The Silver Pigs mdf-1 Read online

  I trailed him all along the street that used to go north, under the shadow of what we called the Upper Palace, through part of the grounds of Nero's Golden House. We hit the Sacred Way. On the corner by the Temple of Vesta, with its mock thatched roof and lattices, the crowds craning their necks for the approach of Vespasian and Titus had clustered so thickly there was only one way my quarry could turn into the Forum on its southern edge. We were hemmed back against the public buildings as the prisoners overtook us. We were both struggling now. Our only way to move was to be eased along by muscular contortions in the crowd, like a recent dinner undulating inside a snake.

  There was no hope of concealment as from time to time the waiter glanced anxiously back. He bludgeoned across the front of the Julian Courts, and I sweated after him. On the processional way I could hear the stamp of twenty-four members of the college of lictors, the escort for the Emperor presumably all in red tunics and shouldering their bundles of staves, though they were hidden from my view by the press of the crowd. Vespasian himself was coming now. The excitement rose, and with it my desperate mood. I tried to fight my way forwards, yet to do anything but stand still and applaud Vespasian like everybody else was virtually impossible. By the Temple of Saturn, I had made up no ground on the waiter and as I turned, distracted by the racket of the Emperor's chariot, I finally lost sight of him for the last time.

  I let him go. Life was too precious to waste. Fighting to keep my feet, I found myself on the steps, almost where I had been standing on that summer day when Sosia Camillina ran towards me and all this began.

  There I stood, squeezed breathless, while the Emperor in whom she so dearly believed rode up to meet the senate at the Temple of Jupiter, to celebrate his victory as a champion of the city and dedicate himself in his role as Chief Priest to the peace and prosperity of Rome. Four powerful white horses dragged his mighty chariot into the grateful roar of the crowd. The old man stood in his richly embroidered robes, beneath a golden oak leaf wreath held over his head; it was the Crown of Jupiter, and too heavy for a mortal man to wear. On his sturdy arm lay the laurel bough he would place in the lap of the gods on Capitol Hill; in his great firm hand he carried the traditional ivory sceptre with its eagle taking flight. The public slave whose task was to murmur reminders of the Emperor's own immortality seemed to have given up. There was no point. Vespasian was a grim old cynic; he knew.

  Slowly the gilded triumphal chariot thundered by. Vespasian looked, as he himself said afterwards, as though he was calling himself a fool to have wasted a day on this endlessly crawling parade. I did not cheer, but despite myself I laughed.

  After him, Titus. Titus in a second great chariot, looking as if his heart was going to burst. Finally Domitian, the junior prince, handsome as mustard on a prancing white horse.

  They had done it. They were here. Three Sabine provincials no one had ever heard of until last year had, with good luck and some merit, made themselves dynastic princes in Rome.

  I turned away. Behind the three Flavians, the full mass of the army now came marching in: line after line of standard-bearers, trumpeters, baton-wielding officers in tall crimson crests, augurs, engineers, then the endless ranks of foot sloggers six deep, swinging along in the easy tramp that had taken the legions effortlessly throughout the world. Regulars piled through the streets in cohort after glittering cohort, followed by their exotic auxiliaries swarthy-faced archers in shimmering scale armour mounted on swift ponies, then heavier cavalry, ominous today in chased golden face masks that made them quite expressionless as they shook their feathered spears in unison.

  There was going to be a long wait while the Emperor climbed the Gemonian steps on his knees, then more delay while he made formal sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter on Capitol Hill. Turning back the way I had come would be impossible for another hour. I decided to circle right round the Palatine and weave back to the others along the Caelian side. This would enable a discreet check of certain premises on the way.

  I followed the line of the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Sewer, built five hundred years ago to drain the marshes round the Forum and the river side of the Aventine. My road soon brought me among the spice markets, where I came upon a watchman guarding the manhole where sewer men still plugged away daily under Nap Lane. They were not here today. On a public holiday no one works; only watchmen sometimes watch, if they want somewhere quiet to get drunk. This watchman had guzzled his way through one raw skinful and was taking a nap to encourage him for more.

  So far nothing unexpected. Yet at the head of the alley I spotted a girl I vaguely thought I knew.

  "Naissa?" It was Helena Justina's constantly abandoned maid.

  She had made up her face with borrowed paint in honour of the day. She had done it in poor light so in broad sunshine the final effect passed beyond enhancing her features to a vivid glaze of colour; it gave her an unnatural, astonished stare.

  "Where is your lady, girl?" I demanded anxiously.

  Tn her father-in-law's warehouse. I was frightened to go any further; she told me to wait here."

  "It's just a warehouse, nothing sinister; you ought to have gone in with her!"

  "What shall I do now?" Naissa queried nervously, widening her fantastically painted eyes.

  "Whatever she told you, Nai'ssa!" I instructed unsympathetically, while my mind raced.

  Having informed Helena Justina yesterday that I was not free to go to the warehouse, I knew I ought to abandon my present plan. I wanted very badly to see her, but turned away. Now I had accepted that at least one of her close relations was involved in the conspiracy, facing her was hard to contemplate. Yet all the time I kept remembering that the warehouse was where Sosia had been murdered. To leave Helena alone there would have been even more difficult.

  "Are you Didius Falco?" Naissa asked, with a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. I stopped. "She told me to go to your house with this"

  She was holding something out. It was wrapped in a scarf, but the weight felt familiar as soon as it dropped into my hand.

  "Was there a message?"

  "No, sir."

  Already I realized something serious was happening. I said urgently to the maid: "Go back and watch the Triumph with the family again. Tell Helena Justina's mother, as discreetly as you can, that your lady is under my escort now. Her father should be attending the sacrifice, no need to bother him yet. But if Helena does not reappear by the time of the celebration dinner, go immediately to the senator and tell him where we are."

  The next time I began to walk it was rapidly down Nap Lane. As I went, I unfolded Helena's scarf.

  What I held in my hand then was a bracelet of British jet, fashioned in interlocking pieces like whale's teeth. It was the bracelet that Sosia Camillina once gave to me, which had been stolen from me on the doorstep of the senator's house.

  LVIII

  Sometimes a case consists of a progression of facts that lead you from one to another in a logical sequence; with these an informer who has any sort of brain can do all the work himself, at his own pace. Sometimes it is different. All you can do is stir the mire, then keep prodding so pieces of flotsam float to the top, while you stand there and watch for some putrid relic to emerge and at last make sense. Something had swirled into view now; the only problem was, it must be Helena who had stirred the mire. But if Helena had found this bracelet where Sosia found her list of names, it made sense. And it meant Helena Justina now knew who the last conspirator was. To keep it safe, I buckled the bracelet onto my belt.

  When I walked into the alley some things had changed, some were exactly the same. Rank weeds lolled against decaying doorposts where fungus gleamed like shrimp roe; further on, new chains flaunted bright padlocks on businesslike new doors. It must be a place where property ownership constantly changed, shifting with the storms of commerce, be they blown up on the ocean by the gods in their wicked mood, or manufactured in the Emporium by speculating men.

  At the Marcellus warehouse there seemed littl
e alteration on the outside. In the lane a broken down waggon which I remembered had been shunted along a couple of yards; I was surprised it could be moved. I noticed the difference because there was a manhole with its cover off where the clapped-out vehicle had stood before in apparently permanent decay. The yard gates were closed, but unlocked. I walked in on hurried feet.

  When I came here looking for Sosia, the Marcellus warehouse had appeared almost abandoned. Since then, the sea routes to Alexandria had reopened, and evidently several triremes laden to swamping-point had made the trip for Pertinax while he was still alive and operating in trade. This was obviously a working unit now. A line of carts stood against the yard wall, and when I approached the warehouse door I could smell the difference from five paces away. Someone had left a great key in the outside lock. The twelve-foot door gave with a creak, though I had to lean against it with my whole body weight to heave the monster ajar.

  What a place! Now that Pertinax and his partner Camillus Meto had been using it again, the atmosphere was magical. But the dead silence told me nobody was here.

  The pepper warehouse was a square, high, cluttered space, dimly lit from far above. Even now it was still less than half full, but on that warm afternoon the varied aromas of the rich goods inside hit me at the entrance like the whoomph of a well-sealed steam-room at the baths. Once my eyes focussed in the weird light I could see bell jars of root ginger standing in shadowy rows like pharaohs' statues lining the route to the tombs in some silent city of the dead. Sacks were piled in the centre of the floor stuffed with cloves, coriander, cardamoms and cinnamon bark. One entire wall wds lined with wooden stalls where I plunged to the elbow in peppercorns, black, white and green. I stuffed half a handful worth a year's salary into my pocket absentmindedly.

  She was nowhere to be seen. I walked steadily up a long aisle of baskets and kegs to the back of the building, then returned. My eyes watered slightly. I stood in that dizzy fug of aromatic scents, like a man drowning in medicinal balsam.

  "Helena!" I spoke her name, but not loudly. I waited, straining to find her presence, but I could tell she was not there.

  "Helena

  I walked out into the glare of the yard. Someone had been here. Someone had left the key. Someone intended coming back.

  No one was in the yard. I stood looking again at the line of waiting carts. They were quite substantial. Spices were normally transported in panniers slung on mules.

  I walked to the gate. Naissa had gone. Nothing else had changed. I walked back to where the watchman had just woken up enough to look up at me in bleary happiness.

  "I'm looking for a girl."

  "Good luck to you, sir!"

  By now all the world was his friend. He insisted I share his next bottle, so I sat on the ground beside him while I tried to decide what to do. Sharing his bottle involved sharing his company, both of which explained why the watchman had been drinking alone, for his company was unendurable and his wine worse. Drinking seemed to sober him up, so to take my mind off his tedious personality and the foul taste of his liquor on the roof of my mouth I enquired after progress in the sewers. I should have known better. It turned out he was an opinionated orator who started to cackle on, imparting grimly-held theories about incompetent management by the aediles who ran the public works. He was right, but that did not make me keen to hear his views. I bit at a peppercorn, cursing myself.

  This work has been going on for almost a year. Why so long?" If I had been a lucky man, he would have answered he was only the watchman and had no idea; men who lecture you on local government are never so honest or so brief. After a slurred treatise on the art of sewer maintenance, wildly inaccurate on engineering facts and positively intolerable once he started drawing diagrams in the dust, I found out that quite simply the patched cracks consistently reappeared. The job was troublesome. The fault lay two hundred yards down Nap Lane. None of the self-important occupants would agree to have their yards dug up, so all the concrete had to be bar rowed here then slung along in baskets underground…

  "Can't they use a manhole nearer the spot?" I asked.

  He answered with the logic of the truly drunk, that there wasn't one.

  Thanks!" I said, tipping down the brim of Maia's hat over my face.

  I knew without moving that I had found the silver pigs.

  We lay there, side by side, – a hopeless drunk with half his belly showing, and his companion under a country hat while I got used to this idea. Somehow I felt no surprise when brisk footsteps approached us from the main street direction and passed by, striding down the lane. I lifted Maia's hat a crack above my nose.

  I saw a man I recognized go in through the warehouse gate.

  There was just time for me to hop down the lane and flatten myself inside the clapped-out cart before he burst back out like an exploding lupin seed. He must have discovered the same key that I found, still in the lock. I kept well down, and heard him walk straight to the false manhole that had been hidden beneath the wrecked vehicle until it was moved. He seemed to pause, listening; I tried not to breathe. I heard him strike a sulphur match. He swung himself down the iron ladder, while I slid to the floor crabwise and approached the hole, circling around so that my shadow fell away from it. I stood back until the faint clang of his shoes had stopped ringing on the ladder, then I waited a few seconds longer in case when he reached the bottom he looked up.

  No one in sight: I scrambled up and shinned down the ladder myself, silently planting the arches of my feet on the metal rungs.

  There was a small chamber to turn in, from which an excavated passage ran under the yard wall. It was high enough to walk without crouching, and smooth underfoot. Everywhere was thoroughly lined with mortar, and quite dry. Enough light came from the manhole to fumble my way to a heavy open doorway where I stayed, secure in the outer darkness of the passage, to observe the man I had followed as he spoke to Helena. It was the younger Camillus brother, her uncle Publius.

  What I still did not know was whether he had come as a villain, anxious to secure his loot or whether, like me, he was an innocent, merely curious citizen.

  LIX

  Publius and Helena held a lamp each. Beyond these tiny orbs, which glowed upon their faces with sick translucency, gloomed a black rectangular mass.

  "So you're here!" Camillus Meto exclaimed, with the mild astonishment of a man who had imagined a young girl would want to watch the Triumph. From the acoustics as he spoke I gathered they were in a small chamber, densely packed. "Did I startle you?"

  Neither seemed particularly alarmed; I was. I could hear my heart knocking like an airlock in a narrow bronze water pipe

  Helena Justina had been standing quite still in the underground room as if lost in thought. She must have heard her uncle's footsteps, but she showed no surprise. She spoke to him cheerfully, like any relative. "Look at this! The saffron vault keeps a good secret. I wondered if the soldiers would have found it. Obviously not!"

  "You knew about this place? Did Pertinax bring you here?"

  "To show me the perfumes, several times. We were married then, of course. His dry cellar, with a secret door, where the most costly spices could be locked away. Such a simple trick, having the entrance in the lane outside I never believed him when he said it was safe… I've found some other lamps " She began lighting them with a spill, then they both stared.

  It was a low vault, with slabs of rough-hewn stone forming shelves where ceramic jars and glass vessels stood like elixirs in an apothecary's shop. Here, apart from the dried saffron filaments from bright Bithynian crocuses which gave the cavern its familiar name, Pertinax and Publius Meto had secured their precious oils, safe from the excise and from any light-fingered warehousemen of their own. You could not smell the saffron for the much more concentrated perfumes which haunted the place with their enclosed, ambrosial scent. But Helena and her uncle did not notice those. Filling most of the floorspace was a sombre block, chest-high, which chilled the memory of an ex-lead-m
ine slave: silver ingots by the score stood stacked in the gloom, as regular and tight as turf blocks built into a military wall.

  I could see Camillus Meto was watching his niece.

  "Is Falco here with you?"

  "No." Her voice was hard.

  He laughed shortly, with an implication I objected to. "Cast you off?"

  Helena ignored the remark. "A down payment on an Empire!" she marvelled in her old, bitter way. "Falco would have liked to see this. Such a pity he found out that three quarters of this eerie booty no longer contains any silver at all."

  "Clever old Falco!" Publius said quietly. "I can't see the Praetorians knocking at seaside villas in Pompeii and Oplontis, trying to sell them cheap lead water pipes!" He seemed more positive than I remembered him before. "What were you doing here all alone when I came in?"

  "Thinking." She sounded sad. Thinking about Sosia, I wondered if this vault was where she died. She knew it was here; she visited once with Gnaeus and me. She may have come, knowing that it was a secret place"

  With an abrupt movement Sosia's father set his lamp on a shelf and folded his arms, gazing round bleakly as lines deeply incised his face.

  "It's too late to make any difference!" he stated, in a strained voice. He wanted to stop her. For his sake, so did I. He could not stand here and face it. His voice had the harsh break I remembered from Sosia's funeral, as if he were still fretting to avoid the fact of her death, brusquely rejecting anyone who reminded him.

  Helena sighed. "Fair, reverent and dutiful; father read me your eulogy. He was so upset"

  "He copes!" Publius rapped.

  "Not so well as he did. Father said to me recently, he felt he was drowning in a whirlpool now I see this I understand!"