Three Hands in The Fountain

XV

'Don't bother looking. I haven't brought the children.' Silvia wasted no time. She was a tiny spark, as neat as a doll. Petronius used to laugh at her as if she just had a vigorous character; I thought her completely unreasonable. Gripping her hands together tightly she mouthed, 'In an area like this you don't know what types they might meet.' Silvia had never minded being rude.

'They are my children too.' Petronius was the paterfamilias. Since he had acknowledged the three girls at birth they belonged to him legally; if he wanted to be difficult he could insist they lived with him. Still, we were plebs. He had no means of looking after them, as Silvia knew.

'That's why you abandoned them?'

'I left because you ordered me to.'

Petro's very quietness was working Silvia into a rage. He knew exactly how to drive her wild with restraint. 'And is that a surprise, you bastard?'

Silvia's rage was increasing his stubbornness. He folded his arms. 'We'll sort it out.'

'That's your answer to everything!'

Helena and I had carefully stayed neutral. I would have kept it that way, but since there was a lull Helena inserted sombrely, 'I'm sorry to see you two like this.'

Silvia tossed her head. She went in for the untamed mare attitude. Unfortunately for Petro it took more than a handful of carrots to calm her down. 'Don't interfere, Helena.'

Helena assumed her reasonable expression, which meant she wanted to hurl a bowl of fruit at Silvia. 'I'm just stating a fact Marcus and I always used to envy your loving family life.'

Arria Silvia stood up. She had a secretive smile that Petronius had probably once thought enthralling; today she was using it as a bitter weapon. 'Well, now you see what a fraud it was.' The fight died in her, in a manner I found worrying. She was leaving. Petronius happened to be standing in her way. 'Excuse me.'

'I would like to see my daughters.'

'Your daughters would like to see a father who doesn't pick up every broken blossom that drops in his path.'

Petronius did not trouble to argue. He stepped aside and let her pass.

Petro hung around just long enough to be sure he would not run into Arria Silvia when he went back out to the street. Then he too left, with nothing more said.

Lindsey Davis

Three Hands in The Fountain

Helena finished patting up Julia's wind. A new toy, which Silvia must have brought as a gift for the baby, lay on the table. We ignored it, knowing both of us would always find its presence uncomfortable now. Helena laid the baby down in her cradle. Sometimes I was allowed that privilege, but not today.

'It won't happen again,' I promised, not needing to specify what.

'It won't,' she agreed.

'I'm not making excuses.'

'No doubt you were called away to something extremely important.'

'Nothing is more important than her safety.'

'That's what I think.'

We stood on opposite sides of the room. We were talking in low voices, as if to avoid waking the baby. The tone was strangely light, cautious, with neither Helena's warning nor my apology stressed as they might have been. The searing quarrel between our two old friends had affected us too heavily for us to want or to risk a fight ourselves.

'We shall have to have a nurse,' Helena said.

The reasonable statement involved major consequences. Either I had to give in and borrow a woman from the Camilli (already offered by them, and proudly refused by me), or I had to purchase a slave myself. That would be an innovation for which I was hardly prepared – having no money to buy, feed or clothe her, no inclination to expand my household while we lived in such cramped conditions, and no hope of improving those conditions in the near future.

'Of course,' I replied.

Helena made no response. The soft material of her dark red dress clung slightly to the rocker of the cradle at her feet. I could not see the baby, yet I knew exactly how she would look and smell and snuffle and squint if I went over and peered in at her. Just as I knew the lift of Helena's own breathing, the surge of her annoyance that I had left the child unprotected, and the tightening muscle at the corner of her sweet mouth as she fought her conflicting feelings about me. Maybe I could win her round with a cheeky grin. But she mattered too much for me to try it.

Presumably Petro had once felt about his wife and family as I did about mine. Neither he nor Silvia had changed fundamentally. Yet it seemed that somehow he had stopped caring whether his indiscretions were apparent, while she had stopped believing he was perfect. They had lost the domestic toleration that makes life with another person possible.

Helena must have been wondering whether one day the same thing would happen to us. Yet perhaps she read the sadness in my face because when I held out my hands she came to me. I wrapped her in my arms and just held her. She was warm and her hair smelt of rosemary. As always our bodies seemed to come together in a perfect fit. 'Oh, fruit, I'm sorry. I'm a disaster. What made you choose me?'

'Error of judgement. What made you choose me?'

'I thought you were beautiful.'

'A trick of the light.'

I pulled back slightly, studying her face. Pale, tired perhaps, and yet still calm and capable. She could handle me. Still holding her hip to hip, I dropped a light kiss on her forehead, a greeting after being apart. I believed in daily ceremonial.

I asked after her orphans' school, and she reported her day to me, speaking formally but without wrangling. Then she asked what had been so important as to drag me from home, and I told her about Anacrites. 'So he's pinched our puzzle from under our noses. It's a dead end anyway, so I suppose we should be glad to let him take over.'

'You're not going to give up, Marcus?'

'You think I should go on?'

'You were waiting for me to say it,' she smiled. After a moment she added, watching me, 'What does Petro want to do?'

'Haven't asked him.' I too waited a moment then said wryly, 'When I'm brooding I talk to you. That won't ever change, you know.'

'You and he have a partnership.'

'In work. You're my partner in life.' I had noticed that even though Petro and I were now in harness I still wanted to chew over debatable issues with Helena. 'It's part of the definition, my love. When a man takes a wife it's to share his confidence. However close a friend may be, there remains one last modicum of reserve. Especially if the friend himself is behaving in ways that seem senseless.'

'You'll support Petronius absolutely -'

'Oh, yes. Then I'll come home and tell you what a fool he is.'

Helena looked as if she was about to kiss me in a more than fleeting manner, but to my annoyance she was interrupted. Our front door was being repeatedly kicked by a pair of small feet in large boots. When I strode out to remonstrate it was, as I expected, the surly, antisocial figure of my nephew Gaius. I knew his vandalism of old.

He was thirteen, rising fourteen. One of Galla's brood. A shaved head, an armful of self-inflicted tattoos of sphinxes, half his teeth missing, a huge tunic belted in folds by a three-inch-wide belt with a 'Stuff you' buckle and murderous studs. Hung about with scabbards, pouches, gourds and amulets. A small boy making a big man's fashion statement – and, being Gaius, getting away with it. He was a roamer. Driven on to the streets by an unbearable homelife and his own scavenging nature, he lived in his own world. If we could get him to adulthood without his meeting some dreadful disaster we would do well.

'Stop kicking my door, Gaius.'

'I wasn't.'

'I'm not deaf, and those new footprints are your size.' 'Hello, Uncle Marcus.'

'Hello, Gaius,' I answered patiently. Helena had come out behind me; she reckoned Gaius needed sympathetic conversation and cosseting instead of the belt round the ear which the rest of my family regarded as traditional.

'I've brought you something.'

'Will I like it?' I could guess.

'Of course! It's a smashing present -' Gaius possessed a developed sense of humour. 'Well, it's another disgusting thing you want for your enquiry. A friend of mine found it in a drain in the street.'

'Do you often play in the drains?' asked Helena anxiously. 'Oh no,' he lied, alert to her reforming mood.

He fumbled in one of his pouches and brought out the gift. It was small, about the size of a draughts token. He showed me, then quickly whipped it out of sight. 'How much will you pay?' I should have known the rascal would have heard about the reward Petro had advertised. This sharp little operator had probably prevailed upon half the urchins in Rome to scour unsavoury spots for treasures that I could be bribed to buy.

'Who told you I wanted any more foul finds, Gaius?'

'Everyone's talking about what you and Petro are collecting. Father's at home again,' he said, so I knew who was sounding off most wildly.

'That's nice.' I disapproved of telling a thirteen-year-old boy I thought his father was an unreliable pervert. Gaius was clever enough to work it out for himself.

'Father says he's always fishing pieces of corpses out of the river -'

'Lollius always has to cap everyone else's stories. Has he been telling you wild tales about dismembered bodies?'

'He knows all about them! Have you still got that hand? Can I see it?'

'No, and no.'

'This is the most exciting case you've had, Uncle Marcus,' Gaius informed me seriously. 'If you have to go down the sewers to look for more bits, can I come and hold your lantern?'

'I'm not going down any sewers, Gaius. The pieces that have been found were in the aqueducts; you ought to know the difference. Anyway, it's all been taken care of now. An official is investigating the matter for the Curator of the Aqueducts, and Petronius and I are going back to our ordinary work.'

'Will the water board pay us for bones and stuff?'

'No, they'll arrest you for causing a riot. The Curator wants to keep this quiet. Anyway, what you've found may be nothing.'

'Oh yes it is,' Gaius corrected me hotly. 'It's somebody's big toe!'

At my shoulder Helena shuddered. Keen to impress her, the wretch brought out the knob of dark matter again, then once more demanded how much I would pay for it. I looked at it. 'Come off it, Gaius. Stop annoying me by trying to palm me off with an old dog's bone.'

Gaius scrutinised the item himself, then sadly agreed he was trying it on. 'I'll still hold the lamp for you if you go down the sewers.'

'The aqueducts, I told you. Anyway, I'd rather you held the baby so I don't get told off for abandoning her.'

'Gaius hasn't even seen Julia yet,' suggested Helena. My nephew had bunked off from our introduction party. He hated family gatherings: a lad with hidden sense.

Rather to my surprise he asked for a viewing now. Helena took him indoors and even lifted the baby out of the cradle so he could hold her. After one appalled glance he accepted the sleeping bundle (for some reason Gaius had always been fairly polite to Helena), and then we watched the famous tough being overcome by our tiny tot until he was positively eulogising her miniature fingers and toes. We tried not to show our distaste for this sentimentality.

'I thought you had little brothers and sisters of your own,' said Helena.

'Oh, I don't have anything to do with them!' returned Gaius scornfully. He looked thoughtful. 'If I did look after her, would there be a fee?'

'Of course,' said Helena at once.

'If you did it properly,' I added weakly. I would sooner leave Gaius in charge of a cage of rats, but the situation was desperate. Besides, I never thought he would want to do it.

'How much?' He was a true member of the Didii.

I named a price, Gaius made me double it, then he handed Julia very carefully back to Helena and decided to go home.

Helena called him back to be given a cinnamon pastry (to my annoyance, since I had already spotted it on the table and had been looking forward to devouring it myself). Then she kissed his cheek formally; Gaius screwed up his face, but failed to avoid the salute.

'Jupiter! I hope he's clean. I haven't dragged him to the baths since we went to Spain.'

We watched him go. I still held his little treasure from the drains. I was pleased with myself for rebuffing his attempt at bribery, though I had mixed feelings all the same.

'Why's that?' asked Helena dubiously, already suspecting the worst.

'Mainly because I rather think it really is a human toe.'

Helena touched my cheek gently, with the same air of taming a wild creature that she had shown when kissing Gaius. 'Well there you are,' she murmured. 'Anacrites can do what he likes – but you're obviously still taking an interest!'