toffs in the orchestra stalls, he stabbed himself and we suffered a free-for-all. First Galba, a doddering old autocrat from Spain. Next Otho, who had been Nero's ponce and so judged himself Nero's legitimate heir. After him, Vitellius, a bullying glutton who drank himself into and out of the job with a certain ironclad style, and then had a recipe for mushy peas named after him in return.

All that in twelve months. It was getting to seem that anyone with half an education and a winning smile could persuade the Empire that purple was just his colour. Then, with Rome vandalized and battered, up cropped this canny old general

Vespasian, who possessed one great advantage in that no one knew much about him for better or worse, and a priceless confederate in his son Titus, who gripped the chance of political glory like a terrier shaking a rat… My man Decimus Camillas Verus believed anyone opposing Vespasian must wait until Titus came home from Judaea. Vespasian himself had been quelling a Jewish rebellion when he scrambled into power. He returned to Rome as Emperor, leaving Titus to complete that popular job with his usual panache. Edging out Vespasian would merely allow his brilliant elder son to inherit the Empire early. His younger son Domitian was a lightweight, but Vespasian and Titus must be swept off their perch together or any conspiracy against them was destined to fail. This meant I had just as long to solve the mystery as it took Titus to capture Jerusalem though from what Festus had told me before he threw away his life at Bethel, Titus would rattle through Jerusalem in two shakes of a centaur's tail. (Titus had commanded the Fifteenth Legion, in which my brother served.)

So there we were. Anyone with the rank and the clout who fancied his own chance as Emperor could be trying to batter the new dynasty out of its olive tree. There were six hundred men in the senate. It could be any one of them.

I did not believe it was Camillus Verus. Was that because I knew him? As my client, the poor duffer seemed more human than the rest (though I had been caught like that before). Even if he was sound, that left five hundred and ninety nine.

It was someone who knew Britain. Or knew someone else who did. A quarter of a century had passed since Rome invaded the province (and incidentally first made Vespasian's name). Since then countless brave souls had tramped north for their tour of duty, many of them men with shiny reputations who might be feeling ambitious now. Titus himself had been typical. I remembered him there, the young military tribune who commanded the reinforcements brought over from the Rhine to reconstruct the province after the Revolt. Britain provided a social fitness test. No one liked the place, but no good Roman family nowadays was without a son or a nephew who had done his chilly stint in the bogs at the back of the world. I could be looking for any one of them.

It could be someone who had served in northern Gaul.

It could be someone in the British Channel fleet.

It could be anybody who owned any kind of ship. One of the merchants who ferried British grain to the military bases on the

Rhine. An importer of hides or hunting dogs into Italy. An exporter of pottery and wine. Or, knowing merchants, a whole sticky consortium.

It could be the British provincial governor.

It could be his wife.

It could be the man I was travelling to meet, Gaius Flavius Hilaris, my senator's brother-in-law, who was the procurator in charge of finance now after choosing to live in Britain for the past twenty years a choice that was so eccentric it implied Hilaris must be running away from something (unless he was completely off his head…).

By the time I reached the Britannic Ocean, I had thought through so many wild schemes I felt dizzy. I stood on the cliffs at the far rim of Gaul, watching the white horses scud over that churning water and felt worse. I set the problem to one side while I concentrated on trying not to be seasick as the boat I was taking attempted to put out across the Strait. Don't know why I bothered trying, I always am.

It took us five tries to clear the harbour at Gesoriacum, and by the time we made open water I only wanted to turn back.