`I think it's for one of the shops on the ground floor.'
Helena's sharp eyes had spotted the kind of street graffiti you usually ignore. I walked her downstairs and across the road to check up. The chalked advertisement was for a workshop. It called itself `well-set-out artisan premises with advantageous living accommodation, but it was a damp booth with an impossible stairway to a disgusting loft. It's true there was a small domestic apartment attached, but the two-room tenancy was for five years. Who could say how many offspring I might have accidentally fathered by that time, and how much space I should be needing to house them all?
Shivering, I let Helena lead me out to Fountain Court. The scruffy dog had found us again, and was staring at me hopefully. She must have worked out who was the soft one.
Since the barber had no customers we dumped ourselves pessimistically on two of his stools. He grumbled briefly, then went indoors for a lie-down, his favourite occupation anyway.
`You know we can live anywhere,' Helena said quietly. `I have money -',
`No. I'll pay the rent.'
As a senator's daughter she owned far less than her two brothers, but if she allied herself with anyone respectable there was a large dowry still kicking around from her previous failed marriage, plus various legacies from female relations who had spotted her special character. I had never let myself discover the exact extent of Helena's wealth. I didn't want to upset myself. And I never wanted to find myself a kept man.
`So what are we looking for?' She was being tactful now. Refraining from comment on my proud self-respect. Naturally I found it maddening.
`That's obvious. Somewhere we don't risk scum breaking in. Where perverts who come to see me about business won't make trouble for you. And more space.'
`Space for a cradle, and seats for all your sisters when they come cooing over the item in it?' Helena's voice was dry. She knew how to soften me up.
`More seats would be useful.' I smiled. `I like to entertain.'
`You like to get me annoyed!'
`I like you in any mood.' I ran one finger down her neck, just tickling the skin beneath the braid on her gown. She lowered her chin suddenly, trapping my finger. I thought about pulling her closer and kissing her, but I was too depressed. To provide a public spectacle you need to be feeling confident.
From her position with her head tucked down, Helena was looking across Fountain Court. I felt her interest shift. Gazing at the sky, I warned the gods: `Watch out, you loafers on Olympus. Somebody's just had a bright idea!'
Then Helena asked in the curious tone that had so often led to trouble, `Who lives above the basket shop?'
The basket-weaver occupied a lockup two along from Cassius the baker. He shared his frontage with a cereal-seller – another quiet trade, and fairly free of smelly nuisances. Above them rose a typical tenement, similar to ours and with the same kind of underpaid, overworked occupants. There was no letting sign, but the shutters on the first-floor apartment were closed, as they always had been to my knowledge. I had never seen anybody going in.
`Well spotted!' I murmured thoughtfully.
Right there, opposite Lenia's laundry, we could have found our next home.
XIV
THE BASKET-WEAVER, a wiry gent in a tawny tunic whom I knew by sight, told us the apartment above him belonged to his shop. He had never occupied the upstairs because he only bunked temporarily in Fountain Court. He lived on the Campagna, kept his family there, and intended to retire to the country when he remembered to stop coming to town every week. The rooms above were in fact impossible to live in, being filled up with rubble and junk. Smaractus was too mean to clear them out. Instead, the idle bastard had negotiated a reduced rent. It suited the basket-weaver. Now it suited me.
Helena and I peered in warily. It was very dark. After living on the sixth floor, anywhere near ground level was bound to be. No balcony; no view; no garden, of course; no cooking facilities. Water from a fountain a street away. A public latrine at the end of our own street. Baths and temples on the Aventine. Street markets in any direction. My existing office within shouting range across the lane. It had three rooms – a gain of one on what we were used to – and a whole array of little cubbyholes.
`Pot stores!' cried Helena. `I love it!'
`Cradle space!' I grinned.
Smaractus, my landlord, was a person I avoided. I lost my temper just thinking about that fungus. I had intended to discuss matters peacefully with Lenia, but I foolishly chose a time when her insalubrious betrothed had dropped in with a wine flagon.
I refused to drink with him. I'll take a free tipple from most people, but I'm a civilised man; I do discriminate. Below the line I drew in those days lay unrepentant murderers, corrupt tax-gathers, rapists, and Smaractus.
Luckily I knew I made him nervous. There had been a time he always brought two gladiators from the gym he ran whenever he risked his neck in Fountain Court; with Lenia to defend him from aggrieved tenants he had taken to dispensing with the muscle. A good idea; poor Asiacus and Rodan were so badly nourished they needed to conserve their strength. The big daft darlings would never stagger into the arena after a day fighting me. For Smaractus I was a difficult proposition. I was lean and hard, and I hated his guts. As I crossed the threshold I heard his voice, so I had time to apply what Helena called my Milo of Croton look.
`Falco is going to read the sheep's liver at the wedding for us!' Lenia simpered, incongruously playing the eager young bride. He couldn't have been there for more than a few minutes but she was well into the wine. Who could blame her?
`Better watch out!' I warned him. He realised that if I took the augury this might be a double-edged favour. A bad omen could ruin his happiness. A really bad omen, and Lenia might back out before he got the ring on her, depriving him of her well-filled strong-boxes. Being sick on his mother as Lenia had asked me was nothing to the fun I could have with a co-operative ewe.
`He's nice and cheap,' said Lenia to him, as if explaining why I seemed a good idea. I was on her side too, though we refrained from mentioning that. `I see the little dog's found you, Falco. We call it Nux.'
`I'm not taking in a stray.'
`Oh no? So when did you change your attitude?'
Smaractus muttered that I lacked experience as a priest, and I retorted that I knew quite enough to pontificate on his marriage. Lenia shoved a winecup into my hand. I shoved it back.
With the business formalities over, we could get down to cheating each other.
I knew Smaractus would try to swing some fiddle if he heard we were the basket-weaver's subtenants. One way out was to avoid telling him. Unfortunately, now he was betrothed to Lenia he was always littering up the neighbourhood; he was bound to spot us going in and out. This needed care – or blatant blackmail. To start with I ranted at him about the dilapidated rooms above Cassius. `Somebody's going to tell the aediles that place is a danger to passers-by, and you'll be ordered to demolish the lot before it falls in the street!' Smaractus would do anything to avoid pulling down a property because by law he would have to replace it with something equal or better. (The idea of making more money from higher rents afterwards was too sophisticated for his mouldy old sponge of a brain.)
`Who would stir up trouble like that?' he sneered. I smiled courteously, while Lenia kicked his foot to explain what I was getting at. He would be limping for a week.
`Wasn't it you I saw talking to the rug-seller?' Lenia asked me. You couldn't squeeze a pimple in Fountain court without three people telling you to leave yourself alone.
`I'm going to help him clear out his upper floor.'
`Why's that?' demanded Smaractus suspiciously.
