in for safety- or are you doing good work?'
'I'm having a delightful time, Falco.'
'Really! Who hit you?'
Justinus touched his eye gently. I found a bronze hand mirror among his kit and showed the damage. He winced, more at the marring of his looks than the pain.
'Yes/ I said calmly. 'You are a big boy now. Looks like you've been playing with some older boys that your mummy would disapprove of.'
My assistant was not in the least discomfited. 'He was young,
actually.'
'Just stupidly drunk, or hated your accent?'
'Slight disagreement about a young lady.'
'You are a married man, Quintus!'
'So is he, I gathered… I was squeezing her for information- while he was just squeezing her tits.'
'Marriage has made you very crude.'
'Marriage has made me' He stopped, on the verge of some enormous sad confession. I let it pass.
As I pulled him to his feet and carried him off to the kitchen for sustenance, I kept him talking lest he fall asleep again. 'So, you compared notes with your assailant? That would have been when you became blood brothers in a heart-rending reconciliation, over jugs of British beer?'
'No, Falco. We are two homesick Romans stranded here. When the disloyal girlie went off with someone else, he and I found a quiet wine shop where we shared a very decent Campanian red and a civilised platter of mixed cheeses. 'Justinus had the knack of telling an unbelievable story as if it were entirely true.
'I bet.' I shoved him to a bench by a table. Someone had been chopping onions. Justinus went green and put his head in his hands. I moved the bowl away smartly.
'It was civilised,' he vowed again weakly.
'I don't like the sound of that.' I put some bread in front of him. 'Eat, you beggar. And keep it down. I will not clear up a mess.'
'What I really fancy is some nice traditional porridge…'
'I'm not your adoring grandmother. I've no time to pamper you, Quintus. Stuff in the bread, then tell me what you've found out.'
'The nightlife,' declared my disreputable agent, through a mouthful of stale crust, 'is almost non-existent here. What there is well, I've found it!'
'I can see that.'
'Jealous, Falco? When the troops were here thirty years ago, they must have quickly taught the natives what tough lads needed in the way of a brothel and a couple of dingy drinking dives. You can get several colours of imported wine, not well-travelled, and dried-up
whelks as appetisers. In very small dishes. Second-generation hostesses and tapsters run those places people, I'd say, with half or quarter Roman blood in them. The Second Augusta- that was your legion, wasn't it? -must be well represented in their pedigrees.'
'Don't look at me. I was based at Isca.'
'Anyway, you were a shy boy, weren't you, Falco?'
Truer than he knew. 'Innocence is more normal than most boys admit.'
'I believe I remember it myself… Falco, the canabae hosts speak with a bastard Esquiline twang and can part you from your cash as quickly as any caupona keeper in the Via Sacra.'
I caught his drift at once. 'You are getting no more money.'
'On expenses?' he wheedled.
'No.'
He sulked, then carried on reporting. Then from the palace site come into town most evenings. They walk here and back.'
'It's about a mile. Easy when you're sober and not impossible when drunk.'
'Once they arrive, they tend to divide up. The foreign labour drinks in one area, near the west gate, which is the first part of town they come to. The Britons venture further and favour the south-gate end. The road there goes out to a native settlement, on a headland at the coast.'
'What I'd expect. There are two gangs, with two different supervisors. The supervisors don't like each other,' I told him.
'And nor do the men.'
'Is there much trouble?'
'Almost every night. From time to time they hold a running street battle and throw bricks at shuttered windows to deliberately annoy the locals. In between, they just arrange one-to-one punch-ups. And knife fights that was what happened to that Gaul you asked me to find out about.'
'Dubnus?'
'He fell foul of a gang of the British. Insults were traded and when the Britons scattered, he was lying there dead. He had been alone at the time, so his mates don't know who to take vengeance on though they think it was brick-makers.'
'Is this tale common knowledge?'
'No, but I had it from a rather common source.. Justi nus leered. 'I discovered it in confidence from the young lady I mentioned. Her name,' he said, 'is Virginia.'
I gave him a look. 'Sounds a regular flower to cultivate! But then what about your fighting friend?'
'Oh.' He grinned. 'The painter and I can share her!'
'He's a painter? Well, it he's the new assistant then I've been looking for him, and word has it he wants to talk to me. Hyspale wouldn't say no either- she thinks he's a cute prospect.'
Justinus was grimacing. 'Hyspale's our freed woman Can't have her smooching the pig's-bristle boy!'
'So you will drink and fight with this fellow, but your womenfolk are off-limits to him? Let's have no snobbery. He can take her, if his wife will let him,' I retorted with feeling. 'Anyway, tell your boozing mate, he's known on site as 'the smart arse from Stabiae'.' I paused. 'But don't tell him that you know me.'
Justinus was bored with eating. He slowed down, looking as if he wondered when the next drink and fight might come along. 'So I can carry on? It's exhausting me, having such a good time '
'But you will be brave and uncomplaining?' I rose to leave him. I gave him a very small allowance in cash. 'Your commendatory gold medal is being moulded. Thanks for suffering.'
'It's a tough assignment, Falco. Tonight I am off to my favourite den of iniquity where if the rumour is correct, a really interesting female from Rome will come in to entertain the lads.'
I was halfway back home on my pony when for some reason his remark about the female entertainer bothered me.
XXVIII
I had grown depressed. 'One of my assistants wants to be a playboy; the other simply doesn't want to play.' I was moaning to Helena. She adopted her usual method of showing sympathy a heartless expression and burying her head in a poetic scroll. 'Here I am, trying to re-impose order on this huge chaotic project, but I'm a one-man arena orchestra.'
'What have they done?' she murmured, though I could see the scroll was more interesting than me.
'They have done nothing; that's the point, sweetheart. Aelianus lies in the woods with his feet up all day; Justinus goes on the town drinking all night.'
Helena looked up. She said nothing. Her way of staying silent implied I was leading her brothers astray. She was the eldest and she cared about them. Helena had a habit of diligently loving wastrels; that was what had made her fall for me.
'If this is what it means to be an equestrian,' I told her, 'I would rather be half starved at the top of a tenement. Staff- I spat the word out. 'staff are no good to an informer. We need light and air. We need space to
