woman wore rich clothing in subtle shades, with a gleam of silk in the weave. Her light cloak was held on her shoulders by matched brooches, linked by a heavy gold chain. More gold shone at her neck and on her fingers. Long, elegant earrings dangled from her pale ears.
Her voice, calm, aristocratic-and Latin-carried easily from the stage: “Which of you is Didius Falco?”
If she had brought attendants they must be waiting elsewhere. Her solo appearance had been calculated to shock us. I raised my arm, still distracted. However, I was always perfectly capable of insulting a suppliant: “Dear gods, do the Cyrenian elite allow women gladiators into their arena?”
“That would be outrageous.” Resplendent in her chic street wear, the woman surveyed me coolly. She paused slightly, as people do when they know exactly what effect they will cause. “my name is Scilla.”
Beside me, Helena Justina smiled faintly. She had been right. I would accept this client.
49
“HOW DID YOU find me?”
We were strolling back along the warm, dappled path to the Sanctuary. Helena, my discreet chaperon, walked in silence beside me, holding my hand, and lifting her face to the sun as if absorbed in the beauties of the scenery. Gaius had taken the baby and Nux and rushed off home ahead of us. The young lovers, or whatever they turned out to be, had dawdled behind to tell each other firmly how there was nothing more to be said.
“I traced you eventually through your friend Petronius. Before that I spoke to a man called Anacrites. He said he was your partner. I didn't care for him.” Scilla was forthright, a woman who made her own judgments and acted accordingly.
Letting the prospective client get the measure of me, I explained as we walked slowly, “I used to work with Petronius, whom I trusted absolutely.” Knowing Petro, I did wonder briefly what he had made of my new client when she approached him. His taste ran to more fragile types, however. Scilla was slim, but she had sinewy arms and a firm spring in her step. “Unhappily, Petronius returned to his career with the vigiles. Now, yes; I work with Anacrites, whom I don't trust at all-so one thing is certain: he won't ever let me down.”
Faced with the traditional wit of the informing fraternity, Scilla merely looked irritated. Well, that's traditional too.
“You have come a long way. So why me?” I asked her mildly.
“You have been involved already in what I need you to do. You came to the house.”
“to see Pomponius Urtica?” For a moment I was transported back to the ex-praetor's luxury villa on the Pincian last December, on those two useless occasions when I endeavored to interview him after he had been mauled by Calliopus' lion. Had Scilla been in the house, or was she just told about me afterwards? Either way, I knew she lived there, a close member of the praetor's domestic circle. “I wanted to talk to Pomponius about that accident.”
Her voice grated: “An accident that ought not to have happened.”
“So I deduced. And how is Pomponius?”
“He died.” Scilla stopped walking. Her face was pale. “It took until the end of March. His end was prolonged and horribly painful.” Helena and I had paused too, in the shade of a low pine tree. Some of the story must have been relayed to Helena already, but she had left me to hear it in full for myself. Scilla came to the point briskly: “Falco, you must have worked out that I want you to help me deal with the people responsible.”
I had indeed guessed that.
What I felt unprepared for was this expensive, cultured, educated-sounding woman. According to the gossip in Rome, she was supposed to be a good-time girl. A lowborn fright, a freed slave probably. Even if Pomponius had bequeathed her millions, it would have been impossible for a common piece like that to transform herself in a few weeks into a close match for a Chief Vestal Virgin's niece.
She noticed my stare, which I had made no effort to hide. “Well?”
“I'm trying to make you out. I had heard you had a “wild” reputation.”
“And what does that mean?” she challenged me.
“To be blunt, I expected a slut of tender years, bearing evidence of adventures.”
Scilla remained calm, though clearly gritting her teeth. “I am a marble importer's daughter. A knight; he had also held important posts in the tax service. My brothers run a thriving architectural fittings business; one is a priest of the imperial cult. So my origins are respectable and I was brought up in comfort, with all the accomplishments that go with it.”
“Then where does the reputation come from?”
“I have one unusual hobby, not relevant to your enquiry.”
My mind raced salaciously. The strange hobby had to be sexual.
The woman set off walking again. This time Helena slipped a hand through her arm, so the two of them strolled along close together while I kicked my own path through the dill bushes. Helena took up the conversation, as if it were more proper for a knight's accomplished daughter to be interviewed by a woman. Personally, I felt Scilla needed no such concession.
“So tell us about you and the ex-praetor? Were you in love?”
“We were going to be married.”
Helena smiled and allowed that to answer the question, though she knew it did not. “Your first marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Had you lived with your family until then?”
“Yes, of course.”
Helena's question had been a subtle way of probing whether Scilla had had significant lovers beforehand. Scilla was too canny to say. “And what about the night Pomponius had the lion brought to his house? That was meant as a “treat” for you?”
The expression in Scilla's hazel eyes seemed sad and far away. “men can have a queer idea of what is appropriate.”
“True. Some lack imagination,” Helena sympathized. “Some, of course, know they are being crass and go ahead anyway… And you were present when Pomponius was mauled. That must have been a terrible experience.”
Scilla prowled on for a moment in silence. She had a fine, controlled walk, not like the tripping shuffles of most well-bred dames who only leave their houses carried in a litter. Like Helena, she gave the impression that she could route-march through half a dozen markets, spend with panache, and then carry her own purchases home.
“Pomponius behaved foolishly,” she said, without rancor or blame. “The lion broke free and leapt at him. It surprised the keepers, though we now know why it behaved that way. It had to be put down.”
I frowned. Somebody had told me the girl had reacted hysterically; that would have been understandable, yet she seemed so composed here I could not quite envisage it. Tipping my head to look around Helena, I said, “Pomponius had been maneuvering a straw man, I believe. The lion flew at it, mauled him, and then chaos broke out-what happened next?”
“I shouted-as loudly as I could-and I rushed forwards, to frighten the lion away.”
“That took nerve.”
“Did it work?” asked Helena, taken aback, yet assuming control again.
“The lion stopped and escaped into the garden.”
“Rumex-the gladiator-followed it, and did what was necessary?” I prompted.
I thought a shadow crossed Scilla's face. “Rumex went after the lion,” she agreed quietly.
She seemed to want to end this conversation, understandably. After a moment Helena said, “I nearly met Rumex once, but it was shortly after the accident and he was being kept apart from the public.”
“You didn't miss much,” Scilla told her, with unexpected force. “He was a has-been. All his fights were fixed.”
Still, I thought, feeling obliged to defend the poor fellow; he had speared an agitated lion, single-
