I knew perfectly well that he would be sleeping well, comfortable and at ease.

XXXII

RAIN HAD drizzled all night. The streets shone and would be slippery. Before I decided on my next course of action, I went up to my roof terrace. The sky was clear now. From the river came distant shouts of stevedores, with the unexplained crashes and shouts that emanate from wharves. We were out of sight of the Emporium, yet it somehow made its presence felt; I was conscious of all the commercial activity close by. Occasional mooing sounded from the other direction, the Cattle Market Forum.

It felt mild. Not warm enough to sit on the stone benches, but pleasant enough for a quick stroll among the browned roses and near dormant shrubs. At this time of year there was little to occupy a gardening man, but I picked off a few dead twigs and left them in a small soggy pile.

Something startled me. I thought it was a large bird, diving downwards in the wide-armed fig tree Pa had planted here and half trained. But the movement that had caught my eye was a stray leaf, desiccated and loose, suddenly falling from a cleft where it had lodged among high branches. Pallid and heavy with rain water, it had sought the ground in a sudden swoop.

Most of those leaves had dropped much earlier. When the great things had first carpeted the terrace and made it treacherous underfoot, we were sweeping up heaps of them all the time. Now I had for some time been able to see the tree's skeleton. I meant to prune the taller branches. They were carrying baby fruit over the winter, but some might yet be shed. They were too high up anyway. Even if the figlets stayed on to grow and ripen next year, blackbirds would devour them the very hour they turned purple. I would never manage to harvest the fruit unless I was up a ladder every day.

The side branches needed to be cut back too. Pa had neglected it. The fig's roots had been contained in an old round-bottomed amphora but the tree was prolific. It would need a really hard prune every spring and more tidying would be advisable each year in late summer. I made a note to acquire a billhook. Like the one in the Metellus store.

That made up my mind. I was off to see Calpurnia Cara.

The first disappointment somehow failed to surprise me. Yet again the door was guarded by a substitute. When I asked after Perseus, I was told he was no longer at the house.

`What – sold? Shoved off in disgrace to the slave market?'

`No. Sent to the farm in Lanuvium.' The substitute porter flushed. 'Oops – I'm not supposed to say that!'

Why not? I knew the family had connections near the coast. Lanuvium was where Justinus went to fetch that document Silius had requested, when we were involved in the original corruption trial.

So the door porter had been carted off at short notice. Was it convalescence or a punishment for him? Had Calpurnia finally lost patience with her slave's bad behaviour? Or was it a move to thwart me?

The steward was out, or he might have denied me admittance. The substitute porter innocently told me Calpurnia had gone outside to take the morning air. He escorted me as far as the first enclosed peristyle, but then passed me into the care of a gardener.

I passed a few polite remarks about burgeoning narcissi. The gardener was slow to respond, but by the time we reached the orchard area, I was able to ask if Metellus senior had been a plantsman. No. Or handy with a pruning knife? No, again. That failed to fit a theory I was mulling, but I made one last attempt, asking who looked after the fruit trees? The gardener did. Damn.

He spotted his mistress, so he beetled off and left me to face her wrath.

Calpurnia scowled, annoyed that I had been let in. She had been standing much where I found her on my first visit, near the store and also near the fig tree. Ashes of a bonfire smoked alongside. The store had its door wide open; slaves with cloaks over their heads were pulling down the roof panels and tackling the wasps' nest. Calpurnia, veiled, was supervising in an irritated voice. If insects buzzed her, she swept them aside with her bare hand.

I walked closer to the fig. It was professionally maintained, unlike Pa's shaggy mess; I guessed here even the new fruits had been hand thinned for over-wintering. A wall ran behind the tree. Beyond, other properties stood close. I could smell lye, the distillation used for bleaching; one of the premises must be a laundry or a dyer's. Two unseen women were having a long, loud conversation that sounded like an argument, the kind of excited declamation over nothing that echoes around stairs, porticoes and light-wells all over Rome. We were in a small sanctum of nature up against the Embankment, but the city surrounded us.

On the wall was fastened a new-looking, inscribed limestone plaque. I did not remember seeing it before, though it may have been there yesterday when I was preoccupied with Birdy and Perseus. I walked closer. It was a memorial to Rubirius Metellus – in some ways quite standard. Ostensibly in the name of a loyal freedman, praising his master in conventional terms, it ran:

To the shades of the departed,

Gnaeus Rubirius Metellus,

son of Tiberius, quaestor, legate, holder of three priesthoods, member of the centumviral court, aged fifty-seven:

Julius Alexander, freedman, land agent, set this up to the kindest of patrons

And Gnaeus Metellus Negrinus, to one who was well-beloved of him.

That last line was a mystery, squeezed in using much smaller letters, where the stone-carver ran out of space. Being tagged on as an afterthought on a freedman's plaque was an odd position for the son – whose relationship and role was not even defined.

If Calpurnia Cara saw me looking, she made no mention. Nor did I. I wanted to consider this.

`I'm sorry to have missed you yesterday,' I teased.

`Oh you are full of schemes!' Calpurnia snorted. `First you sneak in your wife, then you devise some luncheon invitation with my daughter to lure me from my house so you can creep in with Negrinus -'

`I know nothing of any lunch date; I happened to call when your son was already here -'

`Oh he's to blame!'

`This is his home still, surely?' I regretted that at once. The house would be assigned to Paccius Africanus as soon as the will was executed; he could throw out Calpurnia today, if he wanted to. `Why do you hate your son, Calpurnia?'

`That is stupid.'

`You have denounced him as his father's killer.'

Perhaps she looked abashed. `Negrinus has caused too much trouble.'

`He strikes me as inoffensive – even though he apparently upset his father. Why did your husband hate you?'

`Who told you that?'

`His will says so. Why did you hate him?'

`I only hated his cowardice.'

`He was brave enough to omit you from his bequests – in a will he wrote a full two years before his so-called suicide.' She did not react. `I gather your husband had a passion for your daughter-in-law Saffia?'

Calpurnia scoffed. `I told you. Saffia is a troublemaker. My husband knew that better than anyone.'

`You mean he screwed her physically, then she screwed him financially?'

This time Calpurnia only stared at me. Did she simply blank it out?

`So is Paccius Africanus being generous in letting you remain here, or are you sticking tight until he evicts you?'

`He won't institute the will until the court case is over.'

That suited us; his reluctance to evict Calpurnia was one more instance we could cite to imply Paccius and she were co-conspirators.

She was growing restless. `I do not have to talk to you, Falco.'

`But you may find it advisable. Tell me, why was Saffia's bedspread in your garden store?'

`It was too badly soiled to save. It has been burned now.'