SHADOWS IN BRONZE

hereabouts?'

'Crispus told him. Look, Falco, I shall have to take Gordianus seriously. You are an Imperial agent; what is the official view?'

'Mine is that if Gordianus forces a trial it will raise a bad smell all the way from here to the Capitol. But he might succeed despite the lack of evidence. We both know the sight of a grief-stricken brother calling out for justice is the sort of sentimental scene that makes juries sob into their togas and convict.'

'So I should arrest Pertinax?'

'I believe he killed Curtius Longinus, who may have threatened to expose him, and later he tried to kill Gordianus too. These are serious charges. It sticks in my craw to grant him a pardon simply because he is a consul's adopted son.'

Aemilius Rufus listened to my grounds for action with the caution I should have expected from a country magistrate. If I had been the victim of a malicious prosecution based on flimsy evidence, I might have commended his thoroughness. As it was, I felt we were wasting time.

We talked round the problem for another hour. In the end Rufus decided to throw it over to Vespasian: just the sort of negative compromise I despised. We stopped the next Imperial dispatch rider who came through town. Rufus penned an elegant letter; I tore off a terse report. We told the horseman to ride all night. Even at the rate they travel the earliest he could arrive in Rome was dawn tomorrow, but Vespasian liked reading his correspondence at first light. Thinking of Rome, I was buffeted by homesickness, and wished I had dashed off with the message to the Palatine myself.

•

'Well. Nothing else we can do now,' the magistrate sighed, swinging his athletic torso into a sitting position so he could reach a tripod table and pour us wine. 'May as well enjoy ourselves-'

He was not the type I choose for a companion and I wanted to leave, but writing reports gives me a strong urge to get drunk. Especially at a senator's expense.

I almost suggested we went out to the baths together, but some lucky fluke stopped me. I hooked myself upright, stretched, and hopped over to fetch my wine; once in possession I condescended to sit on his couch to facilitate clinking cups like the cronies we weren't. Aemilius Rufus favoured me with his relaxed, golden smile. I buried myself gratefully in his Falernian, which was immaculate.

He said, 'I'm sorry I never saw much of you when you were tutoring my sister. I have been hoping to put that right-'

Then I felt his right hand fondling my thigh, while he told me what beautiful eyes I had.

LXIV

I have only one reaction to approaches like that. But before I could crump my fist against his handsome Delphic jawbone he removed his hand. Someone he could not be expecting came into the room.

'Didius Falco, I'm so glad I caught you!' Bright eyes, clear skin, and a swift, light step: Helena Justina, the darling of my heart. 'Rufus, excuse me, I came to see Fausta but I gather she is dining out… Falco, it's much later than I expected, so if you are going back to the villa,' she suggested serenely, 'may I travel under your protection? If that suits your own plans, and is not too much trouble-'

Since the magistrate's wine was the very best Falernian, I drained my cup before I spoke.

'Nothing is too much trouble for a lady,' I replied.

LXV

'You might have warned me!'

'You were asking for all you got!'

'He seemed such a gentleman-he caught me by surprise…'

Helena giggled. She was heckling me through the window of her sedan chair while I walked alongside grumbling. 'Drinking wine with him, snuggling on one seat with your tunic up over your knees and that doe-eyed, vulnerable look-'

'I resent that,' I said. 'A citizen ought to be able to drink where he likes without it being interpreted as an open invitation to advances from men he hardly knows and doesn't like-'

'You were drunk.'

'Irrelevant. Anyway I was not! Lucky you came to see Fausta-'

'Luck,' rapped back Helena, 'had nothing to do with it! You were away so long I started worrying. I passed Fausta actually, going the other way. Were you glad I came?' she suddenly smiled.

I stopped the chair, brought her out, then made the bearers walk ahead while we followed in the twilight and I demonstrated whether I was glad.

•

'Marcus, why do you think Fausta was heading for Oplontis? She had discovered that a certain someone will be at Poppaea's villa again, treating the commander of the fleet to dinner again.'

'Crispus?' I groaned, and reapplied myself to other things.

'What's so special about the Misenum prefect?' wondered Helena, unimpressed by the distractions I was offering.

'No idea…'

'Marcus, I shall lose my ear-ring; let me take it off.'

'Take off anything you want,' I agreed. Then I found myself being drawn into considering her question. The damned Misenum fleet commander had adroitly intruded himself between me and romantic mood.

Ignoring the British squadron, which is almost beneath the notice of anybody civilized, the Roman Navy orders itself in the only way possible for a long narrow state: one fleet based over at Ravenna to guard the eastern seaboard, and another at Misenum in the west.

Answers to several questions were suggesting themselves now. 'Tell me,' I broached thoughtfully to Helena. 'Apart from Titus and the legions, what was the key feature of Vespasian's campaign to become Emperor? What was worst in Rome?'

Helena shuddered. 'Everything! Soldiers in the streets, murders in the Forum, fires, fever, famine-'

'Famine,' I said. 'In a senator's house I suppose you managed as normal, but in our family no one could get bread.'

'The corn!' she responded. 'It was critical. Egypt supplies the whole city. Vespasian had the support of the Prefect of Egypt, so he sat all winter in Alexandria, letting Rome know that he controlled the grain ships and without his good will they might not come…'

'Now suppose you were a senator with extraordinary political ambitions, but your only supporters were in deadbeat provinces like Noricum-'

'Noricum!' she chortled.

'Exactly. No hope there. Meanwhile the Prefect of Egypt still strongly supports Vespasian, so the supply is assured-but suppose this year, when the corn ships hail in sight of the Puteoli peninsula-'

'The fleet stops them!' Helena was horrified. 'Marcus, we must stop the fleet!' (I had a curious vision of Helena Justina sailing out from Neapolis like a goddess on a ship's prow, holding up her arm to stop a convoy in full sail.) She reconsidered. 'Are you really serious?'

'I think so. And we're not talking about a couple of sacks on the back of a donkey, you know.'

'How much?' demanded Helena pedantically.