area. Only then did he greet his next visitor properly.
It was decent of him to admit the fault. If all the supervisors with scheming workmen came through so well, I would soon be going home.
On the other hand, when any witness in an enquiry owned up too readily, my habit was to look around to see what he was really hiding.
Iggidunus brought his five barred gates late that afternoon. They started off large, then became smaller as he ran out of space on his tablet. I could see at once that if his count was vaguely accurate, my fears were correct.
'Thanks. Just what I wanted.'
'Aren't you going to tell me what it's for, Falco?' Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gaius, head down over his work, looking apprehensive.
'Auditing pottery,' I decreed smoothly. 'The storekeeper isn't happy. Seems we've had too many beaker breakages on site.'
Iggidunus, thinking he would get the blame, scurried off hastily.
Gains and I at once grabbed the tablet and started to set our official labour records against the numbers who were actually here on site according to the mulsum round. The discrepancy was not as bad as I had expected, but then they were still digging foundations and the current complement was low. When the walls of the new palace started rising, I knew Cyprianus was due to take on a very large tranche of general masons, plus stone-cutters to shape and face the ashlar blocks, scaffolders, barrow boys and mortar-mixers. That would be any day now. If we acquired non-existent workers in the same proportions, our numbers would at that point be out by nearly five hundred. In army terms, someone would be defrauding the Treasury of the daily cost of a whole cohort of men.
The clerk was extremely excited. 'Are we going to report this, Falco?'
'Not straight away.'
'But '
'I want to sit on it.' He did not understand.
Discovering that a fraud exists is only the first step. It has to be proved and the proof has to be absolutely watertight.
XXVI
I whistled to Nux and took her on a walk. She wanted to go home for her dinner, but I needed the exercise. As I plodded along, lost in thought, she looked up at me as if she thought her master had gone crazy. First I dragged her on a frightening ship, then an immense journey overland, and finally I brought her to this place where there were no pavements and the sun had died. Half the human legs she sniffed were clad in hairy woollen trousers. Nux was born a city dog, a sophisticated Roman layabout. Like me, she wanted to be kicked at by the bare-legged bullies of home.
I took her to the painters' hut, hoping to ask the assistant about Blandus' progress. There was no sight of this lad everybody talked about. I did see more of what must be his work. In the blank space where someone had previously written 'lapis blue here', that note was now scrawled out and a different hand had added 'pomponius too mean: blue frit!' Perhaps that was the assistant. Some deep blue paint was mixed in a bucket, no doubt ready to obliterate the graffiti before the project manager saw it.
Since I was last here, someone had tried out new types of marbling. Blue and green paints were smeared together in an artistic technique he had not quite mastered, with pairs of symmetrical patches like the mirrored patterns of split-open marble blocks. Endless squares of better-executed dull pink and red veining had been added to the chaos. There was a landscape panel, a stunning turquoise seascape, with finely touched white villas on a shore that looked exactly like Surrentum or Herculaneum. No; it was Stabiae, of course- whence the smart arse had been fetched.
Light seemed to dance off the waves. With a few competent brush strokes the artist had created a haunting miniature holiday scene. It made me long for the Mediterranean…
The fresco assistant had loafed off somewhere. Given what yprianus said about painters, he might be after some woman. It had better not be one of my party.
In the hut next door I did find the bereaved mosaicist, Philocles Junior.
'I'm sorry about what happened to your father.'
'They say you hit him!'
'Not hard.' The son was obviously all fired up. 'Keep calm. He was going mad and had to be restrained.'
The son took after his father, I could see. It seemed best not to hang about. I had too much to do; this was no time to start making myself a slow-burning, brooding enemy. If Philocles Junior wanted a feud in
ySBI
his late father's mould, he must look elsewhere.*
I led Nux past the parked wagons, hunting for Aelianus. He was lying in the statue cart not quite asleep today, but looking bored.]
Recognising him, Nux jumped on him happily.
'Ugh! Get it off me.' -p
'Not a dog-lover?'
'I spend half my time hiding from the guard dogs from the secure compound.'
'Fierce?'
'Man-eaters. They bring the pack out once a day, looking for human flesh they can train them with.'
'Ah, British dogs have a tremendous reputation, Aulus.'
'They're gruesome. I was expecting them to howl all night- but their silence is worse, somehow. The handlers can hardly hold them. They snake around, virtually towing the men, searching for someone who's stupid enough to try running away. It's clear they'd kill anyone who did. I think the handlers bring the dogs out so would-be thieves see them and are too terrified to break in.'
'So you're not going over the fence to pick up a new fountain bowl for your father's garden?'
'Don't joke.'
'All right. I don't want to have to tell your mother I found you with your throat torn out… Anything to report?'
'No.'
I'll be off, then. Stick with it.'
'Can't I stop doing this, Falco?'
'No.'
Nux and I set off to our elegant royal quarters for dinner, leaving Aelianus out in the damp woods. As I started walking back, I wondered how his brother was, and when Justinus might manage to send me word of his activities. My assistants and I were too scattered.
I needed a runner. At home I could have brought in one of my teenage nephews; here there was no one I could trust.
Nux was root ling This was better. She had learned that in Britain there were at least ways of getting her hair full of twigs and her snout earthy. Maybe the guard dogs had left fascinating messages as they passed this way. She spent long pauses with her nose in the leaf litter at the side of our track, then she tired of that and rushed crazily after me, dragging a large branch and barking hoarsely.
'Nux, let's show the barbarians some forum manners, please- don't roll in that!' Too late. 'Bad dog.' Nux, who had never grasped the finer points of reprimands, wagged her tail frenetically.
Why had I taken in a reckless street mongrel with a taste for dung as an unguent, when other Romans acquired sleek lapdogs with long pointed noses to appear in the stone plaques they commissioned? Father to gate and serious with a scroll, mother matronly and bestoled, infants tidy, slaves respectful, moneybags flaunted and clean pet gazing up at them adoringly… I should have known better. I could at least have let myself be picked by a dog with short hair.
