FIFTY NINE
Everything was still against me.
As I set off, all the battered wine wagons and marble carts in Rome were struggling to leave the city before dawn. After the Games ended the private hire transport had taken off the audience and then dispersed. I had to walk. From the Circus to the Praetorian Camp is a damned long way.
By the Gardens of Maecenas I shoved a drunk off a donkey, commandeering it for the Empire. The drunk didn't care. He was out of it. The donkey put up a fight, but I was in a hard mood. I kicked him into action and cajoled him the rest of the way to the Porta Tiburtina with a stick I found; there I fell off just as the vigiles were preparing to disperse.
`Hold it! Urgent have any private vehicles left this way tonight?'
'Oh, shit, Falco. It's been a heavy night; there's been hundreds.'
`Got the list?'
`We thought we were finished; we've already, sent it off to the Prefect.'
`Help me out, lads – a big four-horse; carriage, or a sit-upand-beg?'
`Could well have been, but don't ask us!'
`Jupiter – you're a disgrace to public office! Is this why I paid my census tax?'
`Give over – who coughs up the tax?'
`Not enough people to pay for an efficient watch, apparently. Stop here. Don't argue – the creep has snatched a young girl who was to marry a senator. We've got to find her. Search everything that comes this way and try to get word to the other city gates
I hauled my stolen donkey back into service. We went under the arcade of the Anio Vetus, then rode parallel to the huge triple mass of the Aqua Marcia, carrying both the Tepula and the Julia above it. Unplanned originally, the newer channels were not even centred; the arches had had to be reinforced, but even so the top cover of the Marcia was cracking due to the uneven distribution of weight. Thanks: to Bolanus, I knew these details intimately. I also knew what might be floating down in their waters soon.
I forced the donkey to the Praetorian Camp. As always it was a bad experience. The camp itself is a monstrous spread in the shadow of the Servian Walls, mirrored by an even more gigantic parade ground that takes up most of the space between the Viminal and Colline gates; the troops inside are bastards to a man.
It was fairly quiet for once. So quiet I had the odd experience of hearing the beasts roaring in the Imperial menagerie just outside the city. From a clubroom nearby my ears were assailed by the distinctive -noise of Guardsmen finishing off their routine fifteen flagons a night. The set of bullies on the gate must have been halfway there too, but they carried it well. The wine made them slow to respond to an emergency, but infused them with a certain wild flair once they got the hang of things. A kind soul patted my donkey, who responded by biting him. The burly Guardsman was so tough – or so tipsy – he never felt a thing.
The centurion of the Urbans who had been instructed to stay on alert to help us was a neat, mild soul who had turned in for an early night. Nice to think of the hard-baked and notorious city guardians having a quiet read in their tidy bunks then blowing out their lamps while the city rampaged, untroubled by their attentions. After an agonising- wait, he
turned up in a long Greek nightshirt just to tell me that without a judge's warrant he was going back to bed. I advised him to check how much pension he had collected in the regimental savings bank, because for exile in further Armenia it might not be enough. He sniffed, and left.
In despair, I heard myself pouring out my troubles to the Praetorian duty watch. These big lads in shiny breastplates were a soft touch for a heartbreaking tale. Ever keen to put one over on the Urbans, whom they regarded as inferior barrack companions, they led me to the prepared horses, and wittily suggested that they should look the other way while I snuck, off with one. I thanked them, pointed out that the horses were in fact mules, then chose the best.
First light was blossoming above the Seven Hills as I spent half an hour kick-starting my stubborn mount, then galloped out of Rome on the Via Tiburtina, chasing after a killer, who might not even have come this way.
SIXTY
It was twenty miles, and probably more than that, from Rome to Tibur. As I rode out in the cold, grey early morning there was ample time for thinking. Most of my thoughts were bad. The easiest to bear was that I had totally misjudged events, and was making a pointless journey. Claudia would turn up; she might be safely at home already. If she had actually been abducted, Petronius Longus or somebody else might have seen it and arrested the man; while I was looking for Petro on the streets he could have been sequestered in some patrol house, applying hooks to the killer's anatomy:- Or the vehicle searches that I had ordered might discover the girl before she came to harm. Her abductor might be arrested at the city gates. My last hope was that even if she was now on her way to Tibur, helpless and terrified- assuming she was still alive – I might manage to overtake her kidnapper…
I would find her. Nothing would stop me. But she was probably already dead; In view of what she might have had to endure first, I almost prayed that by now she was.
For the first few hours I saw nobody. I travelled out on the empty Campagna, the only traveller on the road: It was far too early even for the farmers to have woken. Now the mule had settled into his rhythm, the music of his galloping hooves soothed my panic. I tried not to think directly about Claudia, so instead I remembered Sosia.
Hers was another death I could have and should have prevented. She had grown up with Helena's family, another young girl they cherished, for whose terrible loss they would
always blame me We never spoke of it, but none of us would ever forget. Sosia and Helena had been very close, At first Helena had blamed me bitterly for her young cousin's death,
though she had allowed herself to forgive me. How could I expect her to overlook the same fault a second time? Aelianus would by now have told her that Claudia had gone missing: every moment that passed on my solitary journey was a moment Helena would spend at home fretting over the dark fate of her young friend, losing faith in me and worrying about me at the same time. I had lost faith in myself before I left the Tiburtina Gate.
It grew light. I was riding into the sun. It shone low over the Sabine Hills, somewhere perhaps lighting a hovel where scores of poor women had been tortured, killed, and cut up. The tricky light made me more weary than I was already. Squinting into the glare sapped my fading concentration. It made me irritable and heartsick. I had spent too many hours riding against time on filthy quests to free the world of villains. Worse villains only arose to take their places. Fouler in their habits, more vindictive in their attitudes. -
People in the farmhouses were beginning to stir. I began to meet country carts. Most were coming the wrong way, towards Rome. Those I passed heading east delayed me frustratingly while I searched them. Angry at these hold-ups, which. I dared not omit, I grew sick of cabbage nets and turnips, damson punnets and leaky skins of wine. Toothless old men who smelled of garlic held me; up as they slowly pulled coverings aside. Excited youths with untrustworthy eyes, stared ghoulishly. I asked them all if they had been passed by another vehicle; those who denied it sounded as if they were lying, those who thought they might have been were only saying what I obviously wanted to hear.
I hated the Campagna. I hated the dreamers and dawdlers who lived on it. I hated myself. Why did I do this? I wanted to be a poet, working in some peaceful library, cut off from the midden of humanity, absorbed in my own unreal world of the mind. (Supported financially by a millionaire patron in love with the arts. Falco? No, chance!),