Venus in copper

Chapter XVII

Some informers with a telling piece of information rush straight off to report. I like to mull things over. Since I met Helena Justina most of my best mulling had been done in company; she had a sharp brain, with the advantage of a dispassionate view of my work. Her approval always reassured me-and sometimes she contributed a thought that I could hone up into a clever ploy for solving the case. (Sometimes Helena told me I was a patronising ferret, which just proves my point about her perceptiveness.)

I arrived at the Senator's door at about nine, just before dinner. The porter on duty was an old antagonist. He eagerly told me Helena was out.

I asked where she had gone. The bathhouse. Which? He didn't know. I didn't believe him anyway. A senator's daughter rarely leaves home without mentioning where she is going. It need not be true. Just some tale to delude her noble father that his petal is respectable, and give her mother (who knows better) something new to worry about.

I shared a few choice witticisms with Janus, though frankly his intellect had never been up to my standard. I was turning away when their lost pigeon decided to wing in home.

'Where were you?' I demanded, more hotly than I meant.

She looked startled. 'Bathing…'

She was clean all right. She looked delicious. Her hair shone; her skin was soft, and perfumed all over with some distinctive flowery oil that made me want to move very much closer to investigate… I was working up a froth again. I knew she could tell, and I knew she would laugh, so I retreated into banter. 'I just encountered a fortune-teller who promised I was doomed in love. So naturally I dashed straight here -'

'For a dose of doom?'

'Works wonders on the bowels. You're due for "a higher destiny", by the way.'

'That sounds like hard work! Is it like a legacy? Can I pass it on hastily to somebody else?'

'No, madam, your stars are fixed-though luckily the prophetess has decided I am the constellations' agent. For a small backhander I can undertake to unfix fortune and unravel destiny…'

'Remind me never to let you near when I'm spinning wool… Are you coming in to make me laugh, or is this just a tantalising glimpse to make me pine for you?'

Since the porter had opened the door for her, I was already inside.

'Do you?' I asked nonchalantly.

'What?'

'Pine for me?'

Helena Justina gave me an unfathomable smile.

She whisked me further indoors and seated me under a pergola in a secluded colonnade. Helena slid onto a seat next to me and fastened a rose in my shoulder-brooch while she kept the houseslaves running about bringing me wine, warming it, fetching dishes of almonds, then cushions, then a new cup because mine had a minute chip in the glaze… I lay back in her own reclining chair and enjoyed the attention (gnawing my thumb). She seemed extraordinarily loving. Something was up. I decided some burnished bugger with a senatorial pedigree must have asked her home to see his collection of blackfigure jars.

'Marcus, tell me about your day.' I told her, gloomily. 'Cheer up. You need more excitement. Why not let some floosies flaunt themselves at you? Go and see your clients. The lapidary sounds a complete waste of time, but tell them about the astrologer and the mason, then see how they react.'

'You're sending me into a witches' lair!'

'Two overfed spenders, with no taste and even fewer scruples, both falling out of their frocks… I think you can handle them.'

'How do you know all this?'

'I've been to have a look at them.' Her face grew warmer, but she faced me out as I screwed round in the chair, full of alarm.

'Helena Justina! How?'

'I called on them this afternoon. I said I was trying to start a school for female foundlings, and-as women of feeling, and in one case a mother-could I persuade them to contribute?'

'Mars Ultor! Did they?'

'Only Atilia at first. That Pollia is an unyielding little bodkin-but I shamed her in the end. Then of course she gave me a huge donation, trying to impress on me what plutocrats they are.'

'I hope you never told them who you were?'

'I certainly did. There was no reason for them to connect me with you.' Cruel, but true. I was having a hard time connecting us myself. 'People who live on the Pincian are terrible snobs. They were delighted to have a senator's daughter sip mulled wine amid their outrageous artwork, while she entreated them to involve themselves in her modest civic works.'

'Did they get you drunk?'

'Not quite. Trust them to believe they were immaculate hostesses for giving a visitor monstrous goblets of boiling hot liquor, totally unsuited for the time of day; what I really needed was a nice fingerglass of herbal tea. Did they get you drunk?'

'No.'

'Bad luck! They wanted me to admire their solid silver goblets-too heavy to lift and too ornate to clean. Mine had the biggest topaz I have ever seen.' She looked thoughtful, then commented, 'They judge the world by what it costs. Unless the price is vulgar, nothing counts… Your rates are too reasonable; I'm surprised they employed you.'

'Thanks!' I barked, though I had the uneasy feeling my darling might be right. I buried my face in my hands for a moment then laughed. 'What will you do with the money?'

'Found a school. I'm not a hypocrite, Marcus.'

She was amazing. It seemed best to keep my admiration to myself. Helena needed no encouragement. I had wit-nessed her in public as endearingly shy-yet she forgot all about that whenever some daft idea like this invaded her head. 'I worry when you career off uncontrollably. Why ever did you go?' She would not answer me. 'Curiosity!' I slid my nearest arm round her and pulled her over against my chest, looking into her great dark eyes with their perplexing mixture of love and dismissiveness. 'So what did you think of my clients?'

'Rather too obvious-if I go again I must take them a present of some dress pins…'

Her old sense of mischief was dancing there, I was glad to see. 'Sabina Pollia clawed her way up from nothing-and may still have dirt under her fingernails. The maternal one looks like the kind of tremulous sweetheart who begs for protection-while she savagely manipulates everyone around her… Did you meet her little boy, by the way? I suspect that tot has the full measure of his mama. Atilia has big plans for him. Her life's work will be putting him up for the Senate the minute he's old enough -'

I could think of bigger ambitions for a family who had the energy and funds to promote a child; tactless to say so to the daughter of a senator. 'But a wonderful mother!' I teased, without thinking: equally tactless, in fact.

'Lots of us might be wonderful mothers?

Even before the violence flared I had enveloped her fiercely with both arms. 'You will!' We had never discussed this; no opportunity. I had assumed I was glad to avoid it; yet now I found myself launching into an urgent, prepared speech: 'My love, neither of us was ready; losing that baby may have been the best fate for the poor mite -' Helena squirmed angrily. I glimpsed some dark mood I didn't care for, but I was not prepared to dump the girl and run just because she expected it. 'No, listen; I need to talk about this-Helena, I never rely on anything, but so far as I'm concerned we now have to find some way of being together; we'll enjoy that-and when it really seems a good idea we will start a new generation of quaint curiosities like us-'

'Perhaps I don't want to -'

'I'll win you round -'

'Marcus, I don't want to think about it; I need to live with what has happened first!'

'I know that -' I suspected I would lose her altogether if she crashed the bolts home on me now. Besides, I was annoyed. 'Don't block me out of it-and don't suppose it had no effect on me!'

'Oh you and your old republican code!' Helena murmured with one of her sudden changes of mood, kissing my face. 'Stop being so reasonable -' I said nothing. 'Didius Falco, somebody ought to explain to you, informers are tough; informers are hard men who lead mean lives, and whenever they have a lucky escape, informers speed off back to their own low world-'

'Wrong. Informers are soft slugs. Any woman in decent shoes can stamp on us.' That reminded me of something: 'Though I have no intention of letting the Hortensius females squash me on a garden path. There was no need for you to reconnoitre the terrain; my darling, I can look after myself…' I could certainly do that. My problem was looking after Helena. 'Don't get involved.'

'No Marcus,' she promised, with a meek air I knew was false.

'Well don't tell me afterwards!' She was still watching me. 'There's no need to worry about me. Those two women at the Hortensius house are trash. There's no one to compete with you. Besides, I have a rule: never sleep with a client.'

'Ever broken it.'

'Once.'

I gave her a sheepish grin. She gave me a twitchy smile. I tugged her head down onto my shoulder and held her close.

The colonnade where we were lurking was a completely private area. I stayed as I was, holding Helena. I felt relaxed, and more affectionate than I usually allowed myself to be. She still looked troubled; I stroked her hair, which soothed the look away. This encouraged me to range more widely, in case there were any other little tension spots that needed attention…

'Marcus!' I decided to carry on. Her sleek, soft skin seemed to have been oiled at the baths especially to attract an appreciative hand. 'Marcus, you're making things impossible for both of us…' I decided to prove I was as tough as she had said earlier; so I stopped.

Not long afterwards I chose to make my excuses; the various chinks of silverware which announced that her parents were at dinner were becoming an embarrassment. Helena invited me to dine, but I did not want Helena or her parents (especially her mother) to get the idea I was the sort of parasitic hanger-on who kept turning up at mealtimes in the hope of being fed.

On leaving the house I walked north, thoughtfully. Some informers give the impression that wherever they go ravishing women shed their scanty clothing without the slightest encouragement and want to fall into bed. I told myself it so rarely happened to me because I appealed to a more selective type of girl.

Well; I had appealed to her once.