'What have you done today?' It appeared oblique, but I knew it would be relevant.
'Spoke to Maia; Mico; Allia. Got nowhere with any of them. I talked to the waiter at Flora's-and I inspected the corpse.'
I must have looked drawn. 'Did you have to do that?' Helena asked in a changed voice.
I smiled wryly. 'So you still have some heart?'
'I have always treated you reasonably!' That was a fierce dig. 'I think you have been wasting time, Marcus. It's obvious there were two people you ought to have seen immediately. You've spent a whole day dodging the issue, and contacted neither. The situation's too serious for this.'
'There is time.'
'Petronius only gave you today!'
'So you've been listening to private conversations?'
She shrugged. 'Thin walls.'
'Who are these people I'm supposed to be ignoring?'
'You know who. Your brother's old girlfriend for one. But first you should have gone straight to your father.' I folded my arms. I said nothing; Helena fought me silently.
'Why do you hate your father?' she demanded eventually.
'He's not worth hating.'
'Is it because he left home while you were just a child?'
'Look, my childhood is none of your business.'
'It is,' snapped Helena, 'if I have to live with the results!'
Fair comment. And I could not object to her interest. Helena Justina's main criterion for living with a man was that he let her read his thoughts. After thirty years of keeping my own council, I went along with it. Being an informer is a lonely profession. Allowing Helena free access to the inner sanctum had come as a relief.
'All right. I can see I have to suffer.'
'Marcus, you're trussed up like a bird in a braising pan-'
'I'm not done for yet. Mind you don't get pecked.'
Her eyes glimmered; that was promising. 'Stop prevaricating! Tell me the truth.'
'You won't like it.'
'I realise that.'
'You win.' I faced the inevitable. I should have told her all this a long time ago. She must have half guessed it anyway, while I had nearly forfeited the right to give her my version. 'It's quite simple. I don't know what went on between my parents, but I've nothing to say to any man who walks out on his children. When my father took a stroll I was seven. Just about to assume the toga praetexta. I wanted my papa to be there watching at my first big ceremony.'
'You don't approve of ceremonial.'
'I don't now!'
Helena frowned. 'Plenty of children grow up with only one parent present. Still, I suppose the lucky ones at least get a stepfather to despise or stepmother to hate.' She was teasing, and on this subject I object to being teased. She read my face. 'That was bad taste: Why did your parents never divorce formally?'
'He was too ashamed to do it; she was, and is, too stubborn.' I used to wish I was an orphan. At least then I could have started again, without the constant hope or dread that just when everything had settled down our paterfamilias might reappear, upsetting everyone with his old blithe smile.
Helena was frowning. 'Did he leave you without money?'
I began to answer angrily, then took a deep breath. 'No, I can't say that.'
When my father ran out with his redhead we never saw him for several years; I learned afterwards that he had been in Capua. Right from the start there had been a man called Cocceius who brought money to my mother on a fairly regular basis. It was supposed to be coming from the Auctioneers' Guild. For years I accepted that story, as Mother appeared to do. But when I grew old enough to work things out I realised that the Guild was acting as agent-a polite excuse for my mother to accept my father's money without lessening her disgust for him. The main clue was that the weight of the coin bag increased with time. Charitable hand-outs tend to tail off.
Helena was looking at me for more answers. 'We just about escaped being destitute. We were barely clad and fed. But that applied to everyone we knew. It sounds bad to you, love, with your privileged upbringing, but we were the swarming mass of the great Roman poor; none of us expected any better from life.'
'You were sent to school.'
'Not by him.'
'But your family did have benefactors?'
'Yes. Maia and I had our school fees paid.'
'She told me. By the lodger. Where did he come from?'
'He was an old Melitan moneylender. My mother found space for him so the rent money would help out.' She only let him have a fold-up couch and a shelf for his clothes in a corridor. She had assumed he would hate it and leave, but he clung on and lived with us for years.
'And your father disapproved? Was the lodger a cause of arguments?'
This was all wrong. I was supposed to be the intruder who went round asking awkward questions, forcing long-hidden secrets to bubble to the surface of other people's ornamental ponds. 'The Melitan did cause a lot of trouble, but not the way you mean.' The Melitan, who had no family, had wanted to adopt Maia and me. That had caused some tumultuous rows. To Helena, who came from a civilised family where they hardly seemed to wrangle over anything more serious than who beat the Senator to the best bread roll at breakfast, the riots among my own tribe must sound harsh and barbaric. 'I'll tell you about it some day. My father's disappearance was directly related to his flamboyant girlfriend, not the lodger. Times were hard and he wasn't prepared to endure the struggle with us. The Melitan was irrelevant.'
Helena wanted to argue, but accepted it. 'So your father suddenly walked out one day-'
'It seemed unexpected, but since he left with a red-haired scarfmaker, maybe we should have been prepared.'
'I've noticed you hate redheads,' she said gravely.
'Could have been worse: could have been a Macedonian; could have been a blonde.'
'Another colour you loathe! I must remember to stay dark-'
'That means you're not leaving me?' I threw in lightly.
'Even if I do, Marcus Didius, I shall always respect your prejudices!' Helena's gaze, which could be oddly charitable, met mine. A familiar spark tingled. I let myself believe that she would stay.
'Don't go!' I murmured softly, with what I hoped were pleading eyes. Her mood had changed again, however. She looked back as if she had just spotted mould on a best table napkin. I kept trying. 'Sweetheart, we haven't even started yet. Our 'old times' have yet to be enjoyed. I'll give you things to look back on that you cannot even dream-'
'That's what I'm afraid of!'
'Ah Helena!'
'Ah nuts, Marcus!' I should always have spoken to her in formal Greek, and never have let her pick up my own slang. 'Stop bluffing,' commanded the love of my life. She had a sharp eye for fraud. 'So your father started a new life as an auctioneer in Capua; he eventually reappeared in Rome, the man I know as Geminus. Now he is a rich man.' She had met my father briefly. He had made sure he steamed in like Lars Porsena of Clusium to inspect the high-born madam who had picked me up. I still felt good whenever I remembered his amazement. Helena Justina was not some enamelled old baggage I was chasing for her money. He found her presentable, apparently rational, and genuinely fond of me. He never got over the shock and I never stopped gloating.
This sibyl could also be too shrewd for her own good: 'Is it his wealth you resent?'
'He can be as rich as he likes.'
'Ah! Is he still with the redhead?'
'I believe so.'
'Do they have children?'
'I believe not.'
