Time To Depart

XXV

ONLY YOU COULD do this!' Helena groaned.

`Your lucky day!' I told the babe. `Here's a nice lady who only wants to cuddle you. Listen to me. She's a pushover for big brown eyes and a showy grin -'

`This is no good, Marcus.'

`Very true. I'm determined to be firm. I'm not allowing other people's unwanted goods in my rubbish skip. I paid for it, and I've got plenty of clutter to shift for myself-'

`Marcus!'

`All right, but once I picked him up and took him out, what was I supposed to do? Lay him down in the gutter and just walk off?'

Helena sighed. `Of course not.'

`He'll have to find himself a, berth somewhere. This is just a temporary reprieve.' It had a callous ring.

I noticed Helena made no attempt to come and take the child. He stared at me, as, if he realized this could be the big tricky moment in his life. He was quite a few months old, enough to take notice of his surroundings anyway.

He looked healthy. His hair, which was dark and slightly curled, had been trimmed neatly. He wore a proper little tunic, in white, with embroidery at the neck. He had been wearing it much longer than he should, however. That kind of babywear usually belongs to families where the children are changed regularly, almost certainly by a nurse; this baby had not been cleaned up, perhaps for days. He was soiled and sore. I was handling him gingerly.

`Poor little fellow needs a bath.'

`I'll find you a big bowl,' snorted Helena. She was definitely not going to help.

`Luckily you've come to a home where the women are fierce but the men understand it's not your fault,' I told him. When I talked, he hardly seemed aware of me. I tickled his chin, and he did condescend to wave his feet and hands about.

He was a very quiet baby. Something about him was too subdued. I frowned, and Helena, who had by then brought me a bowl of warm water, looked at me closely the way she did when she thought I was drawing conclusions. `Do you think he has been mistreated?'

I had lain him on his back on a tunic on the table while I took the clothes off him. He was not afraid of being handled. He was plump, a good weight. There were no bruises or unhappy marks on him.

`Well, he looks unharmed. But there's something odd,' I mused. `He's too old, for one thing. Unwanted babies are abandoned at birth. This lost mite must be nearly a year old. Who keeps a child so long, looks after him, grows fond of him – and then carefully pushes him under a canvas in a rubbish skip?'

`Someone who knows it's your skip!' suggested Helena dryly.

`How could they? I only got it tonight. And if they wanted me to find him, why wait until I'd finished work, covered it up, and could not be expected to look inside again? I only found him by accident. He could have died of exposure or been gnawed by rats or anything.'

Helena was examining a loose cord around his neck, a twisted skein of coloured material. `What do you think this is? It's very fine thread,' she said, unravelling it partially. `One of the strands could be gold.'

`He's had an amulet probably. But where's it gone?'

'Too valuable to throw away with the child!' Helena Justina was growing angry now. `Some person felt able to abandon the baby – but made sure they kept his bulla.'

`Perhaps they removed it because it might have identified him?'

She shook her head sadly, commenting, `This never happens in stories. The lost child always has a jewel very carefully left with it so years later it can be proved to be the missing heir.' She softened slightly. `Maybe his mother cannot keep him, but has preserved his amulet as a memento.'

`I hope it breaks her heart! We'll make sure we keep his tunic,' I said. `I'll get Lenia to wash it, and I'll ask her if any of the laundry girls have seen it before. If they have they are bound to remember the embroidery.'

`Do you think he's a local baby?'

`Who knows?'

Somebody knew. If I had had more time, I might have traced his parents, but the rubbish-skip babe had picked the wrong moment to be dropped on me. Working with Petronius on the Emporium heist was going to take up all my energies. In any case, finding parents who don't want their babies is a dead-end job.

I had done the child a favour, but in the long run he might not thank me for it. He had been found in a district so poor that we who lived there could hardly keep ourselves alive. On the Aventine, three times as many children died in infancy as those who survived, and many of the survivors grew up with no life worth speaking of. There was little hope for him, even if I did find somebody to take him in. Who that could be I had no idea. Helena and I had our own troubles; at this stage we were certainly not available to foster unknown orphans. There were too many children already in my family. Although no member of the Didius clan would be made to suffer this child's fate, finding space for an extra who had no claim on us was inconceivable.

We could sell him as a slave, of course. He wouldn't be overjoyed about that.

The baby seemed to like being washed. The sensation appeared to reassure him, and when Helena allowed her guard to slip and started a gentle splashing game, he seemed to know he was expected to chuckle and play along with her. `He's not a slave's baby,' I observed. `He's already been among feckless timewasters who throw water all over the room!'

Helena let me haul him out, though she did find a towel to dry him on. He must have decided that now he could start in with the serious demands: food preferably. We had patted him all over, allowing him a few more tickles on the way, and rolled him in a stole while we thought about where we could stow him safely overnight. Then the babe decided to assert himself and began roaring.

Unluckily for Helena, that was the moment when the Palace slave arrived to ask me to an urgent confidential meeting with the Emperor's eldest son.

I managed not to grin as I kissed Helena tenderly, apologised for bunking off – and left her to cope.