O Juno!

O Jupiter and Minerva too, frankly. I would need the complete Olympian triad to get me out of this.

Honorius stepped to my left side, playing the ventriloquist: `That's Procreus. He is Silius' regular informer. We had to expect something.' It was the low, admiring murmur of a man who had worked with Silius and seen what he could do. `The bastards!' he whispered. `I never thought of this…'

Aelianus rather unexpectedly was on my right, gripping my elbow supportively. His solid response was a new treat. We walked down the steps, smiling.

`I am at the praetor's disposal,' I told Procreus pleasantly. I refrained from punching his crossed front teeth through the back of his thin neck. My companions were grasping my arms too hard for me to take a swing at him.

We did not stop. Honorius and Aelianus walked me to my house, propping me up like a pair of bossy caryatids. It felt as if everyone in the street stared at us. Helena Justina followed us, silent and anxious. Only when I was safely indoors did I drop the fixed smile and start swearing.

Helena was white. `Given that you have just had a charge of impiety slapped on you, Marcus, bad language is not a smart reaction.'

`Start thinking!' Aelianus instructed me. He was flushed with excitement, trying not to get hysterical. He had been an army tribune. They had taught him logical responses to setbacks. If regrouping in a square and doubling our guard would have helped, Aulus would have organised it. He assessed my situation perfectly: `When exactly was the last time you straightened any feathers on those bloody geese? And, Marcus, it had better be recent – or you are finished!'

XLIV

IMPIETY? I was innocent. My views on the gods might not be flattering, but I kept those views to myself.

My post as Procurator was ludicrous, but I carried out my duties at the temple, more or less. The job showed the world that the Emperor had recognised me. And besides, it carried a salary.

No one could spot any fiddles. I was a market gardener's grandson. Country matters were in my blood. The Sacred Geese and the Augurs' Sacred Chickens were safe in my hands. If, after tending them, I carried home stolen eggs, I knew how to stuff them in my tunic invisibly.

But there was a problem. Last year, I could not deny it, there had been a long period – over six months – when I did not oversee the geese at all. I was in Britain. I was working for the Emperor. I had a genuine excuse – but one I could not use in open court. The whole point of the tasks I had carried out in Britain was that Vespasian wanted them kept secret.

I could hardly summon the Emperor to vouch for me. One alternative existed: Anacrites. If he swore I was away on imperial business, nobody would need to know why. Even the praetor would shrink from querying the Chief Spy. But if Anacrites was my only solution, I would rather be condemned.

Helena tried to calm me down. 'Procreus, and his manipulator Silius, know perfectly well you are innocent. Making the charge is a ploy. You dare not ignore an accusation of impiety, let alone in a position that was your personal gift from the Emperor.'

`Too right. Tomorrow I shall be pacing the corridors, waiting for an appointment with the praetor. Something tells me he will be in no hurry to oblige me. I know just how they will fix it. Procreus won't show; without him to state his evidence, I'll be stuck in limbo.'

`Well, Marcus, if he really never shows, there is no charge… You must convince the praetor there is no case to answer – and demand a retraction.'

`I won't get that! But you understand, my darling. I have to put this right before I can show my face in court again. We cannot have Paccius Africanus helpfully pointing out to the jury that one of Calpurnia's accusers has been denounced for offending the gods.'

Today was wasted. I had just made the best speech of my life – and instantly the professionals had wiped me off the board.

`It was a good speech,' agreed Helena approvingly. `I was proud of you, Marcus.'

She gave me a moment to bask in her sweet praise. She held me and kissed me. I knew what she was doing, but I melted.

Then, having soothed me, Helena whipped out a calendar and a clean note tablet, so she could work out my past visits to the Temple of Juno in order to rebut Procreus' charge.

XLV

‘YOU MAY not want to hear this, Falco.'

`I'm low, lad. You can't make it worse.'

Petronius Longus was one of a long stream of visitors. Most were excited relatives, thrilled that I was in real trouble, trouble their neighbours had heard about. They had been barred by Helena. Petro was allowed in, though only because he said he had something to tell me about the Metellus case. He at least was not thrilled. He thought I was an idiot. Tangling with ex-consuls headed his list of untouchable social stupidities.

`Paccius was bound to turn on you.'

`Actually, my accuser works with Silius.'

‘- who works with Paccius! By the way, Falco, do you know you have people watching this place?'

He was right. I took a squint through a crack in the shutters. A couple of shady characters in bum-starver cloaks and woollen caps were lurking on the Embankment outside. It was too cold for them to be fishing in the Tiber. Incompetent burglars who were casing a house too openly? Clerks who wrote the Daily Gazette scandal page? Sidekicks of Silius, hoping to witness me march up to the Capitol and threaten the man who herded the geese? No chance. Earlier, I did consider telling the gabby gooseboy just how he had landed me in it – but I had been dissuaded by my level-headed wife.

`They are pretty obvious.'

`Want me to move them on?'

`No. Their masters will just send others.' Petronius did not ask me, what masters.

Helena came in to join us. I glanced at Petro, and we moved away from the window. Helena glanced at us suspiciously.

`Did you hear Marcus make his speech?'

Petronius sprawled on a couch, stretching his long limbs. Helena and he looked at one another, then at me, then they both beamed. `You and your mouth!' he commented, perhaps fondly.

Helena's smile faded slightly. `It all needed to be said, Lucius.'

`Well,' said Petro, drawling quietly, `our boy made a big impression.

I joined him on the couch. `You feel I should not have done it?' My best friend gazed at me. `You broke some rules today. I worry for you.' That was unlike him.

`If he wants to move among the big bad bastards,' Helena murmured, `I would rather see him break their rules and offend them, than become what they are.'

`Agreed. Nothing he said was safe – but nothing he said was wrong either.'

For some time then we all sat musing.

`So,' Helena asked Petro eventually, `Lucius, what is your news that affects the court case?' As if by chance, she went and straightened a window shutter, quickly glancing out to see what we had been looking at earlier.

Petronius massaged his scalp with both hands, then squeezed his fingers along his neck wearily. He watched Helena checking up on us. She spotted the observers. She shot me a glance of annoyance, but then came back and sat with us.

`Falco, I don't know if this is good or bad, but you need to know about it.'

I nudged him. `Cough up.'

`The lads in the Second Cohort have been following the news. It finally struck them that Metellus senior died in his house and the death may be unnatural. So somebody ought to have tortured the slaves.'

He was right: I did not know whether I was happy or not.

Whenever a free citizen – well, one of a rank the authorities admire – is murdered at home, the legal assumption is that his slaves may have done it. They are all automatically tortured, to find out. This is good in one way, because their evidence is then acceptable in court; slaves can only be court witnesses if they are speaking under torture. On the other hand, evidence extracted under torture has a large flaw: it is quite unreliable. `So nobody thought of it originally, because Calpurnia said the death was suicide and everyone believed her?'