Shadows In Bronze Part 21

It was hardly a function where the host hovered on the doorstep in his best boots, waiting to shake hands; some of the hands he had invited were too clammy to touch. But Crispus must be in the house by now. I re-entered from the terrace to sneak an early look at him if I could.

I walked through the atrium. It was mainly red, painted with a mock colonnade of fluted yellow columns, through which ma.s.sive double doors appeared, decorated with emblematic figures and set with azure studs, among distant perspectives of fanciful scenery, religious objects and triumphal shields. A connecting room brought me into a peaceful enclosed garden - live plants plus horticultural landscapes on the inner walls. Beyond that lay the grand saloon, which opened through two majestic pillars straight into the main gardens - a wonderful, typically Campanian effect. Most of the couches for visitors of quality had been set up in the saloon, so when I looked in, noise and warmth and the perfume from scores of fresh garlands were spilling out into the summer night. Smaller reception rooms contained table s.p.a.ce for the lower sort. None of this was what I wanted. Fighting back through the scrum, by a lucky guess I found the lavish kitchen suite; with, as I expected, the master dining room stationed alongside.

The triclinium at the Villa Poppaea was approached through two pillars where winged centaurs crouched on guard. It was a small room, painted in the ethereal architectural style which characterized the villa, and included a fine mural of a mock courtyard gate with winged sea horses writhing on its architrave below a shrine to some patron G.o.d. On the back wall a particularly vivid painting of a bowl of figs caught my eye.

Tonight the room was piquant with fine, scented oils. The standard nine places, in couches of three, lay under graceful swags of embroidered cloth, beneath peac.o.c.k feathers arcing over tall floral displays; peac.o.c.ks in full display were also a motif in the decor of the house. I made a few mental notes of these gracious touches, in case I ever gave a dinner party at home.

I had arrived too early; Crispus was not there yet. The place of honour on the central couch still lay unoccupied.

I did see Aemilia Fausta, looking pleased with herself though tense, tearing at grapes on the left-hand couch - not quite the most exalted place. Two senators I failed to recognize were positioned more prominently, on either side of their host's empty place. A couple of women were flashing heavy jewellery, and there were two younger men fashionably arrayed in circular cheesecloth dinner gowns. One was our blond G.o.d Rufus, standing at the top of the room, talking to one of the senators. He had dumped the famous floozie on her own at the end of the table, just in front of me.

I knew her the minute I saw her. I gulped in a good eyeful before she turned and realized: long, pale feet, kicking each other fretfully as she was ignored by the magistrate; then a body that was slender and full at the same time, sheathed in some fine silvered cloth which looked as if it would slide wonderfully under a man's hands if he risked taking hold of her. Half a fortune in lapis lazuli beads circled her throat. Dark shining hair, curled at the front, then its heavy ma.s.s battened under a round gold net. That neat, deep-blue necklace and the close, golden cap made her look younger and sweeter; compared to the unashamed flamboyance all around, she had a compact, understated elegance. Tonight she was the best-looking woman in Campania, but people in Campania have garish taste and I was probably the only man who knew.

A slave tidied her sandals at the foot of her couch so she twisted round to thank him and saw me. I was lolling in the doorway with Fausta's instrument under my left arm and my right hand in her abandoned almond bowl. Until Helena looked back I had been munching my way methodically through the nuts.

Eyebrows I would have recognized across the width of the Circus Maximus shot up as the magistrate's escort glued her bonny brown eyes on me. I mouthed a silent, admiring whistle. The Senator's golden-capped daughter turned away (supplying an overhead view of a gorgeously haughty shoulder), with what she meant to be an expression of utter disdain.

She ruined the effect by preceding it with a distinctly sultry wink.

There was a flurry which heralded Crispus' approach, then I was hustled out. I shed the harp onto a slave as I went, ordering him to stow it at the back of Fausta's couch. (I had no intention of carting round someone else's cithara all night.) Accepting the situation, I let myself be pushed off to the public rooms. I would have liked to identify Crispus, but good timing is a crucial part of my work. Now, with his favoured guests chomping at the manger, was not the time to draw the big man's attention to my Emperor's communique.

I glanced into the saloon again but the appetizer course was already proceeding formally and although there were one or two free places they were beside men who looked unfriendly or women with fat fingers and false hair. I ducked round a file of waiters shouldering trays of dressed endive, then foraged among the lower orders until I flopped down with relief between Silvia and Petronius.

'Avoid the mussel dumplings!' Silvia advised, hardly bothering to greet me. 'Lucius saw them half an hour ago, congealing well.' She shared my mother's views on serving food. And I was not surprised to find she had sent our lad into the kitchen even here. 'The top table are having ostrich but there won't be enough for us-'

'What's it going to be then, Lucius?' I asked in some hilarity. I did know his name was Lucius, though I only called him that if we were sensationally drunk. 'One of those doss where a clever chef makes a ton of rock salmon look like forty different cuts of meat?'

Petro chuckled, before opening his mouth and dropping in Colymbadian olives; they were superb - huge fruits from Ancona, swum in amphorae Ion and herbs until they became infused with a fragrance you never find in the small, hard, brine-soaked Halmadian sort people normally eat.

Petronius a.s.sured me they had caught so many sea ba.s.s and lobster for this evening, the water level had sunk two inches in the Bay. Two annoying Campanian revellers were boasting about Baian oysters; we watched in silence, both of us remembering the oysters they dredge up in Britain from the cold, murky channel between Rutupiae and Thanet, and their dusky brothers from the north banks of the Tamesis Estuary... Petro tucked into the dinner wine with a wry face. It seemed fine to me, though I could tell he despised it. He had been tasting local vintages while I was away from Oplontis and enthused educationally about sparkling whites and robust young reds while I tackled the hors-d'oeuvres, feeling jealous of having given up his company.

I was really missing Petro. This morose pang reminded me I had work to do. The sooner I did it, the sooner I could escape from Herculaneum back to my friends.,.

If the hired waiters were hoping to get ready, they hoped wrong. The invitees were planning on a long night. The plebs displayed cautious manners but the senators and knights and their ladies were piling into the viands, all eating twice as much as they would at home since this was free. The noise and the scents of sizzling wine sauces must have blown on the breeze to Pompeii, three miles away. The liquor slaves were skidding on the wet soles of their bare feet as they rushed round with refills, barely bothering to show the charcoal to the hot wine scuttles or measure the spice. There was no doubt Crispus was achieving what he wanted. It was the sort of ghastly communal occasion that everyone would remember later as a wonderful time.

After a couple of hours the Spanish dancing troupe arrived. Those of us around the bottom table redoubled the cheer we were just putting up as our main course dishes hove in sight. The waiters were doing their best, with gristly good temper, but it was a job and a half feeding such a throng, and there were the usual aggravating women who ordered up veal medallions in fennel sauce - without the fennel, please!

I guessed that the entertainers were timed to suit the n.o.bs in the triclinium, who had their own swift fleet of carvers and carriers under supervision of a wily major-domo. Sure enough, when I went to ask the winged centaurs how matters were progressing, a great silver platter with one forlorn cinnamon pear was just coming out after the dessert course as a table tray of finger bowls swept in. I could hear the furious clack of Hispanic castanets, while one of those singers with no voice but a great deal of bravado was expressing anguish loudly in ferocious Spanish style. Through the portals I glimpsed a fiery girl with floor-length blue-black hair and not much in her clothes coffer striking att.i.tudes which demonstrated her nakedness most attractively. I was so busy admiring her formidable fandango I forgot to look out for Crispus. Lackeys staggered past me under cornucopiae of fresh fruits, some so exotic I was unsure what their names were, then the doors slamined, and I was shooed away again.

I rushed back and in an undertone told Petro about the dancer, he whistled enviously at this bonus of my job.

Silvia had organized a main course for me. I managed to cram in a gingered duck wing, a potted salad, and a few mouthfuls of roast pork in plums, then I nipped back to the triclinium hastily. Things had moved on faster than I wanted. The host and most of his private party had dispersed. The two women with the jewellery were talking about their children, ignoring one of the younger men, before whom a different dancer with hypnotic stomach muscles was spiralling majestically.

Judging by the care with which the catering had been ordered, I reckoned my man had emerged now for some heavy social mingling. Making himself agreeable, as Helena Justina called it. Once they had eaten his dinner, people would feel even better about him if they saw him putting himself out to compliment them on their dress sense and enquire after their elder sons' careers. He would be moving round doing good work for himself; Aufidius Crispus was an operator on a determined scale.

I ducked out and started searching through the reception rooms, asking flushed waiters to point out Crispus if he was in sight. A perfume-sprinkler sent me to look for him in an inner peristyle garden, but no luck.

No one was there - except a quiet, solitary woman on a stone seat, looking as if she was waiting for someone. A young woman, in a stint dress and not much jewellery, with fine, dark hair fastened under a round gold net...

It was her own business if she had managed to fix up a treat for herself. I was not about to interfere and spoil her a.s.signation. They only reason I hung around was that a man appeared. He clearly thought she was waiting there for him, and I thought the same. So I stopped, to see who he was.

I didn't know him. But after I had decided that, I stayed there anyway because Helena Justina was giving the impression that neither did she.

L.

He emerged from a group of hibiscus bushes as if he had been up to something a well-brought-up young woman would rather not know. He was drunk enough to greet Helena as a marvellous discovery, yet not enough to be deflected by her frosty att.i.tude. I a.s.sumed she could handle it; this swaying lecher was no worse a social menace than M. Didius Falco, droolingly affectionate - and a few brisk insults usually handled me.

This garden was decorated in a simple rustic style. I stood tight against a pillar which was painted with dark diagonal stripes; it was dusk now, so neither of them noticed I was there. He said something which I could not catch, but I gathered her reply: 'No; I'm sitting alone because that's how I want to be!'

The man swung nearer, puffing himself up tipsily. Helena ought to have slipped off straight into the crowd but she was obstinate, and perhaps the fellow she really had planned to meet in the garden seemed worth a few risks. He spoke again, and she insisted, 'No. I'd like you to go!'

He laughed. I knew he would.

Then she did get up. The pale, supple cloth of her gown swung from her shoulder brooches, trying to drape itself straight - emphasizing where the lady beneath it was not.

'For heavens' sake!' Her bitter exasperation struck me at once - but he was far too fluthered with drink. 'My head aches,' Helena raged, 'my heart aches; the noise is making me dizzy and the food is making me queasy! I was sitting by myself because there is n.o.body I want to be with - especially not you!'

She tried to sweep by, but misjudged it. I was already moving when he caught her arm. Drunk or not, he was quick; his other hand was grappling brutally under her gown as I leapt the low wall which connected the rustic columns and covered the ground between us with a roar. Then I seized him by both shoulders and dragged him off.

There was a crack of heads, one of them mine. He was fairly athletic, and his energy surged unexpectedly, so he landed some punches. Root ginger repeated on me faintly, though I was far too angry to feel much else. Once his accuracy started fading I squared him up and demonstrated my disapproval with a series of unrelenting blows in the parts of his body which my trainer had always advised me never to hit. After that I screwed his head under one elbow and hauled him to a st.u.r.dy well when I let a torrent from its fountain spew straight into his lungs.

While he was still on the healthy side of drowning, Helena's low voice warned, 'Stop it, Falco; you're killing the man!' So I plunged him under a couple more times then stopped.

I propelled him through the colonnade to a corridor, where I sped him on his way with my party sandal in the small of his back. He sprawled headlong. I waited until I saw him starting to struggle upright, then strode back to Helena.

'Why were you skulking?' she accused by way of thanks. 'Coincidence.'

'Don't spy on me!'

'And don't expect me to let you be attacked!'

She was sitting on the rim of the well, hugging herself defensively. I put out my hand to her cheek but she drew back from another male a.s.sault; I flinched myself. After a moment she stopped shaking.

'If you still want to sit in the garden I'll stand guard.' 'Did he hurt you?' she asked, ignoring that.

'Not as much as I hurt him.' She frowned. 'He's upset you; you ought to have company.' She exclaimed; I bit my lip. 'Sorry; that was cra.s.s. I heard what you said-'

Then Helena Justina let out a whisper which sounded like my private name, s.n.a.t.c.hed the hand she had recoiled from, and buried her face in my palm. 'Marcus, Marcus, I just wanted to be somewhere quiet so I could think.'

'What about?'

'Everything I ever do seems to turn out wrong. Everything I ever want becomes impossible...

As I struggled to react to this, she suddenly looked up at me. 'I beg your pardon -' Still gripping my hand so I could not escape, she demanded in her normal purposeful voice as if nothing else had happened, 'How are you getting on with Crispus? Have you talked to him yet?

I confessed I had still not found him. So the n.o.ble young lady jumped from her wellhead and decided she had best come and help. I did mention about being sharp, and tough, and good at my job (etcetera). Before I got to the part about how I loathed being supervised, she had hurried me out of the garden and was coming with me whether I wanted her or not.

LI.

I should never have allowed this. Her father would disapprove of his flower rushing about, and my sort of work is best done alone.

On the other hand, Helena Justina always did seem to find a plausible reason to ignore social conventions, and as we combed through the great reception rooms I certainly saved time having somebody who could identify the man I was looking for. Or not, in fact; because Crispus was never there.

'Is he a family friend? '

'No; my father hardly knows him. But Pertinax did. When I was married he came to dinner several times...' Turbot in Caraway, no doubt.

As we went out into the s.p.a.cious formal gardens which extended beyond the central features of the house, she slipped her hand through my arm. I had seen her like this before. Helena hated crowds. The bigger they were, the more her own sense of isolation grew. That was why she was clinging to me; I was still a menace, but I had a friendly face.

'Hmm!' I mused, as we stood at the far end of the garden among fine-scented roses, looking back towards the stupendous fluted pillars of the grand saloon. 'This would be nice work if we had time to enjoy it -' I tilted my wreath to a more debonair angle, but Helena answered severely: 'We don't have time!'

She hauled me back indoors and we started to explore the smaller rooms. As we crossed the lofty atrium we pa.s.sed one of the senators who had dined in the triclinium, already leaving the party with his wife. He nodded goodbye to Helena, with a grim glance at me as if I was just the sort of low-down plebeian rake he would expect to find with a senator's daughter twined around him at a party like this.

'That's Fabius Nepos,' Helena told me in an undertone, not bothering to untwine her arm just to save an old gent's blood pressure. 'Very influential in the Senate. He's elderly and traditional; not inclined to speculate-'

'Looks like we can a.s.sume he's one prospective collaborator who is going home early, unimpressed!'

Encouraged, we pressed on into a smaller hall which was decorated with illusionary perspectives of Corinthian columns, theatrical masks, a peac.o.c.k to please the popular taste, and an elevated Delphian tripod to add a touch of culture for the rut. An extremely serious man with a beard was talking about philosophy. He looked as if he believed himself. The people who were privileged to hear his visionary dissertation looked as if they all thought they would probably believe him too - only nature had denied them the wherewithal to catch his drift.

I did. I thought it was tosh.

When we peeped back into the triclinium, Aemilia Fausta was sitting morosely by herself, plucking at her cithara. We ducked out before she spotted us, giggling together uncharitably. Later we discovered a long corridor set with stone benches for waiting clients, where Fausta's brother and a group of similar well-barbered aristos were standing round with wine cups, watching some of the younger male waiters playing dice on their knees on the floor. Rufus looked surprised to see us, but made no attempt to reclaim Helena so I waved and we sped on.

She seemed in no mood to go sedately back to him. Her spirit was up now. She pushed ahead of me eagerly, sweeping open double doors and rapidly scanning the occupants as if she hardly noticed the ribaldry from the drinkers or the startling combinations of people who had wrapped themselves together for the purposes of pleasure. It was not, as I remarked at the time, the kind of party you would take your Great-aunt Phoebe to.

'I expect an aunt could cope with it,' Helena disagreed. (Thinking about my own Auntie Phoebe, she was probably right.) 'But let's pray your mother never finds out you came!'

'I'll say you brought me -' I grinned suddenly. I had noticed a welcome alteration in her appearance. 'You've washed your hair!'

'A lot of times!' Helena admitted. Then she blushed.

In one colonnade the musicians who had come with the Spanish dancers were now strumming and fluting for their own amus.e.m.e.nt - about six times as well as they had played for the girls.

Not a good night for fountains. By one in a small tetrastyle atrium we saw the other senator from the triclinium, spread- eagled between two slaves while he was gloriously, obliviously sick.

'I don't know his name,' Helena told me. 'He had a lot to drink. He's the commander of the Misenum fleet -' As he sagged between the slaves we watched for a moment, admiring the fleet commander's total abandonment.

After half an hour of fruitless search we both stopped, frowning with disgust.

'Oh, this is hopeless!'

'Don't give up; I'll find him for you -' The part of me that wanted to snort that I would find him for myself backed down happily before the part that was smitten with honest l.u.s.t. When Helena Justina was bright-eyed with determination she looked adorable...

'Stop it, Falco!'

'What?'

'Stop looking at me,' she growled through her teeth, 'in that way that makes my toes curl!'

'When I look at you, lady, that's how I have to look!' 'I feel as if you were going to back me into a bush-' 'I can think of better places,' I said. And backed her towards an empty couch.

The annoying bundle wriggled out from under me just as for once I had her in a satisfactory clinch. I landed on the couch in the graceful position the Fates liked to see me in: flat on my face.

'Of course!' she exclaimed. 'He'll have a room! I should have thought of that!'

'What? Have I missed something?'

'Oh, hurry, Falco! Get up and straighten your wreath!'

Two minutes later she had me back in the atrium, where she crisply extracted from the chamberlain directions to his master's dressing room. Three minutes after that we were standing in a bedroom with a dark-red painted ceiling, just off the seafront side of the house.

In the five seconds since we had stepped inside his borrowed boudoir, I had learned two things. Aufidius Crispus was wearing an ensemble which made his ambitions perfectly clear: his dinner robe was deeply dyed with the juice of a thousand Tyrian sea-sh.e.l.ls to the luxuriant crushed purple which emperors reckon suits their complexions best. Also, his luck was better than mine: when we came in he had the prettiest after-dinner dancer pinioned on a bed with her rose behind his ear and half her breast in his mouth, while he was banging away at her Spanish tambourine with breathtaking virility.

I turned Helena Justina against my shoulder to shield her from embarra.s.sment.

Then I waited until he had finished. In my business it always pays to be polite.

LII.

The dancer slipped out past us, bearing her rose for re-use elsewhere. Evidently the incident had been rapid and routine.

'Beg your pardon, sir; did I put you off your stroke?'

'Frankly, no!'

Helena Justina sat quickly on a stool, more straightbacked than usual. She could have waited outside, though I was glad that she stayed to see me through this.

Crispus glanced at her without much interest, then he settled in an armed chair, shuffled his purple folds back into order, plugged his head back through a laurel wreath, and offered audience to me.

'Sir! I'd thank you for inviting me to your highly select symposium, but I came with Aemilia Fausta, so 'invitation' is hardly the word!' He smiled faintly.

He was in his middle fifties, with a tireless, boyish look. He had a swarthy complexion with slightly heavy though good-looking features (a fact he was rather too aware of), plus a great array of regular teeth which looked as though he whitened them with powdered horn; he showed them at every opportunity, to emphasize what superb teeth they were and how many he still owned. Beneath the wreath, which he wore as if he was born with it, I admired the careful way his barber had layered off his hair. (Probably that same afternoon, judging by the fatty whiff of Gallic pomade which hung around the dressing room.) 'What can I do for you, young man? Who are you, first?' 'Marcus Didius Falco.'

He leaned on his thin thoughtfully. 'Are you the Falco who sent home my friend Maenius Celer with some colourful bruising and stomach cramps?'

'Could be. Or maybe your Celer just ate a bad oyster and b.u.mped into a wall . I'm a private informer. I'm one of the dispatch boys who have been trying to deliver a letter to you from Vespasian.'

The atmosphere crackled as he sat more alert in his chair.

"I don't like you, Falco!" Isn't that what I am supposed to say? Then you answer something like, "That's all sight, sir; I don't much care for you!" I could see at once that this would be nothing like convincing the chief priest Gordia.n.u.s; Crispus was really expecting to enjoy our interview.

'I suppose you'll throw me out now, sir?'