'Falco, you ought to have warned us!' Arria Silvia accused me bitterly, as if she really thought Petronius would have omitted saying it.
I sighed. 'Silvia, I have work to do. I'd like to stay unobtrusive in a family group. As soon as I can meet the man I need to interview, I'll be off. Petronius is not involved-'
Silvia snorted. Her voice grew more tense. 'Oh! I know you two! You'll leave me alone with all the children in this terrible village while you do what you like. I won't know where you are, or what you're doing, or what any of it is about. Who,' she demanded, 'were those men this afternoon?' Silvia had an accurate grasp of whatever her male companions were trying to conceal.
I must have been weary. I was beginning to feel I could no longer cope; a typical holiday mood.
'The one in green must be a freedman with a grudge called Barnabas. Don't ask me who loaned him the cavalry. Someone told me he was dead-'
'Ghost, is he?' Petronius rasped.
'Matter of time!' Petro gave me his sardonic smile; I decided to concentrate on Silvia. I poured her a drink; she had a prissy way of sipping wine that made my teeth grate. 'Look, you know I work for Vespasian. A certain group have hung back from welcoming him to the purple; I'm persuading them that that is a bad idea-'
'
'Apparently,' I said drily, 'the new diplomacy consists of reasoned argument-backed up by hefty bribes.'
I was too tired to argue and far too much in awe of her. Silvia reminded me briefly of Helena at her worst, but a tussle over nothing with her ladyship had always given me the mental satisfaction some men find in playing draughts.
'Earned any real cash from Vespasian yet?' Petronius niggled. My reply would have been ill-natured but we were supposed to be here to enjoy ourselves, so I held back. In a scruffy lodging house beside the Bay of Naples you get no thanks for restraint.
'I want to know what you are doing here?' Silvia broke in.
'My fugitive is on a boat that was spotted in this neighbourhood-'
'Spotted where?' she insisted.
'Oplontis actually.'
'So,' Silvia deduced inexorably, 'our staying at this disgusting village is no coincidence!' I tried to look suave. 'What will you do when you find the boat, Falco?'
'Row out to speak to him-'
'You don't want my husband for that.'
'No,' I said, cursing inwardly. I can row. But I had envisaged Petronius doing the hard work while I jumped off at landing stages and steered. 'Unless,' I started with a cautious glance, 'you can spare him to come to Pompeii to help me unload a cargo of ingots I'll be using for my disguise?'
'No, Falco!' Silvia raged.
Petronius made no attempt to speak. I avoided his eye.
Arria Silvia shot me a look that was as poisonous as aconite. 'Oh, what's the point asking me? You'll both do as you like!'
It seemed a smart idea to take Larius upstairs to inspect the accommodation and unpack.
This did not delay us long. We found our rooms up a dark corridor. We were hiring two stuffy cubicles with crumbling wattle walls. The beds had uneven softwood slats where they had lost their suspension ropes. Larius and I bent up our pallet to look for bugs but there was nowhere a bug who liked his comforts could make a nest, just a coarse cover, waxy with ancient dirt, which held together a few matted lumps of straw that would poke into our backs like mountain scree.
I changed my boots for sandals and headed downstairs, intending to suggest that we left Ollia with the children while the rest of us went out to eat. Larius was fiddling secretively in a satchel; I told him to follow me. At ground level I stopped, waiting to bawl up at him when the absent-minded sparrow forgot to come.
Across the courtyard Petronius Longus sat where we had left him, with his head back against the pergola, his long legs stretched out, and a pain-free expression as he absorbed the evening peace. He hated quarrels, yet could let them slide over him. Now he had finished driving he was, despite everything, starting to enjoy himself. His familiar brown hair looked more ruffled than usual. His wine cup lolled at an angle; it was obviously empty, its weight in his hand merely comforting. His other arm was crooked casually round his wife.
After five years suffering the hazards of marriage these two managed in private with less fuss than their public mask implied. Arria Silvia had edged in beside Petronius. She was weeping, reduced to a disappointed young woman who felt exhausted beyond her strength. Petro was letting her snuffle on his great shoulder while he went on dreaming to himself.
Just when I had impressed myself with this clever dissertation on marriage, Silvia dried her eyes. I watched Petro rally his attention and wind her in closer. I had known him for years, and had seen him kiss more women than his wife would want to hear about; I could see the old reprobate was taking much more trouble now than a mere peck to keep the peace. Afterwards he said something to her, very quietly, and she answered him. Then they both got up and walked out towards the road with their arms round each other and their heads close.
I felt an internal wrench that had nothing to do with lack of food. Larius appeared. I told him I had changed my mind about dinner, then dragged him back indoors.
One aspect of my nephew's difficult phase, I noticed, was that wherever anyone took him the young curmudgeon looked as if he wished he had stayed at home.
XXIV
Next day the sun was shining; in my mood, this came as a surprise.
I strolled out to take stock; to the right and left the two arms of the Bay lay shimmering in a fine grey haze. Ahead, Capri was entirely hidden by mist, and when I glanced back over my shoulder the cone of Vesuvius loomed as a mere blur too. But even at that early hour the light off the sea was beginning to dazzle; this soft, all-pervading haze would precede a hot, blue, brilliant day.
I felt dismal. My nephew had slept soundly, despite our rocky mattress. Petronius snored. So (I discovered) did his wife.
'Falco looks jaded. We must find him a girlfriend!' Arria Silvia chirruped brightly at breakfast, piercing a peach with her vixenish front teeth. I told myself that at least we had not been away long enough for people to collect stomach disorders and start comparing notes on them while we ate.
'Give him five minutes in Pompeii,' quipped Petro, 'and he'll find one for himself…' For a moment I thought he meant a stomach ache.
I could not concentrate on pointless domestic chat. I felt thoroughly preoccupied. Here I was in Campania in the holiday season. As we drove in yesterday I had sized up the laughing faces on all sides-frank young women in the pink of condition, relaxed and plumped up in the warm seaside air, each one wearing very little and just looking for a reason to take it off… So here was I, a handsome devil in a nearly-new mustard tunic (a snip from a second-hand stall, jollied up by my mother with two rows of crinkled braid). And if a woman who looked like a Venus of Praxiteles had jumped out of a fountain straight into my lap wearing nothing but a pair of fancy sandals and a smile, I would have tipped her off and stomped away to brood on my own.
Breakfast was water and fruit. If that was not what you were used to at home, you could omit the fruit.
We men slunk off to Pompeii the same day.
Just out of town at the mouth of the Sarnus lay a small harbour which also served the larger centres at Nola and Nuceria. We left the cart at the port; the Marine Gate was too steep to take it up. Larius wanted to stay watching the boats but I could not face telling my sister that her firstborn had received a rude awakening on the River Sarnus quayside from a barrel-waisted bosun, so we dragged him along with us. Petro and I went through the pedestrian tunnel on the left of the Gate; there was a separate slope for pack animals, which Larius pointedly
