LXV

'You might have warned me!'

'You were asking for all you got!'

'He seemed such a gentleman-he caught me by surprise…'

Helena giggled. She was heckling me through the window of her sedan chair while I walked alongside grumbling. 'Drinking wine with him, snuggling on one seat with your tunic up over your knees and that doe-eyed, vulnerable look-'

'I resent that,' I said. 'A citizen ought to be able to drink where he likes without it being interpreted as an open invitation to advances from men he hardly knows and doesn't like-'

'You were drunk.'

'Irrelevant. Anyway I was not! Lucky you came to see Fausta-'

'Luck,' rapped back Helena, 'had nothing to do with it! You were away so long I started worrying. I passed Fausta actually, going the other way. Were you glad I came?' she suddenly smiled.

I stopped the chair, brought her out, then made the bearers walk ahead while we followed in the twilight and I demonstrated whether I was glad.

'Marcus, why do you think Fausta was heading for Oplontis? She had discovered that a certain someone will be at Poppaea's villa again, treating the commander of the fleet to dinner again.'

'Crispus?' I groaned, and reapplied myself to other things.

'What's so special about the Misenum prefect?' wondered Helena, unimpressed by the distractions I was offering.

'No idea…'

'Marcus, I shall lose my ear-ring; let me take it off.'

'Take off anything you want,' I agreed. Then I found myself being drawn into considering her question. The damned Misenum fleet commander had adroitly intruded himself between me and romantic mood.

Ignoring the British squadron, which is almost beneath the notice of anybody civilized, the Roman Navy orders itself in the only way possible for a long narrow state: one fleet based over at Ravenna to guard the eastern seaboard, and another at Misenum in the west.

Answers to several questions were suggesting themselves now. 'Tell me,' I broached thoughtfully to Helena. 'Apart from Titus and the legions, what was the key feature of Vespasian's campaign to become Emperor? What was worst in Rome?'

Helena shuddered. 'Everything! Soldiers in the streets, murders in the Forum, fires, fever, famine-'

'Famine,' I said. 'In a senator's house I suppose you managed as normal, but in our family no one could get bread.'

'The corn!' she responded. 'It was critical. Egypt supplies the whole city. Vespasian had the support of the Prefect of Egypt, so he sat all winter in Alexandria, letting Rome know that he controlled the grain ships and without his good will they might not come…'

'Now suppose you were a senator with extraordinary political ambitions, but your only supporters were in deadbeat provinces like Noricum-'

'Noricum!' she chortled.

'Exactly. No hope there. Meanwhile the Prefect of Egypt still strongly supports Vespasian, so the supply is assured-but suppose this year, when the corn ships hail in sight of the Puteoli peninsula-'

'The fleet stops them!' Helena was horrified. 'Marcus, we must stop the fleet!' (I had a curious vision of Helena Justina sailing out from Neapolis like a goddess on a ship's prow, holding up her arm to stop a convoy in full sail.) She reconsidered. 'Are you really serious?'

'I think so. And we're not talking about a couple of sacks on the back of a donkey, you know.'

'How much?' demanded Helena pedantically.

'Well, some wheat is imported from Sardinia and Sicily; I'm not sure of the exact proportions, but a clerk in the office of the Prefect of Supply once told me the amount needed annually to feed Rome effectively is fifteen billion bushels-'

The Senator's daughter permitted herself the liberty of whistling through her teeth.

I grinned at her. 'The next question is, whether Pertinax or Crispus is now the prime mover of this abominable plan?'

'Oh that's answered!' Helena assured me in her swift, conclusive way. 'It's Crispus who is entertaining the fleet.'

'True. I reckon they were in it together, but now Pertinax has taken to assaulting all and sundry, Crispus views him as a liability… The corn ships leave for Egypt in April-' I mused… Nones of April-Galatea and Venus of Paphos; four days before the Ides, Flora; two days before May, Lusitania, Concordia, Parthenope, and The Graces… 'It takes three weeks to get there and as much as two months to sail back again against the wind. The first ones home this year must be overdue-'

'That's a problem!' Helena muttered. 'If this fiasco takes to the water, you'll be stuck!' I thanked her for the confidence, and quickened my step. 'Marcus, how do you think they are planning to proceed?'

'Hold up the ships when they arrive here, then threaten to sail them off to some secret location? If I was doing it, I'd wait until the Senate sent some stiff-necked praetor to negotiate, then start emptying the sacks overboard. The vision of the Bay of Neapolis being turned into one vast porridge bowl would probably produce the right effect.'

'On the whole,' said Helena with feeling, 'I'm glad it's not you doing it! Who asked you to investigate the corn imports?' she asked me in a curious tone.

'No one. It was something that I stumbled on myself

For some reason Helena Justina hugged me and laughed.

'What's that for?'

'Oh, I like to think I've cast my future into the hands of a man who is good at his work!'

LXVI

I decided to raid Poppaea's villa while Crispus was there.

Ideally I would have slipped inside the place on my own. My expertise as an informer would lead me straight to the diners at the moment when they concluded the sordid details of their plan; then, equipped with hard evidence, M. Didius Falco, our demigod hero, would confront them, confound them, and single-handedly clap neck-irons on the lot…

Most private informers will boast of such ideal episodes. My life had a crankier pattern of its own.

The first problem was that Helena, Petronius and Larius, who were all highly inquisitive, came too. We arrived like second-rate temple drummers, too noisy-and too late. As we stood on the terrace debating how best to get in, the supper party streeled out past us. There was no chance of extracting a confession from any of them-or the slightest sense.

Crispus himself led the exodus, feet first and face down; he knew nothing about anything. The dispassionate slaves who were bringing him to his skiff had simply lifted the dinner table he had fallen across, limbs akimbo, then bumped him outside on it like a finished dessert course, with tonight's limp wreath hung on one of the handles and his shoestraps through another. It would be a long time before his honour woke up, and he would not make a good subject for interview at that point.

His guests had been the commander from Misenum, plus a group of trireme captains. The navy was made of really stern stuff. During the recent civil wars we had had a bad outbreak of piracy in the Black Sea, but here on the west coast things had stayed peaceful since Pompey's day. The Misenum fleet had little to do but cope with the many claims on their social life. Round the Bay of Neapolis there were parties every night, so the navy spent most evenings infiltrating private functions in search of free drink. Their capacity was enormous and their expertise at steering a course home afterwards while singing jolly songs in fabulously obscene versions made sober men blench.

When they first emerged from the house, half a dozen trireme captains were pretending to be hunting dogs. They were nipping each other, yowling, yapping, begging with their front paws, panting with their tongues out, sniffing at the moon and at the insalubrious backside of whoever was in front. Their delight in their own silliness was a joy. Their fleet commander circled these splendid fellows on all fours, baaing like a Lactarii sheep. They all milled around like Greek comedians whose producer had failed to plot their moves on stage, then the situation somehow gelled of its own accord; they surged up a gangway with heavy arms on each other's shoulders, locked in a loving chain like blood brothers, lifting their knees as they danced. One nearly fell overboard, but at the summit of his arc over the water his comrades used centrifugal force to swing him back, chorusing a wildly soaring whoop. Trailing its gangplank, their transport disappeared.