I told her my new address. She returned graciously that now her father would be able to send the cast-off couch they had promised me. 'Father was trying to contact you urgently yesterday. He had been approached by Anacrites.'

I swore. 'The man's a complete pest!'

'You will have to do something about it, Marcus. With him hounding you, how can you do your work?'

'I'll deal with it.'

'Promise?'

'Yes. Life's becoming impossible.'

I returned to the issue of my new address: 'I'm living in two rooms and another will be the office; that leaves one which could quite easily become yours. You know what I want-'

'A tolerant housekeeper, a free bedmate--and someone brave to catch the crawlies who scuttle out of the floorboards!--No; that's wrong,' Helena corrected herself.

'Someone timid who will let you batter the insects and look tough!'

Well the offer stays open, but I don't intend to remind you again.' She knew it; pleading for her attention was not my style. 'Your n.o.ble pa will want you at his party; I'd better go'

Helena reacted with her customary snootiness: 'So you had.' She relented: 'Are you coming again?'

'When I can,' I answered, accepting the weaker note in her voice as the nearest I would get to an apology. 'I just have a lot to think about. But now I've met the woman, it ought not to be beyond me to sort it all out pretty smartly.'

'Do you mean you won't come until the case is over?'

'That sounds like a brush-off.'

Helena stuck out her chin. 'I'm getting the brush-off. It was a sensible suggestion.'

My teeth set. 'G.o.ds, I hate sensible women! You decide. I'll come if you ask me. Whenever you want me you know where to find me.'

I waited for her to dissuade me, but Helena Justina was as obstinate as me. It was not the first time we had driven ourselves into some pointless deadlock.

I was leaving. She was letting me. 'Io, my darling! What I really need is a girl to stay at home and take messages!'

'You can't afford to pay her,' Helena said.

Chapter XXVIII.

Boasting that I would settle the case quickly had been rash. The case was nowhere near its end yet. In fact it was only just beginning, as I would soon find out.

As I sloped off home I was thinking less about work than about women. A normal preoccupation--though weighing on me more heavily tonight. My clients, Severina, my ladylove, my mother, all had designs on my peace of mind. Even my sister Maia, whom I had still not seen since Ma sprung me out of prison, loomed as a subject of guilt because I had not yet made any attempt to thank her for rescuing the betting tags which financed my new apartment... It was all getting beyond me. I needed to take action; the best kind of action, which is nothing at all: I had to stand back, give myself a breather, and let the ladies gently mull.

I planned to spend the next three days devoting myself to my own pleasure and profit. I even managed it for two of the days: not a bad success rate for a plan of mine.

First I spent a morning in bed, thinking.

Then, as I still officially worked for the Emperor (since I had never bothered to inform him otherwise) I went to the Palatine and applied to see Vespasian. I hung around the labyrinth of Palace offices for a whole afternoon before a flunkey deigned to tell me that Vespasian was away, enjoying a summer holiday in the Sabine hills. Now that he wore the purple, the old man liked to remind himself of his humble roots by kicking off the Imperial sandals and wriggling his toes in the dust of his old family estates.

Afraid I might run into Anacrites if I stayed too long, I left the Palace and put the Falco personality at the disposal of my private friends. That night I dined with Petronius Longus at his house. He had a wife and three young children, so it was a quiet occasion which ended early (and, by our standards, fairly soberly).

In the morning I redirected my request for an audience to Vaspasian's elder son, t.i.tus Caesar. t.i.tus was governing the Empire in virtual partnership with Vespasian so he held ample authority to overrule Anacrites in my little bit of bother. He was also known as a soft touch. This meant my appeal had to take its place in a mountain of other scrolls full of hard-luck stories from ambiguous characters. t.i.tus worked hard, but in August lavishing clemency on down-and-outs was bound to proceed at a slower pace than normal.

While I was waiting for my own screed to grab his Caesar-ship's jaded attention I went to a horse sale with my brother-in-law Famia. I hated to part with Little Sweetheart, but the chariot stables where Famia worked as a vet for the Greens could not be expected to house a horse of mine for ever--well, not for nothing, which was the present arrangement (unbeknown to the Greens). So Famia and I auctioned poor old Little Sweetheart, before the cost of keeping him in hay outstripped his winnings. With money in my pocket I made a trek to the Saepta Julia where I let myself be tempted by a dirty, candelabrum which looked as if it might clean up (wrong, as usual) and an Egyptian cartouche ring (which fitted when I tried it on but felt too big when I got it home). Then I browsed in a couple of literary dealers and came away with an armful of Greek plays (don't ask me why; I hate Greek plays). I took some cash to my mother for her day-to-day expenses, and finally stowed what was left of the proceeds in my bankbox in the Forum.

Next day there was still no invitation to climb up to the Palace and make t.i.tus laugh with my tale of woe, so I did go to see my sister Maia. She let me hang around her house for most of the morning, which led to lunch, followed by an afternoon asleep on her sun terrace. I promised her some of the Pincian cakes but Maia knew how to handle me; she managed to upgrade this to the offer of a house-warming in my s.p.a.cious new abode. Like a speculator promising to square things with his banker I made a rapid escape: forgetting to agree a date.

Petronius and I spent that evening touring various wineshops to see if they were as good as we remembered from our youth. What with the free cups we were offered to encourage us to come more often, the flagons I bought him, and the drinks Petronius (who was a fair man) stood me in return, this occasion ended neither early nor soberly. I saw him home, since a watch captain risks all sorts of vindictive-ness if villains he may have arrested in the past spot him stumbling about the city.

His wife Silvia had locked us out. Still, law officers know how to pick most locks and informers can force the ones that defeat them, so we got ourselves indoors without too many of his neighbours flinging open their shutters to bawl at our noise. We broke a bolt, but the door itself remained in one piece. Petro offered me a bed, but Silvia had come downstairs cursing us; she was trying to repair the door lock with a pair of eyebrow tweezers while Petro manhandled her affectionately with a view to a peace treaty (unlikely, I thought). Then their children woke up frightened, and Petro's youngest daughter started crying that her kitten had been sick in a sandal--so I left.

Like most decisions made after trying five or six amphorae of mediocre vintages in cheap commercial drinking rooms, this was not a good idea.

An important occasion: the first time I tried to find my new apartment when crazily drunk. I got lost. A big dog with a pointed snout nearly bit me and several prost.i.tutes shouted uncalled-for abuse. Then, when I finally located the Piscina Publica, and found my own street, I failed to notice that a low-rank five-days-in-uniform Praetorian Guardlet was waiting to greet me--with a warrant from Anacrites, a painful set of leg irons, and three other baby-faced recruits in shiny breastplates who were all as keen as Baetican mustard to carry out their first official mission by arresting a dangerous renegade who apparently shared my name.

After they fastened the irons on me, I just lay down in the road and told them I would go wherever they wanted--but they would have to carry me.

Chapter XXIX.

I spent the next two days recovering from my hangover, back in the Lautumiae jail.

Chapter x.x.x.

By the second evening I was reacquainted with my old cellmate the rat. I tried keeping to one corner so as not to inconvenience him, but he was starting to look at me hungrily. I had to disappoint him. I was called away; someone very influential made enquiries about my case.

Two of the schoolboy Praetorians turned up to fetch me. At first I resisted. My hangover had been replaced by light-headedness. I was in no state to endure a confrontation with Anacrites and the bullies he used to encourage frank confessions. No fear of that! Anacrites had planned to imprison me until I was incontinent and toothless. With a kick to my kneecap the jailor let slip that a High-Up wanted a look at me. My pet.i.tion to t.i.tus must have surfaced on the pile...

The young troopers were bursting with excitement at the prospect of a royal audience. In the past the Imperial bodyguard had shown itself p.r.o.ne to replacing the Caesar who was entrusted to their care with anyone who caught their eye after a good night's carousing (Claudius, for heaven's sake, and that primped liability Otho). Not any longer. On his father's accession t.i.tus had shrewdly taken direct charge of the Praetorians; so long as he gave them a good bounty on his birthday, they would stick by their own commander like burs on a shepherdess's skirt. Now Proculus and Justus (if you happen to get arrested, always find out the names of your guards) were about to come face to face with their famous new Prefect in their first week, thanks to me.

They were so wrapped up in their own glory they tactlessly escorted me across the open Forum, still in chains. But they were too new in uniform to have lost all their charity; they let me scoop up a drink from a public fountain to cure my dehydration before dragging me into the cool of the Cryptoporticus, that long galleried entrance which leads up to the various palaces that hog the crest of the Palatine. Outside the guardroom their centurion, a hardened regular, made them take the leg irons off me. He knew what was proper. We exchanged the imperceptible scowl of old soldiers as he inspected his inexperienced rankers for sloppy belts and smears on their armour. He came with us to the throne room, fretting in case his babes put a step wrong.

At the first waiting room an usher who claimed to know nothing about me showed us into a side cubicle on our own. Proculus and Justus were starting to look rosy; the centurion and I had been through this stupid quarantine on other occasions so we saved our sweat.

Half an hour later we were moved to a corridor, which was full of tired people in limp togas hanging about. Proculus and Justus exchanged glances, thinking they would be stuck in this endless trail of ceremonial long after their watch was supposed to end. But immediately my name was called; minor flunkeys bustled us past the crowd; then we reached a cavernous antechamber where an elegantly spoken secretary inspected us like vermine while he crossed us off a list.

'This man was summoned an hour ago! What kept you so long?'

A major-domo produced Anacrites, looking sleek in a grey tunic; like a conjuror's tame dove--but not so cute. In contrast to me he was well bathed and barbered, with his straight hair slicked back in a way I disliked intensely. It made him look like the trickster he was. At the sight of him I felt crumpled and crusty-tempered, with a mouth like the bottom of a cementmaker's hod. He narrowed his pale, suspicious eyes at me, but at this stage I forwent the chance of insulting him. Next minute Proculus and Justus had been ordered to march me in.

When we first entered through the grand travertine entrance pillars, Anacrites was the trusted official and I the seedy hangdog, under guard and in disgrace. But no protocol that I knew said I had to go along with it. Two days in bruising leg irons made it easy to adopt a brave expression and a limp. Which meant the first thing t.i.tus Caesar asked me was, 'Something wrong with your leg, Falco?'

'Just an old fracture, sir. I broke a leg last winter, on that job for your father in Britain; it bothers me when I'm cramped up without exercise...'

'Cut the pathos, Falco!' Anacrites growled.

t.i.tus shot a sharp glance at the spy. 'Britain; I remember!' His tone was clipped. The work I did for his father in Britain was too confidential to be mentioned in detail, but Anacrites would know of it. I heard him mutter with annoyance. I also noticed the secretary, whose job was to take shorthand notes, hold his stylus discreetly at rest as confidential subject matter came up. His exotic oriental eye caught mine momentarily; finely tuned to atmosphere, he antic.i.p.ated fun.

Then t.i.tus gestured to a slaveboy. 'Didius Falco needs looking after. Will you bring him a seat?'

Even at that stage Anacrites had no real need to worry. I had never made any secret of my rampant republican views. Dealing with the Imperial family always caused me difficulty. The Chief Spy knew as well as I did what to expect. M Didius Falco was about to be rude, ungracious, and a fool to himself as usual.

Chapter x.x.xI.

So there we were. t.i.tus relaxed on a throne, with one ankle crossed on the opposite knee, crushing the braid-encrusted pleats of his purple overtunic. To the slaveboy it seemed natural to place my cushioned footstool near the only other person who was seated, so he carried it right up onto the plinth at the base of His Caesarship's throne. He helped me hitch myself up. Anacrites took a step forward, then suppressed the protest as he was forced to accept his Imperial master's courtesy to me. I refrained from smirking; Anacrites was far too dangerous. I perched on my footstool, occasionally rubbing my leg unconsciously, as if it was a habit when my poor cracked bones were distressing me...

t.i.tus was thirty. Too happy to be called handsome and too approachable for his rank, though a grave sense of public duty had recently sobered him. Even those forced to endure existence in the provinces knew from the coinage that he had a less craggy version of his father's bourgeois face, and curly hair. While he was a boy that mop probably caused his mother to pa.s.s the same remarks as mine did, but had Flavia Domitilla still been alive she could have relaxed now: a circus of hairdressers kept her eldest trim, so he would not let the Empire down in front of foreign amba.s.sadors.

t.i.tus and I made a nice friendly group, up on his plinth. My letter was in his hand; he tossed the roll back at me. There was a glint in his eye. t.i.tus was always so gracious I suspected a joke--yet the charm was genuine. 'This is a moving narrative!'

'Sorry, Caesar. I'm a spare-time poet; my style tends to lyrical excess.' t.i.tus grinned. He was a patron of the arts. I was on safe ground.

It was the wrong moment to force the Chief Spy to watch us enjoying ourselves. Infected by my own wariness, t.i.tus gave Anacrites the nod to approach and state his case.

Anacrites took the floor without bl.u.s.ter. I had seen him in action on other occasions so was prepared for the worst. He possessed the true bureaucrat's knack of sounding reasonable whatever lies he told.

In some ways I felt sorry for the unprincipled carbuncle. His was a cla.s.sic case of career blight. He must have studied his craft under Nero, those crazy years of suspicion and terror, when prospects for intelligence agents had never looked more golden. Then as he reached his prime he found himself stuck with the new Emperor Vespasian, a man so irredeemably provincial that he did not really believe in palace spies. So instead of enjoying himself at the centre of some crawling network of undercover termites, Anacrites now had to devote every day to proving that his place on the payroll was justified.

No joke. Vespasian was tight with the salaries bill. One slip, one mistake in diplomacy, one door opening too suddenly to reveal him napping in his office when he had said he would be out on surveillance, and the Chief Spy would find himself selling catfish on some Tiber wharf. He knew it. I knew it. He realised I knew. Perhaps that explained some things.

I made no attempt to interrupt his speech. I wanted him to shoot all the dice from his cup. Out it poured, a subtle slime of misinterpreted facts, at the end of which he sounded like the honest professional whose superiors had lumbered him with a bungling outsider to work with. I emerged as a straightforward thief.

The facts were straightforward too: some ingots of lead from the Imperial mines had been stored in a warehouse. I knew they were there, forgotten by the Treasury. When I was sent to Campania I took the ingots with me, and sold the lead for waterpipes. I had never paid back the proceeds.

t.i.tus listened with his hands linked behind his head. He himself was not a great speechmaker but he had served his time as a barrister before he came into higher tilings. Despite his impatient energy he knew how to listen. Only when he was sure Anacrites had finished complaining did he turn to me.

'The case against you was well put. The lead ingots belonged to the State; you took them without leave.'

'Anacrites is a good speaker; it was a good exercise in rhetoric. But Caesar, there's no case.' t.i.tus shifted position. I had his full attention; he was leaning forwards now with both elbows on his knees. 'Caesar, I had a particular reason to respect those bars of lead; I probably hacked some of the ore from the seam myself,' I paused, to give those present time to absorb another reference to my mission in Britain, where I had been forced to disguise myself as a lead-mine slave. 'Harsh, Caesar--but necessary, for your father's sake. And when I used up the ingots, I was in disguise again. We were seeking a fugitive. Anacrites can confirm it was a frustrating task, one on which he himself had spent several fruitless weeks--' His jaw stiffened pleasingly. 'I was asked to try my own ingenuity. Unorthodox methods were, after all, why your father was augmenting his regular staff with me--'

'True,' said t.i.tus to Anacrites pointedly.

'--acting as a black-market plumber helped me find the missing man. So the disguise worked, Caesar, as you know.'

In a silky voice Anacrites reminded t.i.tus that the ingots I borrowed might have been needed as evidence in a conspiracy case.

'What prosecutor was going to produce multiple tonnage of metal in open court?' I asked. 'We all knew the ingots existed. There were doc.u.ments to prove it: the Praetorian Guards had stacked them, and the victor of Jerusalem won't need me to tell him that the first thing military conscripts are taught is to count everything they handle...'

t.i.tus smiled tolerantly. He was willing me to explain the charge away. I was not naive. I knew why it probably suited the Empire to set me loose: t.i.tus and his father must have some real pig of a problem they wanted me to solve for them.

'I suppose,' Anacrites suggested heavily, 'you intended to repay the money from selling the ingots? Or have you blown away your profits on women and drink?'

I looked shocked. Just one woman (Helena Justina); though on holiday in Campania she and I, and a nephew of mine, and Petronius Longus, and Petro's wife and family, had freely eaten and drunk the Treasury's cash, using my imperial mission as our excuse. 'Don't blame me for the delay, Anacrites! Being thrust into the Lautumiae hampered me unfairly--though I did make use of my few days of freedom to see my banker on the very subject of transferring funds to the Privy purse...'

'Good news!' t.i.tus sounded relieved. Having to write off the money was his main stumbling block to releasing me.

'I must warn you though, Caesar,' I apologised swiftly, 'since I was selling the metal on back-door terms, the sum involved is not as great as it would have been using official franchises...'

'He's lying!' snarled Anacrites. 'I have a complete list of his a.s.sets--' A short list! 'This windbag hasn't a bean!'

So much for my banker keeping his client's confidence... Yet I knew that Anacrites had pried open my private money chest the day before I sold my racehorse; I now possessed funds he must have overlooked. Now there was no escape. Even if it ruined me I was not prepared to let a pernicious undercover agent do me down. Sighing, I kissed goodbye to Little Sweetheart (or what was left of the poor nag after my Saepta Julia spending spree).

'There is a liar in this throne room, but it's not me!' I pulled off my signet ring. 'Caesar, if you will send someone to my banker we can settle this tonight--' Suddenly suspicious, Anacrites chewed his lip.

'Spoken like an upright citizen!' t.i.tus, embarra.s.sed, aimed a frown at the spy while a minion took my ring away as a sanction to my financier to bankrupt me. 'That does seem to cover your charges, Anacrites!'

'True, Caesar--if the cash comes!'

'You can trust me! Mind you,' I grumbled touchily, 'I don't want to be cleared on false pretences. If this is just a gag in order to make me available for some filthy undercover mission which none of your regular Palace employees will handle, frankly I prefer jail--'

t.i.tus soothed me, too eagerly for honesty: 'Didius Falco, there are no complications; I p.r.o.nounce you a free man!'

'And a free agent?' I haggled.

'As usual!' he chipped--but then, overcome by his keenness he jumped straight in: 'So, are you free to do something for my father?'

Excellent: one bound from prison, straight back in favour. Anacrites glowered. He need not have worried. 'Love to, sir--but prison didn't suit me; I need to recuperate.' Back in favour--then straight back out in one more bound.