VII

A warm May night in Rome. We paused on the doorstep, and sniffed the air. A faint spattering of tiny stars hung above the twin peaks of the Capitol. An aroma of hot forcemeat sausage made me suddenly ravenous. Music sounded in the far distance, while the night was alive with the laughter of men who had nothing to regret.

Anacrites and I set off down the Vicus Longus briskly, to deter unwelcome night trade. We passed the Forum on our right and entered the Palatine complex via the Clivus Victoriae. Above us the official suites looked cheerfully lit, though if the Emperor or his sons had been entertaining their banquets had already broken up; our painful new dynasty kept its state in respectable style.

At the Cryptoporticus, Nero's grand galleried entrance, the Praetorians let us through with a nod. We went up. The first people we encountered, and the last I wanted to see, were the Senator Camillus Verus and his daughter Helena.

I swallowed, with one cheek tightening; Anacrites smiled understandingly (rot him!) and made a swift exit.

The Senator had a fluffed-up, formal, newly laundered look. I winked at his daughter affectionately, even in front of him; she gave me a faint, rather troubled smile. Strong looks and a strong character: a girl you could take anywhere-so long as the people who lived there did not mind being told frankly what was wrong with their lives. Helena was austerely swathed in grey, her feet kicking at the heavy, flounced hem of a woman who had been married, her dark head topped by a pointed plain gold diadem. The scroll which Camillus was carrying said they had been here to petition the Emperor, and I could guess their plea: Camillus Verus was a stalwart supporter of Vespasian; he had had a brother who had not been. The brother conspired against the new Flavian dynasty; was exposed, killed, and left to lie where he fell. I had been wondering how long it would take for the Senator to decide his brother's soul was his responsibility. Now I knew: eleven days. He had come to ask Vespasian for the warehouse corpse.

'Here's Falco!' I heard Helena say, chivvying her father. 'He'll find out for us-'

The Senator's wife was a supportive woman but I could see why it was his daughter he brought today. Beneath her quiet public manner Helena Justina always meant business. Luckily she was still preoccupied after their mission in the throne room and barely reacted to meeting me. Her father explained their presence; he told me the Emperor was being difficult (not surprisingly); then Helena waded in, wanting me to investigate.

'That rather cuts across me working for the Palace-'

'When did that stop you?' Camillus himself assaulted me cheerfully; I grinned, but let their proffered commission drop.

'Sir, if your brother has been bundled into oblivion by a gang of off-duty Praetorians will it really make you feel better if you know?' Helena fell ominously silent. It boded ill for somebody; I guessed who. I tried not to remember the sordid details of her uncle's end, in case she read my face.

I gestured in the direction Anacrites had taken, implying urgent business elsewhere. Camillus asked me to remain with Helena while he organized their transport. He rushed away.

We two stood there, in one of those Palace corridors that was so wide it was almost a room in itself, while occasional officials passed to and fro. I had no intention of ending our tender relationship beneath the tawdry glitter of a Neronian reception hall, so I looked tough and said nothing.

'You know!' Helena accused me levelly, while she was still watching her father out of earshot.

'If I do, I'm not allowed to say.' She glanced at me with a look that would wither the spines on a porcupine.

•

While the subject died quietly between us I enjoyed myself surveying her. The cumbersome folds of her matronly stole only emphasized the warm curves they were meant to disguise, and which I had found myself possessing so unexpectedly two weeks before. Her presence tonight had enveloped me with the familiar sense that we both knew each other better than we would ever know anyone else (and yet neither of us had discovered the half of it…) 'This is how I like you,' I teased. 'All big brown eyes and blazing indignation!'

'Spare me the disreputable dialogue! I imagined,' her ladyship informed me in a taut voice, 'I might have seen you before this.'

She had on her sweet look of wariness in public places, which always made me step closer protectively. With one finger I stroked very gently from the soft hollow of her temple to the fine contour of her jaw. She allowed it with a stubbornness that implied complete indifference, but her cheek whitened beneath my touch. 'I was thinking of you, Helena.'

'Thinking of dropping me?' It had taken me ten days to make up my mind not to see her again-and ten seconds to decide not to leave. 'Oh I know!' she continued angrily. 'This is May. That was April. I was the girl in last month's adventure! All you wanted-'

'You know damn well what I wanted!' I cut in. 'It's another thing I am not supposed to tell you,' I said more quietly. 'But believe me, lady, I thought the world of you.'

'And now you've forgotten,' Helena argued bitterly. 'Or at least, you want me to forget-'

Just as I was about to demonstrate how much I remembered and how little I intended either of us to forget, the brisk figure of her illustrious father hove into view again.

'I'll come and see you,' I promised Helena in an undertone. 'There are things I need to talk about-'

'Oh there are some things you can say to us?' She deliberately let her father overhear. Camillus must have seen we were quarrelling, a fact he treated with a nervous diffidence which belied his true character. When occasion demanded he was forceful enough.

Before Helena could forestall me I told him, 'Your brother's soul was taken care of with the necessary reverence. If the underworld really exists, he is lounging on the grass in Hades, throwing sticks for Cerberus. Don't ask how I know.'

He accepted it more readily than Helena did. I parted from them tersely, making it plain I had to work.

•

I rejoined Anacrites, to wait outside the Emperor's room with that tension no one quite loses when visiting a highly important man; being the bugs in favour can easily change. Anacrites groomed a fingernail between his teeth. I felt dismal. Vespasian liked me. He usually showed it by confronting me with impossible tasks for which I earned hardly any cash.

We were called in. Court chamberlains avoided us as if we carried the sores of an Eastern disease.

Vespasian was not one of your spindly, stringy-necked aristocrats, but a burly ex-general. His lavish purple tunic sat on him as casually as brown country frieze. He had a reputation for struggling to power on mortgages and credit, but he loved showing off as Emperor, throwing himself into the work with a grasp no Caesar since Augustus had shown.

'Camillus Verus has been here!' he exclaimed at me. 'And that daughter of his!' The Emperor sounded snappy; he knew my involvement with the lady, and disapproved. 'I said I had nothing to tell them.'

'So did I!' I assured him, ruefully.

He glared at me, as if our predicament was my fault, then settled down. 'What's to report?'

I left Anacrites the subtle pleasure of fibbing to the lord of the world. 'Making progress, sir!' He sounded so efficient my stomach rebelled.

'Found any evidence yet?' crackled Vespasian.

'A denunciation of Pertinax Marcellus by his ex-wife-'