Three Hands in The Fountain mdf-9 Page 8

  Lindsey Davis

  Three Hands in The Fountain

  Helena finished patting up Julia's wind. A new toy, which Silvia must have brought as a gift for the baby, lay on the table. We ignored it, knowing both of us would always find its presence uncomfortable now. Helena laid the baby down in her cradle. Sometimes I was allowed that privilege, but not today.

  'It won't happen again,' I promised, not needing to specify what.

  'It won't,' she agreed.

  'I'm not making excuses.'

  'No doubt you were called away to something extremely important.'

  'Nothing is more important than her safety.'

  'That's what I think.'

  We stood on opposite sides of the room. We were talking in low voices, as if to avoid waking the baby. The tone was strangely light, cautious, with neither Helena's warning nor my apology stressed as they might have been. The searing quarrel between our two old friends had affected us too heavily for us to want or to risk a fight ourselves.

  'We shall have to have a nurse,' Helena said.

  The reasonable statement involved major consequences. Either I had to give in and borrow a woman from the Camilli (already offered by them, and proudly refused by me), or I had to purchase a slave myself. That would be an innovation for which I was hardly prepared – having no money to buy, feed or clothe her, no inclination to expand my household while we lived in such cramped conditions, and no hope of improving those conditions in the near future.

  'Of course,' I replied.

  Helena made no response. The soft material of her dark red dress clung slightly to the rocker of the cradle at her feet. I could not see the baby, yet I knew exactly how she would look and smell and snuffle and squint if I went over and peered in at her. Just as I knew the lift of Helena's own breathing, the surge of her annoyance that I had left the child unprotected, and the tightening muscle at the corner of her sweet mouth as she fought her conflicting feelings about me. Maybe I could win her round with a cheeky grin. But she mattered too much for me to try it.

  Presumably Petro had once felt about his wife and family as I did about mine. Neither he nor Silvia had changed fundamentally. Yet it seemed that somehow he had stopped caring whether his indiscretions were apparent, while she had stopped believing he was perfect. They had lost the domestic toleration that makes life with another person possible.

  Helena must have been wondering whether one day the same thing would happen to us. Yet perhaps she read the sadness in my face because when I held out my hands she came to me. I wrapped her in my arms and just held her. She was warm and her hair smelt of rosemary. As always our bodies seemed to come together in a perfect fit. 'Oh, fruit, I'm sorry. I'm a disaster. What made you choose me?'

  'Error of judgement. What made you choose me?'

  'I thought you were beautiful.'

  'A trick of the light.'

  I pulled back slightly, studying her face. Pale, tired perhaps, and yet still calm and capable. She could handle me. Still holding her hip to hip, I dropped a light kiss on her forehead, a greeting after being apart. I believed in daily ceremonial.

  I asked after her orphans' school, and she reported her day to me, speaking formally but without wrangling. Then she asked what had been so important as to drag me from home, and I told her about Anacrites. 'So he's pinched our puzzle from under our noses. It's a dead end anyway, so I suppose we should be glad to let him take over.'

  'You're not going to give up, Marcus?'

  'You think I should go on?'

  'You were waiting for me to say it,' she smiled. After a moment she added, watching me, 'What does Petro want to do?'

  'Haven't asked him.' I too waited a moment then said wryly, 'When I'm brooding I talk to you. That won't ever change, you know.'

  'You and he have a partnership.'

  'In work. You're my partner in life.' I had noticed that even though Petro and I were now in harness I still wanted to chew over debatable issues with Helena. 'It's part of the definition, my love. When a man takes a wife it's to share his confidence. However close a friend may be, there remains one last modicum of reserve. Especially if the friend himself is behaving in ways that seem senseless.'

  'You'll support Petronius absolutely -'

  'Oh, yes. Then I'll come home and tell you what a fool he is.'

  Helena looked as if she was about to kiss me in a more than fleeting manner, but to my annoyance she was interrupted. Our front door was being repeatedly kicked by a pair of small feet in large boots. When I strode out to remonstrate it was, as I expected, the surly, antisocial figure of my nephew Gaius. I knew his vandalism of old.

  He was thirteen, rising fourteen. One of Galla's brood. A shaved head, an armful of self-inflicted tattoos of sphinxes, half his teeth missing, a huge tunic belted in folds by a three-inch-wide belt with a 'Stuff you' buckle and murderous studs. Hung about with scabbards, pouches, gourds and amulets. A small boy making a big man's fashion statement – and, being Gaius, getting away with it. He was a roamer. Driven on to the streets by an unbearable homelife and his own scavenging nature, he lived in his own world. If we could get him to adulthood without his meeting some dreadful disaster we would do well.

  'Stop kicking my door, Gaius.'

  'I wasn't.'

  'I'm not deaf, and those new footprints are your size.' 'Hello, Uncle Marcus.'

  'Hello, Gaius,' I answered patiently. Helena had come out behind me; she reckoned Gaius needed sympathetic conversation and cosseting instead of the belt round the ear which the rest of my family regarded as traditional.

  'I've brought you something.'

  'Will I like it?' I could guess.

  'Of course! It's a smashing present -' Gaius possessed a developed sense of humour. 'Well, it's another disgusting thing you want for your enquiry. A friend of mine found it in a drain in the street.'

  'Do you often play in the drains?' asked Helena anxiously. 'Oh no,' he lied, alert to her reforming mood.

  He fumbled in one of his pouches and brought out the gift. It was small, about the size of a draughts token. He showed me, then quickly whipped it out of sight. 'How much will you pay?' I should have known the rascal would have heard about the reward Petro had advertised. This sharp little operator had probably prevailed upon half the urchins in Rome to scour unsavoury spots for treasures that I could be bribed to buy.

  'Who told you I wanted any more foul finds, Gaius?'

  'Everyone's talking about what you and Petro are collecting. Father's at home again,' he said, so I knew who was sounding off most wildly.

  'That's nice.' I disapproved of telling a thirteen-year-old boy I thought his father was an unreliable pervert. Gaius was clever enough to work it out for himself.

  'Father says he's always fishing pieces of corpses out of the river -'

  'Lollius always has to cap everyone else's stories. Has he been telling you wild tales about dismembered bodies?'

  'He knows all about them! Have you still got that hand? Can I see it?'

  'No, and no.'

  'This is the most exciting case you've had, Uncle Marcus,' Gaius informed me seriously. 'If you have to go down the sewers to look for more bits, can I come and hold your lantern?'

  'I'm not going down any sewers, Gaius. The pieces that have been found were in the aqueducts; you ought to know the difference. Anyway, it's all been taken care of now. An official is investigating the matter for the Curator of the Aqueducts, and Petronius and I are going back to our ordinary work.'

  'Will the water board pay us for bones and stuff?'

  'No, they'll arrest you for causing a riot. The Curator wants to keep this quiet. Anyway, what you've found may be nothing.'

  'Oh yes it is,' Gaius corrected me hotly. 'It's somebody's big toe!'

  At my shoulder Helena shuddered. Keen to impress her, the wretch brought out the knob of dark matter again, then once more demanded how much I would pay for it. I looked at it. 'Come off it, Gaius. Stop annoying me by trying to palm me
off with an old dog's bone.'

  Gaius scrutinised the item himself, then sadly agreed he was trying it on. 'I'll still hold the lamp for you if you go down the sewers.'

  'The aqueducts, I told you. Anyway, I'd rather you held the baby so I don't get told off for abandoning her.'

  'Gaius hasn't even seen Julia yet,' suggested Helena. My nephew had bunked off from our introduction party. He hated family gatherings: a lad with hidden sense.

  Rather to my surprise he asked for a viewing now. Helena took him indoors and even lifted the baby out of the cradle so he could hold her. After one appalled glance he accepted the sleeping bundle (for some reason Gaius had always been fairly polite to Helena), and then we watched the famous tough being overcome by our tiny tot until he was positively eulogising her miniature fingers and toes. We tried not to show our distaste for this sentimentality.

  'I thought you had little brothers and sisters of your own,' said Helena.

  'Oh, I don't have anything to do with them!' returned Gaius scornfully. He looked thoughtful. 'If I did look after her, would there be a fee?'

  'Of course,' said Helena at once.

  'If you did it properly,' I added weakly. I would sooner leave Gaius in charge of a cage of rats, but the situation was desperate. Besides, I never thought he would want to do it.

  'How much?' He was a true member of the Didii.

  I named a price, Gaius made me double it, then he handed Julia very carefully back to Helena and decided to go home.

  Helena called him back to be given a cinnamon pastry (to my annoyance, since I had already spotted it on the table and had been looking forward to devouring it myself). Then she kissed his cheek formally; Gaius screwed up his face, but failed to avoid the salute.

  'Jupiter! I hope he's clean. I haven't dragged him to the baths since we went to Spain.'

  We watched him go. I still held his little treasure from the drains. I was pleased with myself for rebuffing his attempt at bribery, though I had mixed feelings all the same.

  'Why's that?' asked Helena dubiously, already suspecting the worst.

  'Mainly because I rather think it really is a human toe.'

  Helena touched my cheek gently, with the same air of taming a wild creature that she had shown when kissing Gaius. 'Well there you are,' she murmured. 'Anacrites can do what he likes – but you're obviously still taking an interest!'

  XVI

  Lenia let Petro and me put up a notice on the laundry advising that all samples of body parts from the waterways were now required By Order to be handed in to Anacrites. That helped.

  We had become so notorious that even our flow of regular clients improved. Mostly they brought in work we could do with our eyes closed. There were the usual barristers wanting witness statements from people who lived out of Rome. I sent Petro to do those. It was a good way to take his mind off missing his children – and to make sure he could not disgrace himself again by visiting Balbina Milvia. Besides, he had not yet realised that the reason the barristers wanted to employ us for this work was that it was tedious as all Hades riding a mule to Lavinium and back just to hear some crone describe how her old brother had lost his temper with a wheelwright and bopped him on the nob with half an amphora (bearing in mind that the wheelwright would probably get cold feet about suing the brother and withdraw the case anyway).

  I busied myself tracing debtors and carrying out moral health checks on prospective bridegrooms for cautious families (a good double bind, because I could sneakily ask the bridegrooms if they wanted to pay for financial profiles of the families). For several days I was a dedicated private informer. When that palled I retrieved the big toe from an empty vase on a high shelf out of Nux's reach, and went down to the Forum to see if I could irritate Anacrites.

  He had had so many revolting finds handed in by people who assumed the reward still applied that a separate room and two dedicated scribes had had to be assigned to the enquiry. A quick glance told me most of the horrid deposits should have been rejected, but the officials were receiving and logging everything. Anacrites had progressed only as far as devising a form to be filled in laboriously by his scribes. I tossed in the toe Gaius had found, refused to supply the prescribed half a scroll of details, leered round the door of Anacrites' strictly private office, then disappeared again.

  I had had my fun. I could have left it at that. Instead, gnawed at by something Gaius had said and what I had overheard myself at Julia's party, I decided I would go and visit Lollius.

  My sister Galla struggled to exist with an uncertain number of children and no support from her husband. She rented a doss down by the Trigeminal Gate. It could have been described as a fine riverbank property with fabulous views and a sun terrace, but not to anyone who had seen it. Here my favourite nephew Larius had grown up, before he had the sense to elope and become a wall painter in the luxurious villas on the Bay of Neapolis. Here in theory lived Gaius, though he rarely put in an appearance, preferring to steal sausages from street sellers and curl up at night in a temple Portico. Here, on extremely infrequent occasions, one could encounter the Tiber water boatman Lollius.

  He was lazy, deceitful, and brutal – quite civilised by my brothers-in-law's standards. I despised him more than any of the others except Gaius Baebius the puffed-up customs clerk. Lollius was ugly, too, yet so cocky that he somehow convinced women he was vitally attractive. Galla fell for it – every time he came back to her from the others. His success with tavern trollops was just unbelievable. Galla and he regularly tried to make an effort with their marriage, saying they were embarking on that defeatist course for the children's sake. Most of the children ran away to my mother's house when it happened. Almost as soon as the pitiful pair were supposedly together again Lollius would be playing pop the bunny down the hole with some new fifteen-year-old flower-seller; inevitably Galla would hear the news from a kind neighbour, and he would stagger home one night in the small hours to find the door locked. This always seemed to surprise him.

  'Where's Gaius?' shouted Galla as I entered their sordid home and tried to clean my boot where I had stepped in a bowl of puppies' gruel left in the hall.

  'How should I know? Your unwashed, undisciplined little rag-picker isn't my affair.'

  'He was coming to see you.'

  'That must have been two days ago.'

  'Oh, was it?' No wonder young Gaius ran wild. Galla was a hopeless mother. 'What are you going to do about Larius?'

  'Nothing, Galla. Don't keep asking me. Larius is doing what he wants, and if that happens to be painting walls miles from Rome I don't blame him. Where's Lollius?' I roared, since I had not actually encountered Galla face to face and was still uncertain which room she was bawling from.

  'Who cares? He's asleep.' At least he was in.

  I tracked down the unprepossessing blackguard and dragged him out from under a grimy bolster where he was snoring with his arm round an empty flagon. This was the boatman's idea of uxorious devotion. Galla sounded off at him as soon as she heard him grumbling, so Lollius winked at me and we sauntered from the house without calling out that we were going. Galla would be used to it.

  I walked my brother-in-law towards the Forum Boarium. He was probably drunk, but always had a serious limp that made him walk with a lurch, so I had the distasteful task of holding him upright. He looked as if he smelt, though I tried to avoid snuggling up close enough to find out.

  We were on the stone-clad side of the Tiber, what they call the Marbled Bank, a good way past the wharves that surround the Emporium but before the elegant theatres and Porticoes and the great bend in the river that encompasses the Campus Martius. After the Sublician Bridge we steered round the Arch of Lentulus, and the Market Inspector's office, and ended up looking out over the water near the ancient Temple of Portunus, immediately above the exit arch of the Great Sewer. A nice smelly place if I had thrown Lollius off the embankment. Something I should have done. Rome, and Galla's children, deserved it.

  'What do you want
, young Marcus?'

  'It's Falco to you. Show some respect for the head of the family.' He took it that I was joking. Being head of our family was an unenforceable honour. Unendurable, too; a punishment I had been give by the Fates out of malice. My father, the auctioneer and fillollicking finangler Didius Geminus, ought to carry out the prescribed duties, but he had fled from home many years back. He was callous, but shrewd.

  Lollius and I stared gloomily towards the Aemilian Bridge. 'Tell me about what you find in the river, Lollius.'

  'Shit.'

  'Is that a considered answer, or a general curse?' 'Both.'

  'I want to hear about dismembered bodies.'

  'More fool you.'

  I fixed him sternly. It did no good.

  When I forced myself to survey him I was looking at a miserable specimen. Lollius appeared to be about fifty, though he could have been any age. He was shorter and stouter than me, in such bad condition that things looked cheerful for his heirs. His face had been ugly even before he lost most of his teeth and had one of his eyes permanently closed by Galla's hitting him with a solid-bottomed pancake pan. His eyes had been too close together to start with, his ears were lopsided, his nose had a twist that made him snuffle and he had no neck. A traditional waterman's woollen cap covered his lank hair. Several layers of tunics completed the dreary ensemble; when he had spilt enough wine down himself he just pulled a new one on top.

  So was there nothing to recommend him? Well, he could row a skiff. He could swim. He could curse, fight and fornicate. He was a potent husband, though a disloyal father. He made regular earnings, then persistently lied about them to my sister, and never handed over anything for the upkeep of his family: a classic. True metal from the traditional Roman mould. Surely overdue to be elected to a priesthood or a tribunate.

  I looked back at the river again. It wasn't much. Brown and gurgling fitfully as usual. Sometimes it floods; the rest of the time the fabled. Tiber is a mediocre stream. I had stayed in smaller cities whose waterways were more impressive. But Rome had been built on this spot not just because of the fabled Seven Hills. This was the prime position in central Italy. To our right at Tiber Island had been the first bridgeable position above the sea, a decent one-day stage from the coast. It had probably seemed a sensible location to the kind of slow-witted shepherds who thought they were clever fortifying a floodplain and placing their Forum in a stagnant marsh.