The Iron Hand of Mars mdf-4 Read online

  I went to sleep.

  Most of the night had passed. I woke in a sweat, realising what I must have done.

  'Pleasant nap?' She was still there anyway.

  'You told me to relax… I'm awake now,' I said, trying to make it sound meaningful.

  Helena merely laughed at me, and snuggled against my shoulder. 'Sometimes when I'm trying to make friends with you, I feel like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain.'

  I laughed too. 'Just when he's shoved the thing up farther than ever before, he gets a terrible itch on the shoulder that he's compelled to scratch… I know.'

  'Not you,' she disagreed. 'You'd find some clever way to poke a wedge under the rock.'

  I loved her eccentric faith in me.

  I rolled over suddenly, seizing her in a domineering hold. Then, as she stiffened, expecting something fierce, I kissed her so gently she was overcome. 'Sweetheart, you are the one person who will never need to worry about making friends with me.'

  I smiled into her eyes. She closed them. Sometimes she hated me to see how deeply she felt. I kissed her once more, making a deliberately thorough job of it.

  When she looked at me again her eyes were richly brown, and full of love. 'Why did you run away from the dinner table, Marcus?'

  'I hate stories where dangerous bandits are grabbing women I care about as hostages.'

  'Ah, the bandit was a sweetie!' she teased softly.

  'I bet you handled him.'

  'I have some practice with curmudgeons who think they know all about women!' she mocked, but she was stretching beneath my weight so invitingly I could hardly concentrate. Helena grew still. 'Do you care about me?'

  'I do.'

  'Did you miss me?'

  'Yes, my darling…'

  As I set about the pleasant task of showing her how much, she murmured restively, 'It's starting to get light, Marcus. I ought to go.'

  'I don't think I can allow that…'

  For a moment longer I could tell she was unhappy. I pressed on, letting her know it would have to be all her decision if she wanted us to stop. Then she forgot about the proprieties of living in her brother's house, and was all mine again.

  Light had worked round a stout northern European shutter to reach my comfortably untidy bed. We had not been asleep long this time, since we were still locked close in a way that made sleep fairly difficult.

  'Thank you lady. I needed that.'

  'So did I.' For a modest girl, she could be very direct. Having grown up among women whose shameless behaviour was rarely matched by honesty in bed, it always startled me.

  I kissed her. 'What am I supposed to say to your brother?'

  'Nothing. Why should you?' That was more like what I expected in a girl: totally unhelpful. She smiled. 'I love you, Marcus.'

  "Thank you – but are you going to forgive me for not celebrating your birthday?' It now seemed safe to broach the issue.

  Good timing, Falco: she wanted a fight about it, but her sense of fairness won. 'You didn't know it was my birthday.' She paused. 'Did you?'

  'No! You should know that… I leaned across, then, after a slight delay caused by her sweetness and nearness, I fetched out the amber necklace I had bought on the wineship from Dubnus the pedlar.

  That reminded me – I had to do something about Dubnus. Why do crucial thoughts always interrupt at such inconvenient moments? I had been happily forgetting the Ubian scavenger, not to mention my plan to use him in my search for Veleda. With Helena Justina here in my arms, going into the barbarian forest was a prospect I now found unbearable.

  I let Helena inspect the glimmering skein of beads, then fastened it around her neck. 'Suits you – especially with nothing else on.'

  'That should cause a sensation when I'm next asked to a dinner party! It's lovely…' The sight of Helena wearing nothing but her birthday present encouraged me to further reconciliation, especially as I had managed to keep our physical union intact even when stretching sideways to my bedside table. 'Marcus, you ought to be exhausted – '

  'I had a good night's sleep.'

  'Are you afraid you might have forgotten how to do it?' she taunted wickedly, but accepting my attentions. Helena knew how to be gracious after she had received a well-chosen necklace of daunting cost. 'Or had you just forgotten how good it is?'

  'Forgotten? Sweetheart, when you leave me pining, the problem is that I remember all too well.'

  For some reason this manly reassurance worked on Helena so well she responded with what might have been a sob, though it was well muffled. 'Oh hold me – touch me – '

  'Where?'

  'There – anywhere – everywhere.'

  Nearby in the house something fell over with a loud crash.

  Something large. A statue of museum proportions, or an immense vase.

  No one squealed. But after a second, we heard small desperate feet scampering.

  'That's a child!' I was amazed.

  'Oh Juno, I forgot – ' Helena reached the door first. The child was fleeing down the long corridor, leaving the giant shards behind. Unluckily for her, she had fled towards us.

  What she had pushed over was a dramatic, two-handled vessel that was trying to pass for a middle-period Hellenic black-figure wine crater. It almost succeeded, but I had been trained by experts and I knew a fake, even when it was the kind of high-class fake that has better workmanship than the original (and costs more). It had been displayed on the plinth where I had once written Falco was here in the dust to annoy the tribune's servants. The crater had been big enough for a Treasury clerk to bury his savings in, and was probably the most expensive item Camillus Justinus possessed. The first piece in his lifetime collection, possibly.

  'Stop! Stand still at once!'

  Helena justina could fix me in my tracks when she wanted to; she had no trouble with an eight-year-old. It was, however, the culprit who demanded: 'What are you doing there?' The rude defiance seemed familiar.

  'Escaping from you!' I growled, for this must be the unwelcome soul I had observed snoring in Helena's bedroom earlier. I strode to the remains and picked up a curved fragment. Odysseus with a jutting spade beard was enjoying being tempted by some female; she had a tantalising ankle, but the rest of her was broken off.

  I turned back angrily and surveyed the infant. She had a plain face and a petulant expression, with five or six thin little plaits tied together with a skinny rag on top of her head. My brain struggled to pin down which potbellied little disaster this was, and what relationship she bore to me. For it was one of ours all right. The gods only knew how she came to be in Upper Germany, but I could spot a member of the rampant Didius clan even before the wail of, 'I was only playing – it fell over on its own!'

  She was hip-high, wearing a tunic that ought to have been decent, though she managed to have it hitched up so her bottom showed. That settled it; I knew her parentage all right. Augustinilla. An elaborate name, but a very straightforward personality – dumb insolence. She was my most hated sister Victorina's most objectionable child.

  Victorina was the eldest in our family, the bane of my childhood and my worst social embarrassment since then. As a child she had been a tough little tyke with a constant runny nose and her loincloth at half-mast around her scabby knees. All the local mothers had warned their children not to play with us because Victorina was so violent; Victorina made them play with her anyway. When she grew up she played only with the boys. There were plenty. I could never understand why.

  Of all the naughty children who could have walked in on my tender reunion with Helena, it had to be one of hers…

  'Uncle Marcus has got nothing on!' The reason was that the tunic Helena had plunged into as she rushed to the door was mine. With a good amber necklace it looked highly incongruous, increasing the impression that a Bacchanalia had been occurring in my room. The child's accusing eyes went to Helena too, but there she had better sense than to comment. Presumably Augustinilla had witnessed at close quarters how Helena Justi
na had dealt with the wild bandit chief.

  I took up an athletic pose; a mistake. Flashing the oiled muscles of a handsome physique may succeed in a sunlit stadium within sniff of the Mediterranean, but in a dim domestic corridor halfway across Europe being unclad only makes you feel cold. In a dark mood, I waited for Helena to utter the traditional imperative: 'She's your niece; you deal with her.'

  She said it, and I issued the traditional rude reply. Helena tried not to let the child see she was annoyed.

  'You are the head of the Didius family, Marcus!'

  'Purely notional.'

  Being head of our family was so punishing that the real claimant to the title, my father, had abandoned his ancestors and completely changed his identity to avoid the ghastly task. Now the role fell to me. This explains why I was no longer on speaking terms with my papa the auctioneer. It may even explain why I myself had felt no qualms about entering a profession which most of Rome despises. I was used to being cursed and treated with contempt; my family had been doing that for years. And being a private informer had the great advantage of taking me undercover or right away from home.

  Perhaps all families are the same. Perhaps the idea that paternal power holds sway was put about by a few hopeful lawmakers who had no sisters or daughters of their own.

  'You brought her; you can have the joy of beating her,' I said coolly to Helena. I knew she would never strike a child.

  I strode back inside my room. I felt depressed. Since we were not married there was no reason for Helena to take notice of my relatives; if she did, it boded the kind of serious pressure I had come to dread.

  Sure enough, after a few rapid words, followed by a surprisingly meek reply from Augustinilla, Helena came in and began to explain: 'Your sister is in trouble – '

  'When was Victorina ever out of it?'

  'Hush, Marcus. Women's trouble.'

  'That's a change; her trouble is usually men.'

  I sighed and told her to spare me the details. Victorina had always been a moaner about her insides. Her wild life must have strained her system intolerably, most of all after her marriage to an inane plasterer who in his ability to father horrid children in rapid succession outshone every rodent in Rome. I would never wish surgery on anyone, however. Let alone those painful, rarely successful businesses with forceps and dilators that I vaguely knew were inflicted on women.

  'Marcus, the children were being parcelled out to give your sister a chance of recovery, and in the lottery you won Augustinilla.' Some lottery – a blatant fix. 'No one knew where you were.' That had been deliberate.

  'So they asked you! Augustinilla is the worst of the bunch. Couldn't Maia take her in?' Maia was my one half-likeable sister, which worked against her whenever problems were being handed out by the rest. Her amiable nature meant she was frequently leeched on even by me.

  'Maia had no more room. And why should Maia always have to be the obliging one?'

  'That sounds like Maia talking! I still don't understand. Why ever did you have to bring the nipper here?'

  'What else could I do with her?' she snapped crossly. I had a few suggestions, but sense prevailed. Helena scowled. 'As a matter of fact, I didn't want to admit to other people that I was running around Europe after you.' She meant that she had refused to say she was storming off after we had had a fight.

  I grinned at her. 'I love you when you're embarrassed!'

  'Oh shut up. I'll take care of Augustinilla,' she assured me. 'You have enough to do. Justinus told me about your mission.'

  I sat on the bed, cursing morosely. With one of Victorina's badly brought-up brats on hand, I would certainly not be staying around the house. Helena, of course, would be at home, like a decent Roman matron. Even my lady's wild flights of freedom would have to be constricted inside a military fort.

  Helena squashed in beside me while she swapped my tunic for her own. As she pulled her gown over her head, I fondled her in a desultory way.

  'Talking to you is like interviewing a centipede for a job as a masseur…' Her head popped out. 'How's your mission?' she enquired, checking up on me.

  'I've made some progress.' It was my turn to start dressing and Helena's to make overtures, but she failed to take up the opportunity, even though I was repossessing my tunic as languidly as possible. Evidently I had had my fun. The passion which Augustinilla had interrupted would not be resumed today.

  'How much progress, Marcus? Solved anything?'

  'No. Just acquired new tasks – tracing a missing commander no one even knew about…'

  'This ought to be an ideal location for tracking down suspects – a fort, I mean. You have a closed community.'

  I laughed bitterly. 'Oh yes! Only an enclosed community of twelve thousand men! He's offended his whole legion, not to mention having a hostile wife, an interfering mistress, numerous creditors, people in the local community-'

  'What people?' Helena demanded.

  'He's been trying to trace the rebel I'm pursuing myself, for one thing.' She didn't ask for details about Civil. Justinus must have filled her in last night. 'And he was apparently involved in wrangles over some military franchises.'

  "That sounds like something that could easily have gone wrong if he mishandled it. Which franchises?' she asked curiously.

  'Not sure. Well, pottery, for one thing.'

  'Pottery?'

  'Red tableware presumably.'

  'For the army? Is there a lot at stake?'

  'Think about it. In every legion six thousand rankers all needing cereal bowls and beakers, as well as cooking pots and serving platters for each ten-man tent. On top of that, full formal dinner services for the centurions and officers, plus the gods know what for the provincial governor's regal establishment. The legions reckon to do themselves nicely. Nothing will suffice for the army but the best-quality gloss. Samianware is strong, but it does break with rough handling, so there will always be repeat orders.'

  'Does it have to be brought all the way from Italy or Gaul?'

  'No. I hear there is a local industry.'

  She seemed to change tack. 'Did you find your mother's comport?'

  'Was it a comport she wanted?' I asked, innocently.

  'You didn't buy one!'

  'You guessed.'

  'I bet you never even looked!'

  'I looked all right. They were too expensive. Ma would never have wanted me to spend so much.'

  'Marcus, you're dreadful! If there's a local factory,' Helena decided, 'you'd better take me to buy one for her. Then while I'm choosing your present, you can look around for clues.'

  Helena Justina never wasted time. Left to my own devices I could have frittered away half a week helping her brother with his formal enquiry into the soldier's death. Instead, Justinus was on his own. I did manage to speak to him briefly on another subject, though, asking him to have the pedlar found and put in a holding cell.

  'What has he done?'

  'Leave that blank in the warrant. I just need ready access. It's for what he's going to do.'

  By then Helena had enquired where the best ceramics in Moguntiacum were to be had, and almost before I had managed to snatch breakfast I found myself escorting her sedan chair out of the fort. I did not entirely object. I still had to mention to Justinus that my niece had destroyed his wine crater, and ways of explaining the disaster were slow to suggest themselves.

  Helena and I left the fort in the late morning. Autumn was making its presence felt: a chill still freshened the air several hours after dawn, and moisture clung to the sere grasses along the roadside. Spiders' webs were everywhere, making me blink whenever my horse passed under low branches. Helena looked out of her sedan chair laughing, only to brush away filaments that caught in her own eyelashes. Well, it was an excuse to stop, so I could help.

  The pottery quarter at Moguntiacum was a lesser affair than the vast compound Xanthus and I had visited at Lugdunum. There were clear signs that the German enterprise was struggling to compete against its r
ivals in Gaul, who had backup from the original factory at Arretinum to lend them extra clout. Here the craftsmen were unsupported by the parent industry. Their goods on display were just as fine quality, yet the potters seemed surprised to see customers. The biggest workshop was actually boarded up.

  We found one nearby that was open. It was owned by a certain Julius Mordanticus. Many provincial Celts adopt aristocratic names like Julius or Claudius. After all, if you are trying to advance yourself, who chooses to sound like a cheap artisan? Hardly a second-generation Romanised tribesman anywhere in the whole Empire answers to Didius, apart from one or two youngsters with extremely pretty mothers who live in towns which my elder brother Festus once passed through.

  Helena had soon bought an impressive dish for Mother – at a price which made me wince only slightly, moreover. She then made friends with the potter, explained that she was visiting her brother the tribune, and soon led the conversation round to the legions in general. She was refined, gracious – and deeply interested in his livelihood. The potter thought she was wonderful. So did I, but I fought it back. Once I had paid for his dish, I leaned against a wall, feeling surplus.

  'I expect you do a lot of trade with the fort,' Helena said.

  'Not as much as we'd like these days!' The potter was short, with a wide, pale face. When he talked he hardly moved the muscles of his mouth, which gave him a wooden appearance, but his eyes were intelligent. His remark to Helena had been forced out by strong feelings – his normal nature seemed more cautious. He wanted to let the military subject drop.

  I hauled myself away from the wall as Helena chatted on. 'I confess I didn't know saurian ceramics were made in Germany. Is your speciality confined to Moguntiacum, or does it go further afield, among the Treveri?'

  'The whole area from Augusta Treverorum to the river produces samianware.'

  'I should think you do well?' she suggested.

  'A bit of a slump lately.'

  'Yes, we were looking at your colleague's stall – the one that's boarded up, belonging to Julius Bruccius. Is that due to the depression, or is he off on an autumn holiday?'

  'Bruccius? A business trip.' A shadow crossed his face.