The Silver Pigs (19 page)

XLIX

Afterwards, awe-struck, I felt her racked by half a dozen sobs, releasing tensions which even in her arms last night I had only half realized were there.

"Marcus!"

I fell asleep, shedding all other senses as Helena Justina spoke my name.

I had called her my darling. Any self-respecting informer knows better than that. We were both fairly preoccupied at the moment when it escaped, and I told myself that she probably had not heard. But in my heart I knew I hoped she had.

When they eventually unlocked the gates, we walked out past the stiffly sprouting banks of acanthus while the gardeners, with their floppy hats on their big daft heads and their flat dirty feet in the dew, gaped after us. Still, I dare say it was not the first time they had found uninvited visitors nesting in their patch. Before I took her home I bought Helena some breakfast, something hot from a shop. It was a sausage shop. Fortune defend me, you are dealing with a man who once fed a senator's daughter a peppered calf-meat rissole wrapped in a laurel leaf. Fortune defend my lady, she ate it in the streetl

I ate mine too, though cautiously, for my mother brought me up very strictly to eat indoors, respectably.

It was dawn along the Tiber, with a pale sun glimmering. We sat in our ruined finery on a wharf by the river and watched leisurely boatmen ply the silvered water. We had a long good-humoured conversation about whether me thinking all gardeners are daft was another example of my pointless prejudice. There were wonderful smells of dried fish and new bread. It was the start of a bright day, though the air still hung chill in the shade by the waterfront booths. It seemed to me it was the start of more than a bright day.

We looked a pair of grisly desperados; I was ashamed to take her home. I found a small private bathhouse already open. We went through together; no one else was there. I bought a flask of oil at an exorbitant price, then in the absence of a bath slave, anointed Helena myself. She seemed to like that; I know I did. Then she scraped me down with a borrowed strigil, which was even better fun. Later, while we were sitting side by side in the warm-air-room, she suddenly turned towards me without a word. She held me close, burying her face. Neither of us spoke. Neither of us needed to. Neither of us could.

All was quiet when I brought her home. The worst part was persuading her father's dumb pig of a porter to wake up and let their lady in. It was the slave who had refused to recognize me the evening before. He would remember now: as she went indoors, the senator's daughter turned back quickly and kissed me on the cheek.

I walked from the Capena Gate back to the Aventine.

I walked without noticing my journey. Exhaustion and elation were swamping me. I felt I had aged a generation in a single night. I was utterly happy benign towards all the world. Although I was so tired, my maniacal grin glittered from ear to ecstatic ear.

Petronius was hovering outside Lenia's laundry, with the pinkish face and limp hair of a man who had been steaming himself in a laundry for a long time. I felt a deep pang of affection, which he did not deserve and would never have understood. He thumped me in the stomach, then looked at me closely. All the strength had gone from my legs but I accepted the thump with only a faint blink.

"Marcus?" he demanded uncertainly.

Tetro. Thanks for your help."

"Pleasure. Your mother wants to speak to you about that bag of gold. And this is yours, isn't it?" He handed me my Uncle Scare's ring.

"You tracked down that runt Melitus?"

"No trouble. We know his haunts. I recovered some loot that belonged to your lady her jewels. I took them round to her house this morning; the people said she wasn't there..." His voice faded uncertainly.

"No. She is now. I told her if you managed to return her jewellery a reward would be polite. I suggested something nice for your wife!"

He stared at me. I regarded him with poignant tenderness. What a wonderful friend.

"Look, Falco, about last night"

I chuckled dismissively. "Fate!"

"Fate!" he exploded. "What shit's that?" A simple soul; with a sound philosophy! He was heartbroken to find me in this trouble. (He could tell I was in trouble by my ludicrously gentle smile.) "Oh Falco, you poor excitable devil what have you done?"

Lenia came out. Behind her the dull boom of the washtubs throbbed before she swung her backside to close the door. After a lifetime of swaggering with armfuls of dirty linen, she did this as automatically as she opened the doors with her foot. Her arms were free now, but her lined forehead told me she had a headache from imbibing too much with Smaractus the night before. Her frock clung to her in twisted folds, eternally damp from the steam. For some reason, she had lately taken to flinging thin scarves back over her shoulders, in a travesty of refinement. She weighed up my condition as impartially as a stain on a bedsheet, then scoffed, "Soft as cake custard; the fool's in love again."

"That all?" Petro tried to reassure himself, though as usual when faced with one of my extravagant antics sturdy Petronius did not appear convinced. "Happens to Falco three times every week."

He was wrong. I knew now: until that morning I had never been in love.

"Oh my Petronius, this is different."

"Blossom, that's what you always say!" Petro shook his head sadly.

I gazed from one to the other of them, too tired and too shaken to speak, then turned upstairs by myself.

Love! That took me by surprise.

However, I was ready for it. I knew what to expect too. Some heartless little button of a girl, pretty as glass. No one who would want me (I intended to suffer; I was a spare-time poet). I could cope with that (I could scribble whole rivers of verse). Some bright enamelled button, or a whole string, until I found one whose hard-nosed father I could wear down to a wedding, then sink like any dutiful citizen into convenience and boredom...

Knowing Helena Justina would never be convenient. She was a person I could study for half a lifetime with no danger of becoming bored. Had my status been different, I might have regretted not having half a lifetime to spare.

I could not afford it. Not even the button. A man bowed down by my negative bank balance had to brace himself for chasing rich widows of the elderly grateful kind...

I walked upstairs feeling certain of all that. I marched up four flights before I changed my mind.

Love was final. Absolute. A horrendous relief. I walked all the way back down again, and went out to a perfume shop.

"How much is Malabathron?"

The per fumier must have been born wearing an insulting sneer. He told me the price. I could just about afford to let her sniff the stopper from the jar. I informed him with a proud stare that I would think about it, then walked home again.

Lenia saw me come back. I smiled in an aloof way that said I would not answer questions, then set off up the stairs.

When I got to my apartment I stood until inspiration struck. I went into my bedroom and dug around in my baggage roll until I found my little silver nugget from the Vebiodunum mine, then walked back down all six flights to the street. This time I went to a silversmiths. The pride of his collection was a twisted filigree strap, hung with tiny acorns all along its meticulous length, which perfectly matched the restrained taste of what I had seen her wear. I admired it profusely, heard the price, and pretended to decide on earrings instead. But I turned up my nose at all his current stock, then produced my piece of treasure and explained what I wanted him to make.

"I suppose," the smith remarked, "it would cause you some embarrassment if I asked where you got hold of this?"

"Not at all," I told him blithely. "I obtained it working as a slave in a British silver mine."

"Very funny!" scoffed the smith.

I walked home.

Lenia saw me again. She did not bother to ask any questions, and I did not bother to smile.

My problems were not yet over. I had evicted the hot-wine waiter; my mother was coming to scrub out my balcony. She aimed an unfriendly blow at me with her mop.

I smiled at my mother, a serious mistake.

"You've been with one of your rope dancers!"

"I have not." I captured the mop. "Sit down, share a cup of wine, and I'll tell you what the famous Titus Caesar says about your glorious son."

She did sit, though she rejected wine. I told her how Titus had praised Festus, laying on the compliments fairly thick. She listened, with no change that I could see, then sombrely requested wine after all. I poured; we tilted cups in his memory. She sipped in her usual way, sitting very upright, as if she merely drank to be sociable.

My mother's face would never age. Only her skin had grown tired in recent years, so it no longer fitted properly on her bones. After I came back from Britain she seemed smaller than before. Her black-rimmed eyes would stay bright and sharp-witted to the day she died. One day that would happen, and though I now spent so much effort fending off her encroachments, when she was gone I would be desolate.

I sat quiet, letting her absorb all I had said.

No one, not even his girlfriend, ever criticized what Festus had done. My mother had received the news, heard his self sacrifice hailed, ensured decent arrangements were made (by me) for Marina and the child. People talked about him; she never said a word. We all understood that losing that great, gaudy, generous character had swept away the underpinnings of her life.

Now, alone with me, quite suddenly she told me what she thought. When I made the mistake of calling him a hero, her face set even more. She drained off her cup and fiercely banged it down.

"No, Marcus," my mother said harshly. "Your brother was a fool!"

And at last she could cry, for Festus and his folly, in my arms, knowing I had always thought so too.

From that day it became accepted that in the presumably permanent absence of my father I came into my full authority as head of our family. To cope with that, ageing a generation seemed a good idea.