•

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 Barnabas provided an irresistible challenge. Smiling, I unrolled the document.

a) Under the authority of Vespasian Augustus; M. Didius Falco to escort the funeral ashes of A. Curtius Longinus, senator (deceased), to his brother A. Curtius Gordianus (priest), believed to be at Rhegium. Departure; immediate.

b) Travel documents 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 Hercules? 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.

c) The Temple was not very big.

Then I resealed the letter, and readdressed 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.

The Palace had had its money's worth; I went to bed. The normal procedure was simple; I stood my favourite wine 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.

PART TWO

SOUTHERN ITALY (Magna Graecia)

'… Croton, a very ancient city, once the foremost in Italy… If you are a sophisticated type and you can take incessant lying, you are following the right road to riches. You see, in this city no literary pretensions are honoured, eloquence has no standing, sobriety and decent behaviour are not praised and rewarded'

– Petronius, The Satyricon

XII

Vespasian had signed a travel pass for me. I screwed this treasure out of his clerks and picked up a state mule from a stable at the Capena Gate. The ancient watchtower still stands at the start of the Appian Way, though the city has expanded beyond into a quiet suburb, popular with the more discerning type of millionaire. Helena Justina's father lived hereabouts so I delivered her box of recipes and I dare say she would have had me in for a few words of thanks, but she was a sociable lady with a life of her own and the door porter claimed she was not there.

Young Janus and I had had run-ins before. The Camillus family never needed a floor mosaic to say beware of their dog; this two-legged specimen of human mange drove off enquirers before they edged a sandal in the door. He was about sixteen. He had a very long face, which gave plenty of scope for his current flush of acne, with a very short brain cavity on top; the brain inside was an elusive piece of plasma. Talking to him always made me tired.

I refused to believe these were Helena's orders. She was capable of dispatching me on a one-way ferry to Hades, but if she wanted to do it she would tell me herself. Still; it solved one problem. Telling her I was not going to see her again would be difficult if they never let me in.

I asked where she was; sonny didn't know. I informed the porter pleasantly that I knew he must be lying because even when she becomes a batty old harridan with no hair or teeth, Helena Justina will be much too well-organized to sail off in her sedan chair without a word to her staff. Then I left friendly greetings for the senator, left Helena's box, and left Rome.

At first I went south on the Appian Way to avoid the coast, which I hate. At Capua the Via Appia took its route towards Tarentum in the Heel of Italy while I turned west, heading for the Toe. Now I was on the Via Popilia, for Rhegium and Sicily, aiming to strike off it just before the Messana Strait.

I had to cross Latium, Campania and Lucania, and go deep into Bruttium-half the length of Italy; I seemed to be travelling for days. After Capua came Nola, Salernum, Paestum, Velia, Buxentum, then a long hike close against the Tyrrhenian shore until the road to Cosentia in the far south. There the ground climbed abruptly as I peeled off the highroad to cross the peninsula. It was then the mule I had picked up at the last staging post turned tetchy on me, and I saw I had been right to dread a mountain rollicking.

Cosentia: provincial capital of the Bruttii. A hunchbacked collection of single-storey shacks. It was up in the hills, hard to get at, and had not been as important as the Bruttians' second city, Croton, for several hundred years. Still, Cosentia was their capital; odd tribe, the Bruttii.