Three Hands in the Fountain Read online

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ scoffed Petro. ‘When did anyone in the water board ever show any initiative? They’re all too busy working fiddles.’

  ‘I’ll threaten to expose a few. Any sign of you coming back to work, chief?’

  ‘Ask Rubella,’ growled Petro, though I knew the tribune had said my foolish pal was to ditch the gangster’s daughter before showing his face around the cohort again. Unless I had missed something, that still left Petro with a goodbye speech to make to Milvia.

  ‘I heard you were in business with Falco nowadays?’ For a pleasant man, Fusculus seemed to be in a starchy mood. I was not surprised. Informers have a black name amongst most Romans, but we are particularly reviled by the vigiles. The cohorts keep lists with our names on so they can knock on our doors halfway through dinner and drag us off for questioning about nothing in particular. State servants always hate people who are paid by results.

  ‘I’m just helping him out informally. Why – do you miss me?’ Petro asked.

  ‘No, I’m just wondering when I can apply for your post.’ It was said in jest, but the fact was, unless Petronius Longus sorted out his private life rather quickly the joke would become fact. Warning him, though, would only make it worse. Petronius had a stubborn side. He had always had a tendency to rebel against authority. It was why we were friends.

  The Fourth kept a gruesome museum which they showed to the populace for half a denarius a throw, in order to raise cash for the widows of cohort members. We left the hand for the museum, and told ourselves it was no longer our problem.

  Petronius and I then walked via the Circus Maximus to the Forum, where we had an appointment with a wall.

  IV

  IF I HAD had any sense, I would have ended the partnership while we were standing in front of the wall. I would have told Petro that although I was grateful for his offer, the best way for us to preserve our friendship would be if I just let him doss at my apartment. I would work with someone else. Even if that meant pairing up with Anacrites.

  The omens were bad from the very start. My normal method of advertising my services was to march up to the foot of the Capitol, quickly clean off someone else’s poster from the best position on the Tabularium, then scrawl up a few swift strokes of chalk, writing whatever jocular message came into my head. Petronius Longus approached life more seriously. He had written out a text. He had worked up several versions (I could see the evidence in his note tablets) and he intended to inscribe his favourite in meticulous lettering, surrounded by a Greek key border drawn in variously hatched patterns.

  ‘No point making it pretty.’

  ‘Don’t be so casual, Falco.’

  ‘The aediles will wash it off again.’

  ‘We need to get it right.’

  ‘No, we need to avoid getting spotted doing it.’ Chalking graffiti on national monuments may not be a crime in the Twelve Tables, but it can lead to a right thrashing.

  ‘I’ll do this.’

  ‘I can write my name and mention divorce and stolen art recovery.’

  ‘We’re not dabbling with art.’

  ‘It’s my speciality.’

  ‘That’s why you never earn anything.’

  It could be true. People who had lost their treasures were slow to pay out more money. Besides, the ones who lost art were often the mean sort. That was why it had not been protected by decent locks and alert watchmen in the first place.

  ‘All right, Pythagoras, what’s your philosophy? What stunning list of services will you claim we perform?’

  ‘I’m not quoting examples. We need to tantalise. We should hint we cover everything. When the clients come we can weed out the duds and pass them on to some hack at the Saepta Julia. We’re going to be Didius Falco & Partner –’

  ‘Oh, you’re staying anonymous?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘So you still want your job back?’

  ‘There was never any suggestion of giving up my job.’

  ‘Just checking. Don’t work with me if you despise my life.’

  ‘Shut up a minute. Falco & Partner: a select service for discerning clients.’

  ‘Sounds like a cheap brothel.’

  ‘Have faith, lad.’

  ‘Or an overpriced shoemaker. Falco & Partner: try our triple-stitched calfskin slipperettes. As worn by all decadent layabouts, sheer luxury at the arena and the perfect lounging shoes for orgies –’

  ‘You’re a dog, Falco.’

  ‘Subtlety is fine, but unless you give some delicate hint that we carry out enquiries, and that we rather like to be paid for it, we’ll get no work.’

  ‘Listen – Partners’ personal attention may be possible in certain instances. That implies we are a sound organisation with a large staff who look after the riffraff; we can flatter each punter into believing he gets special terms – for which he naturally pays a premium.’

  ‘You have an exotic view of the freelance world.’ He was revelling in it. ‘Listen, scribe, you still haven’t said –’

  ‘Yes I have. It’s in my draft. Specialist enquiries. Then in small letters at the bottom I’ll put No charge for preliminary consultation. That lures them in, thinking they’ll get something for nothing, but hints at our steep fee for the rest.’

  ‘My fees have always been reasonable.’

  ‘So who’s the fool? Half the time you let yourself be bamboozled into doing the work for nothing. You’re soft, Falco.’

  ‘Not any longer, apparently.’

  ‘Give me some room here. Don’t stand in my way.’

  ‘You’re taking charge,’ I accused him. ‘It’s my business, but you’re pushing in.’

  ‘That’s what a partner is for,’ grinned Petro.

  I told him I had another appointment somewhere else.

  ‘Push off then,’ he murmured, completely absorbed in his task.

  V

  FOR MY NEXT appointment a formal escort had been provided: my girlfriend, the baby, and Nux the dog.

  I was late. They were sitting on the steps of the Temple of Saturn. It was a very public place, at the north end of the Forum on the Palatine side. They were all hot. The baby wanted feeding, the dog was barking at everybody who passed, and Helena Justina had applied her extra-patient face. I was in for it.

  ‘Sorry. I called at the Basilica to put the word around the barristers that I was back in town. It may bring in the odd subpoena delivery.’

  Helena thought I had been at a wineshop. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I realise that registering your firstborn child takes a low priority in your busy life.’

  I patted the dog, kissed Helena’s warm cheek, and tickled the baby. This overheated, irritable little group was my family. All of them had grasped that my role as the head of their household was to keep them waiting in uncomfortable locations while I pottered around Rome enjoying myself.

  Luckily Helena, their tribune of the people, was saving up her comments until she had a complete set to blast me with. She was a tall, well-rounded, dark-haired dream with rich brown eyes whose most tender expression could melt me like a honeycake left on a sunny window sill. Even the scathing glance I was meeting now rattled my calm. A fiery tussle with Helena was the best fun I knew, outside of bedding her.

  The Temple of Saturn lies between the Tabularium and the Basilica Julia. I had guessed Helena Justina would be waiting at the Temple, so when I left Petro I had dodged round the back on the Via Nova to avoid being seen. I hate barristers, but their work might make the difference between survival and going under. Frankly, my financial situation was desperate. I said nothing, so as not to worry Helena; she squinted at me suspiciously.

  I tried to climb into my toga in public view, while Nux leapt at the cumbersome folds of woollen cloth, thinking this was a game I had organised just for her. Helena made no attempt to help.

  ‘I do not need to see the child,’ sighed the Censor’s clerk. He was a government slave, and his lot was gloomy. Faced with a constant stream of the p
ublic through his office he had a continual cold. His tunic had first belonged to a much larger man, and he had been dealt a rough throw of the dice by whoever shaved his beard. His eyes had a Parthian squint about them, which in Rome cannot have won him many friends.

  ‘Or the mother, I suppose?’ snorted Helena.

  ‘Some like to come.’ He could be tactful, if it helped avoid verbal abuse.

  I placed Julia Junilla on his desk, where she kicked her legs and gurgled. She knew how to please the crowd. She was three months old now, and in my opinion starting to look pretty cute. She had lost the squashed, shut-eyed, unformed look with which the newborn frighten first-time parents. When she stopped dribbling she was only one stage away from adorable.

  ‘Please remove your baby,’ mouthed the clerk. Tactful, but not friendly. He unravelled a scroll of thick parchment, prepared an inferior one (our copy), and applied himself to filling a pen from a well of oakgall ink. He had black and red; we were favoured with black. I wondered what the difference was.

  He dipped the pen then touched it to the lip of the well to release unnecessary ink. His gestures were precise and formal. Helena and I cooed over our daughter while he steadily wrote the date for the entry that would confer her civic status and rights. ‘Name?’

  ‘Julia Junilla –’

  He looked up sharply. ‘Your name!’

  ‘Marcus Didius Falco, son of Marcus. Citizen of Rome.’ It did not impress him. He must have heard the Didii were a swarm of quarrelsome roughnecks. Our ancestors may have caused trouble for Romulus, but being offensive for centuries doesn’t count as a pedigree.

  ‘Rank?’

  ‘Plebeian.’ He was already writing it.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Fountain Court, off the Via Ostiana on the Aventine.’

  ‘The mother’s name?’ He was still addressing me.

  ‘Helena Justina,’ the mother crisply answered for herself.

  ‘Mother’s father’s name?’ The clerk continued to aim his questions at me, so Helena gave in with an audible crunch of teeth. Why waste breath? She let a man do the work.

  ‘Decimus Camillus Verus.’ I realised I was going to be stuck if the clerk wanted her father’s father’s personal name.

  Helena realised it too. ‘Son of Publius,’ she muttered, making it plain she was telling me in private and the clerk could go begging. He wrote it down without a thank you.

  ‘Rank?’

  ‘Patrician.’

  The clerk looked up again. This time he let himself scrutinise both of us. The Censor’s office was responsible for public morals. ‘And where do you live?’ he demanded, directly of Helena.

  ‘Fountain Court.’

  ‘Just checking,’ he murmured, and resumed his task.

  ‘She lives with me,’ I pointed out unnecessarily.

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘Want to make something of it?’

  Once again the clerk raised his eyes from the document. ‘I am sure you are both fully aware of the implications.’

  Oh yes. And in a decade or two there would no doubt be tears and tantrums when we tried explaining them to the child.

  Helena Justina was a senator’s daughter and I was one of the plebs. She had married once, unhappily, at her own level in society, then after her divorce she had had the luck or the misfortune to meet and fall for me. After a few false moves we decided to live together. We intended to make it permanent. That decision made us, by strict legal definitions, married.

  In real social terms we were a scandal. If the excellent Camillus Verus had chosen to make trouble over my theft of his noble daughter, my life could have been extremely difficult. Hers too.

  Our relationship was our business, but Julia’s existence called for a change. People kept asking us when we intended marrying, but there was no need for formality. We were both free to marry and if we both chose to live together that was all the law required. We had considered denying it. In that case our children would take their mother’s social rank, although any advantage was theoretical. As long as their father lacked honorific titles to cite on public occasions, they would be stuck in the mud like me.

  So when we came home from Spain we had decided to acknowledge our position publicly. Helena had stepped down to my level. She knew what she was doing: she had seen my style of life, and faced up to the consequences. Our daughters were debarred from good marriages. Our sons stood no chance of holding public office, no matter how much their noble grandfather the senator would like to see them stand for election. The upper class would close against them, while the lower ranks would probably despise them as outsiders too.

  For the sake of Helena Justina and our children, I accepted my duty to improve my position. I had tried to achieve the middle rank, which would minimise awkwardness. The attempt had been a disaster. I was not intending to make a fool of myself again. Even so, everyone else was determined that I should.

  The Censor’s clerk surveyed me as if he were having second thoughts. ‘Have you completed the Census?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I would be dodging it if possible. The point of Vespasian’s new Census was not to count heads out of bureaucratic curiosity, but to assess property for tax. ‘I’ve been abroad.’

  He gave me the old they all say that expression. ‘Military service?’

  ‘Special duties.’ Since he did not query it, I added tantalisingly, ‘Don’t ask me to specify.’ He still didn’t care.

  ‘So you haven’t reported yet? Are you head of a family?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Father dead?’

  ‘No such luck.’

  ‘You are emancipated from your father’s authority?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. Pa would never dream of doing anything so civilised. It made no difference to me, however.

  ‘Didius Falco, are you to your knowledge and belief, and by your own intention, living in a valid state of marriage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks.’ His interest was cursory. He had only asked me to cover his own tracks.

  ‘You should ask me the same question,’ Helena sniped.

  ‘Heads of household only,’ I said, grinning at her. She regarded her role in our household as at least equal to my own. So did I, since I knew what was good for me.

  ‘Name of the child?’ The clerk’s indifference suggested that mismatched couples like us turned up every week. Rome was supposed to be a moral sink, so perhaps it was true – though we had never encountered anyone else who took the same risks so openly. For one thing, most women born into luxury cling on to it. And most men who try to lure them away from home get beaten up by troops of very large slaves.

  ‘Julia Junilla Laeitana,’ I said proudly.

  ‘Spelling?’

  ‘J-U–’

  He looked up in silence.

  ‘L,’ said Helena patiently, as if aware that the man she lived with was an idiot, ‘A-E-I-T-A-N-A.’

  ‘Three names? This is a girl child?’ Most females had two names.

  ‘She needs a good start in life.’ Why did I feel I was having to apologise? I had the right to name her as I chose. He scowled. He had had enough of whimsical young parents for one day.

  ‘Birthdate?’

  ‘Seven days before the Kalends of June –’

  This time the clerk flung his pen down on the table. I knew what had upset him. ‘We accept registrations on the naming day only!’

  I was supposed to name a daughter within eight days of her birth. (It was nine days for boys; as Helena said, men need longer for everything.) Custom decreed that a family trip to the Forum for a birth certificate would be made at the same time. Julia Junilla had been born in May; it was August now. The clerk had his standards. He would not permit such a flagrant breach of the rules.

  VI

  IT TOOK ME an hour to explain why my child had been born in Tarraconensis. I had done nothing wrong and this was nothing unusual. Trade, the army and imperial business take plenty of fathers abro
ad; strong-minded womenfolk (especially those who regard foreign girls as a walking temptation) go with them. In summer most births in self-respecting families occur at fancy villas outside Rome in any case. Even being born outside Italy is perfectly acceptable; only parental status matters. I did not intend my daughter to lose her civic rights because the inconvenient timing of an investigation for the Palace had forced us to introduce her to the world at a distant port called Barcino.

  I had taken all the steps I could. Various freeborn women had been present at the birth and could act as witnesses. I had immediately notified the town council at Barcino (who ignored me as a foreigner) and I had made a formal declaration within the proper time limit at the provincial governor’s residence in Tarraco. I had the bastard’s seal on a blurred chit to prove it.

  There was an obvious cause for our problem today. Public slaves receive no official stipend for their duties. Naturally I had come equipped with the usual ex gratia offering, but the clerk thought that if he made things look difficult he could garner a more spectacular tip than usual. The hour’s argument was needed to persuade him that I had no more money.

  He started weakening. Julia then remembered she wanted to be fed, so she screwed up her little eyes and screamed as if she were practising for when she grew up and wanted to go to parties that I disapproved of. She received her certificate without further delay.

  Rome is a masculine city. Places where a respectable woman can feed her young child modestly are rare. That is because respectable nursing mothers are supposed to stay at home. Helena disapproved of staying at home. Perhaps it was my fault for not providing a more alluring habitat. She also despised suckling the baby at the women’s latrines, and seemed in no mood to proffer an entry to the women’s baths. So we ended up hiring a carrying chair, making sure it had window curtains. If there was one thing that grated on me more than paying for a chair, it was paying for it to go nowhere.