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-shells 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 embarrassment.
Then I waited until he had finished. In my business it always pays to be polite.
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 straight-backed 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 chin 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 bumped 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 right, sir; I don't much care for you!"' I could see at once that this would be nothing like convincing the chief priest Gordianus; Crispus was really expecting to enjoy our interview.
'I suppose you'll throw me out now, sir?'
'Why should I?' He was scanning me with some interest. 'I've heard you are an informer! What qualities does that need?'
'Oh, judgement, foresight, constructive ideas, acceptance of responsibility, reliability under pressure-plus the ability to shovel dung down a sewer before it attracts public notice.'
'Much the same as an administrator!' he sighed. 'Well, Falco, what's your mission here?'
'Finding out what you're up to-which is more or less self-evident!'
'Oh really?'
'There are plenty of public positions you could want. For all of them you need the Emperor's support-all except one.'
'What a shocking suggestion!' he told me pleasantly.
'Sorry; what I do is a shocking job.'
'Perhaps I should offer you a better one?' he tried, though with a latent humour in his tone, as if mocking his own attempt.
'Always open to suggestions,' I said, not looking at Helena. He smiled at me again, though I noticed no grand offers of employment rushing forth.
'Well, Falco! I know what Flavius Vespasianus has palmed off on Gordianus; what's he offering me?' The way he named the Emperor as if he were still a private citizen gave a clear indication of his disrespect.
'How do you know about Gordianus, sir?'
'For one thing, if the garland you are wearing was provided by me tonight, it came in a consignment I had shipped round the coast from Paestum.'
'Paestum, eh! Apart from a talkative garlandseller, who else is spreading rumours that Gordianus is going to Paestum?'
At my insistent return to the question I saw a glint in his eyes (which were brown enough to entice the women, though too close together to be classically correct). 'He told me himself. He wrote to me about his brother's death-' Crispus stopped.
'Warning you!' Barnabas.
'Warning me,' he agreed gently. 'Have you come to do the same?'
'Partly, sir; also to negotiate.'
'What with?' he exploded, on a contemptuous note. (I remembered Crispus owned half Latium, in addition to his expensive dinner outfit and his natty sailing boat.) 'Vespasian has no money. He never had any money; it's what the man is famous for! All through his public career he was notoriously mortgaged to the hilt. As Governor of Africa-the most gracious post in the Empire-he ran out of credit so disastrously he had to trade in Alexandrian wet fish… What does he pay you, Falco?'
'Too little!' I grinned.
'So why do you support him?' the man purred. I found him easy to talk to, perhaps because I reckoned he would be difficult to offend.
'I don't, sir, particularly. Though it's true I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher's bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome-and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!'
Crispus was laughing. I had never expected to like him. I was beginning to see what made everyone tell me he was dangerous; popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command.
'I never sing in public!' Crispus assured me affably. 'A dignified Roman hires in professionals… You see, from my point of view,' he explained, taking time to convince me, 'after Nero died we saw Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian-not to mention various other pretenders who never even managed to edge their buttocks onto the throne-and the only thing which made any of them better than anybody else-for instance better than me!-was that they had the simple luck at the time to be holding public positions which provided armed support. Otho won over the Praetorian Guard, while the rest were all stationed in provinces where the legions they commanded were bound to hail their own governor to the skies. So if I had been in Palestine in the Year of the Four Emperors…'
He stopped. And smiled. And cleverly left any statement of treason unsaid.
'Am I right, Falco?'
'Yes, sir-up to a point.'
'What point?' he enquired, still perfectly pleasantly.
'Where your political judgement-which looks pretty shrewd-ought to tell you what we all have to accept: that a violent cycle of events has reached its natural conclusion. Rome, and Italy, and the Empire, are exhausted by the civil war. By popular consent Vespasian is the candidate who survived. So whether anybody else could, in theory, have challenged him is, in practice, no longer relevant. With all due respect to you, sir!' I declared.