“Oh, of course!” he retorted, with an edge. My in-laws, now I tentatively called them that, were senatorial-a swanky alliance for an informer. Petronius still did not quite know whether to mock my good luck or throw up in a gutter. “Jupiter, Falco; don’t apologize to me. You must be dying to present yourself as the wonderboy imperial favorite with the new middle-class credentials.”
It seemed tactful to find a joke: “Up to my bootstraps in putrid gooseshit.”
He accepted it. “Nice, on their expensive marble floors.” I noticed his eyes narrow slightly. He had seen something. Without appearing to break off our casual banter, he told me, “Your ma has just turned the corner from Tailors’ Lane.”
“Thanks!” I murmured. “This could be a moment to nip off and officiate over some sacred beaks-”
“No need,” returned Petronius, in a changed tone, which carried real admiration. “Looks as if your important new role has just come to you.”
I turned to follow his gaze. At the foot of the steps that led wonkily up to my apartment stood a smart litter. I recognized its white-and-purple-striped curtains, and the distinctive Medusa head boss on the front: the same one that brought little Gaia yesterday.
Descending from it was a man in ridiculous clothing, whose snooty attendants and wincing demeanor filled me with horror. He wore a shaggy double-sided cloak and on his head a birchwood prong set in a wisp of wool; this contraption was held on by a round hat with earflaps, tied under his chin with two strings, rather like an item that my baby daughter used to pull off and throw on the floor. The cloak was supposed to be the garb of a hero, but the pointy-headed visitor belonged to a caste I had always reviled. In my new position, I would be forced to treat him with fake politeness. He was a flamen, one of the hidebound priests of the ancient Latin cults.
Two days in the job, and the bastards had already found out where I lived. I had known landlords’ enforcers who gave a man more grace.
V
AFTER A FEW words with the basket weaver on the ground floor, the flamen’s attendants preceded him up the decaying steps towards my apartment. Outside on the tiny landing where Gaia had broached me yesterday, Nux was now gnawing a large raw knucklebone. She was a small dog, but the way she growled stopped the cavalcade dead.
There was a short confrontation.
Nux gripped the bone, which was almost too heavy to lift. I had seen it-and smelled it-when I went out, a decayed monster she must have retrieved after letting it mature for weeks. A couple of flies buzzed off it. Since the half door had been shut behind her to keep Julia in and away from the dog while it was dangerous, Nux had limited options. Her ears went back and she showed the whites of her eyes. Even I would not have approached her. Continually growling, she advanced down the steps, lugging the bone, which thudded on each stone tread. The attendants retreated, stepping on the flamen’s toes. Back at the foot of the stairs they squashed into a scared huddle as my dog stalked past them with her precious cargo, all the way subjecting them to a ferocious rolling growl.
The flamen clutched his cloak around him and sneaked up the steps. His attendants, four in all, reluctantly formed up at the foot of the stairs to protect his back, then when he disappeared indoors they stood at ease beside the litter. Nuxie dropped her bone in the road. Head down, she went around in a circle, pushing imaginary earth over the bone with her nose. Then, convinced her treasure was now invisible, she strolled off looking for something more interesting.
Petronius, a cat man, guffawed silently. I clapped him on the shoulder; I waved violently to Ma to say this official business should not be interrupted for her usual loving enquiry about my family’s bowels; I winked at the basket weaver as I passed his shop. I walked upstairs quietly. The attendants ignored me. Ma called out, but I was used to not hearing my mother when she wanted me.
Indoors, I captured Julia as she crawled headlong for the half door, which the flamen had left swinging open. Holding the baby on my shoulder and hoping she would keep quiet, I settled my backside against the new turquoise paint of the corridor wall, to overhear the fun.
I wondered what the flamen had expected. What he got was the girl I had left at home a few minutes before I met Petronius: a fairly domesticated treasure-with a volatile, rebellious streak. She had kissed me good-bye with a sensual hug and beguiling lips. Only her faraway eyes had revealed to a man who knew her well that she would like to see the back of me; she was dying to read some scrolls Pa had brought for her last night, lifted from an auction in which he was involved. By now she would have delved around in the scrollbox and been happily unrolling the first discovery. She would be furious when the priest interrupted.
She would see he was a flamen. The cap and prong were unmistakable. Senators’ daughters know how to behave. But informers’ wives say what they think.
“I want a man named Falco.”
“You are in his house. Unfortunately, he is not here.” Under her naturally pleasant approach, I could tell she had immediately taken against him.
Helena’s accent was more refined than the flamen’s. He spoke with unattractive vowels, which were pretending to be better than they were. “I shall wait.”
“He may be a long time. He has gone to see his mother.” Despite the fact that I had dodged Ma in Fountain Court, telling her about Famia was indeed supposed to have been my errand.
If he had heard I was an informer, the flamen probably thought Helena was a hangover from some past adventure of mine. True. He would have assumed he was trying to contact a hard man in a squalid location whose female accomplice would own all the wrinkled charm of an old shoestrap. A bad mistake.
He would be realizing now that Helena Justina was younger, fiercer, and more refined than he had expected. His pinched nose must register that he stood in a small but scrupulously clean room (swept daily by Ma while we were abroad). It was typical of the Aventine, in that despite an open shutter it smelled of baby, pets, and last night’ s supper, but through it that morning was issuing a richer, more exotic, much more expensive perfume from the rare balsam on the warm skin beneath the light dress that Helena wore. She was in blue. Without paint, without jewelry. Needing neither. When completely unadorned she could startle and trouble an unwary man.
“I need to speak to the informer,” he whined again.
“Oh, I know that feeling!” I could imagine how Helena’s great brown eyes were dancing as she stalled the priest. “But his specialty is dodging. He will turn up in his own time.”
“And you are?” the man demanded snootily.
“Who am I?” she mused, still teasing. “The daughter of Camillus Verus, senator and friend of Vespasian; the wife and partner of Didius Falco, agent of Vespasian and Procurator of the Sacred Poultry; the mother of Julia Junilla, who is too young to have social relevance. Those are my formal definitions. My name, should you be keeping a daily diary of the interesting people you meet, is Helena Justina-”
“You are a senator’s daughter-and you live here?” He must be looking around at our bare decorations and furniture. We coped. We had each other. (Plus various tasty artifacts waiting in store for better days.)
“Certainly not,” Helena rattled back promptly. “This is merely an office where we meet members of the public. We live in a spacious villa on the Janiculan.” First I heard of it. Still, I was only the head of the household. With a practical young woman in charge of my private life (and in possession of her own bank box), if my home address changed overnight I would be the last to be notified.
Helena was picking on the prong-bearer now. “I see you are a flamen. Obviously not the Flamen Dialis.” The top man, Jupiter’s priest, wore an even more ludicrous uniform and kept the public at a distance with a long wand. “The Flamen Quirinalis is my father’s second cousin.” As far as I knew, this was pure invention. Being related to the priest of Quirinus, the deified Romulus, would place Helena in high circles, if true, and was designed to intimidate. “The Flamen Martialis is ninety and renowned for groping women.” Not many people would know the unsavory habits of the priest of Mars. “I believe the Emperor is very concerned about how to deal with it…” Incorrigible girl. “So you are not one of the patrician group,” Helena’s cool voice concluded, insulting the man if he was at all sensitive about his status. “Which, then, shall I tell Falco has called on him?” she cooed.
“I am the Flamen Pomonalis.”
“Oh, poor you! That’s the lowest of all, isn’t it?” Excluding the novelty newcomers who honored the deified
