My brother-in-law started making elaborate arrangements for meeting me tomorrow, while I groaned inwardly. I hate people who complicate life with unnecessary paraphernalia. And I was none too pleased at the prospect of spending days in his dreary company. Lunch was bad enough.

I was looking around. The place was as grim as I remembered. Gaius Baebius sat eating his bowlful of beef and vegetables with the impervious calm of an innocent. Maybe my eyesight was better. I was filled with unease by the dark corners and sinister clientele.

We were in a dank cellar, a hole cut half into the Caelian Hill, more a burrow than a building. Beneath its filthy arched roof stood a few battered tables lit by tapers in oily old jugs. The landlord had a lurching gait and sported a viciously scarred cheek, probably acquired in a bar fight. His wine was sour. His customers were worse.

Since my last visit one of the rough-cast walls had acquired a crudely drawn pornographic picture in wide swathes of murky paint. It involved some mightily furnished manly types and a shy female who had lost her guardian and her clothes but who was gaining some unusual experience.

I summoned mine host. 'Who did your striking art work?'

'Varga, Manlius and that mob.'

'Do they still come in here?'

'On and off.' That sounded useless. It was not a den where I wished to hang around like a critic or a collector until these flighty artists deigned to appear.

'Where can I look them up while I'm in the neighbourhood?'

He made a few desultory suggestions. 'So what do you think of our frescos?'

'Fabulous!' I lied.

Now that the wall-painting had been drawn to his attention, Gaius Baebius was staring at it so fixedly I felt embarrassed. My sister would have been seriously annoyed to see him studying it so closely, but she would be more furious if I abandoned him anywhere so dangerous. Out of brotherly regard for Junia I had to sit there fuming while Gaius slowly finished his lunch-bowl as he perused the brothel scenes.

'Very interesting!' he commented as we left.

Shedding my inane relation, I followed up the landlord's suggestions for finding the fresco painters, but had no luck. One place the man had sent me was a rented room in a boarding-house. I could go back there at a different time and hope for better results. Any excuse was welcome. Needing food fairly urgently, I took myself off somewhere that by comparison was highly salubrious: back on the Aventine, to Flora's Caupona.

XXXIII

Flora's was in a greater state of misery than usual: they had the decorators in.

Epimandos was hovering outside, robbed of his kitchen but making an attempt to serve drinks and cold snippets to people who did not mind lunching in the street.

'What's this, Epimandos?'

'Falco!' He greeted me eagerly. 'I heard you had been arrested!'

I managed a grunt. 'Well I'm here. What's going on?'

'After the problem upstairs,' he whispered tactfully, 'the whole place is being done up.'

Flora's had been there for at least ten years and never seen a painter's brush before. Evidently a murder on the premises was good for trade. 'So who ordered this? Not the legendary Flora?'

Epimandos looked vague. He ignored my enquiry and burbled on. 'I've been so worried about what was happening to you-'

'So have I!'

'Are you going to be all right, Falco?'

'I've no idea. But if I ever catch up with the bastard who really did kill Censorinus, he won't be!'

'Falco-'

'Don't flap, Epimandos. A whimpering waiter kills the lively atmosphere!'

I looked for a seat. Outside they were limited. The objectionable cat, Stringy, was sprawled over one bench displaying his revolting belly fur, so I perched on a stool beside the barrel where the beggar always sat. For once it seemed necessary to nod at him.

'Afternoon, Marcus Didius.' I was still trying to think of a polite way to ask if I knew him when he introduced himself resignedly: 'Apollonius.' It still meant nothing. 'I was your schoolteacher.'

'Jupiter!' Long ago this hopeless soul had taught me geometry for six years. Now the gods had rewarded his patience by making him destitute.

Epimandos rushed up with wine for both of us, apparently pleased that I had found a friend to take my mind off things. It was too late to leave. I had to converse politely; that meant I had to invite the ex-teacher to join my lunch. He accepted my invitation timidly while I tried not to look too closely at his rags. I sent Epimandos across the road to fetch me a hot meal from the Valerian, and another for Apollonius.

He had always been a failure. The worst kind: someone you could not help but feel sorry for, even while he was messing you about. He was a terrible teacher. He might have been a snappy mathematician, but he could not explain anything. Struggling to make sense of his long-winded diatribes, I had always felt as if he had set me a problem that needed three facts in order to solve it, but he had only remembered to tell me two of them. Definitely a man whose hypotenuse squared had never totalled the squares of his other two sides.

'What a wonderful surprise to see you!' I croaked, pretending I had not been ignoring him every time I had come to Flora's over the past five years.

'Quite a shock,' he mumbled, going along with it as he devoured the broth I had supplied.

Epimandos had nobody else to serve, so he sat down by the cat and listened in.

'So what happened to the school, Apollonius?'

He sighed. Nostalgia was making me queasy. He had had the same dreary tone when he was lamenting some stubborn child's ignorance. 'I was forced to give up. Too much political instability.'

'You mean too many unpaid fees?'

'Youth is the first to suffer in a civil war.'

'Youth suffers, full stop,' I answered gloomily.

This was an appalling encounter. I was a tough man doing a swinish job; the last thing I needed was a confrontation with a schoolmaster who had known me when I was all freckles and false confidence. Around here people believed I had a shrewd brain and a hard fist; I was not prepared for them to see me doling out free broth to this scrawny stick insect with his sparse hair and shaking, age-mottled hands while he flapped over my forgotten past.

'How's your little sister?' Apollonius enquired after a time.

'Maia? Not so little. She worked for a tailor, then she married a slovenly horse vet. No discernment. He works for the Greens, trying to keep their knock-kneed nags from dropping dead on the track. He has a nasty cough himself-probably from pinching the horses' liniment.' Apollonius looked puzzled. He was not in the same world as me. 'Her husband drinks.'

'Oh.' He looked embarrassed. 'Very bright, Maia.'

'True.' Though not in her choice of husband.

'Don't let me bore you,' the schoolmaster said courteously. I cursed him in silence; it meant I would have to carry on with the chat.

'I'll tell Maia I saw you. She has four children of her own now. Nice little things. She's bringing them up properly.'

'Maia would. A good pupil; a good worker; now a good mother too.'

'She had a good education,' I forced out. Apollonius smiled as if he were thinking, Always gracious with the rhetoric! On an impulse I added, 'Did you teach my brother and the other girls? My eldest sister, Victorina, died recently.'

Apollonius knew he should be saying he was sorry but lost himself answering the first question. 'Some I might have done, from time to time:'

I helped him out: 'The elder ones had a problem getting any schooling. Times were difficult.'

'But you and Maia were always signed on every term!' he cried, almost reprovingly. He was bound to remember; we were probably the only regular attenders on the whole Aventine.