Three Hands in The Fountain

XLII

Martinus took charge of the head. It would be reunited with the torso at the station house. Then the formalities would be set in motion so Cicurrus could hold a funeral for his wife.

For the first and probably the only time ever, Anacrites and I went to a bath-house together. We were both extremely thorough with the strigil. Nevertheless, I did not offer to help him scrape his back.

I had taken him as my guest to the baths attached to Glaucus' gym, only a few steps from the Forum. A mistake. Soon Anacrites was glancing around as if he were thinking how civilised it was here and that he might apply for a subscription. I let him leave by himself to go back to whatever he wasted his time on at the Curator's office, while I stayed behind to warn Glaucus that the Chief Spy was not the type he wanted to patronise his esteemed premises.

'I could see that,' sniffed Glaucus. When I admitted whom exactly I had brought today, he gave me a disgusted look. Glaucus liked to avoid trouble. His way of doing it was to bar people who habitually caused it. He only let me in because he viewed me as a harmless amateur. Professionals are paid for their work; he knew I rarely was.

I enquired if Glaucus had a free period for a spot of wrestling practice. He snorted. I took it as a negative, and I knew why too.

I strolled out down the steps, between the pastry shop and the small library which were provided for patrons' extra delight. Glaucus ran a luxurious establishment. You could not only exercise and bathe, but borrow some odes to rekindle a flagging love affair and then stick your teeth together with glazed raisin dumplings that were fiendishly delicious.

Today I had no time for reading and I was in no mood for sweetmeats. I was oiled and scraped in every pore yet still uneasy with the results. I had been in filthy locations before, but something about descending into sewers to find hacked-up human remains left me shuddering. It would have been bad enough even without remembering that I myself had once dropped a man's decayed carcase through a manhole. A couple of years and plenty of heavy rainstorms should have ensured there was no chance I would stumble across unwelcome ghosts. But down there in the Cloaca Maxima I had almost been glad of Anacrites' irritating presence to prevent me dwelling on the past.

It was over. There was no need for Helena ever to find out. I was still unsure how she would react to hearing that her missing uncle Publius had been left lying dead until he was positively fermenting, then shoved in the Cloaca, and shoved there by me… By now I thought I was safe. I had convinced myself I would never have to face her with the truth.

Even so, I must have been brooding. Here at Glaucus' gym I was on home ground. Informers learn that home is where you should never relax. Places where you are known are where bad characters come to find you. And when I noticed the group who were waiting outside for me today, I had already walked past them and given them time to emerge from the doorway of the pastry shop so they were above me on the steps.

I heard the clatter of boots.

I didn't stop. Instead of turning to see who was behind me, I took three running skips then a giant leap down the rest of the steps to pavement level. Then I turned.

There was a large group. I didn't count them. About four or five from the pastry shop, followed by more streaming out of the library. I would have yelled for help, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed the pastry shop proprietor beetling off into the gymnasium.

'Stop right there!' It was worth a try. They did pause slightly.

'You Falco?'

'Certainly not.'

'He's lying.'

'Don't insult me. I'm Gambaronius Philodendronicus, a well-known gauze-pleater of these parts.'

'It's Falco!' Spot on.

This was clearly no genteel outing of philosophy students. These were rough. Street-stroppy. Unfamiliar faces with fighters' eyes, shedding menace like dandruff. I was stuck. I could run; they would catch me. I could make a stand; that was even more stupid. No weapons were visible, but they probably had them concealed under those dark clothes. They were built like men who could do a lot of harm without any help from equipment.

'What do you want?'

'You, if you're Falco.'

'Who sent you?'

'Florius! They were smiling. It wasn't pretty, or cheerful.

'Then you've got the wrong man; you want Petronius Longus.' Naming him was my only chance. He was bigger than me, and there was a faint hope I could somehow warn him.

'We've seen Petronius already,' they sniggered. I went cold. After his night on watch at the Circus he would have been asleep alone at the oflice. When Petronius was dog-tired he slept like a stone. In the army we used to joke that wild bears could eat him from the feet up and he wouldn't notice until they were tickling him behind the ears.

I knew what kind of punishment squad this was. I had once seen a man who had been beaten up on the orders of Milvia's mother. He was dead when he was discovered. He must have hoped for an end to it long before he actually passed out. These heavies worked for that family; I had no reason to think Milvia's husband was any more scrupulous than her mother. Desperately I tried not to imagine Petro enduring an assault like that.

'Did you kill him?'

'That's for next time.' The terror tactic. Make it hurt, then give the victim days or weeks to think about death coming for him.

They were co-ordinated. The pack had spread; now they were creeping down on two sides to encircle me. I edged backwards slowly. The flight of steps from the gym was steep; I wanted them away from there. I glanced quickly behind me, ready for the off.

When they rushed me, I was looking at one, but I jumped another. Springing forward into the pack, I dived low, and hit him around the knees. It brought him down. I rolled over him and threw myself up a few steps. I got an arm around the neck of a different lump of muscle and bodily dragged him with me back towards the gym, fighting to put him between me and some of the others. I clung on, using my feet to deter the rest as they weighed in. If they had had knives I would have been done for, but these lads were physical. They were stamping too. I was dodging furiously.

For a few moments I was heading for a short walk to Hades. I took some heavy blows and kicks, but then there was a racket from above us. Help at last.

I lost my man, but managed to squeeze his neck so hard I damn near killed him. As he crouched coughing at my feet I sent him down the steps with a flying kick. Someone behind me cheered raucously. Out came Glaucus, followed by a herd of his clients. Some had been weight-lifting; they were in loincloths with wristbands. Some had been at swordplay with Glaucus himself and were armed with wooden practice swords – blunt, but good for vicious whacks. A couple of generous souls had even left their baths. Naked and glistening with oil, they rushed out to help – useless for grappling opponents, but themselves impossible to catch hold of. It added wildly to the confusion as we launched ourselves into a fierce streetfight.

'I waste my time, Falco!' Glaucus snarled as we both worked over a couple of nut-headed thugs.

'Right! You haven't taught me anything useful -'

The clients at Glaucus' gym usually honed their bodies discreetly, hardly speaking to each other. We went there for exercise, cleanliness, and the fierce hands of the Cilician masseur, not chat. Now I saw a man who I happened to know was a rising barrister digging his fingers into someone's eyes as viciously as if he had been born in the Suburra slums. An engineer tried to break another thug's neck, clearly enjoying the experience. The prized masseur was keeping his hands out of trouble, but that did not prevent him from using his feet for wholly unacceptable purposes.

'How could you get trapped right on the damned doorstep?' Glaucus grunted, fielding a punch then slamming in a rapid set of four.

'They were holed up in your sweetmeat shop -' His man was out of it, so I threw him mine to hold while I battered him. 'Must have had a complaint. I keep telling you the cinnamon mice are stale -'

'Behind!' I spun, in time to knee the next bastard as he leapt at me. 'Talk less and watch your guard,' Glaucus advised.

I trapped a wrestler about to put a fatal lock on his neck. 'Take your own orders,' I grinned. Glaucus screwed the grappler's nose around until it snapped. 'Nice trick. Requires a calm temperament,' I smiled at the blood-stained victim. 'And very strong hands.'

All down the street there was action. It was a friendly commercial alley. Pausing only to remove their goods from the danger zone, the shopkeepers had come out to help Glaucus, who was a popular neighbour. Passers-by who felt left out started throwing punches; if they were hopeless at that they lobbed apples instead. Dogs barked. Women hung out of upstairs windows, yelling a mixture of encouragement and abuse, then emptied buckets of whoknows-what on fighters' heads for the fun of it. Washing was caught on the practice swords and came down, tangling around frantically tussling figures. Weightlifters were showing off their pectorals carrying horizontal human weights. A startled donkey skidded on the road, tipping wineskins off his back so that they burst and doused his furious driver, making a slippery patch on the paving which claimed several victims who crashed to the ground and were painfully trampled.

Then some idiot fetched the vigiles.

A whistle alerted us.

As the red tunics rushed into the alley, order reimposed itself in seconds. All they saw was a normal street scene. The Florius gang, with the skill of long practice, had melted away. Two feet stuck out from behind a barrel of salt fish – evidently somebody sleeping it off. Something that looked like red tunic dye was being sluiced along with a bucket of water and swept down a drain by a girl who was loudly singing a rude song. Groups of men sized up fruit on stalls, making studied comparisons. Women leant out of windows adjusting pulleys on the drying lines above the alley. Dogs lay grinning on their backs and waggling their bodies madly as passers-by tickled their turns. I was pointing out to Glaucus how the gable on his bathhouse was capped by an excellent acroterion of truly classic design, while he thanked me for my generous praise of his fine Gorgon-featured antefix.

The sky was blue. The sun was hot. Two fellows walking up the steps of the gymnasium discussing the Senate had no clothes on for some reason, but otherwise there was nobody the guardians of the law could arrest.