promotion by dragging down his century. We said he marked down our personnel reports unfairly. Rather than waiting to find out after twenty years of failing to make centurion ourselves, we manufactured invalidity discharges and left him to it. Last I heard he was tormenting the local populace in Nicopolis. Interestingly, he was still a centurion. Maybe we really had been successful in blighting his life. It was a pleasing thought.
`Your honourable tribune spoke as if it were a promise to find out who our centurion was, and ask.'
'He loves handing out some hint of blackmail that sounds like a joke but might not be,' scoffed Petro.
`Oh well,' I teased. `At least he won't have any trouble tracing Stollicus. He will have already found him once, to ask about you!'
Thinking about our military careers we were silent for a moment, and allies again. Perhaps, being more mature now, we wondered whether it might have been wiser to placate the official and salvage our rights.
Perhaps not. Petronius and I both believed the same: only crawlers get a fair character reference. Decent characters don't bother to argue. For one thing, the truly decent know that life is never fair.
Changing the subject, Petro asked, `Did you get anywhere with Nonnius?'
`No. He swears the Emporium raider isn't him.'
'Hah! That was why,' Petro explained, fairly mildly, `I myself wasn't, going to bother to visit him.'
'All right. I just thought I'd been assigned here to volunteer for the embarrassing jobs, so I might as well get on with one.' 'lo! You're going to be a treasure.'
'Oh yes. You'll be asking for a permanent informer on the complement… So what lying ex-mobster do you reckon we should tackle next?'
Petro looked thoughtful. `I've had Martinus doing the rounds of the other big operators. They all deny involvement, of course. The only hope is that one of them will finger the real culprit out of spite. But Martinus can handle that. Why should we upset ourselves? The only trouble is he's slow. Martinus reckons never to break into more than a decorous stroll. Asking three gang warlords where they were on a certain Thursday night will take him about five weeks. But left to himself he'll tell us in due course if anything has an abnormal whiff.'
`You trust him?'
`He has a reasonable nose – with expert guidance from his senior officer!'
'So while he's sniffing villains extremely cautiously, what do we two speedy boys get up to? Investigating the races?'
`Depends…' Petro looked whimsical. `Do you see this as an office job, or will you take a mystery assignment that could ruin your health and your reputation?'
`Oh the office job for me!' I lied. If I had realised what mystery assignment he meant, I might have stuck to this joke.
`That's a pity. I thought we could go visiting my auntie.' A very old euphemism. Petronius Longus did not mean his Auntie Sedina with the big behind and the flower stall.
`A brothel?'
`Not just any old brothel.'
`Ooh! A special brothel!'
`I do have my standards, Marcus Didius! You don't have to come with me -
`True, you're a big lad.'
`If Helena wouldn't like it’
I grinned gently. `She'd probably want to come too. The first time I slept with Helena Justina we'd been to a brothel earlier that night.'
Petronius snorted disapprovingly. `I didn't know Helena Justina was that kind of girl!' He thought I had been implying she had once been one of those senatorial stiffs who descend on bawdyhouses for a thrill.
`We were just passing through…' Calling his bluff could be easy. `Oh get wise. Helena could have been a vestal virgin if she hadn't met her heart's delight in me.' I shook my head at him. He winced. I didn't worry him by mentioning the rest of the story. `So where is this palace of delight you're luring me to? The dives in the Suburra where the practices are ancient and the whores positively mummified? The out-of-town cabins where runaway slaves solicit travellers for a bit of brass? Or the lousy dens of push-and-shove in the deeply plebeian Patrician Street?
'Home ground. Down by the Circus.'
`Oh Jupiter! You can catch something just thinking about those filthy holes.'
`Shut your brain off then. You get by without thinking often enough… We've had a hard morning. I thought we-deserved an afternoon of exotic entertainment with the exquisite Lalage!'
`I'll buy you lunch first,' I offered promptly. Petro accepted, agreeing with me that we needed to build up our strength before we went.
XIX
WE HAD ENTERED the Eleventh region. It was outside Petro's area, although he said it was unnecessary to make a courtesy call on the Sixth Cohort, who patrolled here. His was the career in public service, so I let him decide. I could tell he didn't like the Sixth. He was enjoying the fact we had sneaked into their patch privately, on the excuse of our special task.
Most prostitutes around the Circus Maximus are pavement-crawlers and portico practitioners. They hang about during and after the races, preying on men whose appetites for excitement have been aroused by watching arena crashes. (Or men who have just come out hoping to waste money and don't fancy any of today's track runners.)_ Some of these women give themselves an air of moral rectitude by parading near temples, but the trade is the same: up against a wall, with the penalties of theft, a guilty conscience, and disease.
The brothel known as Plato's Academy offered a few advantages. At Plato's, unless you were a nice boy who liked clean bedding, you could at least do the deed horizontally. Theft and the scald were still hazards. Your conscience was your own affair.
Petronius and I carried out a reconnoitre of Plato's. I won't say we were nervous, but the place did have a lush reputation even by Roman standards. We wanted to be sure of ourselves. We walked to the Circus, scowled at the dark-eyed girls who hooted lewd suggestions after us from the colonnades, and ventured into a maze of lanes at the south end of the hippodrome. We stationed ourselves at a streetside drink stall opposite. While we decorated the marble with cups of the worst wine I had sunk in Rome for several years, I risked some chilled peas. Petro asked for brains; excitement had always made him go peculiar.
The peas were completely tasteless. The brains didn't look as if they had ever been up to much either, even allowing for the fact that calves don't devise encyclopedias. Whatever they tasted like, something made Petro say gloomily, `There's a rumour Vespasian wants to ban the sale of hot food in the streets.'
`Well that'll solve one of life's great dilemmas: to go hungry or get the runs.'
`The latrine-keepers are hopping with worry.' `Well they're always on the go.'
The chat was meant to divert the stallholder whilst we sized up our destination.
Officially Plato's appeared, from a very faint painted sign above the lintel, to be called the Bower of Venus. Depressed cherubs swinging on garlands at either end of the sign attempted to reinforce the dainty-sounding message. To reassure tourists who had been recommended in the vernacular, a larger chalked banner gave its common name at eye level, just alongside a stone Priapus with a horrible erection, for those who either could not read or were in too much of a hurry to stand about deciphering mere lettering. On the opposite side of the doorway another slogan announced, Come and Get What Every Man Wants, with a graphic doodle which made it plain that this did not mean a modest woman, an unexpected legacy, and a tranquil life. For all but the tragically short-sighted, there could be no doubt which trade was carried on within the drab-looking premises.
There was a lumbering oak door, propped open with two staves. It looked too slumped on its hinges to be closed. No doubt it never was.
This portal was barely a couple of yards from us, diagonally up the dirty street. Through it marched a regular line of last-time-before-recall soldiers, straight-off-the-ship sailors, slaves, freedmen, and small businessmen. Some of the sailors felt obliged to make a bit of noise. An occasional character who looked like an olive-oil salesman or corn chandler's understeward had the grace to appear furtive and only slipped inside at the last
