Saturnalia mdf-18 Read online

  'You've got more than my note.' I kept my tone light but ominous. 'Why don't you come in decently?' demanded Ma. That would stop me making the Spy squirm round to look at me over his shoulder. He was on a bench that was pulled tight under the table, so movement was hindered. I was standing, so I could dominate the bastard.

  'I'm fine, Ma.' Anacrites was clutching his spoon like a toddler, tantalised by the half-eaten bowl of leeks. 'So you still come to visit my mother, Anacrites?'

  'Anacrites is a good friend to a poor old woman.' Ma's usual note of reproof made me sound like a bad son. Since I would never overturn this myth, I did not bother trying. 'I only wish everyone took so much trouble…'

  'Just bringing Saturnalia greetings,' he excused himself wanly. 'Why did you want to see me, Falco?'

  'You need to do some quick talking, old mucker.' The endearment was fake. I kept smiling. He started to sweat. A severe blow to the head several years ago had left Anacrites with a permanently damaged skull and a tendency to panic at times of tension. He suffered headaches and a changed personality as well. And although I had brought him unconscious to my mother to be nursed back to life (which was how he knew her, and knew her well enough to get free broth), he could never trust me to maintain the insane generosity that had once saved him.

  I came into the room and moved around the table. Anacrites tried to relax. 'I've taught you nothing; never sit with your back to the door.' He dropped his spoon. I bent and kissed my mother's cheek like a good boy. She glared at me suspiciously. 'Now then, Anacrites, what do you mean by arresting Camillus Justinus?' I demanded.

  'You haven't!' cried Ma. I perked up as he took the arrows. 'What's he done? He's a lovely boy!'

  'Some palace mistake,' I told her.

  Anacrites was glowering. 'State business,' he bluffed.

  'State incompetence,' I snorted back. 'Young Camillus is a free Roman citizen. No one may lay hands on him.'

  Anacrites was about to make his favourite boast, that he could do anything because he was the Chief Spy-but he paused. I was invoking the law. It was forbidden to imprison a citizen; being chained breached a free man's rights. Quintus had the right of direct appeal to Vespasian if he was manhandled, and for wrongful arrest he could claim massive compensation. Anacrites' official budget wouldn't cover that. 'This is an issue of the highest security.' His voice became haughty. 'When the barbarians threaten, sometimes liberties must be suspended.' He added insincerely, 'I don't like it any more than you do, Marcus.'

  I had never allowed him to use my praenomen. Sitting in my mother's house with his sly snout in a foodbowl did not make him part of my family.

  'The barbarians are cosy in their forest. One woman is your supposed "threat". She must be frightened and we know she's feeling ill. Some terrorist! Never forget,' I warned him, staring at his head suggestively, 'that I know where your weakness is.' His right hand went up; he brushed back his hair as if to protect his once-holed skull, though he must be aware I had not been referring to his wound. My mother shook her head at me reprovingly. I grinned at her; if my laddish brother had grinned like that she would have turned coy, but it failed to work in my case. I never learn. 'Now then, old fellow; you and I are old compatriots, especially after Leptis-' Leptis Magna, where Anacrites had put himself outside the law, was my big threat. 'I just warn you, Justinus' father is intending a personal appeal to his old friend Vespasian. I've managed to put off the senator until tomorrow, but if you want to keep your job, produce your captive before then.' 'Impossible-'

  'Better to give him to me voluntarily.' 'Falco, I can't-'

  'You are the Chief Spy; you can do anything you want.' He moved restlessly, as I enjoyed myself Irony is the informer's friend. Spies may be devious, but they have to take themselves seriously. 'Anyway, what in the gods' name do you want him for, Anacrites?'

  The Spy glanced at my mother. Ma jumped up at once, crying huffily, 'Oh I know when I'm not wanted!' She swept away into her bedroom; its door had been rather firmly closed until now. I had been hoping Ma had hidden Ganna, Veleda's acolyte, in there to stop Anacrites seeing her. It was two days since I left the young girl in Mother's charge and I needed to check up on her, but it was impossible with the Spy here.

  'I wouldn't dream of upsetting your mother. I know she is discreet,' Anacrites muttered apologetically. I knew she was bound to be listening. Rushing from the room-and then getting her head against a door to eavesdrop-was an old trick. 'Junilla Tacita is the best of women. I never forget what she did for me.' I never forgot what she did for him either. And my own stupid part in it.

  I swung myself over the end bench where my mother had been sitting, so I could gaze at him directly. There was a vegetable knife on the table, which I played with to worry him. 'Well, now you've upset her feelings, let us get on with it! Is arresting Camillus a misguided ploy for finding the priestess?'

  'He knew her in Germany.'

  'I knew her too. Why don't you arrest me? That way at least you gain something: you won't have the embarrassment of me finding her before you do.'

  'Justinus had intimate relations with Veleda,' Anacrites insisted.

  How in Hades did he find that out?

  'Five years ago, perhaps. Now he is a married man and a father, and but for your interference, he would have forgotten her. Instead,' I said heavily, 'you have rekindled any loyalty he had for the damned woman.

  'He is in love with her,' Anacrites sneered.

  'No he's not. He told me at the time.'

  'He lied to you.'

  'He lied to himself,' I said easily. 'He was a boy, that's what boys do. Time moves on. The fact is, he did not know Veleda had been placed in that stupid "safe house", the Quadrumatus villa'-I hoped Anacrites himself had selected it. I took a chance. 'He has not contacted her-'

  'You don't know that!'

  So Anacrites didn't know either. 'Take my word. When your ridiculous goons arrested him, he was attempting a reconciliation with his wife.'

  'His wife,' sneered Anacrites, 'who believes that her husband is leaving her to pursue his forest love.'

  'She's wrong,' I replied lightly.

  There was a silence. Anacrites could no longer bear to be kept from his cooling broth. I expect Ma had told him to eat it up quickly while it was good. As he tucked in, I waited. From time to time I stabbed Ma's knife on the board in front of me. Once I picked it up by the old bone handle, and aimed a throw at Anacrites, as if unconsciously.

  With the issue of Just in us' release still unsettled, the Spy decided to enrage me by discussing foreign policy. I refused to play. Eventually he turned to foreign women. Ignoring his own Eastern looks and Greek forename, he had the ex-slaves' common snobbery: he counted as a true Roman, but all other foreigners were second-class invaders. Anacrites asked about Claudia Rufina; he knew she came from Baetica. The fool must have the innocent girl on some blacklist. 'Why is Camillus Justinus-who, as your mother said, seems a "lovely boy"-so obsessed with foreign women?'

  'I wouldn't call him obsessed. He has a perfectly normal devotion to his wife's money. Common enough. Rome is full of wealthy provincials, and poor senatorial families need helpful alliances. Justinus and Claudia are close. He always liked her.' They flirted. They giggled together. He stole her from his brother… 'They are both devoted to their baby son.'

  'He was fascinated by the priestess first-'

  'Mars Ultor! You're the one with the obsession, Anacrites. That was absolutely normal too. Veleda was mysterious, beautiful, powerful-and he was a very young man, inexperienced, who was flattered when she took an interest. Anyone of us was ready to jump on her, but he was handsome and sensitive so she chose him. What counts is that once he left Germany, Camillus Justinus believed he would never see her again.'

  'Anyway, why not dabble? Barbarians can be tamed, I believe,' Anacrites suddenly suggested crudely. 'To benefit the Empire, maybe every citizen should keep one in his household.'

  Albia. How did he know who lived in my household? W
hy had he bothered to find out? What was he implying or threatening?

  I took a deep breath, hiding it. 'Let's get to the point, Anacrites. We are working on the same side to find Veleda.'

  'So what, Falco?'

  'Tomorrow the Emperor will make you surrender your prisoner.

  You know me and I know you; I'm saying as a friend, give him up now. His father will keep him out of trouble. Or I'll stand parole myself '

  Anacrites went rigid. Weak men are ridiculously stubborn. 'I need him.'

  'What for?' I roared. 'He knows nothing!'

  'That's not why I want him.'

  My heart lurched. 'I hope you have not harmed him.'

  'He is in one piece.' The Spy's lip curled. Now he was making me seem crude.

  'Why then?'

  'It's the kind of scheme you would come up with yourself, Falco.'

  Helena always said this idiot wanted to be me. The concept sickened me. 'I'm using him as my entrapment device.' At last I was forcing him to come clean. I should have known his plan would be ludicrous and unworkable. 'To lure Veleda out of hiding: Camillus is my bait.'

  I lost my temper. 'If I can't find where you've stuck him, how is she supposed to do so? It won't work! You would need him to cooperate and her to be stupid. How are you planning to bring this off, Anacrites? Tie Quintus to a post in a clearing by himself- then let the woman hear him bleat?'

  XXII

  I was so angry, I stormed out.

  There was no chance of searching the endless rooms at the Palace, but I went to both prisons, the Tullianum where foreigners under suspicion were held, and the Mammertine political cells, sometimes called the Lautumiae. Anacrites had always favoured the latter. This damp hole was where Veleda would end up on the day of the Ovation, if we caught her. For various reasons that I preferred to forget, I was no stranger there myself Informers can find themselves in bad places. Hazard of the job. Normally it's temporary.

  Hazards had brought me to grief so often in the past, the jailer even remembered me. 'I can't tell you who's in the holding cell, Falco. Security. You know the rules.'

  The rules were simple: it took more money to bribe this righteous public servant than I had on me that evening.

  'Can't you take credit? Let me write an IOU.'

  'Sorry, tribune. Been caught out that way before. You wouldn't believe the so-called respectable people who don't know how to honour a promissory note!'

  Since my banker would have left the Forum long ago, I had to give up.

  I went home. It was now extremely late. When I crashed in, I heard the low murmur of soldiers' voices as the troops waited up to report to me on their latest day's searching. I knew they would have discovered nothing. We were all on a fool's errand.

  Clemens and one of the others looked out as I stomped upstairs holding a pottery lamp. They thought I was drunk. I didn't care what they thought. I needed a drink, but I was not going to confirm their views by getting one. None of us spoke.

  All my family were in bed. Even the dog, curled up in her basket, barely tolerated me patting her. She humphed and turned away, letting me know I was a disreputable stop-out. Neither of my children stirred when I looked in on them.

  Always anxious if I was out so late, Helena Justina was awake. As I undressed and had a cursory wash, I gave her a stripped-down version of the night's fruitless efforts. Helena sat in bed, with her glowing hair spread over her shoulders, hugging her knees. She knew how to listen. I tried to continue grousing, refusing the lure of a spirited woman who could be wonderfully peaceful in the presence of the stressed. Her calm wore me down.

  'I did my best.'

  'You always do, Marcus.'

  'And it's never good enough.'

  'Don't denigrate yourself You're tired, you're cold, and you had no dinner-'

  'And I've a dirty great blister refusing to burst on my toe.'

  'Do you want me to salve and bandage it, darling?'

  'Don't fuss. I don't want tenderness and care. I'd rather suffer and look tough.'

  'You're an idiot, Falco. Come to bed and get warm.'

  I went to bed, intending to get warm the lively way. I fell asleep.

  As I lay in her arms, I was faintly aware that Helena stayed awake long afterwards. She lay still, but her eyelashes were fluttering against my arm. Helena was thinking. If I had been less weary, I could probably have worked out where those busy thoughts were going. Then I might have worried too.

  Some time next morning I groaned and retreated under the bedcover, refusing to wake yet. For a moment I believed I was back in my old bachelor apartment in Fountain Court, where I could lie in all day and nobody loved or liked me enough to notice. I cared more about myself nowadays. My habits were decent, though I still enjoyed living controversially. And sometimes, when a mission was going nowhere and I had had a punishing day, I took time off to recover. That was when solutions sometimes came.

  Dimly, I had heard Helena asking me to keep an eye on the children because she was going out. Well, I generally allowed that. I was a liberal husband and I had taken on a single-minded, independent wife. She had made me happy. I accepted that keeping a happy woman required time, the regular hire of a carrying chair with bearers, and permission to go where she liked so long as no aediles arrested her. She could shop, gossip with her friends, argue with her mother, argue with my mother, visit galleries and public libraries. She could walk in parks or make offerings at temples-though I advised against both, since public gardens are sordid places, haunts of rapists and rabid dogs, while temples are even more disgusting dives, used by purse thieves and pimps.

  As a partner I was tolerant, affectionate, loyal and house-trained. She lived on a loose rein in all respects. However, there was one area where I thought I deserved to be consulted.

  I did not expect Helena Justina to lean over me exuding a fug of her favourite perfume, amidst the tinkle that I recognised belatedly as her best gold ear-rings with the three rows of tiny spindle-whorls, to kiss me goodbye-knowing I was lost to exhaustion-and then to sail off on a visit to Titus Caesar. Without saying where she was going.

  Titus had had his eye on her once. She knew how I still felt about that.

  Finding myself fully awake about an hour afterwards, I suddenly remembered properly that heady scent of malabathron and those tuneful ear-rings-not to mention the innocent way she had murmured 'I'm just going out, darling'…

  I shot out of bed, conducted a lightning ablution and pelted downstairs.

  I was formally dressed. 'Toga, Falco?' chortled the acting centurion, Clemens, acting amazement. He was leaning in a doorway with his arms folded. 'Running in a toga?'

  'Seems like everybody's going to the Palace today!' commented Lentullus. So they all knew where Helena Justina had gone.

  Lentullus was teaching my daughters to march up and down the hallway, bearing new little wooden swords. I recognised the wood (I had been saving it to make a pantry shelf, one day, in about ten years' time.) Lentullus, babysitting? Julia and Favonia dumped with a legionary? I knew what that meant too. Helena had not just taken Albia to make her look respectable, she had commandeered the new nursemaid, Galene, as well. And that meant, Helena Justina thought that if she saw Titus Caesar without me, she seriously needed chaperons.

  Dear gods. And I had nearly let this feckless, faithless woman rub ointment on my sore toe.

  XXIII

  'You'll never catch her now!' sneered Clemens. 'She's long gone, Falco. '

  I declared it would be a gallant gesture to escort my lady home after her royal interview. It sounded feeble, and if I did set off for the Palace I knew my doubts would grow worse with every step I took. Titus Caesar was commander of the Praetorians, and thus in control of Anacrites. Helena was right. She stood a good chance of persuading Titus to free her brother-perhaps better than her father trying to work on Vespasian. The Emperor tended to leave his subordinates to operate as they chose; he would avoid countermanding Anacrites unless the Spy was very
clearly in the wrong. Titus always boasted he enjoyed doing daily 'good deeds'; Helena would persuade him that generosity to Justinus was classic Roman virtue. Would a man of virtue (a species I distrusted) want classic repayment, however?

  'Helena Justina seemed anxious, Marcus Didius. Something to do with a relative, is it?' I refused to respond to this blatant curiosity. When I demanded to know why Clemens was hanging around at home instead of out on the search for Veleda, he suggested I might need company. He didn't mean at the Palace; it seemed I was going somewhere much more unsavoury. 'Man came to see you last night, Falco. Petronius, would it be? Big stiff with a sneer on his face, said he was in the vigiles.'

  Like me, and like all ex-soldiers, Petro believed the recent military intake was shoddy. Recruits were rubbish, officers were second-rate, discipline had deteriorated and now that Petronius and I were no longer defending the Empire, it was remarkable its entire political structure did not disintegrate.

  I concede that in our day we had the Boudiccan Rebellion. On the other hand, once the legions got to grips with her, Queen Boudicca was eliminated without a trace. Unlike Veleda, she was not now scampering around Rome, gazing at the sacred monuments while she plotted acts of terror right at the foot of the Capitol and made us all look fools.

  'You could have told me before! What's his message, Clemens?' 'Our woman has been spotted talking to vagrants.'

  'Did he say who? Or where the sighting happened?'

  'No, Falco-Oh, I think he mentioned it was on the streets at night. '

  'Very specific!'

  If! had known this, I would have got up and done something about it several hours ago. Even Helena had not seen fit to pass on this message. She knew about it though: 'Helena Justina,' said Clemens, citing her name with exaggerated respect, 'said be sure to take backup, if you go out interviewing rough people.' He was making me sound a wimp, in a way that Helena would never have done; she knew I could look after myself 'Helena told us you will go to find the runaways that your friend told you about, on the Via Appia.' This was Helena subtly reminding me what Petro had originally said. 'Daytime would be best, when they are all sleeping up among the tombs; you'll lose them when they come into the city scavenging at night.' I felt my mouth tighten. 'And she doesn't want you bringing any parasites or skin diseases home, so please go to a bath house afterwards. She's left your oil and strigil out.'