reaction from my family. `Who's dead?' I chivvied him cheerfully.
`Flora,' he said.
It had nothing at all to do with me, and yet I knew I would end up becoming involved, despite myself.
VI
THERE WAS no escape. I now had to trek across town to the public building complex alongside the Field of Mars where Pa kept his warehouse and office in the Saepta Julia. That was a double-storeyed edifice, set around an open area, where you could buy any kind of junk jewellery and bric-a-brac or be fleeced over furniture and socalled art by masters of the auctioneering fraternity like Pa. Unless you were desperate to acquire a fifth-hand general's fold-up throne with one leg missing, you left your arm-purse at home. On the other hand, if you hankered for a cheap reproduction Venus of Cos with her nose glued on crookedly, this was the place to come. They would even wrap it up for you, and not laugh at your gullibility until you had almost left the shop.
Marcus Didius Favonius, renamed Geminus after he fled from home, the paternal ancestor upon whom I ought to model my life and character, had always skulked in clutter. I picked my way through the warehouse, getting covered in dust and acquiring a large bruise from an untethered man-sized candelabrum that toppled over as I passed. I found my father slumped against the stacked parts of several dismantled metal bed-frames, behind a small stone Artemis (upside down in a sack of pottery oddments but you could see she was a game girl), with his feet up on a horrible Pharaonic treasure chest. Luckily he was not wearing boots. That would save the tacky turquoise and gold veneer. He was not drunk, but he had been. Probably for several days.
As they say in official despatches, the illustrious one welcomed me by name and I returned his greeting.
`Sod off, Marcus.'
`Hello, Pa.'
The sour tunic that clung to his wide, sagging frame would have been rejected even for the discards basket in a flea market. His beard had grown long enough to see that it would end up darker than his flopping grey curls. Of the famous seductive grin there was no sign.
'So you've lost her,' I said. 'Life stinks.' I sniffed the sordid air. 'And life is not the only thing that stinks around here. This, I gather, is the start of the long decline into financial ruin and personal debauchery?'
'I see you take the hard line with the bereaved in their grief,' he whined.
I had already heard from Gornia, his faithful and long-serving chief porter, that the business had suffered since Flora's unexpected demise, which had happened in her sleep a week ago. Now there were distraught buyers going hairless at non-deliveries and huffy sellers taking their custom elsewhere. The warehouse hands had not been paid. Pa had lit a fire with three months' invoices, badly singeing a batch of ivories during this gesture against life's futility. Gornia had appeared with a water-skin just in time. The ivories were damaged beyond the skill of even the most creative faker Pa employed. Gornia now looked tired; he had been loyal, but might not put up with too much more of this pathos.
'Go to the baths and the barber, Pa.'
'Sod off,' he said again, not moving. But he then roused himself to a minor flight of rhetoric: 'And don't tell me that was what Flora would have wanted, because Flora had one great advantage – she left me alone!'
'Liked to keep her hands clean, I expect. I see you're rallying,' I commented. 'That's wise, because if you don't pull yourself together I shall apply for a writ of custodial care on the grounds of your financial profligacy.'
`Will you Hades! You'll never get a magistrate to say I need a guardian.'
'Stuff you – it's the business I'll be pious about. Roman law has always taken a strict line on leaving fortunes unsupervised.' My father did have more money nowadays than I liked to contemplate. He was either a damned good auctioneer, or a complete scheming dog. The two are perfectly compatible.
It was up to him if he threw his wealth away, but a threat to take it off him was the best way to encourage more fight.
'If you are abdicating as head of the,family,' I offered pleasantly, 'that puts me in charge. I could call a domestic conference in the traditional Roman way. All your affectionate descendants could flock here and discuss ways to keep you, our poor darling father, out of harm's way -'
Pa swung his feet to the floor.
`Allia and Galla would welcome some cash…' My eldest sisters were useless women with large families, both hitched to parasitic men. 'They both love to pry; the sensitive darlings have been perched ready to pounce on you for years. Dear sanctimonious Junia and her dry stick husband, Gaius Baebius, will be in here like ferrets down a pipe. Maia has no time for you, of course, but she can be a vengeful sort -'
'Sod off, and this time I mean it!' roared Pa.
I scowled and left him, telling Gornia to give it another day before abandoning hope. `Hide his amphora. Now he knows that we know what is going on, you may see a sudden difference.'
I was on my way out when I remembered why I came. 'Gornia, have you had any dealings with a scroll-seller called Aurelius Chrysippus?'
'Ask the chief. He handles the dealers.'
'He's not feeling responsive to me. I just threatened to put his daughters on to him.'
Gornia shrugged. Apparently, this cruel tactic seemed fair. He did not know my sisters as I did. There ought to be a statute against letting that kind of woman loose. `Well, Chrysippus has sold a few ex-library collections through us,' Gornia said. 'Geminus sneers at him.'
'He sneers at everyone who might be trickier than himself.'
'He hates Greek business methods.'
'What – too close to his own dirty ways?'
'Who knows? They always share the best bargains with their own people. They glue themselves together. They go off into corners to eat pastries, and it's anyone's guess if they are conspiring or just talking about their families. Geminus can cope with honest crooks, but you can't tell with Chrysippus whether he's a crook or not. Why are you interested, Falco?'
'He offered to publish some work of mine.'
'Watch your back,' advised Gornia. It was how I felt myself. On the other hand, I might have felt the same about all scroll-sellers. 'So how come he got his claws into you, Falco?'
'Heard me reading my stuff in public.'
'Oh bullock's balls!' I was astonished by the porter's fury. 'There's too much of that,' he ranted. I stepped back nervously. 'You can't move these days without some oaf unravelling a scroll at you – under the arches with some rehashed legal speech or grabbing a crowd while they are queuing for the public convenience. I was having a quiet drink the other day and a literary halfwit started disturbing the peace, reciting a crappy eulogy he had read at his grandmother's funeral as if it were high art -'
'My recital was invitation only, and Domitian Caesar attended it,' I answered in a huff.
Then I left.
VII
PA'S DISARRAY was something I needed to think about. The most satisfactory solution was to forget it by doing something else. I decided after all that I would present myself at the Chrysippus scriptorium and size up the outfit. From Pa's place at Saepta Julia back to the Aventine could easily involve a short detour through the Forum. I could pop in at the select gymnasium I patronised and be battered in a workout with my trainer; then when Glaucus had finished toughening up my body, I could follow through with intellectual pursuits.
Afterwards, since Glaucus' gym was at the back of the Temple of Castor, I walked past the famous old establishment of the brothers Sosii, who had sold the works of Horace, to see what a decent scrollseller looked like.
Lucky old Horace. Maecenas for patron; free gift of a Sabine farm (I owned one, but I had paid through the
