Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery) Page 15

  Always vibrant and attractive, she had been dangerously self-willed. Maia was the kind of young woman who seems to offer something special – special and mature. She was intelligent and though virtuous, she always seemed to know what good fun was. The kind that even experienced men can fall for very heavily and yearn for obsessively … [OB]

  Maia’s relationship with Petronius Longus creeps up on Falco, if not us: I wondered why my sister would be visiting Petronius. [OVTM] Then Falco reminisces about how he introduced them: Petro had been surprised when he met Maia, for some reason; he asked why I had never mentioned her. [OB]

  Maia has five children with Famia, including her much-missed eldest daughter glimpsed in The Silver Pigs, who dies (mainly because I mixed myself up). The four survivors gang up with Petronius to organise their mother’s life very sensibly.

  Famia

  Maia’s darling was the best of the bunch, though I have to report Famia was a slit-eyed, red-nosed drunk who would have regularly cheated on Maia if he could have found the energy. While she brought up their children, he whiled away his time as a chariot-horse vet. He worked for the Greens. I support the Blues. Our relationship could not and did not flourish … He had a florid face with puffy eyes. Maia fed him well and tried to keep him neat, but it was hard work. [TTD]

  Sometimes Falco draws in Famia’s contacts to assist a case, even though he says they tend to be one-legged jockeys and liniment-sellers who drank too much. Famia relishes these situations, extracting flagons as bribes.

  It’s clear that Maia married Famia out of desperation, probably when pregnant. Famia had made Maia a drudge, fathered four children just to prove that he knew what his plunger was for, then gave up the struggle and set himself the easy target of an early death from drink. [TFL] When Maia is bowed under the effort of trying to hold the family together, Falco thinks that taking Famia out of the country, to buy new horses for the Greens in Africa, is the best thing he can do for his sister. Drink takes its terrible toll: Famia makes racist comments about the Carthaginians, is charged with blasphemy and devoured by a lion in the arena at Lepcis Magna. This colourful scene was begging to be used and it was time to develop new plot-lines. Poor Famia had to go. I am afraid I liked doing it.

  Marius

  Marius, Maia’s eldest, who actually enjoys school and plans to be a rhetoric teacher, is a well-brought-up nice little boy – which encourages Falco to believe fatherhood need not be a disaster. He was a good-looking, extremely solemn little person, and completely self-possessed. He had the same curls as me and Pa yet somehow managed to make his look neat. [TTD] He organises the rota for guarding Falco’s rubbish skip and has been placed by his grandmother in charge of seeing that Tertulla doesn’t bunk off school.

  He acquires Arctos, Nux’s only known pup, in Ode to a Banker. While organising their mother’s love life, all the children try to fix up Maia with Petronius, who trains them like members of his squad when he takes them across Europe; they think Petro is wonderful.

  Cloelia

  Little Cloelia who had never seen her father for what he was and who doggedly worshipped him … [TFL]

  She desperately wants to be a Vestal Virgin, though her father’s death bars her. She had the Didius curls and something of our stocky build, but facially she resembled Famia most. The high cheekbones that had given her father’s features a tipsy slant could, in Cloelia’s finer physiognomy, make her strikingly beautiful one day. Maia had probably foreseen trouble. Whether her daughter would agree to be steered on a safe course had yet to be seen. [OVTM]

  Anyway it’s probably best if I stay at home to help Mother.

  [OVTM]

  Rhea

  Rhea, the pretty, funny one. [TFL]

  Rhea, poor scrap, smells the body under the floor mosaic in Pa’s bath house after Gloccus and Cotta leave a dead workman there.

  Ancus

  Ancus, with the big ears and the shy smile. [TFL]

  Ancus is a quiet little soul, a bit of a mother’s boy. Marius claims he is training up his little brother to work with Falco (to avoid the job himself). ‘Ancus? Will he be any good?’ ‘He’s useless.’ [TTD]

  At the Market Garden

  My relatives’ disorganised patch of vegetable fields, where as usual the leeks and artichokes were struggling on their own, while the uncles busied themselves with lives of fervent emotional complexity … [OVTM]

  Out on the Roman Campagna lies Falco’s mother’s family home. This represents to me, an urban girl, the nightmare of rural family life. For Falco’s father, the absent Fulvius is a crony, but the other relatives are a blight: being constantly despised by my mother’s peculiar relatives must have been one of the trials that had eventually proved too dreary to endure. [PG]

  We hear little of Falco’s late grandfather, apart from: I remember him sounding off about old land ‘reforms’, which drove countrymen out of tenancies where they had farmed for decades. Gramps kept his farm – but we all thought he had done it by tricking someone else. All his neighbours thought so too. [STH]

  This farm is presumably where Falco flees to a grape-harvesting holiday in The Silver Pigs; it is where Festus had hidden blocks of marble and where Gaius is sent to be reformed. Ma regularly visits her brothers to pick up free veg.

  Great-Uncle Scaro

  Brother of Falco’s maternal grandfather, we never meet Scaro who has died while choking on home-made false teeth – having an obsession with corrective dentistry. Phoebe keeps the teeth on the lararium (the family shrine).

  He has been a good male influence on the young Falco: a friendly old scallywag who had always given me the place in the world that my father had taken away. [PG]

  Scaro stood sponsor when Falco joined the army and needed a male relative’s signature of release. Commenting on Scaro’s one-time plan to break into silphium production, Falco says, A noble character, a complete liability in fact. I had dearly loved the crazy experimentalist, but his schemes were ludicrous. [TFL] He had the knack of convincing you that when he showed you some weird piece of carved bone that looked like a pot-bellied pigeon, he had discovered the secret of flight. [OVTM]

  Great-Auntie Phoebe

  The loyal freedwoman Falco’s grandfather never married is a classic country matriarch who stabilises the rabble: a small, sweet round-cheeked woman who looked as frail as grass but had more strength than three grown men. This was just as well because while the others were being introspective about their personal lives she had to harvest cabbage and turn a fork in the manure heap. [PG] It is Phoebe who shows strangers Scaro’s false teeth (model four) on the lararium, saying they are all that remains of the previous unwanted visitors, and threatening to set the dogs on them.

  Uncles Fabius and Junius

  They were men of huge passions – grafted on to absolutely mediocre personalities … The two brothers had a lifelong feud, a feud so old neither of them could remember what it had been about, though they were comfortable loathing one another. [OVTM] In Scandal Takes a Holiday, Falco blames the feud on Fabius thinking Junius cheated over their father’s will and Junius thinking Fabius will ruin everything through his association with a neighbour’s wife. Their doings are listed flamboyantly from time to time. It is quite convenient that I only have to cover one brother at a time.

  Junius is described as ‘dopey’. It is Fabius we see most: Nothing about my uncle was scientific or organised, except when he went fishing. His note-tablets of tedious data on fishes caught, variety, length, healthiness and bait used took up a whole shelf … Otherwise, Fabius could hardly put on a pair of boots by himself. [OVTM] Despite this, he has invented battery chicken farming (aided by Pliny).

  ‘Fabius, if every get-rich scheme that came out of this family had worked, we would be a legend among the Forum banking fraternity. Instead, we just go downhill from year to year – and our reputation stinks.’

  ‘The trouble with you,’ said Fabius, in his maddeningly grave way, ‘is that you never want to take a risk.’ [OV
TM]

  The One Nobody Ever Talks About (Uncle Fulvius)

  Twenty-five years before the series begins, Fulvius took himself off to Pessinus (birthplace of the goddess Cybele), but got on the wrong boat. He had intended to have a sex change, but met Cassius instead.

  ‘Has he really cut off his whatsit with a piece of flint?’ ‘Not as far as I know.’ Even if Fulvius had done it, self-castration was an offence and he was still my relative. I was not going to give the navy an excuse to lift his tunic and inspect him. [STH]

  When they meet, Falco fails to recognise him: overweight, flabby and hook-shouldered. He wore what must be a valuable cameo ring, vivid white glass over lapis blue, which appeared to show a miniaturised pornographic scene. It was the kind of thing that appeals to men who call themselves connoisseurs, men with cold eyes … something about him was getting on my nerves. He gave the impression he enjoyed being controversial … He had a streak of dark intelligence, plus loathing of the social rules; he took a joy in doing people down. [STH]

  It emerges that Fulvius has been a naval intelligence agent, under cover of being a corn factor in Dalmatia. He is cagey about it, though at least he doesn’t work for Anacrites. Falco is not impressed with his methods. Fulvius was a sibling of Fabius and Junius. It followed that he was a lunatic. [STH]

  By Alexandria, Falco has mellowed, perhaps because Helena quite likes his uncle. Fulvius plays host to their Egyptian visit (though may not have anticipated what a large party they would bring). His situation remains ambiguous; he could be a trader or a worse villain. Since he colludes with Geminus, Falco knows what he thinks.

  Cassius

  Cassius is first seen disguised as a beggar: dirt camouflage stripes blackening his face. What a poser … Grey-sideburned as he was now, in the straight nose and brown eyes I could still trace the handsome younger man for whom Fulvius had fallen. Biceps strained against the tight sleeves of his tunic, his big calves were muscular, and there was no fat on him. [STH]

  In Alexandria, he is the domestic god, throwing himself into hospitality. Helena spots that although he is supposed to be the muscle man, while Fulvius is wheeler-dealing, Cassius may sit in a corner reading a scroll. She wonders if he would have liked an intellectual career but his family could not afford it. We just assume Cassius was once some beautiful vacuous young boy Uncle Fulvius picked up in a gym or a bath house – but he is probably not that young. So, surprisingly, it is Cassius who gives Helena information about problems at the Great Library. On their return to Rome, it is Cassius who corresponds with Helena.

  Aunt Marciana

  My Aunt Marciana could zing beads along their wires on her abacus with a verve any moneychanger would envy. [OVTM]

  I have no idea who this is! I had completely forgotten her. What luxury for an author, to invent a character with neither pedigree nor provenance, just for one bit of narrative colour.

  Helena’s Relatives

  The Camillus family were certainly patrician when viewed from my own perspective, though there were no consuls or generals in their ancestry. They were rich – though their wealth was in land. Their house was spacious and detached, a lived-in town villa with water and drainage but rather tired décor … [TTD]

  Gnaeus Atius Pertinax Caprenius Marcellus

  Helena’s divorced husband is first seen as a brutal aedile: typical of the breed, a short-haired pup, yapping up the political ladder, nagging butchers to sweep their shop-fronts and beating the hell out of me … [SP]

  Pertinax cannot realise his ex-wife will find in Falco the dream of her life – I hadn’t devised her and didn’t know it myself. He shows us how the Roman marriage system, alien to the modern Western concept, sometimes worked among the aristocracy: Helena led a solitary life. She slept alone in that beautiful room while Pertinax had his spacious quarters in a different wing, with Barnabas as his confidant. For a young, ambitious senator, taking a wife was an act of state service which he endured to win fools’ votes. Having done it, Pertinax expected his marital rights, yet begrudged her his time. [SB] After three years of sterile luxury, Helena gave up on him. That was the limit of my original intentions. Having Pertinax killed off-stage in a prison cell would remove him and release Helena from any obligation.

  Reviving Pertinax as Barnabas in Shadows in Bronze was not my best piece of plotting, but I still think it too good to miss. Falco’s fanatical jealousy, and even Helena’s crisis of conscience, justify the ploy.

  Pertinax was fatally flawed from birth, then dangerously encouraged after his adoption by the very rich, interfering Caprenius Marcellus: an old patrician stick, fading from the world at his country estate. [SP] One of Rome’s elderly senators, with seven previous consuls in his glorious pedigree. He had possessed an enormous fortune and no heir, until Pertinax caught his eye … Either he was very shortsighted, or being descended from consuls did not make a senator astute. [SB]

  At the luxurious Marcellus villa rustica on the slopes of Vesuvius, Falco sees that Pertinax, who lives a playboy life with his racehorses, has much to be thankful for but fails to value it – just as he failed to value Helena. Steered by the indulgent Marcellus to punch far above his weight in politics, Pertinax bungles everything; he is dumped by the astute Aufidius Crispus, fails to see when to surrender, and goes crassly to his fate. Though he probably does not intend to knock Helena down the stairs at their old house, he has an undercurrent of violence, the violence that is the only resort of the incompetent. He even shows no gratitude to Marcellus, thus stranding himself alone.

  It is incredible to him that Helena should even deal with a plebeian like Falco. This incomprehension provided a way for me to leave Falco with clean hands (more or less). I agree with Helena that if Falco had killed Pertinax, a permanent shadow would have threatened their future. So, when he learns the truth about the lovers, he explodes in outrage and indignation; Pertinax slips and effectively kills himself.

  Decimus Camillus Verus

  On Falco’s first visit in The Silver Pigs, we learn most things about the senator, Helena’s father. He is not as rich as most of his rank, so shares his home plot with his brother. His side of the semi-detached pair is slightly shabby, with an unfinished look to the garden, though Falco decides it has an approachable, easygoing smile. [SP]

  Decimus has heavy eyebrows above decently spaced eyes that looked at me directly. His hair bristled straight up from his head, even though it was not particularly short, giving him a cheerful, boyish look. [SP] Falco meets him in his study. He is competent, and although he seems squashy, he resists Falco’s bullying and bluff.

  Overlooked by statue busts and high shelves of book canisters … Unlike many an aristocrat, I knew he read the scrolls. [SA]

  ‘Nobody tells me anything. They just keep me to lie on one of the eating couches to prevent the dining room looking empty.’ [OVTM]

  Though Decimus makes out he is hen-pecked domestically, probably his marriage is happy; Falco even speculates queasily on the children’s close ages: It suggested an unnerving period of passion in their parents’ marriage. [OVTM] I loved showing the humorous side of Helena’s parents at the feast in Saturnalia.

  He makes a devoted grandfather. His sense of family and political duty shows most seriously at the climax of The Silver Pigs, where astonishingly, he kills his brother. We see his old-fashioned rectitude when he formally marks the arrival in Rome of Veleda, even though she so threatens his son’s equanimity: He represented the governing body of Rome and she was a national figurehead from outside the Empire. So this sturdy old pillar of noble values stomped out to the street and gave her a polite greeting. He even put his toga on to do it. [SA]

  Falco comes to have a deep respect for this man: Camillus Verus was shrewd and intelligent, with a diffident manner. He did what was necessary and did not waste effort on the rest. I liked him. It mattered to me that he should be able to tolerate me. [TTD] He lost his chances to flourish: Life had made him wealthy enough to have standing yet too poor to do much
with it … Just at the moment when Vespasian – with whom he had long been on friendly terms – became Emperor, family embarrassments had held Camillus back. A relation involved himself in a stupid plot and everyone was damned. Camillus Verus knew he had lost out to Fate again. [AC]

  From the start Decimus is tolerant of Falco, mainly because he sees how good Falco is for Helena. By The Accusers, he has Falco’s interests so much at heart that he gives him the necessary steer for out-prosecuting Paccius Africanus. The plotting takes place at their gym: I was rather impressed that Camillus brought me here, rather than contaminate either of our homes with what he had to say. He was a man of curious refinement. [AC]

  Julia Justa

  She was what I expected: glossy, tense, perfect manners, jingling with gold jewellery – a well-treated woman, with an even better kept face … [SP] Julia’s shrewdness shows over Sosia: She was just the sort of sensible matron a bachelor would be lucky to find when he was presented with an illegitimate child he felt unable to ignore. Later, it is she who spots that the skip baby is deaf.

  Julia Justa is a powerful figure in the home. At first Falco thinks her hard. When they are beginning to reach an accommodation (aided by the unreliable behaviour of both her sons), she softens in his eyes: The noble Julia had the suffering air of a woman who was doing her best even though everyone around her seemed determined to ruin her carefully planned day. [TTD] Later he thinks she is merely impatient with hypocrisy.

  In a ghastly way she trusted me. It made life very difficult. [SA]