SHADOWS IN BRONZE

Rutupiae and Thanet, and their dusky brothers from the north banks of the Tamesis Estuary… Petro tucked into the dinner wine with a wry face. It seemed fine to me, though I could tell he despised it. He had been tasting local vintages while I was away from Oplontis and enthused educationally about sparkling whites and robust young reds while I tackled the hors-d'oeuvres, feeling jealous of having given up his company.

I was really missing Petro. This morose pang reminded me I had work to do. The sooner I did it, the sooner I could escape from Herculaneum back to my friends…

If the hired waiters were hoping to get off early, they hoped wrong. The invitees were planning on a long night. The plebs displayed cautious manners but the senators and knights and their ladies were piling into the viands, all eating twice as much as they would at home since this was free. The noise and the scents of sizzling wine sauces must have blown on the breeze to Pompeii, three miles away. The liquor slaves were skidding on the wet soles of their bare feet as they rushed round with refills, barely bothering to show the charcoal to the hot wine scuttles or measure the spice. There was no doubt Crispus was achieving what he wanted. It was the sort of ghastly communal occasion that everyone would remember later as a wonderful time.

After a couple of hours the Spanish dancing troupe arrived. Those of us around the bottom table redoubled the cheer we were just putting up as our main course dishes hove in sight. The waiters were doing their best, with gristly good temper, but it was a job and a half feeding such a throng, and there were the usual aggravating women who ordered up veal medallions in fennel sauce-without the fennel, please!

I guessed that the entertainers were timed to suit the nobs in the triclinium, who had their own swift fleet of carvers and carriers under supervision of a wily major-domo. Sure enough, when I went to ask the winged centaurs how matters were progressing, a great silver platter with one forlorn cinnamon pear was just coming out after the dessert course as a table tray of finger bowls swept in. I could hear the furious clack of Hispanic castanets, while one of those singers with no voice but a great deal of bravado was expressing anguish loudly in ferocious Spanish style. Through the portals I glimpsed a fiery girl with floor-length blue-black hair and not much in her clothes coffer striking attitudes which demonstrated her nakedness most attractively. I was so busy admiring her formidable fandango I forgot to look out for Crispus. Lackeys staggered past me under cornucopiae of fresh fruits, some so exotic I was unsure what their names were, then the doors slammed, and I was shooed away again.

I rushed back and in an undertone told Petro about the dancer; he whistled enviously at this bonus of my job.

•

Silvia had organized a main course for me. I managed to cram in a gingered duck wing, a potted salad, and a few mouthfuls of roast pork in plums, then I nipped back to the triclinium hastily. Things had moved on faster than I wanted. The host and most of his private party had dispersed. The two women with the jewellery were talking about their children, ignoring one of the younger men, before whom a different dancer with hypnotic stomach muscles was spiralling majestically.

Judging by the care with which the catering had been ordered, I reckoned my man had emerged now for some heavy social mingling. Making himself agreeable, as Helena Justina called it. Once they had eaten his dinner, people would feel even better about him if they saw him putting himself out to compliment them on their dress sense and enquire after their elder sons' careers. He would be moving round doing good work for himself; Aufidius Crispus was an operator on a determined scale.

I ducked out and started searching through the reception rooms, asking flushed waiters to point out Crispus if he was in sight. A perfume-sprinkler sent me to look for him in an inner peristyle garden, but no luck.

No one was there-except a quiet, solitary woman on a stone seat, looking as if she was waiting for someone. A young woman, in a slim dress and not much jewellery, with fine, dark hair fastened under a round gold net…

It was her own business if she had managed to fix up a treat for herself. I was not about to interfere and spoil her assignation. The only reason I hung around was that a man appeared. He clearly thought she was waiting there for him, and I thought the same. So I stopped, to see who he was.

I didn't know him. But after I had decided that, I stayed there anyway because Helena Justina was giving the impression that neither did she.

L

He emerged from a group of hibiscus bushes as if he had been up to something a well-brought-up young woman would rather not know. He was drunk enough to greet Helena as a marvellous discovery, yet not enough to be deflected by her frosty attitude. I assumed she could handle it; this swaying lecher was no worse a social menace than M. Didius Falco, droolingly affectionate-and a few brisk insults usually handled me.

This garden was decorated in a simple rustic style. I stood tight against a pillar which was painted with dark diagonal stripes; it was dusk now, so neither of them noticed I was there. He said something which I could not catch, but I gathered her reply: 'No; I'm sitting alone because that's how I want to be!'

The man swung nearer, puffing himself up tipsily. Helena ought to have slipped off straight into the crowd but she was obstinate, and perhaps the fellow she really had planned to meet in the garden seemed worth a few risks. He spoke again, and she insisted, 'No. I'd like you to go!'

He laughed. I knew he would.

Then she did get up. The pale, supple cloth of her gown swung from her shoulder brooches, trying to drape itself straight-emphasizing where the lady beneath it was not.

'For heaven's sake!' Her bitter exasperation struck me at once-but he was far too fluthered with drink. 'My head aches,' Helena raged, 'my heart aches; the noise is making me dizzy and the food is making me queasy! I was sitting by myself because there is nobody I want to be with-especially not you!'

She tried to sweep by, but misjudged it. I was already moving when he caught her arm. Drunk or not, he was quick; his other hand was grappling brutally under her gown as I leapt the low wall which connected the rustic columns and covered the ground between us with a roar. Then I seized him by both shoulders and dragged him off.

There was a crack of heads, one of them mine. He was fairly athletic, and his energy surged unexpectedly, so he landed some punches. Root ginger repeated on me faintly, though I was far too angry to feel much else. Once his accuracy started fading I squared him up and demonstrated my disapproval with a series of unrelenting blows in the parts of his body which my trainer had always advised me never to hit. After that I screwed his head under one elbow and hauled him to a sturdy well where I let a torrent from its fountain spew straight into his lungs.

While he was still on the healthy side of drowning, Helena's low voice warned, 'Stop it, Falco; you're killing the man!'

So I plunged him under a couple more times then stopped.

•

I propelled him through the colonnade to a corridor, where I sped him on his way with my party sandal in the small of his back. He sprawled headlong. I waited until I saw him starting to struggle upright, then strode back to Helena.

'Why were you skulking?' she accused by way of thanks.

'Coincidence.'

'Don't spy on me!'

'And don't expect me to let you be attacked!'

She was sitting on the rim of the well, hugging herself defensively. I put out my hand to her cheek but she drew back from another male assault; I flinched myself. After a moment she stopped shaking.