Time to Depart Page 5

  ‘You’ll soon catch up,’ she answered with a faint smile. ‘I know you too.’

  I was remembering the little I knew about what she had gone through, on her own, that other time. It was best not to think about it.

  Legally, every day I kept her I was robbing her noble father. Once the results of our fling became apparent, Helena would be strongly encouraged to regularise her life. The obvious solution for her family would be a quick arranged marriage to some senator who was either too stupid to notice this, or plain long-suffering. ‘Helena, I just want you to promise that if there are decisions to be made, you will let me share in making them.’

  Suddenly she laughed, a tense and breathy explosion of dry mirth. ‘I think we took our decisions in Palmyra, Marcus Didius!’

  The formality cut like a boning knife. Then, just when I thought I really had lost her, she seized me in a hug. ‘I love you very much,’ she exclaimed – and unexpectedly kissed me.

  It was no answer.

  On the other hand, when a senator’s daughter tells a plebeian that she loves him, the man is entitled to feel a certain low pride. After that it is all too easy to be seduced by the offer of coming indoors for dinner. And there are domestic routines of an even more wicked nature that can be made to follow dinner with a senator’s daughter, if you can manage to lure one of these exotic and glorious creatures away from her noble father’s house.

  VIII

  Allowing a woman to sidetrack me was routine. Come the morning I was still resolute. Plenty of ineffectual clerks had hired me to chase after heartless females who were giving them the silly story; I was used to being offered sensual bribes to make me forget a mission.

  Of course I never accepted the bribes. And of course Helena Justina, that upright, ethical character, would never try to influence me by shameless means. She went to bed with me that night for the same reason she had always done so: because she wanted to. And the next day, I carried on directly facing up to the situation because that was what I wanted.

  Helena carried on dodging. I had made absolutely no progress in finding out how she felt. That was fine. Her motives defied prediction. That was why I was in love with her; I was tired of predictable women. I could be persistent. Maybe that was why she was in love with me.

  Assuming she really was. A shiver as I remembered our lovemaking last night convinced me – at which point I stopped worrying.

  I washed my face, rinsed my teeth, and bit my way into a hard bread roll. Yesterday’s; we lived too far from the street to buy fresh loaves for breakfast. I gulped down some of the warm drink I was preparing for Helena. While she sleepily drank hers in bed, I put on a tunic that had spiced itself up with a gay shower of moth holes and renewed acquaintance with a wrinkled old belt that looked as if it had been tanned from the ox Romulus had used to measure Rome. I dragged a comb into my curls, hit a tangle, and decided to keep the relaxed coiffure that matched my casual clothes. I cleaned my boots and sharpened my knife. I counted my small change – a swift task – then transferred the purse to today’s belt.

  I kissed Helena, following up with a bit of fumbling under the bedsheet. She accepted the playfulness, laughing at me. ‘Oh go and flaunt your Eastern tan where the men show off…’ Today she would readily surrender me to the Forum, the baths, even the imperial offices. She knew that when I had had my fill of the city I would come home to her.

  After a short tussle with the outer door, which had taken to sticking, I limped downstairs. I had hurt my toe kicking the doorframe and was cursing gently: home again. Everything as I remembered it.

  I was absorbing the familiar experience of the ramshackle apartment block: for five floors angry voices reached me from behind curtains and half-doors. Two apartments per storey; two or three rooms per apartment; two and a half families per dwelling and as many as five or six people to a room. Sometimes there were fewer occupants, but they ran a business, like the mirror-polisher and the tailor. Sometimes one room contained an old lady who had been the original tenant, now almost forgotten amidst the rumbustious invaders to whom Smaractus had sublet parts of her home ‘to help her with the rent’. He was a professional landlord. Nothing he did was to help anybody but himself.

  I noticed a few more graffiti gladiators chalked on the poorly rendered walls. There was a smell like wet dog mingling with yesterday’s steamed cabbage. Stepping down around one dark corner I had a narrow escape when I nearly trod on some child’s lost pottery horse-on-wheels, which would have skated my foot from under me and probably left me with a broken back. I put the horse on a ledge, alongside a broken rattle and one tiny sandal that had been there when I left for Syria.

  The stairs ended outside in a dim nook under two columns that had once made a portico. The rest of this row of columns had long ago fallen down and vanished; it was best not to think about what was happening to the parts of the building they had been meant to support. Now most of the frontage was open, allowing free encroachment from Lenia’s laundry. She had the whole ground floor, which according to her included what passed for a pavement and half the dusty road in Fountain Court. Just now her staff were doing the main morning wash, so warm, humid air hit me as I reached the street. Several rows of soaking togas and tunics hung nicely at face height, ready to slap at anyone who tried to leave the building on lawful business.

  I went inside to be neighbourly. The sweet smell of urine, which was used for bleaching togas, met me like an old acquaintance I was trying to avoid. I had not seen Lenia yet, so when someone else shrieked my name she thrust herself out from the steamy hubbub like some disreputable sand beetle heaving its way above ground. She had armfuls of crumpled garments crushed against her flopping bosom, her chin balanced on top of the smelly pile. Her hair was still an unconvincing red; after the sophisticated henna treatments of the East, it looked hideously brash. The damp air had stuck her long tunic to parts of her body, producing an effect that did little for a man of the world like me.

  She staggered towards me with an affectionate cry of, ‘Look! Something nasty’s blown in with the road dust!’

  ‘Aphrodite rising from the washtub, sneezing at the wood ash!’

  ‘Falco, you rat’s bum.’

  ‘What’s new, Lenia?’ I answered breezily.

  ‘Trade’s bad and the weather’s a menace.’

  ‘That’s hardly new. Have I missed the wedding?’

  ‘Don’t make me angry!’ She was betrothed to Smaractus, a business arrangement. (Each craved the other’s business.) Lenia’s contempt for my landlord exceeded even mine, though she had a religious respect for his money. I knew she had carried out a meticulous audit before deciding Smaractus was the man of her dreams. Lenia’s dreams were practical. She really intended to go through with it apparently, for after the conventional cursing she added, ‘The wedding’s on the Kalends of November. You’re invited so long as you promise to cause a fight with the nut boys and to throw up on his mother.’ I’ve seen some sordid things, but the idea of my landlord having a mother set me back somewhat. Lenia saw my look and laughed harshly. ‘We’re going to be desperate for entertainment at this party. The arrangements are driving me mad, Falco. I don’t suppose you would read the omens for us?’

  ‘Surely you need a priest?’

  Lenia shrieked with outrage. ‘I wouldn’t trust one of those sleazy buggers! Don’t forget I’ve washed their underwear. I’m in enough trouble without having my omens mucked up … You’re a citizen. You can do it if you’re prepared to be a pal.’

  ‘A man’s duty is to honour the gods for his own household,’ I intoned, suddenly becoming a master of informed piety.

  ‘You’re scared of the job.’

  ‘I’m just trying to get out of it.’

  ‘Well, you live in the same building.’

  ‘No one ever told me it meant peering into a sheep’s liver for the damned landlord! That’s not in my lease.’

  ‘Do it for me, Falco!’

  ‘I’m not some cranky E
truscan weather forecaster.’ I was losing ground. Lenia, who was a superstitious article, looked genuinely anxious; my old friendship with her was about to take its toll. ‘Oh I’ll think about it … I told you from the start, woman, you’re making a big mistake.’

  ‘I told you to mind your own,’ quipped Lenia, in her brutal, rasping voice. ‘I heard you were back from your travels – though this is the first time you’ve bothered to call on me!’

  ‘Having a lie-in.’ I managed to beat her to a leering grin.

  ‘Scandalous bastard! Where’ve you been to this time, and was there profit in it?’

  ‘The East. And of course not.’

  ‘You mean you’re too tight to tell me.’

  ‘I mean I’m not giving Smaractus any excuse to bump my rent up!’ That reminded me of something. ‘This deadly dump is getting too inconvenient, Lenia. I’ll have to find somewhere more salubrious to live.’

  ‘Oh Great Mother!’ Lenia exclaimed immediately. ‘He’s pregnant!’

  Taken aback by the shrewdness of her guesswork, I blushed – losing any chance of disguising my plight. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I lied as brazenly as possible. ‘I know how to look after myself.’

  ‘Didius Falco, I’ve seen you do a lot of stupid things.’ That was true. She had known me since my bachelor days. ‘But I never thought you’d be caught out in the old way!’

  It was my turn to say mind your own business, and Lenia’s to laugh seditiously.

  I changed the subject. ‘Does your slimy betrothed still own that decrepit property across the court?’

  ‘Smaractus never disposes of a freehold.’ He never bothered to redevelop a wrecked tenement either. As an entrepreneur, Smaractus was as dynamic as a slug. ‘Which property, Falco?’

  ‘The first-floor spread. What’s he call it? “Refined and commodious self-contained apartment at generous rent; sure to be snapped up.” You with me?’

  ‘The dump he’s been advertising on my wall for the past four years? Don’t be the fool who does snap it up, Falco. The refined and commodious back section has no floor.’

  ‘So what? My shack upstairs hardly has a roof. I’m used to deprivation. Mind if I take a look at the place?’

  ‘Do what you like,’ sniffed Lenia. ‘What you see is all there is. He won’t do it up for you. He’s short of loose change.’

  ‘Of course. He’s getting married!’ I grinned. ‘Old Smaractus must be spending every day of the week burying his money bags in very deep holes in faraway fields in Latium. If he’s got any sense, he’ll then lose the map.’

  I could tell Lenia was on the verge of advising me to jump down the Great Sewer and close the manhole after me, but we were interrupted by a more than usually off-putting messenger.

  It was a grubby little girl of about seven years, with large feet and a very small nose. She had a scowling expression that I immediately recognised as similar to my own. She was one of my nieces. I could not remember which niece, though she definitely came from the Didius tribe. She looked like my sister Galla’s offspring. They had a truly useless father, and apart from the eldest, who had sensibly left home, they were a pitiful, struggling crew. Someone had hung one of those bull’s-testicle amulets around this one’s neck to protect her from harm, though whoever it was had not bothered to teach her to leave her scabs alone or to wipe her nose.

  ‘Oh Juno,’ rasped Lenia. ‘Take her out of here, Falco. My customers will think they’ll catch something.’

  ‘Go away,’ I greeted the niece convivially.

  ‘Uncle Marcus! Have you brought us any presents?’

  ‘No.’ I had done, because all my sisters’ children were in sore need of a devoted, uncomplicated uncle to ruin their characters with ridiculous largesse. I couldn’t spoil only the clean and polite ones, though I had no intention of letting the other little brats think me an easy touch. Anyone who came and asked for their ceramic Syrian camel with the nodding head would have to wait a week for it.

  ‘Oh Uncle Marcus!’ I felt like a heel, as she intended.

  ‘Cut the grizzling. Listen, what’s your name –’

  ‘Tertulla,’ she supplied, without taking offence.

  ‘What are you after, Tertulla?’

  ‘Grandpa sent me.’

  ‘Termites! You haven’t found me then.’

  ‘It’s urgent, Uncle Marcus!’

  ‘Not as urgent as scratching your elbow – I’m off!’

  ‘He said you’d give me a copper for finding you.’

  ‘Well he’s wrong.’ Needing to argue more strongly, I had to resort to blackmail. ‘Listen, wasn’t yesterday the Ides?’ One good thing about helping Petronius at Ostia was that we had missed the Festival of the October Horse – once a savage carnival and horse race, now just a complete mess in the streets. It was also the end of the official school holidays. ‘Shouldn’t you be starting school now? Why are you loose today?’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Tertulla, everyone who has a chance to go to school should be grateful for the privilege.’ What an insufferable prig. ‘Leave me alone, or I’m telling your grandma you’ve bunked off.’

  My mother was helping with the fees for Galla’s children, a pure waste of money. Ma would have stood for a better return gambling on chariot races. What nobody seemed to have noticed was that since I gave my mother financial support, it was my cash being flung away.

  ‘Oh Uncle Marcus, don’t!’

  ‘Oh nuts. I’m going to.’

  I was already feeling gloomy. From the first moment Tertulla mentioned my father I had begun to suspect today might not be all I had been planning. Goodbye baths; goodbye swank at the Forum … ‘Grandpa’s in trouble. Your friend Petronius told him to get you,’ my niece cried. Persistence ran in the family, if it involved telling bad news.

  Petro knew what I felt about my father. If Pa was in such trouble Petro reckoned even I would help him out, the trouble must really be serious.

  IX

  The emporium is a long, secure building close to the Tiber. The barges that creep up from Ostia reach the city with Caesar’s Gardens on their left, and a segment of the Aventine district, below the Hill, to their right. Where they meet the left-hand city boundary at the Transtiberina, with a long view upriver towards the Probus Bridge, they find the Emporium lying to their right, a vast indoor market that includes the ancient Aemilian Portico. You can smell it from the water. A blind man would know he had arrived.

  Here, anything buildable, wearable or edible that is produced in any province of the Empire comes to be unloaded at the teeming wharves. The slick stevedores, who are renowned for their filthy tempers and flash off-duty clothing, then crash the goods on to handcarts, dump them in baskets, or wheel about with great sacks on their shoulders, ferrying them inside the greatest indoor market in the world. Cynical sales are conducted, and before the importer has realised he has been rooked by the most devious middlemen in Europe, everything whirls out again to destinations in workshops, warehouses, country estates or private homes. The moneychangers wear happy smiles all day.

  Apart from a few commodities like grain, paper and spices, which are so precious or are sold in such quantities that they have their own markets elsewhere, you can buy anything at the Emporium. Through his profession, my father was well known there. He no longer involved himself in general sales, for his interest had narrowed to the kind of fine-art trade that is conducted in quieter, highly tasteful surroundings where the purchaser submits to a more leisurely screwing and then pays a more gigantic premium to the auctioneer.

  Pa was a character people noticed. Normally I could have asked anybody if they had seen Geminus, and pretty soon someone would have told me which hot-wine stall he was lurking at. I should have been able to find him easily – if only the fierce patrolmen of the Fourth Cohort of vigiles had been letting people in.

  The scene was incredible. Nothing like it could ever have happened before. The Emporium lay in the area included by Augu
stus when he redrew Rome’s boundaries because habitation had expanded. I had made the mistake of coming out from the old part through the city walls, using the Lavernal Gate – a spot always busy but today almost impassable. Down in the shadow of the Aventine approaching the Tiber, I had found chaos. It had taken me an hour to force a passage through the people who were clogging up the Ostia Road. By the time I really made it to the wharves beside the river, I knew something highly peculiar must have gone wrong. I was prepared for a scene – though not one evidently caused by my sensible friend Petronius.

  It was midmorning. The gates to the Emporium, normally closed at night for security but flung open at first light and kept that way well into the evening, now stood barred. Red-faced members of the watch were drawn up with their backs to the doors. There were a lot of them: five hundred men formed the half-cohort that patrolled the river side of the Aventine. A proportion were dedicated to fire-watching, and with the special dangers of darkness they were mostly on duty at night. That still left ample cover to combat daylight crime. Now, Petronius must have drawn up all the day roster. The line was holding, but I was glad I was not part of it. A huge, angry crowd was milling about insulting the watch and calling for Petro’s head. Occasionally a group rushed forwards, and the line of patrolmen had to link arms and face them out. I could see a small cluster at the far end of the building where Porcius was handing out shields from a waggon.

  Petro was nowhere in sight. It seemed wise.

  With a spurt of anxiety I shoved my way to the front. ‘Great gods, what’s this? Am I supposed to believe that Petronius Longus, notorious for caution, has suddenly decided to make his name in history as the Man Who Stopped Trade?’

  ‘Shove off, Falco!’ muttered Fusculus, who had been trying to argue with four or five score merchants and workmen, many of them foreign and all of them spitting fire.