With Anacrites watching my old place, the sooner I moved into an address he didn't know the easier life would be. In any case I could hardly wait for the pleasure of telling Smaractus he could hire a slow mule to Lusitania and take the lease for his filthy sixth-floor dosshouse with him when he went. Before I could move however, I would have to arrange some furniture.
At home the spies were still watching. I marched straight up to the one with the feet. 'Excuse me, is this where Didius Falco lives?' He nodded before he could help himself. 'Is he in at the moment?' The spy looked vague, now trying to disguise his interest.
Still playing the stranger, I went up to see whether Falco was in. Which he was, once I got there.
Anyone watching a building should record who goes in and make sure they come out again. I rigged up a trip rope attached to an iron griddle pan which would wake the whole tenement if it was kicked down the stairs in the dark, but no one followed me upstairs. Cheap expertise is all the Palace pays for. I knew that; I had once worked there myself.
Chapter XII
On the second day of my surveillance Severina Zotica must have stayed in to read her library scrolls. There were household deliveries-amphorae of olive oil and fish pickle -followed by a woman trundling a rackety handcart full of hanks of wool. It had badly set wheels, so I strolled over and lifted the base with the toe of my boot as she struggled to lever the thing up a kerb.
'Someone's going to be busy!' I commented nosily.
'She always buys a quantity.' The wool distributor backed her ample rear down the entry to Severina's house, huffing as she towed the load. 'She weaves it herself,' she told me, boasting on her customer's behalf. A likely tale.
It was a poor day if I was hoping to publish my diary to literary acclaim: breakfast; Lucanian sausage for lunch (with indigestion afterwards); hot weather; a dogfight in the afternoon (no interesting bites)...
The chair finally veered out of the passage in the early evening, followed by a thin maid with a cosmetics box in one hand and a strigil and oil flask dangling from her other wrist. Severina vanished into the same bathhouse as before, dragging the maid. An hour later she flounced back out down the steps. Her sandals were gilded, a lacing of gold threads embroidered every hem on her get-up, and what looked like a diadem came to a point beneath the inevitable stole. The maid who had tricked her out in this finery set off home on foot with her cast-offs and the cosmetics, while the chairmen hauled Severina north to the Pincian: a social call at the Hortensius house.
She stopped at Minnius' cake stall, where she acquired one of his leaf-lined baskets. I pursued her as far as the Hortensius gatehouse and winked at the porter, who confirmed for me that madam was dining with her fancy man. There seemed nothing to gain by waiting outside all evening while they gorged themselves and exchanged pretty nothings. I went back to see Minnius.
'Does Severina call here often?'
'Every time she goes to see Novus. He's a glutton for sweet stuff; they have a regular order up at the house, but she usually takes him a titbit.'
I bought another piece of must cake for my sister, but I ate it on my way to visit Helena.
'Marcus! How are you getting on with your enquiry?'
'All the evidence suggests the gold-digger is just a home-loving girl, improving her mind, who wants a classic tombstone. Apart from She lived with one husband, which we can assume she has abandoned, it's to be Chaste, virtuous, and well-deserving... She spun and worked in wool -'
'Perhaps she really is well-deserving!'
'And perhaps there will be a snowstorm in Tripolitania! It's time I took a closer look at her -'
'In her women-only bathhouse?' Helena pretended to be shocked.
'My darling, I'll consider most disguises-but I can't pass for a female once I'm in the nude...' Wondering whether I could somehow manage to infiltrate myself as a sweeper, I gave Helena a salacious grin.
'Don't flash your teeth at me, Didius Falco! And don't forget you're already on bail from the Lautumiae...' After a moment she added apropos of nothing, 'I missed seeing you yesterday.' Her voice was low; there was a true note of yearning in it for a man who wanted to be persuaded.
'Not my fault. You were out when I came.'
She stared at the toes of her shoes (which were leather in a discreet shade, but with dashing purple laces). I mentioned, also apropos of nothing, that I had taken a new lease. I was wondering how she would take it. She looked up. 'Can I come and see?'
'Once I've acquired some furniture.' No self-respecting bachelor invites a good-looking girl to his apartment until he can provide a mirror and anything else they might need. Such as a bed. 'Don't worry-as soon as word of my move gets round among my family, I expect to be showered with everything they've been longing to get rid of - especially my brothers-in-law's bodged efforts at carpentry...'
'My father has a battered reading couch he intended to offer you, but perhaps you won't want it now you're going up in the world?'
'I'll take it!' I assured her. Her gaze faltered. Helena Justina could always interpret my motives too easily.
Reading is not the only thing you can do on a couch.
I left early. We had run out of things to talk about.
One way and another I had hardly given my darling so much as a kiss. By the time we said goodbye she seemed rather standoffish, so I kept aloof too and strode away with just a nod.
Before I fetched up at the end of her father's street I felt a serious pang of misery, and wished I had been more affectionate. I nearly went back. But I had no intention of letting a senator's daughter see me behave like a dithering idiot.
Chapter XIII
I spent the rest of that evening turning my betting tags into cash. I found Cossus, clinched the deal, and received my key. I had a few drinks with the agent - business courtesy-then a few more later with my best friend Petronius Longus (in fact a few more than we meant to have, but we revelled in having something proper to celebrate). I ended up feeling far too happy to dupe the spies at Fountain Court so I stumbled to the new apartment, crashed inside, stretched out on the floor and sang myself to sleep.
Someone banged on the door and I heard a voice demanding whether everything was all right. Nice to know my new neighbours were such concerned types.I woke early. The best-laid floorboards tend to have that effect.
Feeling pleased with life despite my headache, I went out to hunt for a snack. All-night cookshops in the Piscina Publica seemed a rarity, which could prove an inconvenience for my erratic way of life. But eventually I found a bar full of bad-tempered flies where a bleary-eyed waiter served me a slab of ancient bread with a pickled cucumber in it and told me I had to take it off the premises to eat.
It was too early for watching Severina's house. Even so, that rapacious little lady was firmly in mind. Clients have the unreasonable habit of expecting rapid progress, so I would soon need to report.
My feet took me east. They brought me up below the Esquiline, in the old part of town which people still call the Subura, though it had been variously retitled after Augustus enlarged the city and redrew the administrative sectors. Some folks grumble that was when Rome lost all its character; still, I dare say while Romulus was ploughing up the first boundary furrow there were hidebound old peasants standing about the Seven Hills and muttering into their frowsty beards that life would never be worth living in this wolf-man's newfangled settlement...
The Subura still kept its republican character. Much of it had been wiped out under Nero in the Great Fire. He had grabbed a large swathe of the blackened ground for his Golden House and its enormous parks and pleasure grounds. He then ordered Rome to be rebuilt on a classic grid pattern, with really strict fire regulations. (Even Nero had recognised that the Golden House was big enough for a petty prince, so there was no need to plan on any more Imperial land clearance.) In fact many streets had been rebuilt ignoring his proclamations, higgledy-piggledy on top of the old ones. I liked it. The Empire has far too many pious four-square towns all looking exactly the same.
This area had once been the most sordid in the city. There were plenty of rivals for that honour now. The Subura seemed like an elderly whore; it still had a tawdry reputation, though it was past living up to it. Yet you could still be robbed. Like everywhere else, the footpads in these tense one-man lanes were far from slack. They were set in their ways: an arm round the throat, a dagger in the ribs, lifting your purse and finger-rings, then kneeing you facedown in the mud while they hopped it.
I kept my wits about me. I knew the Subura, but not well enough to recognise the faces and not well enough for its villains to steer clear of me.
Coming this way was deliberate: to dig deeper into Severina's past. The Praetor's clerk Lusius had mentioned that her first husband, the bead-threader Moscus, used to own a shop which still existed somewhere here. I started looking for jewellers. They usually know where their rivals hang out. Sure enough, on the third try I was given directions and reached the right booth just as it was opening.
The new incumbent was probably another ex-slave from the Severus Moscus household, now free and self-employed. He sold every kind of gemstone work, from intaglios, where he cut into the jewel's surface, to cameos, where the design stood proud. He used all the semi-precious stones, but agates in particular-pale blues laced with milky striations; stone whites which blossomed with green or red ochre threads like lichen; translucent-streaked charcoals; handsome mixtures of matt buff and bronze. He was already at his bench, sorting tiny gold spacing beads. Apparently he did all the work himself.
'Hello!' I cried. 'Is this where Severus Moscus lives? I've been told to look him up; my mother knew his mother -'
He gave me a thoughtful glance. 'Would that have been in Tusculum?' He had a curiously high-pitched voice for one whose manner was so completely confident.
Thinking it might be a trap I shrugged offhandedly. 'Could be. My ma has lived all over the place. She did tell me; I didn't bother to listen, I confess -'
'Moscus is dead.'
'No!' I whistled. 'I've had a wasted journey then. Look-my old biddy's bound to ask; can you tell me how it happened?' He leaned on the counter and told me the tale about the heart attack in the hot amphitheatre. 'That's bad luck. Was he very old?'
'Sixties.'