Time To Depart

XXIV

BY THE TIME consciousness reasserted itself, my sister Galla had told my sister Junia, who had rushed to relate the tale to Allia, who – since she could no longer exclaim with Victorina, who was dead – told Maia. Maia and Allia normally did not get on, but this was an emergency; Allia was almost last in the queue and she was bursting to amaze somebody with news of my latest offence. Maia, who alone amongst them had a conscience, first decided. to leave us alone with our trouble. Then, since she was a friend to Helena, she set off for our apartment to make sure nobody had left home over it. Had rapid action been necessary, Maia would have comforted anyone she found sobbing, then rushed out to look for the runaway.

While she was still on her way to us, I was rousing myself.

`Thank you.'

`What for?'

`The sweet gift of your love.'

`Oh that!' Helena smiled. I had to close my eyes, or I would have been in bed with her until nightfall.

Then she asked me, wanting answers this time, about our visit to Plato's Academy. I rolled over on my back, with my arms behind my head. She lay with her cheek against my chest while I told her my impressions, ending with the fact that I had known Lalage long ago.

Helena laughed at the story. `Did you tell her?'

`No! But I left a few hints to worry her.'

Helena was more interested in the results of our official enquiries: `Did you believe her when she claimed she was going to resist having the place "protected" by a male criminal?'

`I suppose so. To call her competent would be an understatement! She can run the brothel and easily beat up anyone who tries to interfere.'

`So maybe,' suggested Helena, `she was telling you more than you think.'

`Such as?'

`Maybe she would like to take over where Balbinus left off.' `Well we've agreed she wants to run her own empire. Are you suggesting something more?'

`Why not?'

'Lalage control the gangs?' It was an alarming thought. `Think about it,' said Helena.

I was silent, but she must have known I always took her suggestions seriously. Grumpily I accepted this one, though it was against my will. If we could say Nonnius Albius had stepped into the space left by his former chief, things would be much simpler both to prove and to put right. If we needed to consider newcomers, let alone women, the affair assumed unwelcome complexity.

Wanting to make sure I had listened, Helena sprang up excitedly, leaning over me on her elbows. Then I noticed her expression change. With a sudden mutter she turned away out of bed and left me. She scampered next door, and I heard her being sick.

I followed, waited until the worst was over, then put an arm around her and sponged her face. Our eyes met. I gave her the look of a man who was being more reasonable than she deserved. `Don't say anything!' she commanded, still white-lipped. `Wouldn't dream of it.'

`It can't be something we ate at dinner disagreeing with me, because we forgot to have any dinner.'

`Just as well, apparently.'

`So it seems you were right,' she admitted, in a neutral voice. Then Maia's voice exclaimed from the door, `Well congratulations! It's a secret, I dare say.'

`Unless you tell somebody,' I answered, biting back a curse.

`Oh trust me!' smiled Maia, deliberately looking unreliable.

She came in, a neat, curly-haired woman wearing her good cloak and nicest sandals so she could make a real occasion of simpering at the trouble I had caused. `Put her on the bed and lie her flat,' she advised. `Well this is it!' she chirped at Helena helpfully. `You've really done it now!'

`Oh thanks, Maia!' I commented as Helena struggled upright and I started clearing up.

Helena groaned. `Tell me how long this is going to last, Maia.'

`All your life,' snarled Maia. She had four children, or five if you counted her husband, who needed more looking after than the rest. `Half the time you're lying down exhausted, and the rest you just wish you could be. As far as I can tell it goes on for ever. When I'm dead I'll come back and tell you if it improves then.'

`That's what I was afraid of,' Helena answered. `First the pain, and then your whole life taken over.'

They both seemed to be joking about it, but there was a real edge. Helena and my youngest sister were on very friendly terms; when they talked, especially about men, there was a fierce undertone of criticism. It made me feel left out. Left out, and thoroughly to blame.

`We can have a nurse,' I offered. `Helena my darling, if it makes you feel better, I'll even set aside my principles and let you pay for her.'

This piece of piety did not soothe the situation. I decided it was time to go out. I put up the excuse of emptying the rubbish pail, grabbed it and sauntered downstairs whistling, leaving the pair of them to enjoy themselves grumbling. I wasn't going far. I would use up the rest of the evening at the new apartment on the other side of Fountain Court. Having a second home to escape to began to seem a good idea.

I felt shaken. Faced with definite evidence that I was becoming a father, I needed to be alone somewhere so I could think.

I had chosen a good moment. The basket-weaver hailed me with news that a man he knew who hired out carts was bringing one round for me, something he had volunteered when I talked to him previously. The cart could only be driven here at night because of the vehicle curfew, and as I would be keeping it for a few days while I cleared the property, arrangements were required. I wanted to use the cart as a temporary rubbish skip. For this to work we had to put it up on blocks and take the wheels off, or someone was bound to make off with it. That was no easy task. Then we had to manhandle the wheels inside the weaver's shop and chain them together for added security. My troubles had only just started. In the short time that the weaver, the carter and I were in the shop making the wheels safe, some joker stowed half a woodwormy bed frame and a broken cupboard in the skip.

We dragged them out and towed, them a few strides further, leaving them outside the empty lockup on the other side of the road, so the aediles would not make us (or anybody who knew us) pay for clearing the street. Luckily Maia came down at that point, so I told her to send her eldest boy and I'd give him a copper or two to act as a guard.

`I'll send him tomorrow,' Maia promised. `You can have Marius when he's finished school, but if you want a watchman earlier in the day you'll have to pinch one of Galla's or Allia's horrible lot.'

'Marius can miss a few lessons.'

`He won't. Marius likes school!' Maia's children were encouragingly well behaved. Since I felt disinclined to bring more vandals and loafers into the world, this cheered me up. Maybe, despite all the evidence I saw daily in Rome, parenthood could work out well. Maybe I too could father a studious, polite little person who would be a credit to the family. `Put a cloth on top overnight. Famia reckons that makes a skip invisible.'

Famia, her husband, was a lazy swine; trust him to realise people are so idle they would rather lose a chance of dumping their waste in someone else's bin than apply a bit of exertion uncovering the container first.

Maia hugged me rather unexpectedly. In our large family she was the only one younger than me; we had always been fairly close. `You'll make a wonderful father!'

I pointed out that there were a great many uncertainties before ever I got that far.

After Maia left I started hauling debris from the first-floor apartment. The weaver, who told me his name was Ennianus, assured me he would love to be some help but apparently he had a bad back that not many people knew about. I said it was lucky that selling baskets didn't call for much bending and lifting, then he shambled off.

I didn't need him. I rolled my tunic sleeves up to my shoulders and set to like a man who has something disturbing to forget about. Although autumn had arrived, the nights were still light long enough for me to put in an hour or two of heavy work. The whole first-floor apartment was crammed with dirty old junk though I came across no dead bodies or other unpleasant remains. It was hard work, but could have been much worse.

Smaractus must have let his handymen use this place sometimes as a materials store. There were half-buckets of good nails lurking under the warped scaffold boards and bits of mangled joist timber. One of his halfwits had left behind a perfectly decent adze that would find a welcome place in my own toolbag. They were a feckless lot. Dustsheeting had gone mouldy through being folded up while wet. Pulleys had rusted solid. Paint had gone hard in uncovered kettles. They never took home an empty wine flask or filthy food wrapper if they could stuff it under the unusable tangles of hoisting rope. There were unopened sacks of substances that had set like rock so it was impossible to identify the contents; nothing was labelled, of course. Smaractus never bought from a regular builders' merchant, but acquired oddments from contractors who had already been paid once by some innocent householder who had never heard of demanding to keep spare materials.

I cleared one room and used it to store any stuff I could reclaim. By the end of the evening I had made good headway and felt pleased with my work. One more stint would reduce the apartment to a shell, then Helena and I could start thinking about what was needed next. I had not found many bad mending jobs to do. The decor would probably be a pleasure to tackle once I had braced myself to start. Living in the kind of hovels I did, I had never had much call to be a dado and fresco man so this would be something new. Everywhere needed a furious scrubbing, but it struck me that while I was attached to the Fourth Cohort I might be able to wangle help from the fire-fighters to bring the water in…

On my final trip down to street level I found I had been donated an old bench and a soaking-wet counterpane in my rubbish skip. I turfed them out, then covered the skip, and roped it too. I went to the nearest baths to cleanse myself of dust and sweat, mentally adding sweet oil and a strigil to the list of things I would bring across next time I came to work. After I rinsed the dirt from my hair, I also added a comb to the list.

It was dark when I made my way back up Fountain Court. I felt tired but satisfied, as you do after hard labour. My muscles were stretched, but I had relaxed at the baths. I felt on top of life. Playing the thorough type, I stepped over to look under the cover and check my skip again.

In the gloom I nearly didn't see what was there. If I had still been tipping rubbish in, I would not have noticed a thing. That was somebody's intention. Rome being the city it is whoever put the young baby in the cart meant him no good. He was cute, and gurgling trustingly, but a baby who gets dumped by his keeper does not easily acquire another not unless he is grabbed by a woman who is purposely watching the middens in case someone abandons an unwanted newborn. Nobody in Fountain Court felt, that desperate. Whoever ditched this little one had left him to die. They would not have expected anybody else to pick him up and take him home.

Since it was me who found him, that was what I did.