SHADOWS IN BRONZE

'Excuse me. I've spent a long time thinking. Always a bad idea.'

Julia Justa let slip a slight sigh of impatience. 'Falco, this is achieving nothing; why are you still here?'

'I have to see Helena.'

'I must tell you, Falco-she never asked for you!'

'Did she ask for anyone else?'

'No.'

'Then no one else will be offended if I wait.'

Then Helena's mother said that if I felt so strongly I had better see Helena now, so that for everybody's sake I could go home.

•

It was a small room, the one she had had as a child. It was neat, and convenient, and when she had returned to her father's house after her divorce she must have asked for it back because it was nothing like her grand apartment in the Pertinax house.

In a narrow bed, under a natural linen coverlet, Helena lay motionless. She was drugged so deeply there was no chance of waking her. Her face looked completely colourless and plain, still in the exhaustion of her physical ordeal. With other women in the room I felt unable to touch her, but the sight of her dragged out of me, 'Oh they should not have done this to her! How can she know anyone is here?'

'She was in pain; she needed rest.'

I fought against the thought that she might need me. 'Is she in danger?'

'No,' her mother said, more quietly.

Still sensitive to atmosphere, I noticed that the white-faced maid who was sitting on a coffer had been crying earlier. I found myself asking, 'Will you tell me the truth; did Helena want the child?'

'Oh yes!' her mother answered immediately. She disguised her annoyance, but I glimpsed the bad feeling that must have surged around this family before today. Helena Justina would make no one an easy relative; she did everything in her own stubborn high-minded way. 'That may have placed you in a difficult position,' Julia Justa suggested to me in a thin voice. 'So this must be quite a relief?'

'You seem to have me well weighed up!' I answered narrowly.

•

I wanted Helena to know that I had been with her today.

I had nothing else to leave, so I tugged off my signet ring and laid it on the silver tripod table at the side of her bed. Between the pink glass water beaker and a scatter of ivory hairpins, my worn old ring with its dirty red stone and greenish metal looked an ugly chunk, but at least she would notice it and know whose grimy hand she had seen it on.

'Don't move that, please.'

'I shall tell her you came!' Julia Justa protested reprovingly.

'Thank you,' I said. But I left the ring.

•

Her mother followed me from the room.

'Falco,' she insisted, 'it was an accident.'

I would believe what I heard from Helena herself. 'So what happened?'

'Is it your business, Falco?' For an ordinary woman-or so she seemed to me-Julia Justa could pack a simple question with heavy significance. I let her decide. She went on stiffly, 'My daughter's ex-husband asked to meet her. They quarrelled. She wanted to leave; he tried to stop her. She broke free, slipped, and hurt herself running downstairs-'

'So this is down to Pertinax!'

'It might well have happened anyway.'

'Not like this!' I burst out.

Julia Justa paused. 'No.' For a moment we seemed to have stopped sniping. Her mother agreed slowly, 'The violence certainly increased Helena's distress… Were you intending to come again?'

'When I can.'

'Well that's generous!' cried the Senator's wife. 'Didius Falco, you arrived a day after the festival; I gather that is usual for you-never around when you're really wanted. Now I suggest you stay away.'

'There may be something I can do.'

'I doubt it,' said Helena's mother. 'Now this has happened, Falco, I imagine that my daughter will be quite content if she never sees you again!'

I saluted the Senator's wife graciously, since a man should always be good-mannered to a mother of three children (especially when she has just made a highly dramatic statement about the eldest and sweetest of her children-and he intends to insult her later by proving her wrong).

Then I left the Camillus house, remembering how Helena Justina had begged me not to kill Pertinax. And knowing that when I found him, I probably would.

LXXXV

I walked straight to the Transtiberina and up to his room. I was completely unarmed. It was stupid. But all his personal property had gone; so had he.

Across the street the wineshop was doing a hectic trade, but with a stranger serving. I asked after Tullia and was brusquely informed: 'Tomorrow!'; the waiter could hardly find time to account for her. Men were always calling for Tullia, I expect.

I left no message; no one would bother telling that busy young lady that yet another healthy male with a hopeful expression had been hanging round for her.

After that I spent a lot of time walking. Sometimes I was thinking; sometimes I just walked.

I crossed back to the city, pausing on the Aemilian Bridge. Downstream, the desultory river slapped past the triple peperino arch of the main exit from the Great Sewer. At some time in the past three months a bloated corpse, for which I had responsibility, must have swirled out down there, anonymous amidst the dark storm water that carried him away. And now… Did you know, only emperors and stillborn babies have the right to be buried in Rome? Not that it would have been relevant for our poor scrap of life. I had a wry idea what informal arrangements were made for the relics of early miscarriages. And perhaps if I had been a different man, with a less neutral view of the gods, I might have heard in the sound of the Tiber lapping past the Cloaca Maxima the cruel, punishing laughter of the Fates.

Hours after I had left the Transtiberina I turned up at Maia's house. She took one look at me, then fed me, kept away the children, kept away Famia with his wine flask, and steered me to bed. I lay in the darkness, thinking again.

When I could bear no more, I let myself sleep.

•

Pertinax could be anywhere in Rome but the next day was Thursday, and Thursday marked his champion's run