Time to Depart mdf-7 Page 13

  I followed, waited until the worst was over, then put an arm around her and sponged her face. Our eyes met. I gave her the look of a man who was being more reasonable than she deserved.

  'Don't say anything!' she commanded, still white-lipped.

  'Wouldn't dream of it.'

  'It can't be something we ate at dinner disagreeing with me, because we forgot to have any dinner.'

  'Just as well, apparently.'

  'So it seems you were right,' she admitted, in a neutral voice.

  Then Maia's voice exclaimed from the door, 'Well congratulations! It's a secret, I dare say.'

  'Unless you tell somebody,' I answered, biting back a curse.

  'Oh trust me!' smiled Maia, deliberately looking unreliable.

  She came in, a neat, curly-haired woman weating her good cloak and nicest sandals so she could make a real occasion of simpering at the trouble I had caused. 'Put her on the bed and lie her flat,' she advised. 'Well this is it!' she chirped at Helena helpfully. 'You've really done it now!'

  'Oh thanks, Maia!' I commented as Helena struggled upright and I started clearing up.

  Helena groaned. 'Tell me how long this is going to last, Maia.' -

  'All your life,' snarled Maia. She had four children, or five if you counted her husband, who needed more looking after than the rest. 'Half the time you're lying down exhausted, and the rest you just wish you could be. As far as I can tell it goes on for ever. When I'm dead I'll come back and tell you if it improves then.'

  'That's what I was afraid of,' Helena answered. 'First the pain, and then your whole life taken over…'

  They both seemed to be joking about it, but there was a real edge. Helena and my youngest sister were on very friendly terms; when they talked, especially about men, there was a fierce undertone of criticism. It made me feel left out. Left out, and thoroughly to blame.

  'We can have a nurse,' I offered. 'Helena my darling, if it make you feel better, I'll even set aside my principles and let you pay for her.'

  This piece of piety did not soothe the situation. I decided it was time to go out. I put up the excuse of emptying the rubbish pail, grabbed it and sauntered downstairs whistling, leaving the pair of them to enjoy themselves grumbling. I wasn't going far. I would use up the rest of the evening at the new apartment on the other side of Fountain Court. Having a second home to escape to began to seem a good idea.

  I felt shaken. Faced with definite evidence that I was becoming a father, I needed to be alone somewhere so I could think.

  I had chosen a good moment. The basket-weaver hailed me with news that a man he knew who hired out carts was bringing one round for me, something he had volunteered when I talked to him previously. The cart could only be driven here at night because of the vehicle curfew, and as I would be keeping it for a few days while I cleared the property, arrangements were required. I wanted to use the cart as a temporary rubbish skip. For this to work we had to put it up on blocks and take the wheels off, or someone was bound to make off with it. That was no easy task. Then we had to manhandle the wheels inside the weaver's shop and chain than together for added security. My troubles had only just started. In the short time that the weaver, the carter and I were in the shop making the wheels safe, some joker stowed half a woodworm bed frame and a broken cupboard in the skip.

  We dragged them out and towed them a few strides further, leaving them outside the empty lockup on the other side of the road, so the aediles would not make us (or anybody who knew us) pay for clearing the street. Luckily Maia came down at that point, so I told her to send her eldest boy and I'd give him a copper or two to act as a guard.

  'I'll send him tomorrow,' Maia promised. 'You can have Marius when he's finished school, but if you want a watchman earlier in the day you'll have to pinch one of Galla's or Allia's horrible lot.'

  'Marius can miss a few lessons.'

  He won't. Marius likes school!' Maia's children were encouragingly well behaved. Since I felt disinclined to bring more vandals and loafers into the world, this cheered me up. Maybe, despite all, the evidence I saw daily in Rome, parenthood could work out well. Maybe I too could father a studious, polite little person who would be a credit to the family. 'Put a cloth on top overnight. Famia reckons that makes a skip invisible.'

  Famia, her husband, was a lazy swine; trust him to realise people are so idle they would rather lose a chance of dumping their waste in someone else's bin than apply a bit of exertion uncovering the container first.

  Maia hugged me rather unexpectedly. In our large family she was the only one younger than me; we had always been fairly close. 'You'll make a wonderful father!'

  I pointed out that there were a great many uncertainties before ever I got that far.

  XXV

  After Maia left I started hauling debris from the first-floor apartment. The weaver, who told me his name was Ennianus, assured me he would love to be some help but apparently he had a bad back that not many people knew about. I said it was lucky that selling baskets didn't call for much bending and lifting, then he shambled off.

  I didn't need him. I rolled my tunic sleeves up to my shoulders and set to like a man who has something disturbing to forget about. Although autumn had arrived, the nights were still light long enough for me to put in an hour or two of heavy work. The whole first-floor apartment was crammed with dirty old junk – though I came across no dead bodies or other unpleasant remains. It was hard work, but could have been much worse.

  Smaractus must have let his handymen use this place sometimes as a materials store. There were half-buckets of good nails lurking under the watped scaffold boards and bits of mangled joist timber. One of his halfwits had left behind a perfectly decent adze that would find a welcome place in my own toolbag. They were a feckless lot. Dustsheeting had gone mouldy through being folded up while wet. Pulleys had rusted solid. Paint had gone hard in uncovered kettles. They never took home an empty wine flask or filthy food wrapper if they could stuff it under the unusable tangles of hoisting rope. There were unopened sacks of substances that had set like rock so it was impossible to identify the contents; nothing was labelled, of course. Smaractus never bought from a regular builders' merchant, but acquired oddments from contractors who had already been paid once by some innocent householder who had never heard of demanding to keep spare materials.

  I cleared one room and used it to store any stuff I could reclaim. By the end of the evening I had made good headway and felt pleased with my work. One more stint would reduce the apartment to a shell, then Helena and I could start thinking about what was needed next. I had not found many bad mending jobs to do. The decor would probably be a pleasure to tackle once I had braced myself to start. Living in the kind of hovels I did, I had never had much call to be a dado and fresco man so this would be something new. Everywhere needed a furious scrubbing, but it struck me that while I was attached to the Fourth Cohort I might be able to wangle help from the fire-fighters to bring the water in.

  On my final trip down to street level I found I had been donated an old bench and a soaking-wet counterpane in my rubbish skip. I turfed them out, then covered the skip, and roped it too. I went to the nearest baths to cleanse myself of dust and sweat, mentally adding sweet oil and a strigil to the list of things I would bring across next time I came to work. After I rinsed the dirt from my hair, I also added a comb to the list.

  It was dark when I made my way back up Fountain Court. I felt tired but satisfied, as you do after hard labour. My muscles were stretched, but I had rent at the baths. I felt on top of life. Playing the thorough type, I stepped over to look under the cover and check my skip again.

  In the gloom I nearly didn't see what was there. If I had still been tipping rubbish in, I would not have noticed a thing. That was somebody's intention. Rome being the city it is, whoever put the young baby in the cart meant him no good. He was cute, and gurgling trustingly, but a baby who gets dumped by his keeper does not easily acquire another – not unless he is gra
bbed by a woman who is purposely watching the middens in case someone abandons an unwanted newborn. Nobody in Fountain Court felt that desperate. Whoever ditched this little one had left him to die. They would not have expected anybody else to pick him up and take him home.

  Since it was me who found him, that was what I did.

  'Only you could do this!' Helena groaned.

  'Your lucky day!' I told the babe. 'Here's a nice lady who only wants to cuddle you. Listen to me. She's a pushover for big brown eyes and a showy grin – '

  'This is no good, Marcus.'

  'Very true. I'm determined to be firm. I'm not allowing other people's unwanted goods in my rubbish skip. I paid for it, and I've got plenty of clutter to shift for myself – '

  'Marcus!'

  'All right, but once I picked him up and took him out, what was I supposed to do? Lay him down in the gutter and just walk off?'

  Helena sighed. 'Of course not.'

  'He'll have to find himself a berth somewhere. This is just a temporary reprieve.' It had a callous ring.

  I noticed Helena made no attempt to come and take the child. He stared at me, as if he realized this could be the big tricky moment in his life. He was quite a few months old, enough to take notice of his surroundings anyway.

  He looked healthy. His hair, which was dark and slightly curled, had been trimmed neatly. He wore a proper little tunic, in white, with embroidery at the neck. He had been wearing it much longer than he should, however. That kind of babywear usually belongs to families where the children are changed regularly, almost certainly by a nurse; this baby had not been cleaned up, perhaps for days. He was soiled and sore. I was handling him gingerly.

  'Poor little fellow needs a bath.'

  'I'll find you a big bowl,' snorted Helena. She was definitely not going to help.

  'Luckily you've come to a home where the women are fierce but the men understand it's not your fault,' I told him. When I talked, he hardly seemed aware of me. I tickled his chin, and he did condescend to wave his feet and hands about.

  He was a very quiet baby. Something about him was too subdued. I frowned, and Helena, who had by then brought me a bowl of warm water, looked at me closely the way she did when she thought I was drawing conclusions. 'Do you think he has been mistreated?'

  I had lain him on his back on a tunic on the table while I took the clothes off him. He was not afraid of being handled. He was plump, a good weight. There were no bruises or unhappy marks on him.

  'Well, he looks unharmed. But there's something odd,' I mused. 'He's too old, for one thing. Unwanted babies are abandoned at birth. This lost mite must be nearly a year old. Who keeps a child so long, looks after him, grows fond of him – and then carefully pushes him under a canvas in a rubbish skip?'

  'Someone who knows it's your skip!' suggested Helena dryly.

  'How could they? I only got it tonight. And if they wanted me to find him, why wait until I'd finished work, covered it up, and could not be expected to look inside again? I only found him by accident. He could have died of exposure or been gnawed by rats or anything.'

  Helena was examining a loose cord around his neck, a twisted skein of coloured material. 'What do you think this is? It's very fine thread,' she said, unravelling it partially. 'One of the strands could be gold.'

  'He's had an amulet probably. But where's it gone?'

  'Too valuable to throw away with the child!' Helena Justina was growing angry now. 'Some person felt able to abandon the baby – but made sure they kept his bulk.'

  'Perhaps they removed it because it might have identified him?'

  She shook her head sadly, commenting, 'This never happens in stories. The lost child always has a jewel very carefully left with it so years later it can be proved to be the missing heir.' She softened slightly. 'Maybe his mother cannot keep him, but has preserved his amulet as a memento.'

  'I hope it breaks her heart! We'll make sure we keep his tunic,' I said. 'I'll get Lenia to wash it, and I'll ask her if any of the laundry girls have seen it before. If they have they are bound to remember the embroidery.'

  'Do you think he's a local baby?'

  'Who knows?'

  Somebody knew. If I had had more time, I might have traced his parents, but the rubbish-skip babe had picked the wrong moment to be dropped on me. Working with Petronius on the Emporium heist was going to take up all my energies. In any case, finding parents who don't want their babies is a dead-end job.

  I had done the child a favour, but in the long run he might not thank me for it. He had been found in a district so poor that we who lived there could hardly keep ourselves alive. On the Aventine, three times as many children died in infancy as those who survived, and many of the survivors grew up with no life worth speaking of. There was little hope for him, even if I did find somebody to take him in. Who that could be I had no idea. Helena and I had our own troubles; at this stage we were certainly not available to foster unknown orphans. There were too many children already in my family. Although no member of the Didius clan would be made to suffer this child's fate, finding space for an extra who had no claim on us was inconceivable.

  We could sell him as a slave, of course. He wouldn't be overjoyed about that.

  The baby seemed to like being washed. The sensation appeared to reassure him, and when Helena allowed her guard to slip and started a gentle splashing game, he seemed to know he was expected to chuckle and play along with her. 'He's not a slave's baby,' I observed. 'He's already been among feckless time-wasters who throw water all over the room!'

  Helena let me haul him out, though she did find a towel to dry him on. He must have decided that now he could start in with the serious demands: food preferably. We had patted him all over, allowing him a few more tickles on the way, and rolled him in a stole while we thought about where we could stow him safely overnight. Then the babe decided to assert himself and began roaring.

  Unluckily for Helena, that was the moment when the Palace slave arrived to ask me to an urgent confidential meeting with the Emperor's eldest son.

  I managed not to grin as I kissed Helena tenderly, apologised for bunking off – and left her to cope.

  XXVI

  Rome was full of litters taking the wealthy out to dinner. It was, therefore, also hill of harshly squabbling voices as the slaves carrying the litters vied for road space with the heavy carts delivering necessities that were now permitted to enter the city. Flutes and harps occasionally tweedled above the havoc. Around the temples and courts in the Forum I noticed the good-time girls, the night moths, already hovering. There seemed to be more than usual. Maybe I had prostitutes on the brain.

  I was being taken to the Golden House. The slave made enquiries at the marble-clad entrance while Praetorians gave us nasty looks. I was led in to the west wing, the private apartments where I had never been before. Once past the Guards, there was a quiet atmosphere. It was like entering a friendly home, though one with sumptuous embellishments.

  Titus was in a garden. The state bedrooms were all designed to face across the Forum valley, with views that would once have included the Great Lake and which now took in the building site of the Flavian amphitheatre. Behind them, decorously lit with outdoor lamps, lay this private, interior court. It was dominated by an immense porphyry vase but also contained select pieces of statuary chosen to delight Nero. The planting was tasteful, the topiary pristine, the seclusion divine.

  The Emperor's heir aud colleague was sitting with a woman who must have been nearly forty years older than him. Since he was a handsome man in his thirties who was currently unmarried, my imagination leapt wildly. She couldn't be his mother; Vespasian's wife was dead. The Chief Vestal Virgin would be a regular visitor at the Palace, but this elderly biddy wasn't dressed as a vestal. They had been talking together pleasantly. When he saw me being brought through the colonnade, Titus began rising as if he meant to excuse himself for our discussion, but the woman held out a hand to prevent him. He then kissed her cheek befo
re she herself rose and left him. This could mean only one thing.

  Her name was Caenis. She was Vespasian's freedwoman mistress. As far as I knew, Caenis did not interfere in politics, although any woman whom Vespasian had cherished for forty years and whom Titus treated respectfully must have the potential for enormous influence. The freedwoman was a scandal waiting to happen, but the cool glance she gave me said that scandal stood no chance.

  As she passed me, I stood aside meekly. Her intelligent gaze and upright carriage reminded me of Helena.

  'Marcus Didius!' Titus Caesar greeted me like a personal friend. He had noticed me looking at his noble father's not so noble ladyfriend. 'I was telling Caenis your story. She was listening very sympathetically.'

  I was pleased the Emperor's mistress found details of my life entertaining, though I noticed that Titus had not introduced us so the lady could award me a bag of gold, a kindly word, and my heart's desire.

  'Are you well?' Titus was asking, as if my health were of major significance to world events. I said I was. 'And how is the splendid daughter of the excellent Camillus?'

  Titus Caesar had in the past looked at Helena as if he found her as attractive as I did. This was one reason why she and I had been spending time abroad, in case he decided his famous fling with the Queen of Judaea was completely doomed and looked around Rome for a replacement. While Helena would make a perfect substitute for a beautiful, spirited and slightly naughty royal, this would leave me bereft and with little hope that Queen Berenice would fancy me as a quid pro quo. So I was resisting a swap. I thanked him for asking, then made damn sure he knew the truth: 'Helena Justina is fit, flourishing – and doing me the immeasurable honour of carrying my heir.'

  If he drew an unexpected breath, he disguised it well. 'I congratulate you both!' Titus Caesar had the knack of sounding as if he meant exactly what he said.