Three Hands in the Fountain Read online

  The girls made lewd gestures and waggled their skirts offensively. They were a cheerful and appreciative audience.

  Petro had done the threats so the interrogation was mine. These pieces of flotsam would faint if I tried sophisticated rhetoric so I kept it simple. ‘What’s the story?’

  The leader hung his head. ‘You’ve got to stop making a fuss about blockages in the fountains.’

  ‘Who gave out that dramatic edict?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘We do mind. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You could have said it without starting a scrum.’

  ‘You jumped one of my boys.’

  ‘Your wormy sidekick threatened me.’

  ‘You’ve hurt his neck!’

  ‘He’s lucky I haven’t wrung it. Don’t come around this part of the Aventine again.’

  I glanced at Petro. They had no more to tell us, and we might get legal complaints if we bruised them too badly, so we told the leader to stop moaning, then dusted off his trio of backers and ordered them all off our patch.

  We allowed a few moments for them to mutter about us in a huddle once they had turned the corner. Then we set off unobtrusively to tail them home.

  We should have worked out for ourselves where they were going. Still, it was a good practical exercise. Since they had no idea of keeping watch, it was simple to stroll along after them. Petronius even turned off once to buy a stuffed pancake, then he caught me up. We went down the Aventine, around the Circus and into the Forum. Somehow this was no surprise.

  As soon as they reached the office of the Curator of Aqueducts Petro threw what was left of his snack into a gutter and we speeded up. We marched in; the four goons had vanished. I approached a scribe. ‘Where are the officers who just came in? They told us to follow them.’ He nodded to a door. Petro whipped it open; we both strode through.

  Just in time. The four dummies had started complaining to a superior; he had realised we would have followed them, and was on his feet to throw a bolt across the door. Seeing it was too late, he suavely pretended he had jumped up to greet us, then ordered his pitiful group of enforcers to leave. There was no need for introductions. We knew this fellow: it was Anacrites.

  ‘Well, well,’ said he.

  ‘Well, well!’ we retorted.

  I turned to Petro. ‘It’s our long-lost shipwrecked brother.’

  ‘Oh I thought it was your father’s missing heir?’

  ‘No, I made sure I had him exposed on a really reliable mountainside. He’s bound to have been eaten by a bear.’

  ‘So who’s this?’

  ‘I think it must be the unpopular moneylender we’re going to hide in a blanket chest before we lose the key –’

  For some reason Anacrites was failing to appreciate our banter. Still, no one expects a spy to be civilised. Taking pity on his head wound, we pretended to stop ganging up on him, though the sheen on his brow and the wary look in those half-closed grey eyes told us he still thought we were looking for a chance to hold him upside-down in a bucket of water until we stopped hearing choking sounds.

  We took possession of his room, tossing scrolls to one side and shoving the furniture about. He decided not to make a fuss. There were two of us, one large and both very angry. Anyway, he was supposed to be sick.

  ‘So why are you threatening us about our innocent curiosity?’ demanded Petronius.

  ‘You’re scaremongering.’

  ‘What we’ve discovered is cause for alarm!’

  ‘There’s no reason for disquiet.’

  ‘Every time I hear that,’ I said, ‘it turns out to be some devious official telling me lies.’

  ‘The Curator of Aqueducts takes the situation seriously.’

  ‘That’s why you’re skulking here in his office?’

  ‘I’ve been co-opted on special assignment.’

  ‘To clean out the fountains with a nice little sponge?’

  He looked hurt. ‘I’m advising the Curator, Falco.’

  ‘Don’t waste your time. When we came to report that there were corpses blocking the current, the bastard didn’t want to know.’

  Anacrites regained his confidence. He assumed the gentle, self-righteous air of a man who had stolen our job. ‘That is how it works in public service, friend. When they decide to hold an investigation they never use the man who first alerted them to the problem. They distrust him; he tends to thinks he’s the expert and to hold crackpot theories. Instead they bring in a professional.’

  ‘You mean an incompetent novice who has no real interest?’

  He smirked triumphantly.

  Petronius and I exchanged one frigid look, then we leapt to our feet and were out of there.

  We had lost our enquiry to the Chief Spy. Even on sick leave Anacrites carried more clout than the pair of us. Well, that was the end of our interest in assisting the state. We could busy ourselves with private clients instead.

  Besides, I had just remembered something terrible: I had come out without Julia. Dear gods, I had left my three-month-old daughter completely alone in a rough area of the Aventine, in an empty house.

  ‘Well, that’s one way to avoid carrying a baby and looking unprofessional,’ Petro said.

  ‘She’ll be all right – I hope. What’s worrying me is that Helena will probably be back by now and she’ll know what I’ve done –’

  It was too hot to run. Still, we made it back home at the fastest possible gentle trot.

  When we took the stairs, it soon became clear that Julia was safe and now had plenty of company. Women’s voices conversed indoors at what seemed a normal pace. We exchanged a glance that can only be called thoughtful, then we sauntered in looking as if in our honest opinion nothing untoward had happened.

  One of the women was Helena Justina, who was now feeding the baby. She said nothing. But her eyes met mine with the degree of scorching heat that must have melted the wings off Icarus when he flew too near the sun.

  The other was an even fiercer proposition: Petro’s estranged wife Arria Silvia.

  XV

  ‘DON’T BOTHER LOOKING. I haven’t brought the children.’ Silvia wasted no time. She was a tiny spark, as neat as a doll. Petronius used to laugh at her as if she just had a vigorous character; I thought her completely unreasonable. Gripping her hands together tightly she mouthed, ‘In an area like this you don’t know what types they might meet.’ Silvia had never minded being rude.

  ‘They are my children too.’ Petronius was the paterfamilias. Since he had acknowledged the three girls at birth they belonged to him legally; if he wanted to be difficult he could insist they lived with him. Still, we were plebs. He had no means of looking after them, as Silvia knew.

  ‘That’s why you abandoned them?’

  ‘I left because you ordered me to.’

  Petro’s very quietness was working Silvia into a rage. He knew exactly how to drive her wild with restraint. ‘And is that a surprise, you bastard?’

  Silvia’s rage was increasing his stubbornness. He folded his arms. ‘We’ll sort it out.’

  ‘That’s your answer to everything!’

  Helena and I had carefully stayed neutral. I would have kept it that way, but since there was a lull Helena inserted sombrely, ‘I’m sorry to see you two like this.’

  Silvia tossed her head. She went in for the untamed mare attitude. Unfortunately for Petro it took more than a handful of carrots to calm her down. ‘Don’t interfere, Helena.’

  Helena assumed her reasonable expression, which meant she wanted to hurl a bowl of fruit at Silvia. ‘I’m just stating a fact. Marcus and I always used to envy your loving family life.’

  Arria Silvia stood up. She had a secretive smile that Petronius had probably once thought enthralling; today she was using it as a bitter weapon. ‘Well, now you see what a fraud it was.’ The fight died in her, in a manner I found worrying. She was leaving. Petronius happened to be standing in her way. ‘Excuse me.’
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br />   ‘I would like to see my daughters.’

  ‘Your daughters would like to see a father who doesn’t pick up every broken blossom that drops in his path.’

  Petronius did not trouble to argue. He stepped aside and let her pass.

  Petro hung around just long enough to be sure he would not run into Arria Silvia when he went back out to the street. Then he too left, with nothing more said.

  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.