Time to Depart Read online

  The place seemed much emptier than when we arrived. News spreads.

  The girl Macra was standing back at the outside door. She looked edgy, but when she saw we were leaving peacefully she relaxed. As we passed her I heard a young child’s cry. Macra noticed my surprise. ‘Things happen, Falco!’

  ‘I thought you were organised in places like this.’ Some brothels were so organised, their expertise had led to them operating as neighbourhood abortionists.

  ‘Losing a baby’s illegal, isn’t it, officer?’ Macra gurgled at Petronius. He looked tense. We all knew it would be a long time before anyone bothered to take a prostitute to court for this. The unborn are protected if there’s a legacy in it; the unborn with shameless mothers have few rights.

  ‘Like to see around the nursery?’ the girl then offered Petro. There was a distinct undertone of offering him a prepubertal titbit. He declined in silence, and she giggled. ‘You’re a hard man to tempt! Maybe I’ll have to come and see you in your station house.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll show you the cell!’ Petro growled in annoyance. A mistake.

  ‘It’s a promise!’ Macra shrieked. ‘We know a client in the vigiles who does amazing things with chains during “interviews”.’

  Petronius had had enough. He took out his note tablet formally: ‘And who would that be?’

  ‘Well do you believe,’ she leered at him, ‘his name seems to just escape me…’

  ‘You’re a lying little flirt,’ Petronius told her, fairly pleasantly. He put away the note tablet. We stepped out into the street with her jibes ringing along the narrow passage at our backs.

  * * *

  ‘So that’s a brothel!’ Petro said, and we both nudged each other, grinning at an old joke from the past.

  We had hesitated, lacking plans. We should not have laughed. Laughing on a brothel doorstep can lead to disaster. Never do it before you have taken a careful look in both directions down the street.

  Somebody we knew was coming towards us. Petro and I were already helpless. It was too late to make off discreetly; far too late to look less like guilty men.

  Approaching down the narrow lane, crying loudly, was a little girl with big feet and a dirty face. She was seven years old, in a tunic she had outgrown months ago; with it she wore a cheap glass bracelet that a kind uncle had brought her from abroad, and an extravagant amulet against the evil eye. The evil eye had not been averted; the child was being dragged along by a small, fierce old lady with a pinched mouth who had an expression of moral outrage even before she spotted us. Spot us she did, of course, just as we two emerged like utter layabouts from Plato’s Academy.

  The little girl was in deep trouble for playing truant. She was glad to see anyone else she could drag down to Hades with her. She knew we were exactly the distraction she needed.

  ‘There’s Uncle Marcus!’ She stopped crying at once.

  Her jailer stopped walking. Petro and I had been reprobates in our youth, but nobody in Rome knew that. Petro and I had not been stupid. We were reprobates abroad.

  We had just blown our cover. My niece Tertulla stared at us. She knew that even bunking off school after her grandma had pinched and scraped to pay for it failed to match our disgrace. We knew it too.

  ‘Petronius Longus!’ cried the old lady in frank amazement, too horrified even to mention me. Petro was renowned as a good husband and family man, so this disaster would be blamed on me.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ murmured Petro shyly, trying to pretend he had not been chortling, or if he had it was only because he had just heard a very funny but perfectly tasteful story about an aspect of local politics. With great presence of mind he embarked upon explaining that we could not make ourselves available to escort people to a safer neighbourhood, owing to a message he’d just received about a crisis over at the station house.

  At the same moment a flying figure whom I recognised as my fraught sister Galla came hurrying down the lane crying, ‘Oh you’ve found the little horror!’ Galla spent half her life oblivious to what her children might be getting up to, and the rest in guilty hysterics after somebody stupid had told her.

  ‘I found more than that!’ came the terse reply, as a pair of unmatchedly contemptuous eyes finally fixed themselves on me.

  There was nowhere to hide.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ I said.

  XXII

  Ouch!

  XXIII

  When I walked into my apartment I found someone standing in the doorway from the balcony. Her dark hair shone in the sunlight behind her; she had left its warmth immediately she heard my footfall.

  She was full of grace and serenity. She wore a simple dress in blue, with a late October rosebud in a pin on the top seam. If she had used perfume, it was so discreet that only the favoured fellow who kissed her neck would be aware of it. A silver ring worn on her left hand showed her loyalty to whoever he was. She was everything that a woman should be.

  I gave her a courteous nod.

  ‘People will be racing to tell you,’ I said, ‘that Petronius and I spent an hour in a brothel near the Circus Maximus this afternoon. It’s famous for offering disgusting services as bribes to the vigiles. We were witnessed coming out nudging each other guiltily, and with happy grins.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘I was afraid of that.’

  ‘I dare say!’

  The slender links of one bracelet slipped over her fine wrist as she lightly held a scroll. Her feet were bare. She, who should have been cushioned on swan’s-down amidst some great man’s marble colonnades, had been reading in the warm sun, high above the squalor of the Aventine where she lived with me.

  I selected a cool and formal tone. ‘People overreact sometimes. I was with Petro when he reached his own house and couldn’t make his wife answer the door. A neighbour shoved her head through a shutter and bawled, “She’s taken the children to her mother’s and your dinner’s been thrown at the cat.” I had to help him pick the lock. He loves that cat; he insisted on going in to look for it.’

  She smiled. ‘Every hero should have a tragic flaw.’ I happened to know she didn’t care for cats. I suspected she despised heroics too.

  I thought it best to maintain a serious approach. ‘Despite his pleading, I felt unable to escort him to fetch Arria Silvia from her mother’s lair.’

  ‘Did you leave him by himself then?’

  ‘He was all right. He had his cat…’ Something caught in my throat. ‘I wanted to make sure you were still here.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  It was mid-afternoon. I had been as quick as possible, but I had gone to bathe. Now I was clean. Every inch of me was oiled and scraped, but I felt as if I walked in grime.

  ‘Were you worried?’ I asked.

  Her dark eyes were fixed on me with a steadiness my heart was failing to match. ‘I do worry when I hear you’re in a brothel,’ she told me in a low voice.

  ‘I worry when I go into a brothel myself.’ For some reason, I suddenly felt clean again. I smiled at her with special warmth.

  ‘You have to do your work, Marcus.’ There was a shade of resigned amusement lurking deep in Helena Justina’s gaze. It seemed to me she had deliberately placed it there. While she waited for me she had taken her decision: either we could fight, and she would only end up feeling more wretched than when she started, or she would make it be like this. ‘So what did you think of the brothel?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘It was a dump. They didn’t have a monkey. I wouldn’t take a senator’s daughter near the place.’

  ‘The monkey in the one we ran through was a chimpanzee,’ she reminded me. Her tone was serious, but the seriousness was a joke.

  Sometimes we did fight. Sometimes, because she wanted me too badly to use reason, I could make her quarrel bitterly. Other times, the intelligence with which she handled me was breathtaking. She set trust between us like a plank, and I just walked straight across.

  I could
see a very faint twist at the corners of her mouth. If I chose to do it now, with merely a look in my eyes I would be able to make her smile.

  I crossed the room. I came right up to her and took her by the waist. A slight colour stained her cheeks, echoing the unopened rose pinned to her dress. As I had suspected, the perfume was there for somebody who knew her well enough to come close enough to treat her tenderly. Not many had ever had that privilege. I breathed slowly. A whisper of cinnamon crept over me, not just any perfume, but one I particularly liked. It was fresh, only recently applied.

  I let myself enjoy looking at her for a while. She enjoyed herself letting me drown gently in old memories and new expectations. I must have dropped my hand without intending it. I felt her fingers entwine in mine. I drew up both our hands and held hers hard against my chest.

  The room was silent. Even the street noise beyond the balcony seemed far away.

  Helena leaned forward and brushed my mouth with a kiss. Then, with no flutes or incense or sticky wines, without needing to negotiate a price, without even needing words, we went to bed.

  XXIV

  By the time consciousness reasserted itself, my sister Galla had told my sister Junia, who had rushed to relate the tale to Allia, who – since she could no longer exclaim with Victorina, who was dead – told Maia. Maia and Allia normally did not get on, but this was an emergency; Allia was almost last in the queue and she was bursting to amaze somebody with news of my latest offence. Maia, who alone amongst them had a conscience, first decided to leave us alone with our trouble. Then, since she was a friend to Helena, she set off for our apartment to make sure nobody had left home over it. Had rapid action been necessary, Maia would have comforted anyone she found sobbing, then rushed out to look for the runaway.

  While she was still on her way to us, I was rousing myself.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The sweet gift of your love.’

  ‘Oh that!’ Helena smiled. I had to close my eyes, or I would have been in bed with her until nightfall.

  Then she asked me, wanting answers this time, about our visit to Plato’s Academy. I rolled over on my back, with my arms behind my head. She lay with her cheek against my chest while I told her my impressions, ending with the fact that I had known Lalage long ago.

  Helena laughed at the story. ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘No! But I left a few hints to worry her.’

  Helena was more interested in the results of our official enquiries: ‘Did you believe her when she claimed she was going to resist having the place “protected” by a male criminal?’

  ‘I suppose so. To call her competent would be an understatement! She can run the brothel and easily beat up anyone who tries to interfere.’

  ‘So maybe,’ suggested Helena, ‘she was telling you more than you think.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Maybe she would like to take over where Balbinus left off.’

  ‘Well we’ve agreed she wants to run her own empire. Are you suggesting something more?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Lalage control the gangs?’ It was an alarming thought.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Helena.

  I was silent, but she must have known I always took her suggestions seriously. Grumpily I accepted this one, though it was against my will. If we could say Nonnius Albius had stepped into the space left by his former chief, things would be much simpler both to prove and to put right. If we needed to consider newcomers, let alone women, the affair assumed unwelcome complexity.

  Wanting to make sure I had listened, Helena sprang up excitedly, leaning over me on her elbows. Then I noticed her expression change. With a sudden mutter she turned away out of bed and left me. She scampered next door, and I heard her being sick.

  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 wearing 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 makes 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 them 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 woodwormy 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. M
aybe, 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.

  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 warped 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.