I reached the Temple alone. Activity and solitude came like a breath of fresh air.
Whatever the crisis, I had to go alone-and on foot. I wore out my boots, but I was keeping my professional integrity intact.
Every time I paid my shoemender, integrity bothered me less.
The Little Temple of Hercules stood in the Aventine Sector, which was where I lived, so I was able to turn up like any local gawker who had spotted the flames on his way home from a bawdy-house and greeted this spectacle as his second treat of the night. It was a pitiful shrine. It had been poked in between a Syrian bakery and a knife-grinder's lockup booth. There were two worn steps where pigeons stopped to gossip, four front pillars, a warped wooden pediment, and a cranky red roof which bore abundant evidence that it was where the pigeons reassembled when they flew up off the steps.
Temples always seem to be burning down. Their building regulations must omit safety buckets and firefighting platforms, as if dedication to the gods brings its own insurance. But evidently the gods get bored guarding altars with unattended perpetual flames.
The fire was well away. There was a lively crowd. I pushed through to the front.
The Aventine vigilantes were leaning in neighbouring porticos while the blaze lit their faces with lurid red. They were a scarred-looking crew, though most had affectionate mothers and one or two could even tell you who their fathers were. Among them my old friend Petronius Longus, a broad, calm, square-browed officer with a baton through his belt, stood thoughtfully cradling his chin. He looked like a man you could drag into a corner for a natter about women, life, and where to buy a hock of Spanish ham. He was captain of the watch, but we never let that interfere with being friends.
I squeezed in alongside. The heat felt strong enough to melt the marrow in our bones. We scanned the crowd in case there was a mad-eyed arsonist still lurking at the scene.
'Didius Falco,' Petronius murmured, 'always first back into barracks, hogging the fire!' We had both done army service in the bitter north: five years in the Second Augustan Legion in Britain. We had spent half our time on the frontier, and the rest on forced marches or camped out in the field. When we came home we had both sworn we would never feel warm again. Petronius married; he decided it helped. Various eager young ladies had tried to assist me the same way, but I had fended them off.
'Been visiting your girlfriend?'
'Which?' I grinned. I knew which. For at least the past fortnight there had only been one. I set aside my vivid recollection of offending her this evening. 'What highly avoidable accident happened here, Petro?'
'Usual fiasco. Temple acolytes off playing dice in a bar down the street; an incense burner left smouldering…'
'Casualties?'
'Doubt it; the doors are locked-' Petronius Longus glanced at me, saw from my face there was a reason for the question, then turned back to the temple with a heavy groan.
We were helpless. Even if his men burst those studded double doors with a battering ram, the interior would explode into a fireball. Flames were already flickering high on the roof. Black smoke with a worrying smell was gusting halfway to the river. Out here in the alley the heat was making our faces shine like glass. No one could survive inside.
The doors were still standing, and still locked, when the roof-timbers caved in.