XLVII
A
NACRITES SURPRISED me: he was ready for it and knocked Pa's arm aside. By then, I was hanging on to my father, but as I pulled down his right arm he managed to let fly with his left fist and caught the spy a mighty clip across the ear. I hauled away my maddened parent, then, as Anacrites jumped forward angrily, I drew back my own arm to hit him and protect Pa. Somebody caught hold of me.
I turned. I stopped. We all did. The person who had grabbed me with the iron grip was a woman.
`Flying phalluses, Falco! What's this brawl about?'
`Perella!' I exclaimed in shock.
She was a dancer. I mean a good one, not some twirling girl in a two-piece costume with eyes for all the men. Aged somewhere short of fifty but a long way after girlhood, Perella looked like a housewife with a headache on a bad day of the month. She was the deadliest intelligence agent I had ever met.
`Fancy running into you again.'
`No – I ran at you, Falco,' she said, letting go of me with a contemptuous flick of her wrist.
`Stay still, Pa,' I warned him grittily. `The last person I saw upsetting Perella ended up terminally out of it. She's a rather clever lady; we worked together on a job in Baetica.'
`You stole that job from me,' Perella commented.
I grinned. Perhaps uncertainly. `This is my father,' I introduced him, not mentioning her main occupation since Pa probably thought he was a demon at seducing dancers. `He's a lamb normally. He just happened to hear that Anacrites has been making love to my old mother and he lost his rag.' Anacrites, who had gone red when Pa hit him, now went white again. I grabbed Pa by the scruff of his tunic. `Come on. That's enough of us playing the fighting Didius boys. I'm taking you home.'
`Sounds as if the Didius boys – and probably your mother – had best leave town,' murmured Perella. She was implying how stupid it was to offend the Chief Spy.
`I don't think that will be necessary.' For the first time, I looked directly at Anacrites. I spoke quietly. `You owe me one for Lepcis Magna, isn't that right?'
Perella was looking intrigued. She could obviously tell I had made a serious threat. I had done it in front of other people on purpose.
Anacrites breathed carefully. At Lepcis, he had fought as a gladiator in the arena. That meant legal infamy. If it were known, he would lose his position, and be stripped of his newly-acquired middle rank. His free citizenship would be meaningless. He would become a non person. `Of course, Falco.' He was standing so straight he was almost on parade at attention.
I smiled at him. It was not returned.
`So now we are on even terms again,' he pleaded.
`If you like.' Not so even as he implied. This fight with Pa would lose its importance very quickly; Anacrites would remain vulnerable to exposure for the rest of his life. No need to insist too strongly. He knew I had him. `Take a hint, Anacrites old son – it's time to move on. My mother has loved having a lodger, but she is no longer young; she is finding it a bit much nowadays.'
`I was intending to move out,' he said, in a taut voice.
`And one other small point – she is anxious about her savings now the bank has failed.'
`I shall do what I can, Falco.' Then he asked wistfully, `What about Maia Favonia?'
I had done enough. Never strip a man so brutally that he is left with nothing to lose. Maia would have to be the sacrifice. `My dear fellow! That is between you and her, of course.'
He did not thank me.
`What does he mean?' demanded Pa.
`Mind your own business.' I skipped telling him that Anacrites wanted to jump generations; it would only set him off again. Or even if Pa stayed cool, if I thought too much about Anacrites making himself a `friend' to my sister, it might be me letting fly at him.
I marched my father out of the Palace and dragged him into a closed carrying chair, away from prying eyes. I stayed with him all the way to the Saepta Julia, neither of us saying much. At the warehouse, we found Maia, writing figures neatly in the auction daybook. She appeared busy, competent, and content. At our entrance together, she looked up in surprise.
`What have you two been up to?'
`Our esteemed father just socked Anacrites.'
`You pair of fools! What for, Pa?'
`Oh… he gave your mother some terrible financial advice.'
Instinctively, both Pa and I decided not to mention to my sister the real subject of the disagreement.
Maia sidetracked herself, in fact: she had heard about Junia's idea that Pa and I should swap houses. While she had us together, she decided to extol the virtues of him opting for semi-retirement and moving to the Janiculan (nearer the Saepta Julia than his Aventine place, and perhaps further from the temptation to run wild and hit officials) and of me taking Pa's tall, spacious house on the riverbank (close to clients, with plenty of room for a family). Subdued, we both listened to her reasonable words. Eventually Maia found it too disconcerting.
`Oh, I can't stand any more of this! What's the matter with you two? Why are neither of you arguing?'
I had played the peacemaker quite enough today. I left Pa to calm her down.
XLVIII
I WENT HOME. Helena had returned and was talking to Petronius in our third room. She had her nose deep in a chest where my tunics were stored, lifting them out by the shoulders and subjecting each much-loved antique to a mocking survey.
`I am just checking your wardrobe. You and Lucius need to visit a tailor for new togas, so you may as well acquire some wearable tunics at the same time.' She looked up, suddenly uncomfortable, as if she had pried into my bachelor storage without my permission. `Do you mind?'
`That's all right, love.' Seeing a washed-out wine-coloured tunic that I had forgotten I owned, I grabbed the garment and started changing into it. `I don't keep anything in there that I don't want you to find.'
Helena went back to her inspection. After a quiet pause she asked me in an amused tone, `So, Marcus, where do you hide things you are keeping secret?'
We all laughed, while I tried not to blush.
In my bank-box, was the answer – or for tricky items that passed through the home temporarily, stuffed quickly inside the slipcase of a cushion on my reading couch.
To change the subject, I told Helena and Petro what had happened earlier. `Frankly I feel more shattered after coping with my parents than I was last night after we tackled that giant.'
Helena Justina was by then safely out in the main living room, where she had settled to her own devices and started reading a scroll. It must now be the one she had swapped, with Passus that morning, when she left Maia here. She was seated in a basket chair like the one Festus had given Ma, with her feet up on a tall stool and the scroll across her knees. She had the intent air I recognised; I could hold an entire- conversation with her, but afterwards she would be quite unaware of what had been said. Her mind was locked in the new Greek novel, gallivanting about a strange landscape with Gondomon, King of Traximene, as Passus had been yesterday in the Greek library.
Until she finished, she was lost to me. If I had been a jealous type like Pa, I would have been searching for that bastard Gondomon, to take a pot at him.
`Forget your darling family,' said Petro. He still sounded hoarse, though he had been given lunch and looked a
