Time to Depart Page 9

  ‘At least we could get fresh bread,’ Helena pretended to muse. ‘We could reach down through the floor for it without getting out of bed…’

  ‘No, we can’t live above a bakery. Apart from the fire risk –’

  ‘The oven is separate, in the street.’

  ‘So are the mills, with a damned donkey braying and the endless rumble of grinding querns! Don’t fool about, lady. Think of the cooking smells. Bread’s fine, but when Cassius has baked his loaves he uses the ovens to heat offal pies in nasty gravy for the entire street. I should have thought of that.’

  Helena had wandered to the window. She stood on tiptoe, leaning out for the view, while she changed the subject: ‘I don’t like this trouble between you and Petronius.’

  ‘There’s no trouble.’

  ‘There’s going to be.’

  ‘I’ve known Petro a long time.’

  ‘And it’s a long time since you worked together. When you did, it was back in the army and you were both taking orders from somebody else.’

  ‘I can take orders. I take them from you all the time.’

  She chortled seditiously. I joined her at the window and caused a diversion, trying to nudge her off balance. She slipped an arm around me to save herself, then kept it there in a friendly fashion while we both looked out.

  This side of Fountain Court was lower down the hillside than where we lived, so we were almost opposite the familiar streetside row of lockups: the stationery supplier, the barber, the funeral parlour, small pavement businesses in a gloomy colonnade below five storeys of identical apartments, some overpaid architect’s notion of thoughtful design. Few architects permit themselves to live in their own tenements.

  ‘Is that our block?’

  ‘No, the one next door.’

  ‘There’s a letting notice, Marcus.’

  ‘I think it’s for one of the shops on the ground floor.’

  Helena’s sharp eyes had spotted the kind of street graffiti you usually ignore. I walked her downstairs and across the road to check up. The chalked advertisement was for a workshop. It called itself ‘well-set-out artisan premises with advantageous living accommodation’, but it was a damp booth with an impossible stairway to a disgusting loft. It’s true there was a small domestic apartment attached, but the two-room tenancy was for five years. Who could say how many offspring I might have accidentally fathered by that time, and how much space I should be needing to house them all?

  Shivering, I let Helena lead me out to Fountain Court. The scruffy dog had found us again, and was staring at me hopefully. She must have worked out who was the soft one.

  Since the barber had no customers we dumped ourselves pessimistically on two of his stools. He grumbled briefly, then went indoors for a lie-down, his favourite occupation anyway.

  ‘You know we can live anywhere,’ Helena said quietly. ‘I have money –’

  ‘No. I’ll pay the rent.’

  As a senator’s daughter she owned far less than her two brothers, but if she allied herself with anyone respectable there was a large dowry still kicking around from her previous failed marriage, plus various legacies from female relations who had spotted her special character. I had never let myself discover the exact extent of Helena’s wealth. I didn’t want to upset myself. And I never wanted to find myself a kept man.

  ‘So what are we looking for?’ She was being tactful now. Refraining from comment on my proud self-respect. Naturally I found it maddening.

  ‘That’s obvious. Somewhere we don’t risk scum breaking in. Where perverts who come to see me about business won’t make trouble for you. And more space.’

  ‘Space for a cradle, and seats for all your sisters when they come cooing over the item in it?’ Helena’s voice was dry. She knew how to soften me up.

  ‘More seats would be useful.’ I smiled. ‘I like to entertain.’

  ‘You like to get me annoyed!’

  ‘I like you in any mood.’ I ran one finger down her neck, just tickling the skin beneath the braid on her gown. She lowered her chin suddenly, trapping my finger. I thought about pulling her closer and kissing her, but I was too depressed. To provide a public spectacle you need to be feeling confident.

  From her position with her head tucked down, Helena was looking across Fountain Court. I felt her interest shift. Gazing at the sky, I warned the gods: ‘Watch out, you loafers on Olympus. Somebody’s just had a bright idea!’

  Then Helena asked in the curious tone that had so often led to trouble, ‘Who lives above the basket shop?’

  The basket-weaver occupied a lockup two along from Cassius the baker. He shared his frontage with a cereal-seller – another quiet trade, and fairly free of smelly nuisances. Above them rose a typical tenement, similar to ours and with the same kind of underpaid, overworked occupants. There was no letting sign, but the shutters on the first-floor apartment were closed, as they always had been to my knowledge. I had never seen anybody going in.

  ‘Well spotted!’ I murmured thoughtfully.

  Right there, opposite Lenia’s laundry, we could have found our next home.

  XIV

  The basket-weaver, a wiry gent in a tawny tunic whom I knew by sight, told us the apartment above him belonged to his shop. He had never occupied the upstairs because he only bunked temporarily in Fountain Court. He lived on the Campagna, kept his family there, and intended to retire to the country when he remembered to stop coming to town every week. The rooms above were in fact impossible to live in, being filled up with rubble and junk. Smaractus was too mean to clear them out. Instead, the idle bastard had negotiated a reduced rent. It suited the basket-weaver. Now it suited me.

  Helena and I peered in warily. It was very dark. After living on the sixth floor, anywhere near ground level was bound to be. No balcony; no view; no garden, of course; no cooking facilities. Water from a fountain a street away. A public latrine at the end of our own street. Baths and temples on the Aventine. Street markets in any direction. My existing office within shouting range across the lane. It had three rooms – a gain of one on what we were used to – and a whole array of little cubbyholes.

  ‘Pot stores!’ cried Helena. ‘I love it!’

  ‘Cradle space!’ I grinned.

  * * *

  Smaractus, my landlord, was a person I avoided. I lost my temper just thinking about that fungus. I had intended to discuss matters peacefully with Lenia, but I foolishly chose a time when her insalubrious betrothed had dropped in with a wine flagon.

  I refused to drink with him. I’ll take a free tipple from most people, but I’m a civilised man; I do discriminate. Below the line I drew in those days lay unrepentant murderers, corrupt tax-gathers, rapists, and Smaractus.

  Luckily I knew I made him nervous. There had been a time he always brought two gladiators from the gym he ran whenever he risked his neck in Fountain Court; with Lenia to defend him from aggrieved tenants he had taken to dispensing with the muscle. A good idea; poor Asiacus and Rodan were so badly nourished they needed to conserve their strength. The big daft darlings would never stagger into the arena after a day fighting me. For Smaractus I was a difficult proposition. I was lean and hard, and I hated his guts. As I crossed the threshold I heard his voice, so I had time to apply what Helena called my Milo of Croton look.

  ‘Falco is going to read the sheep’s liver at the wedding for us!’ Lenia simpered, incongruously playing the eager young bride. He couldn’t have been there for more than a few minutes but she was well into the wine. Who could blame her?

  ‘Better watch out!’ I warned him. He realised that if I took the augury this might be a double-edged favour. A bad omen could ruin his happiness. A really bad omen, and Lenia might back out before he got the ring on her, depriving him of her well-filled strong-boxes. Being sick on his mother as Lenia had asked me was nothing to the fun I could have with a cooperative ewe.

  ‘He’s nice and cheap,’ said Lenia to him, as if explaining why I seemed a good idea. I was on her
side too, though we refrained from mentioning that. ‘I see the little dog’s found you, Falco. We call it Nux.’

  ‘I’m not taking in a stray.’

  ‘Oh no? So when did you change your attitude?’

  Smaractus muttered that I lacked experience as a priest, and I retorted that I knew quite enough to pontificate on his marriage. Lenia shoved a winecup into my hand. I shoved it back.

  With the business formalities over, we could get down to cheating each other.

  * * *

  I knew Smaractus would try to swing some fiddle if he heard we were the basket-weaver’s subtenants. One way out was to avoid telling him. Unfortunately, now he was betrothed to Lenia he was always littering up the neighbourhood; he was bound to spot us going in and out. This needed care – or blatant blackmail. To start with I ranted at him about the dilapidated rooms above Cassius. ‘Somebody’s going to tell the aediles that place is a danger to passers-by, and you’ll be ordered to demolish the lot before it falls in the street!’ Smaractus would do anything to avoid pulling down a property because by law he would have to replace it with something equal or better. (The idea of making more money from higher rents afterwards was too sophisticated for his mouldy old sponge of a brain.)

  ‘Who would stir up trouble like that?’ he sneered. I smiled courteously, while Lenia kicked his foot to explain what I was getting at. He would be limping for a week.

  ‘Wasn’t it you I saw talking to the trug-seller?’ Lenia asked me. You couldn’t squeeze a pimple in Fountain Court without three people telling you to leave yourself alone.

  ‘I’m going to help him clear out his upper floor.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ demanded Smaractus suspiciously.

  ‘Because I’m a kind-hearted fellow.’

  I waited until he was about to explode with curiosity, then I told him what I had just agreed with the cane-weaver: I would clear out the apartment and in return live there rent-free. Once we moved in I would keep an eye on the lockup when it was closed, allowing the weaver greater freedom to buzz off to his family.

  Smaractus was nonplussed by this news. The word ‘rent-free’ was not in a landlord’s vocabulary. I explained what it meant. He then used some phrases that proved what I had always suspected: he had been brought up by runaway trireme slaves in an unlicensed abattoir.

  ‘I’m glad you approve,’ I told him. Then I left, while he was still choking on his wine.

  XV

  Next morning I presented myself at the Aventine Watch. The Fourth Cohort had its tribunal headquarters in the Twelfth region, the Piscina Publica, which most people deemed more salubrious. Alongside the HQ was a station house for the foot patrols, where their fire-fighting equipment was stored. To cover their other patch, the Thirteenth region, they had a second station house, to which Petronius bunked off whenever possible. That was where he kept an office staffed by his casework team of plain-clothes enquiry agents and scribes. They had a lockup for people who were caught in the act by the foot patrols or who sensibly chose to confess as soon as challenged, plus a room for more detailed questioning. It was small, but had interesting iron devices hung on all the walls. And there was just space to get a good swing with a boot.

  Fusculus was outside the office, helping an old woman compose a petition. They had a bench in the portico for local people who came with complaints. The duty clerk, a lanky youth who never said much, leaned down and worked grit out of his left sandal while Fusculus very patiently went through the procedure for the crone: ‘I can’t write it for you. Only you know the facts. You want to start off: To Lucius Petronius Longus, chief enquirer of the Thirteenth region … Don’t worry. The scribes will put that bit automatically. From … Then say who you are, and tell us details of your loss. On the Ides of October, or whenever it was –’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  Fusculus kicked the clerk into action. ‘The day after the Ides, there was stolen from me…’

  ‘A bedcover.’ The woman had caught on rapidly, as they do when they have persuaded some handsome young fellow to work for them. ‘By a street gang who removed it from my balcony. In Conch Court, off Armilustrum Street.’

  ‘Worth?’ Fusculus managed to squeeze in.

  ‘A denarius!’ She was probably guessing.

  ‘How long had you had it?’ demanded Fusculus suspiciously. ‘What was this treasure made of?’

  ‘Wool! The most serviceable wool. I’d had it twenty years –’

  ‘Put: worth a dupondius! Then the usual formula: I therefore request that you give instructions for an enquiry into the matter…’

  As the clerk began to write, Fusculus nodded me indoors. He was a round, happy fellow, about thirty-five years and a hundred and eighty pounds. Balding on top, the rest of his hair ran around his skull in horizontal ridges. It had remained dark, and he had almost black eyes. Though rotund, he looked extremely fit.

  ‘If you’re after Petro, he’ll be in later. He went out with the night patrol,’ Fusculus announced. ‘He’s convinced there will be another gigantic raid. Martinus is on duty. He’s gone back to the Emporium to check on some things.’

  ‘I can wait.’ Fusculus grinned slightly. Most people didn’t bother with Martinus. ‘So what’s on, Fusculus?’

  ‘Seems pretty quiet. The day patrol is out looking into a possible theft from the Temple of Ceres. We’ve got scratchers doing statues at the Library of Asinius –’

  ‘Scratchers?’

  ‘Lifting off the gilding. Then a tanner’s allegedly poisoning the air by the Aqua Marcia. Normally it’s poisoning the water … Anyway, we can get him for noxious smells and shift his workshop to the Transtiberina, but somebody’s got to go there and actually sniff the air while he’s working. Street fight by the Trigeminal Gate – be over by the time the lads can get down the Clivus Publicus. Three apparently responsible citizens have laid separate reports of seeing a wolf by the Temple of Luna.’

  ‘Probably a large cat,’ I suggested.

  ‘On the usual form it will turn out to be a small, timid tabby!’ chortled Fusculus. ‘Escaped bears and panthers we pass straight on to the Urban Cohorts – well, at least those bastards are armed. And we let them catch senators’ sons’ pet crocodiles that have escaped from the rainwater tank. But a “wolf” we usually have a look at. Just in case it’s suckling heroic twins, you know.’

  ‘Oh, you’d want to be in on the action then!’

  ‘Right! More boringly, we have an abandoned dead horse in the Cattle Market forum which will have to be cleared with fire-breaking tackle. Meanwhile we’ve got a bunch of runaway slaves in the lockup waiting for owners to collect them. There are also two careless householders for me to interview. They were picked up by the fire-watchers last night for allowing fires or smoke in their premises. The first-timer will be let off with a warning; another has been dragged in before, so he has to prove it was an accident or he’ll be thrashed.’

  ‘Who does that?’

  ‘Sergius!’ said Fusculus gleefully. I had met Sergius. He enjoyed his work. ‘Then we’ve a third would-be arsonist in the cell who is definitely on his way.’

  ‘On his way?’

  ‘To the Prefect. He’s a stupid sod of a jeweller who constantly leaves unattended lamps swinging in the breeze in his colonnade.’

  ‘So what’ll he get?’

  ‘A hefty fine. I’m taking him over to headquarters to be processed. Maybe you’d better come with me. Rubella wants a welcoming word.’ Rubella was the Fourth’s tribune.

  I grinned. ‘Am I going to enjoy this?’

  ‘What do you think?’ twinkled Fusculus. As he collected his cudgel, the arsonist and some official notes about the prisoner’s misdemeanours, he continued filling me in. Obviously he was a thoughtful type, and one who enjoyed lecturing. ‘Apart from all that, it’s work as normal – which means not doing it because of more urgent priorities. We have an ongoing investigation of a secret religion that will have to be delayed again because of the new task, as w
ill our long-term granary fire-protection programme, our anti-toga-theft campaign at the baths, and keeping up the lists of undesirables.’

  ‘What undesirables are these?’ I asked, curious about what kind of degenerate earned a formal state record.

  Fusculus looked rather shy. ‘Oh well, you know we have to assist the aediles with their registers. Bars and brothels.’

  ‘Somehow, Fusculus, I don’t think bars and brothels were what you meant!’

  ‘Mathematicians and astrologers,’ he confessed. I looked faintly surprised. ‘Anyone who leans towards the occult or magic has a question mark over them in the public-order stakes. Philosophers especially.’

  ‘Oh, flagrantly seditious!’

  ‘So I’m told. I’m not saying we believe the principle, Falco, but we like to be ready in case the Emperor demands a purge. Under Nero it was Christians. That’s eased off lately, so we can go back to actors.’

  ‘Disgusting degenerates!’ I did not reveal that I had just spent three months working with a theatrical troupe. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Greek shopkeepers.’

  ‘Now that’s a new one. What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They keep their booths open night and day. It’s reckoned unfair on the locals. That can lead to trouble, so we keep lists to tell us quickly who to lock up when a row flares and dung starts being hurled about.’

  Somehow I didn’t suppose he kept matching details of the local businessmen who complained.

  ‘I’m sure it’s a relief to all honest citizens to know you stay vigilant!’ Sarcasm was breaking through as I sensed there was more. ‘And is there anybody else who threatens public order so badly you keep them under surveillance and maintain their names on secret lists?’

  ‘Informers,’ Fusculus admitted, looking resigned.

  XVI

  Rubella was still eating sunflower seeds.

  He looked about fifty. Must have been, to have put in a full stint in the legions. He had been a chief centurion; that takes sticking power as well as a clean nose. Once he would have been about my level socially. Twenty years had pushed him on: promotion the whole way in the legions, discharge with honour, and buying himself into the middle rank. Now he commanded a thousand men; poor quality, it’s true – the vigiles were ex-slaves for the most part – but if he continued to dodge disasters he could aspire to the Urban Cohorts, and maybe even the Praetorian Guard. Rubella was made – though he had spent his whole useful life getting there.