I had better things to do than hang about in the hope of a word with a woman whose only word would be 'goodbye'. I hoofed off back to the jail to free Larius. I took him to a cookshop, then he and I rescued Petro's disgraced ox. Nero had made friends with the horses and mules at the stable. He was like a child at a party; he did not want to go home.
'He looks tired,' commented Larius, as we butted the brute outside so we could harness him.
'Well he might!'
I set Larius on the road back to Oplontis with the cart. Since no man wants his apprentice around while he's teaching a lady the harp, I agreed that my nephew could take himself off painting walls. I stressed it was a temporary arrangement; Larius nodded unconvincingly.
As a harp tutor I lived in the magistrate's house. It saved on rent. Yet I grew to dread its cold, unlived-in smell. Doorways which I would have left open to show life going on in family rooms were grimly sealed with curtains. All the couches had sharp edges looking for a shin to bark. By day there was always a riot in the kitchen and at night there were never enough lamps. Rufus usually ate out; he must have noticed that his cook couldn't cook.
I armed myself for action with some musical manuscripts I found in the town. Aemilius Rufus had been right when he said the Emperor Nero still commanded loyalty here. Within a week of his suicide all the shops in Rome had swept their shelves clear of Caesarly tunelets and sent them out to the markets for wrapping fish. But there were plenty in Campania. For a beginner, Nero's tosh seemed ideal. His compositions were stupendously long, which gave Fausta plenty of practice; they were slow, which was good for her confidence; and without being unpatriotic, they were simplicity to play.
A lyre would have been easier, but with typical obstinacy Aemilia Fausta had set herself the professional challenge of a cithara. It was a lovely thing; it had a deep resonance box decorated with mother-of-pearl, then the sides swept up into elegant horns, with an ivory crosspiece to take the seven strings. How well I could play the cithara is a question I'll leave blank (though when I was in the army I did own a flute with which I managed to create a fair amount of annoyance). Aemilia Fausta was not wanting to run away from home to join a pantomime band; for showing off to drunks at dinner parties, I reckoned I could get her up to scratch. And it would hardly be the first time a teacher had bumbled through a lesson on the basis of some hasty reading up the night before.
The noble lady did possess the sceptical strain I would expect in a friend of Helena's. She once asked me whether I had played much.
'Madam, music lessons are like making love; the point is not how well I can do it, but whether I can bring out the best in you!' She had no sense of humour. Her owly eyes stared at me anxiously.
Teachers who can play well are pretty self-involved. She needed someone like me; gentle hands, a sensitive nature-and able to explain in simple language where the lady I was with was going wrong. As I said: like love.
'Are you married, Falco?' she asked. Most of them do. I gave her my innocent bachelor's smile.
Once that had been clarified, Aemilia Fausta trundled on through her latest Imperial air, while I footled around with a forthcoming lecture on diatonic scales. (A subject on which I admit I could not expound with much fluency.)