Shadows in Bronze (6 page)

X

Because of the curfew restrictions in Rome we could only bring wheeled vehicles onto the Quirinal after dark; being an executor was ghostly work. Four carts were standing outside now while the auctioneer's men loaded them with satinwood couches and enamelled Egyptian sideboards, wedging in lamps to stabilize the loads. Indoors I helped the porters by putting my shoulder to a screwdown clothes press they were manhandling through the hall.

'Falco!'

The foreman Gonda wanted me to see something. Our footsteps echoed as we turned down an empty red corridor to a ground-floor bedroom I had not been in before. We stepped through a panelled door, set between two basalt portrait busts.

'Oh any nice!'

A lady's room: sumptuously quiet. Five times as big as any room I had ever lived in, and half as high again. The dado was painted to imitate dove-grey marble, with upper wall panels in celestial blue, outlined with fine pastel ribboning and finished with central medallions. The floor mosaic had intricate patterns in shades of grey, planned for the room of course, with a designated space for the bed; the ceiling had been lowered there, creating a cosy niche for sleeping in.

The bed had gone. Only one item remained. Gornia pointed to a small chest carved in oriental wood, which stood off the ground on four round painted feet.

'Indian import? Is there a key?' Gornia handed me a hunk of cold brass, with an uneasy look as if he feared we were about to find a mummified baby. I blew at the dust and opened up.

Nothing valuable. Old letters, and some casual strings of amber beads, all uneven shapes and mismatched colours, like something a girl full of hope might keep in case she ever had a child to play with them. The top document looked tasty: Turbot with Caraway Sauce.

'Nothing for Anacrites. Keep the box; I'll see to it.' Gornia thanked me, and two porters removed the chest.

I stayed behind alone, sucking my lower lip. I had realized who lived here once. Helena Justina: the conspirator's ex- wife.

I liked this room. Well; I liked her. I liked her so much I had been trying to convince myself I had better not see her again.

Now some old box that once belonged to her had set my heart thumping like a lovelorn twelve-year-old's.

All that remained here was a massive chandelier on a great gilt boss. A draught among its expensive tapers created leaping shadows which led me through a folding door into a private courtyard garden -a fig tree and rosemary. Helena would have enjoyed sitting there, drinking her warm tisane in the morning or writing letters in the afternoon.

I came back and just stood, imagining how this beautiful room must once have been, littered with the paraphernalia of her life: a high bed and the inevitable wicker chairs and footstools; display cabins and shelves; perfume jars and oil flasks; silver cosmetic casques; sandalwood boxes for jewellery and scarves; mirrors and combs; coffers for clothes. Waiting maids moving to and fro. A harpist to entertain her when she felt sad. (Plenty of time for that -four miserable years of it.)

Pertinax had had his bedroom in a separate wing. That is how the rich live. When Pertinax had wanted his noble young wife to grant his matrimonial privileges, a slave summoned her down two chilly corridors. Perhaps sometimes she had gone to him of her own accord, but I doubted that. Nor would he ever have bothered to surprise her here. Helena Justina had divorced Pertinax for neglecting her. I hated him for it. He wallowed in luxury, yet his sense of values was grotesque.

I strolled back to the atrium with a pain in my gullet, and happened upon Geminus.

'You look seedy!'

'Picking up tips on decor.'

'Get yourself a proper job and earn some decent cash!'

We had cleared out the statues, but while we were gossiping a new one turned up. Geminus valued the artwork privately then openly leered at the wench. She was superbly carved, then cast in bronze, a joy to inspect: Helena Justina herself.

I whistled softly. It was a clever work of art. I wondered how it was possible to capture in metal that sense of angry outrage always waiting to break out, and the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth... I flicked off a huddle of woodlice from the angle of her elbow, then patted her neat bronze behind.

Geminus was the auctioneer Anacrites had libelled as the parent who inflicted me on the world. I could see why people might think so. (As, looking at my family, I could see why my father had chosen to escape.) He was a stocky, secretive, moody man, about sixty years old, with rampant grey hair, all curls. He was good-looking (though less good-looking than he thought). His profile swooped in one strong line without a ledge between the eyes - a real Etruscan nose. He had a nose for a scandal and an eye for a woman that had made him a legend even in the Saepta Julia where the antique dealers congregate. If one of my clients had an heirloom to sell, I pushed it his way (if the client was a woman, and I happened to be busy, I pushed her too).

We stood playing at art critics. Helena's statue was unsigned but had been made by a good Greek sculptor, from life. It was magnificent, with gilding on the headdress and tinted eyes. It showed Helena at about eighteen years old, with her hair folded up in the old-fashioned style. She was formally robed - in a way which cleverly hinted how she looked underneath.

'Very nice,' commented Geminus. 'A very nice piece!'

'Where had they hidden this beauty?' I asked the porters.

'Shoved in a cubbyhole, next to the kitchen latrine.'

I could cope with that. I did not fancy Pertinax brooding over her in his private suite. (All the fool had kept in his bedroom and study were silver statuettes of his racehorses and paintings of his ships.)

Geminus and I admired her stately workmanship. He must have noticed my face.

'Castor and Pollux! You chasing her, Marcus?'

'No,' I said.

'Liar!' he retorted.

'True.'

In fact, when her ladyship had wanted a closer acquaintance she chased me. But that was no business of his.

Women change a lot between eighteen and twenty-three. It was painful to see her untouched by her trials with Pertinax, and to wish I had known her first. Something in her expression, even at that age, made me uneasily aware I had been flirting too busily elsewhere today - and all my life.

'Too submissive. He's missed her,' I murmured. 'In real life the lady glares out as though she'd bite your nose off if you stepped too close-'

Inspecting my snout for damage, Geminus reached to give it a possessive tweak; my arm jerked up to fend him off. ‘So how close do you generally step?'

'Met her. Last year in Britain. She hired me as her bodyguard back to Rome - all perfectly straight and free from scandal, see-'

'You losing your touch?' he mocked. 'Not many noble young ladies could ride fourteen hundred miles with a likely lad and not allow themselves some consolation for the rigours of the road!' He peered at her. I felt a moment of uncertainty, as if two people I cared about had just been introduced.

I was still clutching her recipe.

'What's that?'

'How to cook Turbot in Caraway. No doubt her husband's favourite midday snack -' I sighed grimly. 'You know what they say: for the price of three horses you may buy a decent cook, and with three cooks you can possibly bid for a turbot - I don't even own a horse!'

He eyed me evilly. 'Want her, Marcus?'

'Nowhere to keep her.'

'That statue?' he asked, with a broad grin.

'Oh the statue!' I answered, smiling sadly too.

We decided it would be highly improper to sell a noblewoman's portrait in the public marketplace. Vespasian would agree; he would make her family buy it back at some exorbitant price. Geminus disapproved of emperors as much as I did, so we omitted Helena Justina from the Imperial inventory.

I sent the statue to her father. I wrapped it myself for transit, in a costly Egyptian carpet which had not been inventoried either. (The auctioneer had tagged it for himself.)

The brain can play strange tricks, late at night in an unfurnished house.

Gornia and his porters had already departed; Geminus went ahead of me. I stepped into a reception room to collect my crumpled toga; when I came out I was rubbing my eyes from weariness. The lamplight was dim, but I half noticed someone in the atrium - one of the slaves, presumably.

He was looking at the statue.

In the moment when I was turning to close the door of the room behind me, he disappeared. He was a light-haired, slender man of about my own age, with sharp features that reminded me of someone I had once met... Impossible. For one chilling moment I thought I had glimpsed the ghost of Atius Pertinax.

I must have been brooding too much lately; I had a fertile imagination and was overtired. Thinking about dead men all day had turned my brain. I did not believe that dispossessed spirits ever returned resentfully to stalk their silent homes.

I strode to the atrium. I opened doors but failed to find anyone. I returned to the bronze figure and stared at her boldly myself. Only her face showed, above the hem of the carpet I had earlier furled round her.

'So it's you, me and him; sweetheart. He's a ghost, you're a statue, and I'm probably a lunatic...'

The grave image of the young Helena looked back at me with bright, painted eyes and the suggestion of a smile that was ethereal, sweet and true.

'You're all woman, princess!' I told her, giving her carpet- wrapped posterior another playful spank. 'Thoroughly unreliable!'

The ghost had melted into some marble panelwork; the statue looked superior. The lunatic shivered, then hurried out after Geminus on his way home.

XI

It's my opinion Rome's best houses are not the fine shuttered mansions on Pincian Hill, but the character dwellings that line the Tiber's bank in my own sector, with their quiet steps down to the river and wonderful views. Geminus lived there. He had money and taste and had been born in the Aventine; he would.

To make me feel better he always said they flooded. Well; he could field enough slaves to sweep the Tiber out again. And if an auctioneer finds his furniture wet, he can easily get more.

He was travelling back tonight in his normal quiet style - a lordly litter with six massive bearers, a gaudy troop of torchmen and his two private bodyguards; I hitched a lift. On the way he whistled through his teeth in the annoying way he had, while I hardly spoke. When he dropped me off two dirt tracks from home, he gave me a dark stare.

'Stick with your roots, Marcus; keep the nobility for fleecing, not flirting!' I was in no mood to argue. Besides, the man was right. 'Talk about it?'

'No.'

'You want to find yourself-'

'Please don't tell me what I want!' I sneered unpleasantly. I climbed out.

Geminus leaned after me to ask, 'Would money help?'

'No.'

'You mean, not from me-'

'Not from anyone.' I stood stubbornly in the street while his litter moved off.

'I never understand you!' he grumbled back at me.

'Good!' I said.

Reaching my apartment block, I heard the sinister cackle of Smaractus my landlord being entertained with raw wine and ribaldry by Lenia. I was exhausted. The sixth floor seemed a mile away. I had intended to bunk down at laundry level in some hamper of grubby togas, but the self-assurance of Smaractus had fired me with so much bad temper I went surging upstairs without a second thought.

A shutter flew open below me. 'Falco?' I could not face another quarrel about my unpaid rent, so I leapt to the next landing and kept going.

Six flights later I had just about calmed down.

As I opened my door in the dark I heard one or two astute roaches rustle off. I lit a rush and lunged about, batting hopefully at the rest. Then I squatted on a bench, resting my tired eyes from the glitter of rich men's marble as I gazed at the grey slatted walls of home.

I suppressed a curse, then unsuppressed it and let rip. My gecko shuffled on the ceiling, looking shocked. Half-way through the oratory I noticed an iron skillet sitting on my cooking bench; it was half-full of yesterday's veal cutlet stew. When I went over to peer under the upturned dish which I was using as a lid, the stew looked so clammy I could not face eating it.

A document had been left for me on the table: good quality papyrus and Vespasian's seal. I ignored that too.

Thinking of my talk with Geminus, the only statue I had room for was one of those three-inch clay miniatures people leave at shrines. There was nowhere for a fully grown wench who needed space to keep her dresses and somewhere to sulk in private when she found herself offended with me.

Fighting my weariness, I stumbled out onto the balcony and watered my plants. It could be windy up here, yet my hanks of dusty ivy and pots of blue scillas flourished better than I did. My youngest sister Maia, who looked after them when I was away, said that this gardening was meant to impress women. Our Maia was a shrewd little bun, but wrong about that; if a woman was prepared to climb six flights of stairs to see me, she knew in advance what kind of cheapjack here she was climbing those stairs for.

I breathed the night air slowly, letting myself remember the last young lady who visited my eyrie, then left with a flower in her shoulder brooch.

I was missing her badly. No one else seemed worth bothering with. I needed to talk to her. Every day without Helena seemed somehow unfinished. I could manage the hurly-burly, but the evening stillness reminded me what I had lost.

I fell indoors, too tired to lift my feet. I felt drained, yet Vespasian's letter got the better of me now. As I wrenched at the wax I was automatically assessing today's events.

A conspirator in a dead plot had died unnecessarily; a freedman who ought not to be important suddenly was. This idiot Sambas provided an irresistible challenge. Smiling, I unrolled the document.

a) Curtius Gordianus (priest), heard to be at Rhegium. Departure: immediate.

b) Trawl Gordianus herewith.

It sounded crisp. Needless to say, the ashes were missing; I would have to endorse someone's docket to get those released. For Rhegium read Croton. (Palace scribes are never accurate: they don't have to make the forty-mile detour over mountain roads when they get it wrong.) As usual, they had forgotten to enclose my travel pass, and there was no mention of my fee.

A vigorous snake in the margin in the Emperor's own hand exclaimed:

c) Why am I rebuilding the Temple of Hyades? Can't afford it. Please explain!'

I found my inkpot behind half a cabbage and wrote on the back:

Caesar!

a) The priest has been loyal.

b) The Emperor's generosity is well known. The Temple was not any big.

Then I resealed the letter, and re-addressed it to go back.

Under the cabbage (which my mother must have left for me) I noticed another important communique from her. She stated darkly, 'You need new spoons.'

I scratched my head. I could not tell if this was a promise or a threat.

I set my cup on the corner of the blanket box, then peeled off my tunic, rolled under the hairy counterpane and drank my drink in bed. Tonight I just fell down on top and kept all my clothes on. I managed to think about Helena long enough to share all my worries, but just as I reached what might happen after that I could feel myself falling asleep. Had she been there in my arms events would probably have taken the same course....

Informing is a drab old business. The pay's filthy, the work's worse, and if you ever find a woman who is worth any trouble you don't have the money and you don't have the time; if you do, the chances are you simply don't have the energy.

I could no longer remember leaving my house that morning; I had come home tonight too exhausted to eat my dinner and too depressed to enjoy a drink. I had passed by my best friend without a chance to gossip; I had forgotten to visit my mother and let Helena guess my ghastly involvement in the disposal of her relative's corpse. I had shared my lunch with a watchdog, swapped insults with an Emperor, and thought I'd seen the ghost of a murdered man. Now my neck ached; my feet hurt; my chin needed shaving; I was longing for a bath. I deserved an afternoon at the races; I wanted a night on the town. Instead, I had committed myself to travelling three hundred miles to visit a man I was not allowed to interview, who would probably refuse to see me when I arrived.

For a private informer, this was just an average day.