Time to Depart Read online

  We had naturally been investing for ourselves as well; no point travelling to one of the Empire’s richest markets unless you buy cheap from the caravans. Using Helena’s money mainly, plus my own meagre savings, we had laden ourselves with enough bales of silk to dress our entire families like Parthian dancing girls and still have some over to sell. Helena’s ex-husband had imported peppers, so we shied off those, but that left plenty of other spices to bring home in casks that hummed with addictive scents. We had purchased Arabian incense and other perfumes. I had acquired a few extras at markets when Helena was not looking. Then finally, just when I believed we were coming home, Helena Justina had coerced me into buying glassware for Papa.

  She had made me do the bargaining, though she herself handled a portable abacus with a verve that made the traders sweat. She chose the stock. Helena had a good eye for a flask. Grumbling aside, glass was the desirable commodity. My father knew what he was doing. There were bowls and bottles, jugs and beakers in delicate pinks, metallic greens, sulphurous blues; vases with snakes of molten glass trailing around their elegant throats; tiny perfume flagons like little doves; jugs with furled spouts and fine etching. There was cameo glass, at a price that rivalled the incense. There were even spectacular funeral jars.

  All this glass was a serious burden. We had crept home, trembling for the safety of Pa’s fragile water sets and dinner bowls. As far as I knew, it was all in one piece when we sailed into Portus on the Providentia. All I had to do now was transport it upriver to Rome. If I wanted to remain Helena’s private demigod, I had to make sure I did not slip with the bales.

  All our own packages had already been taken over to Ostia on mules. I had booked a passage up the Tiber on a barge that was leaving today. Now I was on edge about Pa’s damned glass. I did not intend to endure the rest of his lifetime being derided as the son who smashed the equivalent of two hundred thousand pieces of silver. This had to be done right.

  Petronius had some sympathy; he was a loyal friend. But he lacked the direct interest I had myself, and I didn’t blame him for that. It was hard enough for me to interest myself in another man’s profit margins. Only Helena’s pride in her commission kept me going.

  We were having trouble finding transport. We wanted to take the glass to the old harbour using the canal. Some idiot (me) had deemed this the best way. No one would hire us a boat, though. After a couple of hours of fruitless begging Petro left me on the jetty, saying I was to keep looking out for a skiff while he approached the harbour staff and mentioned his official position in a casual manner, hoping to get us fixed up with reliable rowers that way.

  He was gone so long I reckoned he must have slipped off for breakfast without me. If I was lucky he might bring me back a squashed roll with a sliver of limp cheese and a quarter of an olive. More likely the rascal would saunter back whistling and say nothing. Great. The glass had been unloaded from the Providentia and left on the quay, so I had to stay with it.

  I had had enough. I tried to sit on a bollard, but they’re never designed to let a backside rest there. While seagulls squawked scornfully I cursed my father to Hades and back, and even muttered about Petronius. I was wasting time here when I had yet to spend a full day back in Rome. Petro’s caper with the criminal had robbed Helena and me of a much-longed-for first night together in our own bed. Pa, lounging with his boots on a lamp table, had told me that he was ‘a bit too busy’ to visit Ostia. So he had left me to reclaim his goods, which had already cost me enough trouble, and on which, if I knew him, he would deny Helena her agent’s percentage. Assuming the daft girl had even thought of asking for a percentage in the first place.

  I was all set to kick the glass into the harbour when Destiny took pity. A couple of men in a sturdy boat actually hailed me and asked if I wanted my goods ferrying. I was delighted, though after six years as an informer, I naturally viewed the offer with caution.

  Adopting a suave manner, I made some enquiries. Luckily they had the right answers: they were members of the rowers’ guild, and owned their own craft. They looked like lads who knew their business. Their names, which I insisted on knowing, were Gaius and Phlosis. We agreed a price, and they began loading my precious crates, taking all the care I asked for. There were a lot of crates. When they finished, they had to tell me apologetically that the boat could not take me as well. It did seem pretty low in the water.

  Time was running out if I was to catch the barge. Gaius and Phlosis seemed so concerned that I might think they were stealing my collateral, I reluctantly agreed to let them row to Ostia without me while I took one of the regular hired carts. We would meet at the barge; they themselves suggested I didn’t pay them until then. This evidence of their honesty clinched the deal.

  Tired, and pleased to have sorted myself out without aid from Petro, who could be supercilious about commerce, I was ready to agree to anything sensible. I waved them off.

  I was still on the quay, looking around for my friend, when I spotted another skiff. In it I could see Petro, who must have picked up his man Fusculus from somewhere. I waved impatiently. I would now have to explain to the second crew that their services were no longer needed – and if I knew the rules of the Ostian rowers’ guild, they would probably demand a disappointment fee.

  As I was tapping my toe, Petronius’ two rowers suddenly began shouting. Then Petro himself joined in. His boatmen began to row very fast towards Gaius and Phlosis. They tried to speed up. Then, to my amazement, my two handy lads jumped over the side, swam rapidly to the jetty some distance from me, and made off down the quay.

  The realisation that I had been caught by a swindle fell on me like a cartload of wet sand.

  * * *

  Next moment I was screaming with anxiety over Pa’s cargo of glass. Fortunately the inner harbour was sheltered, so there was rarely a swell, and no large ships were manoeuvring at that moment. The abandoned skiff had rocked wildly when Gaius and Phlosis dived over the gunnels, but it had stayed afloat. It was collected by Petronius, who had stepped across from his own boat, then held the two craft close together so that Fusculus could scramble across too. Petronius could row; he brought my goods slowly back to me while his own boatmen raced to shore. Still yelling, they jumped out and ran after Gaius and Phlosis.

  I didn’t care about those thieves; I just wanted Pa’s treasure. Petronius threw a rope to me, while Fusculus shook his head over my narrow escape. ‘You were certainly conned there! A lovely example of the craft-rig,’ he informed me knowingly.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘They steal a boat, then prowl the wharves looking for a sucker who has just arrived at the harbour and needs some goods transferred somewhere. Luckily our own two honest fellows recognised the boat. It belongs to a friend of theirs, so they knew your heroes must have pinched it.’

  I did not want to hear the depressing details, but I gave him a hand to jump back to dry land. ‘You’re the expert on low tricks are you, Fusculus?’

  ‘Fusculus is a fervent scholar of the underworld,’ grinned Petro. Thankfully, he was too good a friend to jeer directly at my mistake.

  ‘Balbinus used to run a gang who specialised in this dodge along the wharves by the Emporium,’ Fusculus said. ‘You’d be surprised, Falco, how easily tired travellers can be taken in.’

  ‘I’m not surprised at all,’ I growled.

  The two rowers who had exposed the near-disaster came back, having failed to catch my lads. We unloaded half the glass from the first boat, then got hot and fractious transferring it to the second one so we could spread the weight between the two and hitch a ride ourselves. Petronius, Fusculus and I all stuck with the precious cargo right to the barge at Ostia. Not until I had seen every crate transferred did I feel able to relax again.

  Exhausted by our adventures, we lay on deck in the autumn sunlight as slowly the barge started to navigate the shoals, creeping up the muddy Tiber into Rome.

  VII

  Helena Justina had not heard me come home. She was t
ying in strands of my climbing rose, a thing of long spindly growth that struggled for water and nourishment on the narrow balcony outside my sixth-floor apartment. For a moment I was able to watch her while she remained quite unaware of me.

  Helena was tall, straight-backed, dark-haired, and serious. She was five days from her twenty-fifth birthday. The first time I ran across her, married life in the utmost luxury but with an insensitive young senator had left her bitter and withdrawn. She had just divorced him, and made it plain that anyone else who got in her way could expect to be kicked out of it. Don’t ask how I got around the problem – but writing my memoirs promised some fun.

  Astonishingly, two years of surviving scandal and squalor with me had softened the hard shell. Maybe it was being loved. Now, as she paused rather dreamily to suck at a thorn in her finger, there was a stillness about her. She looked far away, yet unconscious of her own thoughts.

  I had neither moved nor made a sound, but she turned quickly. ‘Marcus!’

  We embraced. I buried my face in her soft neck, groaning with gratitude for the way her strong, sweet face had lit with pleasure when she realised I was there.

  All the same it worried me. I would have to hang a bell inside our entrance door, so nobody else could creep up on her like this. Where we lived was a lawless tenement.

  Maybe I needed to find a better place for us.

  * * *

  Helena seemed tired. We were both still drained of energy after travelling home from the East. Coming in and crossing the outer room, I had seen evidence that she must have spent my absence at Ostia unpacking and tidying. My mother or one of my sisters might have dropped in to help, but they fussed around and were likely to have been seen off politely with cinnamon tea and a few tales about our journey. Helena never fussed. She liked to set things just so – and then forget about them.

  I pulled her to the rickety wooden bench, which felt even worse than I remembered. Bending down with a curse, I fiddled about with a piece of broken roof tile – which probably meant we had a new leak somewhere – and managed to level up the bench’s feet. Then at last we sat quietly together, gazing out across the river.

  ‘Now there’s a view!’

  She smiled. ‘You love coming home, Marcus.’

  ‘Coming home to you is the best part.’

  As usual Helena ignored my suggestive gleam – though as usual I could tell she welcomed it. ‘Did everything go all right at Ostia?’

  ‘More or less. We got back to Rome about an hour ago. Pa finally managed to show an interest. Once I’d done the hard work he turned up and took charge at the Emporium.’ Luckily my father actually lived on the riverbank, below the Aventine cliff and only a step from the wharves. ‘He’s got the glass, so make sure he pays you an agency fee.’

  Helena seemed to smile at my advice. ‘Did Petronius do what he wanted? And are you now going to tell me what the fuss was about?’

  ‘He was sending a condemned man into exile.’

  ‘A real villain?’ she asked, lifting her bold eyebrows as she caught my surly tone.

  ‘The worst.’ Petronius Longus would be horrified at the way I shared such information; I knew he never told his wife anything about his work. Helena and I had always discussed things; for me, the big rissole was unfinished business so long as I was waiting to confide in Helena. ‘Balbinus Pius. We saw him on to his ship, and one of Petro’s men has gone along undercover to see he doesn’t hop ashore prematurely. By the way, I asked Petro and Silvia to dinner once we’re straight again. Everything in order here?’ I didn’t bother looking back at the bare room behind me: a small table, three stools, shelves with a few crocks, pots and beakers, a next-to-useless cooking bench.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  For the past few months my sister Maia would have valiantly toiled up the six flights from time to time, making sure for us that no one broke in and that Smaractus, my pig of a landlord, had not tried his usual trick of squeezing extra cash from subtenants if he thought I was not here. Maia had also kept the balcony garden watered and had pinched back the herbs, though she drew the line at controlling the rose. She reckoned I had only planted it to get cheap flowers for seducing girls. All my sisters were naturally unfair.

  I took charge of Helena’s finger, removing the thorn with adept pressure from one thumbnail. My right hand was habitually caressing the two-month-old scar on her forearm where she had been stung by a scorpion in the Syrian desert.

  ‘I’ll be in trouble over your war wound.’ Both my own mother and Helena’s noble parent would blame me for taking her to such a dangerous province and bringing her back scarred for life … And there might be another new situation that would set both our mothers on the alert. Newly home after a whole summer abroad, I did not want to start broaching issues. But I took a slow breath and braced myself. ‘Maybe there’s worse than that in store for me.’

  Helena showed no reaction: so much for being mysterious.

  ‘I think there’s something we need to talk about.’

  She heard the message in my tone that time. She looked at me askance. ‘What’s wrong, Marcus?’

  Before I was ready I heard myself saying: ‘I’m beginning to suspect I’m going to be a father.’

  I fixed my gaze on the Ianiculan Mount and waited for her to accept or reject the news.

  * * *

  Helena was silent for a moment, then asked quietly, ‘Why do you say that?’ There was a very slight rasp in her voice.

  ‘Observation.’ I tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Matching evidence with probability is my job, after all.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’re the one who knows!’ Helena spoke like an angry householder whose chief steward had just accused a favourite slave of raiding the wine cellar. ‘How do you reckon it happened?’

  ‘The usual way!’ Now I sounded tetchy. We had only ourselves to blame. It was a classic failure of contraception – not the alum in wax letting anyone down, but two people failing to bother to use it.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, indeed! I’m referring to a certain occasion in Palmyra –’

  ‘I remember the date and time.’

  As I feared, she was sounding far from overjoyed. I decided that my consoling hand on the scorpion scar might be unwelcome; I drew back and folded my arms. Once again I gazed out beyond the Tiber to the Ianiculan Hill, where I sometimes dreamed of owning a villa if Destiny ever forgot that I was the one she liked tormenting with hammerblows. My chance of ever becoming a householder in a quiet and spacious home was in fact ludicrously slim.

  ‘I know you have your position in society to think about,’ I told Helena, more stiffly than I had intended. ‘Your family’s reputation, and of course your own.’ Unhelpfully, she made no comment. It tipped me into flippancy: ‘I’m not asking you to stand by me.’

  ‘I will, of course!’ Helena insisted, rather bitterly.

  ‘Better not commit yourself,’ I warned. ‘When you’ve had time to think, you may not be too happy about this.’

  We were not married. She was two ranks above me. We never would be married unless I could persuade the Emperor to promote me to the middle rank – which had been refused once already. One of the Caesars had turned down my request, even though I had earned quite a few favours from the Palace and my father had lent me the qualifying cash. Humbling myself to take the loan from Pa had been hard; I reckoned the Palace owed me more than favours now.

  But the Palace was irrelevant. I was in a fix. Plebeians were not supposed to sleep with senators’ female relations. I was not a slave, or I would have been dead meat long ago. There was no husband to be affronted, but Helena’s father was entitled to view our crime in the same light as adultery. Unless I was much mistaken about the ancient traditions of our very traditional city, that gave him the right to execute me personally. Luckily Camillus Verus was a calm man.

  * * *

  ‘So how do you feel, Marcus?’

  Fortunately my life as an informer had trai
ned me to avoid saying what I felt when it could only lead to trouble.

  Helena filled in the gap for herself wryly, addressing the sky: ‘Marcus is a man. He wants an heir, but he doesn’t want a scandal.’

  ‘Close!’ I said it with a smile as if both of us were joking. She knew I was dodging the issue. Applying a serious expression, I altered my story: ‘It’s not me who has to go through with the pregnancy and the dangers of birth.’ Not to mention enduring the extreme public interest. ‘What I think takes second place.’

  ‘Ho! That will be a novelty … It may not happen,’ Helena suggested.

  ‘Looks definite to me.’ Helena had been pregnant with a child of mine before, miscarrying before she had even told me. When I found out, I had vowed never to be left out again. Believe me, keeping track had not been easy. Helena was the kind of girl who lost her temper if she felt she was being watched. ‘Well, time will show if I’m right.’

  ‘And there’s plenty of time,’ she murmured. I sat there wondering: time for what?

  The child would be illegitimate, of course. It would take its mother’s rank – utterly worthless without a father’s pedigree to quote as well. Freed slaves stood a better chance.

  We could cope with that, if it ever came to it. What was likely to break us, one way or another, would happen to us before the poor scrap was even born.

  ‘I don’t want to lose you,’ I stated abruptly.

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘Look, I think it’s fair to ask what you want to do.’

  Helena was frowning. ‘Marcus, why can’t you be like other men, who don’t want to face up to things?’ Maybe she was joking, but she sounded serious. I recognised her expression; she was not prepared to think about this. She was not intending to talk.

  ‘Let me say what I have to.’ I tried playing the man of the house, knowing this normally only got me laughed at. ‘I know you. You’ll wait until I leave for the Forum, then you’ll worry in private. If you choose a course of action, you’ll try to do everything alone. I’ll have to come chasing after you, like a farm boy left behind at market when the cart sets off for home.’