We were leaving when Helena Justina remembered her friend. I wanted to abandon Fausta, but was overruled. (One reason why an informer should work alone: to avoid being dragged into good deeds.)
The lady was lurking in the atrium, weeping copiously. She had been at the amphorae. This would only seem a good idea to a wine merchant with sinking profits (if such a man exists).
All around her the caterers were tidying up, ignoring the dishevelled spectre sobbing on her knees. I could see Helena stiffening. 'They despise her! She's a woman, behaving stupidly, but worst of all, she has no man to look after her-'
Larius and Petro stepped back shyly, but Helena had already forced a slave to stop and explain. He said Fausta had made another indomitable foray into the villa, half-way through the meal. The banquet had been a racy one: all male, with all-female entertainment…
'And Aufidius Crispus,' cried Helena haughtily, 'was entwined with a Spanish dancing girl?'
'No madam…' The slave looked sideways at Petro and me. We grinned. 'Two, actually!' He was happy to go into details but Helena hissed through her teeth.
Evidently Fausta had simply crumpled and withdrawn, in the kind of abject grief that was her well-known speciality; Crispus probably never even saw her. Now she was stuck out here in an unoccupied villa, while the caterers had pushed all the empty amphorae off a jetty into the sea and were about to leave.
Helena made a lively fuss until someone brought the lady's chair. Fausta's bearers tonight were an ill-matched set of Liburnian slaves, one with a limp and one with a set of venomous neck boils. 'Oh, we cannot leave these ninnies in charge of her!' Helena declared.
Without admitting liability, Larius and I managed to insert Fausta into her chair. The slaves lurched her as far as the inn at Oplontis, but while we were discussing what to do next she slipped off and scampered onto the beach proclaiming a curse on men, naming the parts which she wished to wither and drop off them in such detail that it made me queasy.
I had had enough of her whole family. But to please Helena, I agreed to waste more of what could otherwise have been a pleasant evening and somehow deal with her
With luck, some bandit in need of a scullion to warm his broth would kidnap Fausta first.
I insisted on putting Helena in her own litter back on the road to the villa. This took quite a long time, for reasons that are nobody's business but mine.
By now most of the coast lay in darkness. When I returned to the inn Fausta had disappeared. Although it was so late, I found Larius talking poetry to the nursemaid Ollia on a bench in the inn courtyard; at least he had progressed from Catullus to Ovid, who has a better outlook on love and, more crucially, on sex.
I sat down with them. 'You been philandering, uncle?'
'Don't be ridiculous. No senator's daughter would enjoy being bedded on the bare ground among a lot of curious spiders with a pine cone in her back!'
'Really?' asked Larius.
'Really,' I lied. 'What coaxed Aemilia Fausta away from the sand hoppers?'
'A kind-hearted, off-duty watch captain. He hates to see noblemen's sisters sitting drunk on beaches.'
I groaned. Petronius Longus was always a soft touch for a sobbing girl. 'So he threw her over his shoulder, stuffed her into the chair while she declaimed what a nice man he was, then he marched off her pathetic entourage to Herculaneum himself?'
Larius laughed. 'You know Petro!'
'He won't even bother to ask for a reward. What did Silvia say?'
'Nothing-very pointedly!'
It was a beautiful night. I decided to hitch up Nero and meet Petro with transport home. Larius decided to keep me company; then, because they were young and illogical, Ollia came as company for him.
When we reached the magistrate's house the door porter told us Petronius had arrived with the lady but since she was none too stable in her party shoes, had helped her indoors. Rather than risk fending off suggestions for fun with Aemilius Rufus, we waited in the cart.
Petro, who was a long time coming out, seemed surprised to find us there. We were all napping, so he swung into the front seat and took up the reins. He was the best driver among us anyway.
'Watch that magistrate!' I warbled. 'His Falernian is decent but I wouldn't want to meet him behind a bathhouse pillar in the dark… His sister give you much trouble?'
'Not if you ignore the usual "Men are disgusting; why can't I get one?" stuff.' I said some hard words about Fausta, though Petronius maintained the poor little thing was rather sweet.
Larius was nodding off on Ollia's comfortable shoulder. I had a better woman to think about than some louse of a magistrate's fool of a sister so I huddled in a corner and went to sleep too, lulled by the cart's gently creaking motion through the warm Campanian night.
Ever good-natured, Petronius Longus hummed to himself quietly as he drove us all home.