Part 7 (1/2)

'Marriage is an agreement between two people to live together. Marcus and I have clasped hands and agreed.'

'It's plain you have done more than that -' Julia Justa tried appealing to me, pretending she thought I was more reasonable: 'Marcus, help me 'out!'

'It is true,' I mused, 'that if I went before the Censor and was asked ”To the best of your knowledge and belief and by your own intention, Didius Falco, are you living in a valid state of marriage?” I should bravely answer ”Yes, sir!”'

The senator smiled and engaged in a bit of private commentary. 'I love that ”to the best of your knowledge and belief'!' His own wife received this very coolly, as if she suspected some hidden jibe.

'Formalities are not required,' growled Helena. 'We don't need an augury because we know we are going to be happy -' It sounded more of a threat than a promise. 'And we don't need a written contract to tell us how our affairs will be unwound if we part, because we won't ever separate.' Actually we didn't need a contract because there was nothing financial to unwind. Helena possessed money but I refused to touch it. I had none, which saved a lot of fuss. 'Just be grateful we are sparing Papa the expense of a ceremony and the burden of a dowry. Times will be hard if he is to put both of my brothers into the Senate -'

'I doubt that will occur,' her mother replied bitterly. She decided not to specify why, though it was obviously our fault: bringing the family into disrepute.

'Let's be friends,' I said quietly. I'II do my best to acquire greater status, and when I'm a suave equestrian counting beans on my farm in Latium and fiddling my taxes like respectable people do, we'll all wonder what the fuss was about.'

Helena's father was keeping quiet. He knew his daughter was not the problem nowadays. It was his sons he needed to watch. Without extremely careful treatment Justinus was likely to end up entangled with an actress (specifically illegal for the son of a senator) while my current enquiries were beginning to suggest that Aelia.n.u.s was involved in an intrigue that could be both dangerous and politically disastrous. He had told his father nothing about it - a bad omen in itself.

Luckily at that point a slave brought a message that Aelia.n.u.s had come home. His father and I were able to escape to the study to interview him. By the rules of convention Helena Justina would remain with her mama.

Well, she would do until she lost her temper. That might happen fairly soon. I overheard her mother asking, 'How are your bowels, Helena?' I winced, and fled after her papa. He had already skipped out of it. For a senator, he was a wise man.

XIV

Three of us were seated together, like an intellectual symposium. Lack of s.p.a.ce in the small, scroll-filled room made civilised reclining impossible. Letters, accounts and intriguing works of literature were piled all around us in teetering stacks. If challenged about his untidiness (as he regularly was by his wife) Decimus Camillus Verus would say that he knew exactly where everything was. One of his likeable characteristics: in truth he could have had no idea.

The senator and I were both upright on his reading couch. Aelia.n.u.s had squeezed on to a stool which his father's secretary occupied in the daytime. While he fiddled with a pot of pens, a bust of Vespasian stared down from a shelf above him, as if our eminent Emperor were checking that the young man's neck was clean.

This son and his father looked fairly alike. They had matching strong eyebrows, though the boy was more thickset. He was also surly where his father was mild- mannered. It was a phase of youth - unfortunately a phase which could lose him the chance of making useful friends. There was no point telling him that. Being critical of his social skills was the certain way to rush him into making life's fatal mistakes.

'I don't have to talk to you, Falco!'

'It's advisable,' his father chastised him briefly.

I kept my voice quiet. 'You can talk to me informally here - or you can be sent for a full grilling on the Palatine.' 'Is that a threat?'

'Senators' sons don't get beaten up by the Praetorian Guard.' I made it sound as if they could be, when someone with my clout requested it.

Aelia.n.u.s glared. Maybe he thought that if he had been anybody else's son I would have taken him to a wine bar and enjoyed a much more easygoing chat without involving his family. Maybe he was right.

'What's this about?' he demanded.

'One man dead and another close to Hades. A strong Baetican connection, and an unhealthy whiff of conspiracy. Your presence at the last Olive Oil Producers' dinner in close company with one of the victims now needs accounting for.'

He went pale. 'If I have to explain myself I want to see someone more senior.'

'Of course,' I agreed. 'I'll just point out that asking for special treatment makes you sound like a man in trouble. People with nothing to hide give their evidence to the regular official.'

'And that's you?' He was being careful now.

'It's me. Orders from the top.'

'You're trying to implicate me in something.' Dear G.o.ds, he was truculent. And I hadn't even started yet. 'Actually I want to clear you.'

'Just answer the questions,' his father instructed patiently.

Hoping for filial obedience, I tried greater formality: 'Camillus Aelia.n.u.s, how did you come to know Anacrites, and why did he take you to that dinner as his guest?'

'Why don't you ask him?' Useless. Well, I was somebody's son. I should have known the odds on obtaining filial obedience were short.

'Anacrites has been attacked - and by thugs who killed one of his agents the same night. He's been taken to a place of safety, but he's likely to die. I need to find out very quickly what is going on.' I remembered how long it had been since I dumped the spy on my mother. It was time to make dutiful enquiries - or to relieve her of the corpse.

The senator leaned towards me anxiously. 'Are you saying Aulus may have been in danger that night?' Aulus must be his elder son's personal name. One which the young chap was unlikely to invite me to use.

Unless Aelia.n.u.s had been dabbling in something far bigger than I gave him credit for, I could not believe professional killers would bother with him. 'Don't worry, senator. Presumably your son is an innocent bystander.' I thought the bystanding innocent looked leery, in fact. 'Aelia.n.u.s, did you realise your dinner host was the Emperor's Chief Spy?'

The young man seemed chastened. 'I understood something of the sort.'

'What was your connection with him?'

'Nothing really.'

'Then how did you come to meet him?'

He did not want to tell me, but admitted, 'I had been sent to him with a letter when I returned from Corduba.'

His father looked surprised. Forestalling his interruption, I asked, 'Who wrote the letter?'

'It's confidential, Falco.'

'Not any more!' his father snapped briskly. He wanted to know about this as much as I did. Though he appeared so easygoing, Camillus had old-fas.h.i.+oned views on a father's rights. The fact that none of his children agreed with him was just a father's usual hard luck.

'It was from the quaestor,' Aelia.n.u.s replied irritably. Quinctius Quadratus?'

He looked surprised at my knowledge. 'No, his outgoing predecessor. Cornelius had just heard that his father is sending him on a trip to Greece before he has to come back to Rome. Since I was coming back, he gave tne thing to me.'

We were talking about the young finance officer in charge of collecting taxes for Rome. 'A provincial quaestor would normally correspond with the Chief Secretary, Claudius Laeta.' His letters would travel via the cursus publicus, the imperial post service. It was quick, secure, and reliable. 'So why send something to Anacrites, and why entrust it to you? You were friendly with this Cornelius?'

'Yes.'

'If he wanted it entrusted to safe hands, was this letter very sensitive?'

'Presumably. Don't ask me what was in it,' Aelia.n.u.s continued triumphantly, 'because it was heavily sealed and I had strict instructions to deliver it unopened straight to the Palatine.' Very convenient.

'Were you present when Anacrites read it?'

'He asked me to wait in another office.'