unconscious, was rescued by me and taken to a safe house-Ma’s-where he lay semi-comatose for weeks while she nursed him. But for her, he would be dead. You could saythough I was carefully too polite to do it-he also owed his life to me. I had made sure his jealous rival at the Palace, Claudius Laeta, could not find him and help him into Hades. I had even tracked down those responsible for attacking him and, while Anacrites still lay helpless, I had brought them to justice. He never thanked me much for that.
“So I know him,” mused Anacrites, struggling to recover some feel for the past contact.
“You had been talking to him about what was going wrong in Baetica.” Helena took pity on him. “At the time my brother had been living there, working with the provincial governor. He was only a passing contact of yours. You cannot be expected to recall it particularly.”
“He didn’t remind me.” Anacrites still had a dark, disturbed look. He had held a discussion with a man who failed to disclose their previous relationship. There must seem a frightening lack of logic in that. I knew the reason, as it happened: Aelianus wanted to cover up a serious error of judgment on his own part. While delivering a document to the intelligence chief, he had let it fall into the wrong hands and be mangled. Anacrites had never found out, but once he saw that the Chief Spy had forgotten him, Aelianus would have happily played the stranger.
“Young tease!” I let Anacrites see me smirking. “He’s playing games,” I condescended to explain. “I imagine he told you that one of the Arval Brethren has died in ghastly circumstances. Aelianus is annoying the cult by looking for a conspiracy.”
The conspiracy might be real, but if so I was annoyed that the young fool had alerted Anacrites. Aelianus and I were playing this game-and the spy would have to ask very nicely indeed before I let him join in.
“So what did Aelianus want?” Helena put to him.
“A name.”
“Really?”
“Stop acting, Falco,” Anacrites snorted. He was Chief Spy, as I had found out when we worked on the Census, because he did have some discernment.
I grinned and gave way. “All right, partner. I suppose he asked if you know who the dead Arval Brother is?”
“Right.”
“You have an identification?”
“None, when Aelianus raised it. The secretive Brethren had succeeded in keeping their loss under wraps. I was impressed!” he admitted, for once mocking himself gently.
“And did you and your cunning trackers then find out?”
“Of course.” Smug bastard.
“Well then?”
“The dead man was called Ventidius Silanus.” I had never heard of him. “Mean anything?” prompted Anacrites, warily watching me.
I decided against bluff. I leaned back and threw open my hands frankly. “It means absolutely nix.”
It was his turn to grin. “Same here,” he confessed, and he too gave every appearance of speaking with a rare burst of honesty.
XXV
ROME WAS AT her best. Warm stone, limpid fountains, swifts screaming at roof height; a resonance in the evening light that no other city I have ever visited seems to possess.
We had returned the mule cart to the hiring stable, so we were now on foot. As Helena and I walked home from Ma’s house, both thinking in silence about our new Janiculan property, the streets on the Aventine remained lively without yet becoming dangerous. It was still light enough and hot enough for the day’s commercial and domestic activities to be continuing, while the nighttime whores and housebreakers had hardly begun to swarm. Even narrow alleyways were almost safe.
Julia Junilla lay asleep on my shoulder with a dead weight that reminded me of carrying cut turfs for temporary ramparts in my army days. Ma always managed to tire the baby out. Nux trotted beside Helena, looking coy. Seven dogs of various shapes and sizes but all with one intent relentlessly trailed Nux.
“Our girl’s definitely in season,” I commented glumly.
“Oh good-pups!” Helena sighed.
We lost a few followers outside a butcher’s shop where scraps had been piled in the gutter. We would have lost Nux too, once she noticed what the curs were at, but Helena grabbed her as she nosed a particularly foul piece of discarded entrail. We dragged her off, paws scrabbling furiously on the lava slabs, then I picked her up and clamped her under my free arm. The dog howled for help from her sleazy admirers, but they preferred slavering over bits of bloody bone and sweetbread.
“Forget them, Nux; men are never worth it,” commiserated Helena. I ignored the seditious girl talk. I was carrying the family treasure, and likely to lose my grip if I forgot to concentrate. Once again I remembered the army: anyone who had humped his quota of military equipment on a Marian Fork halfway around Britain-javelins, pickaxe, toolbag and contents, earth-moving basket, mess tins and three days’ rations-could manage a baby and a dog for a few strides without raising a sweat. On the other hand, a military kettle does not thump you in the rib cage or try to slide off your shoulder; well, not if properly stowed.
In Fountain Court someone was having grilled scallops for dinnermore charred than grilled, by the smell of them. Dusk had fallen now. Shadows of the looming tenements made the way treacherous. A solitary lamp burned on a hook outside the funeral parlor, not so much for the benefit of passersby as to allow the unshaven staff to continue playing a game of Soldiers they had scratched in the dust. That tiny circle of light only served to make the narrow corridor of our street more dim and dangerous. Broken curbstones harbored slithery vegetation on which it was easy to skid to a bone-breaking fall. We trod cautiously, knowing that every stride took our sandals into a morass of dung and amphora shards.
Helena said that she would take charge of bathing the baby; we normally did this at the laundry, using any unwanted warm water after Lenia closed up. I decided to go upstairs and see Petronius. I had to tell him about the Janiculan house before he heard of it elsewhere.
His boots were lying askew under the table in the outer room; he was outside the folding doors, lazing in the last rays of sunlight on the balcony. This always gave me a jar. It was too reminiscent of my own bachelor life. I half expected to find some tasseled dancing girl sprawled in his lap.
He was having a drink. I could cope with that. He let me find myself a beaker and pour my own tipple.
“Been to your new house?” So much for telling him.
“Everyone in Rome seems to have known about it, except me!”
He grinned. He had reached the benevolent phase of dreaming on a bench after dinner. Remembering how easy it was not to bother preparing a platter for one, I guessed he had not had much dinner, in fact, but that just brought the dreamy phase forwards. “So long as the rest of us liked the idea, why trouble you, my son?”
“Well, the plan is a dud. Helena now thinks we cannot live so far out of town.”
“Why did she buy the place then?”
“Probably the rest of you, who were in on the secret, forgot to point out the disadvantages.”
“Well, is it a nice property?”
“Wonderful.”
We swallowed our drinks in silence for a while. I heard familiar women’s voices down below at street level, but supposed it was Helena talking to Lenia. Lenia was probably sounding off about the latest horrors imposed on her by her ex-husband, Smaractus, the landlord who owned this block. I cradled my cup, thinking what an evil, unsanitary, money-grubbing, tenant-cheating insult to humanity he was. Petronius had his head lolling far back against the apartment wall behind us, no doubt pondering hatreds of his own. His cohort tribune, probably. Rubella: an ambitious, unscrupulous, discipline-mad, tyrannical hard man who-according to Petro-could never wipe his bum with a latrine sponge without consulting the rules to see if a ranker was supposed to do it for him.
Footsteps scuffled outside. Petro and I both sat quite still, both suddenly tensed. You never knew here whether
