When Petronius Longus stopped snoring and roused himself, conflicting emotions fought in his face. He took in the fact we had come down the mountain in a very different mood from when we had left. While he was sleeping Helena and I had finished his wine (though that did not matter at the price here); now she and I were tangled together like puppies in the shade. As a man with a hard grasp of the social rules, Petronius was visibly torn.
'Falco, you'll have to be careful!'
I tried not to laugh. In ten years of watching my contorted relationships, this was the first time Petro had bothered to give me brotherly advice.
'Trust me,' I said. (It was what I had told Helena. I blocked out how at the crucial moment when I tried to restrain my efforts, she had cried out and would not let me go…)
Petro growled, 'For heaven's sake, Marcus! What will you do if there's a mistake?'
'Apologize to her father, confess to my mother, and find a priest who keeps his prices down… What do you take me for?'
My shoulder was aching, but nothing could make me shift. The joy of my life had her head on my heart and was profoundly asleep. All her troubles had been drained away; her tranquil lashes were still spiky from her helpless tears afterwards. I could easily have wept myself.
'The lady might see things differently. You ought to stop this!' Petro advised perversely, now that his expedition up the mountain had ensured I never could.
His wife woke on the bench beside him. Now I watched Silvia interpret the scene: Helena Justina tucked against my side with her knees under mine; Helena's hand clasping my own; her fine hair, crumpled by my arm; the depth of her sleep; my own unsmiling peace…
'Marcus! What are you going to do?' she insisted in a worried undertone. Silvia liked everything to be neat.
'Finish my commission, and put in a claim for payment as rapidly as possible…' I closed my eyes.
If Silvia thought we had started something scandalous she must have blamed me for it, because when Helena awoke the two of them went off together to wash their faces and reorganize themselves. When they came back it was with the secretive, satisfied air of two women who had been gossiping. Silvia had her hair wound on the nape of her neck the way Helena usually wore hers, and they had knotted Helena's with ribbon. It suited her. She looked as if she ought to have been doing something typically Athenian on a black-figure vase. I would have liked to be the free-spirited Hellene lying in wait to catch her just around the vase handle…
'This is confusing,' Petro joked. 'Which one was mine?'
'Oh I'll take the one with the topknot, if you like.' He and I exchanged a look. When one of two friends is married and the other stays a bachelor, rightly or wrongly the assumption is that you operate by different rules. It was a long time since Petro and I had been out together on such easy terms.