The Silver Pigs (12 page)

XXXI

At Aquae Sulis I spent five weeks under the care of the procurator's personal physician. Hot springs gushed out of the rock at a shrine where puzzled Celts still came to dedicate coinage to Sul, gazing tolerantly at the brisk new plaque which announced that Roman Minerva was assuming management. There was that furtive atmosphere of commerce disguised as religion which always hangs around shrines. Rome had replaced some basic native equipment with a proper lead-lined reservoir, yet I could not believe that anything could ever be made of this place. Oh there were plans, but there are always plans. We sat in the reservoir, which was full of sand thrown up by the spring, drank flat, tepid water laden with foul-tasting minerals" and watched red-nosed building surveyors clambering about the cliffs, trying to convince themselves there was scope for a vibrant leisure spa.

We played a lot of draughts. I hate draughts. I loathe draughts played against an Egyptian physician who always wins. However, there was not much else to do in a spa that was still on the drawing board, in Britain, at the end of a snowy March. I might have chased after women, but I had given women up. In my present state, even if I caught one it would be hard work doing anything a woman would appreciate.

The hot springs helped, but while I lay in them I stared into space with a dark look. The bones might heal, but never my slave's soul. The procurator's physician said drinking the water had given him piles. I answered I was sorry to hear that, but he may have noticed that I sounded insincere.

Sometimes I brooded about Sosia; it did nothing to help.

Back to Glevum. Hilaris and I tackled Triferus together. Action did me good, and we made a strong team. Gaius sat on his official chair of office, a folding do with yellowed ivory legs that he told me was ruin for the back. I roamed about in a menacing way.

Triferus was a loud British wide boy all twisty elect rum neck lets and narrow, pointed shoes. He wore the toga such middlemen had been encouraged to adopt, but the soldiers who dragged him in peeled that off him at a nod from us. We parked him on a stool so if he turned his head in either direction he was eyeball to muscled thigh with chain-mailed auxiliaries two morose Spanish horsemen, who ignored his shifty jokes. (Only their officers spoke Latin; we had chosen the guards for that reason.)

Apart from the torques beneath that puffy British face, he could have been any barrow boy in any city in the world. He used the forenames Tiberius Claudius possibly a freed slave named for the old Emperor, but more likely some minor tribal dignitary, honoured as an ally at some past date. I doubted he could produce a diploma to support his citizenship.

"We know how you operate: just cough up the names!" I barked at him.

"All right, Falco," murmured Gaius, like a senior man being hopelessly overruled from Rome. This is Britain, we do things differently here. Triferus, whether I can help is up to you. This man is an Imperial agent"

Triferus tried bluff. "Weights and measures? Safety regulations? What's your problem, officer?" He had a high voice with an irritating nasal lilt. He belonged to the Coritani, a self-sufficient tribe on the midland plain.

I tested the point of a dagger between my thumbs. I glanced at Gaius; he nodded.

There's nothing you can tell me about the lead mines," I began. Triferus, I've been in there to explore the whole shambles for myself." His face shone with sweat; I had caught him off guard. "Your system stinks, from the shafts to the furnaces. Even the bakers in the village are using silver shavings for small change"

Trouble with the dockets is it?" he whined with an innocent wink. Treasury interference? Procedures to clear?"

I flung my nugget of silver onto a tripod table where it spun in front of Triferus on a level with his nose. I slammed my hand onto it. Even Gaius looked surprised.

Three weeks on the cupellation bellows and that was my haul! Make a dainty finger ring for some lucky skirt in Rome."

Triferus abruptly came the brave boy: "Shove it up your arse!"

I beamed at him pleasantly: "Oh I've done that!" Gaius blenched.

I strode up to Triferus, grabbing at one of his skinny torques so it pressed against his jugular just enough to make a dent.

"A smart slave can buy his passage to Gaul, if he survives your murderous foreman. Cornix diddles his tax-free bonus; the chain gangs have their sad little dodges; you organize a private racket of your own. How did these traitors from Rome lean on you threaten exposure unless you cut them in?"

"Look, you clerks have to face facts!" For one last desperate moment Triferus continued to pretend. "Mining is a special case. It's not like selling beer and oysters to the troops"

"Don't waste time on him, sir!" I snarled at the procurator. "Let me take him back to Rome. We have decent equipment there; he'll squeal. After that, the Vatican Circus lion-feed!" Releasing the torque as if the owner disgusted me too much to bother, I turned to Gaius with an irritable shout. "Ask him about the stamps! The ingots he steals himself are banged four times if they still contain silver that's one bar in four. The rest have been bled, but this enterprising bastard sells them as intact. How long before our political hopefuls spot his double-cross? I wouldn't like to wear the boots of a man who bribes the Praetorians with counterfeit dosh!"

Triferus, can't you see they know!" For the first time the financial procurator spoke in a voice stripped of all pretence. "British ingots have been found loose in Rome. Unless we arrest the plotters before they get to you, you can kiss goodbye to much more than your tender for the lead franchise in the Malvern Peaks. Vespasian's in for the duration, whatever you have been told. Save yourself, man, turn in whatever evidence you can to the state it's your only way to survive!"

Triferus took on a complexion like unpainted wall plaster.

He asked to speak to Gaius alone. He gave him two names.

Gaius wrote a letter to the Emperor, which I was to carry, though he refused to tell me what the two names were. I thought he was playing the pointless bureaucrat, though afterwards I understood why.

Gaius and I travelled coast wards to Durnovaria to his favourite villa, for me to ask his honourable niece Helena whether she was ready to travel home and if so, would she wish to be escorted through Europe by such as me. Gaius drove me down.

We tripped a hundred miles at a pace so sedate I longed to wrench the reins out of his hand.

I have to admit I hankered for Helena Justina's nippier driving style.

XXXII

Gaius came with me to his villa because he wanted to prune his vines. They were miserable specimens. He had lived in Britain so long he had forgotten what a vine was really like.

The procurator's villa was a rich farm in a small river valley with views of low green hills. The soft climate seemed well suited to a man with a pain in his ribs. The house was full of books and toys. His wife and children had retreated to Londinium after the Saturnalian holiday, but I could imagine what life was like in summer when they were here. It was a house where I could have languished for a long time, the sort I wanted one day for myself.

Gaius amused himself pottering into Durnovaria to officiate as local magistrate. His objectionable niece was at the villa, but she kept to herself. Had I liked Helena Justina better I might have thought her shy; as I didn't, I called her unsociable instead. Since she had not returned to the comforts of Londinium with Aelia Camilla, she presumably intended going back to Rome now, but plans for her journey remained happily vague.

I was enjoying myself in this hospitable house. By day I read, wrote letters, or limped around the farm. The staff were friendly and being pampered felt quite acceptable. Every evening I talked cheerfully with my host. Even in Britain this was an ideal Roman life. I did not want to find the energy to leave.

One day, when it was raining too dismally for Gaius to drive off and impose fines on Celtic cattle thieves, he approached me. "Rufrius Vitalis asked me to have a word with you. I gather you had arranged to fix him up with a passage to Rome, acting as Helena's baggage master?"

"Let me guess he doesn't want to go?"

"Well, it's partly my fault," Gaius grinned. "I was impressed with him. I've offered him a contract in the lead mine, clearing up the procedural abuses as my official auditor."

"Good choice. He'll do well for you. Besides which," I chortled, "I reckon he and a certain dumpling called Truforna cannot bear to part!"

The procurator smiled in his prim way, avoiding details of other people's personal lives. Then he pointed out that if Vitalis was absenting himself, someone else would have to shepherd Helena...

"Has she spoken to you, Falco?"

"We don't speak. She thinks I'm a rat."

He looked pained. "Oh I'm sure that's not right. Helena Justina appreciates all you have done. She was deeply shocked by your condition when she picked you up at the mines"

"Oh I can live with it!" I was lying on a couch, making good use of a bowl of winter pears which the villa steward had carefully selected for me from the farm store. I took the opportunity to probe. "Your niece seems, let's be polite about it, rather overwrought." Flavius Hilaris gave me a stern glance. I added in a reasonable tone, T'm not trying to gossip. If I do escort her, it will help if I know what the problem is."

That's fair." My new friend Gaius was also a reasonable man. "Well! When she came out to stay with us after her divorce, she seemed subdued and confused. I suspect she still is only she hides it better now."

"Can you tell me what went wrong?"

"Only hearsay. As far as I know, the couple were never close. Her uncle, my wife's brother Publius, had known the young man; it was Publius who proposed the match to her father. At the time Helena described her future husband to my wife in a letter as a senator of standing, without indecent habits."

"Pretty cool!"

"Quite. Aelia Camilla did not approve of it."

"Still, safer than starting starry-eyed."

"Perhaps. Anyway, Helena never expected a passionate meeting of minds, but eventually she found that for her a high position and good manners were not enough. She did confide in me recently. She would rather he had picked his nose and goosed the kitchen girls then at least talked to her!"

We both laughed at this, though sympathetically. If I had liked women with a sense of humour, a wench who could say that might have appealed to me.

"Have I got it wrong then, Gaius, did he divorce her?"

"No. Once she found they were incompatible, Helena Justina wrote the notice of divorce herself."

"Ah! She does not believe in pretence!"

"No. But she's sensitive so you've seen the results!"

By now it was obvious the procurator's conscience was prickling him for speaking so freely. So, I let the subject drop.

The next time Gaius was going into town I tagged along. I took the opportunity to acquire twenty assorted pewter beakers, local products made from an alloy of tin and lead.

"Souvenirs for my nephews and nieces! Plus a few "silver" porridge spoons for the new members of the family my sisters are bound to present to me proudly when I get home."

"The Gauls should hear you coming!" Gaius scoffed. (My twenty beakers were rattling well.)

It was still difficult to think sensibly of going home.

This being Britain, much of the time we were at Durnovaria Helena Justina had had a ferocious cold. While she stayed in her room with her head buried in a jug of steaming pine oil it was easy to forget she was there. When she emerged, and dashed off somewhere in a pony cart, I became curious. She was out all day. She could hardly have gone shopping -I knew from my own attempts there was nothing much to buy. When my friend the steward brought me some leeks in wine sauce to tempt my appetite (which was heartily improved, and I come from a market-gardening family so I love leeks), I asked where their young lady had gone. He didn't know, but chaffed me about my well-known reluctance to travel with her.

"She can't be as fearsome as all that!" he remonstrated.

The honourable Helena Justina," I stated callously, spooning away at the leeks like a true market gardener's grandson, "would make Medusa's snakes look as harmless as a pot of fishing worms!"

At that moment, Helena Justina whipped into the room.

She ignored me. That was normal. She looked deeply upset. That was not. I was certain she had heard.

The steward absconded rapidly, which was all I could expect. On my invalid couch, I sank into a nest of tasselled cushions. I waited for the tidal wave to break.

Helena had taken a ladylike chair. Her feet perched on a footstool, her hands lay in her lap. She was wearing a dull grey dress and an expensively tasteful necklace of tubular agate beads in a mixture of red and brown. For a moment she seemed lost in some grave, introspective mood. I noticed something: when she was not crackling at me, the senator's daughter could transform her face. To anyone else she might have appeared a calm, competent, thoughtful young woman, whose good birth made her go pink doing business with men, yet perfectly approachable.

She roused herself.

"Feeling better, Falco?" she demanded derisively. I lay on my couch and looked pale. "What are you writing?" Changing the subject with a cool look, she caught me off guard.

"Nothing."

"Don't be so childish; I know you write poetry!"

With an exaggerated gesture I laid open my wax tablet. She jumped out of her chair and marched across to look. The tablet was blank. I did not write poetry any more. I felt no obligation to tell her why.

Disconcerted myself, I waded in: "Your uncle tells me you'll be leaving Britain soon?"

"No choice," she clipped tersely. "Uncle Gaius is insisting I take the Imperial post with you."

"Take the post by all means," I remarked.

"Are you saying you won't act for me?"

I smiled slightly. "Lady, you have not asked."

Helena bit her lip.

Ts this because of the mines?"

The face I was wearing belonged in a chain gang but I said, "No. Helena Justina, I am open to offers but don't assume you can dictate which I accept."

"Didius Falco, I assume nothing about you; not any more!" We were sparring, but without our usual relish; her concentration seemed to be painfully distracted. "Given your choice and acceptable pay will you consent to escort me home?"

I had intended to refuse. Helena Justina looked at me steadily, acknowledging that. She had clear, sensible, persuasive eyes in an intriguing shade of brown... I heard myself saying, "Given the choice, of course."

"Oh Falco! Tell me your rates."

"Your father is paying me."

"Let him. I'll pay you myself then if I want to end your contract I will."

Every contract should have an escape clause. I told her my rates.

She was evidently still angry. Ts anything the matter, ladyship?"

"I've been down to the coast," she told me, frowning. Trying to organize our crossing to Gaul."

"I would have done that!"

"Well, it's done." I watched her hesitate. She needed somebody to share some trouble; there was only me. "Done, but not without annoyance. I found a boat. But Falco, there was a ship at the shale yards that I hoped would have taken us the captain refused. The ship belongs to my ex-husband," she forced out. I said nothing. She went on brooding. "Petty!" she remarked. "Petty, unnecessary, bad-mannered, and vile!"

The hysterical edge in her tone had disturbed me. Still, I make it my rule, never to interfere between married couples even when they are not married any more.

When we went to the coast, Flavius Hilaris embraced me on the quay side like a friend.

Of all the men I met on this business I liked him the most. I never told him that. (I know he realized.) But I did tell him, no one but me could have found a case where only the civil servants were straight. We both laughed, as we grimaced with regret.

"Look after our young woman," Gaius commanded me, hugging Helena goodbye. Then to her, "And you look after him!"

I suppose he meant, if I was seasick. Which I was, though needless to say I looked after myself.