Shadows in Bronze (14 page)

XXVIII

As we approached the inn at Oplontis, I saw two skulking figures on the dark beach outside.

I said nothing to Larius, but led him round in the shadows to slip in through the stable block. We found Petro bedding down the ox. Poor Nero was almost asleep on his cloven feet; after hauling my lead he was too tired even to bend his neck to the feeding trough so Petronius Longus, the hard man of the Aventine watch, was enticing wisps of hay into the beast's huge mouth with murmurs of loving encouragement.

'Just a bit more, precious...' we heard him coax, in his tone for spooning broth down a sad child. Larius giggled; Petro was unabashed. 'I want to take him home in good condition!'

I explained to my nephew that Petronius and his brother (who was a tireless entrepreneur) had formed a syndicate to buy this ox with three of their relatives; it always caused bad feeling when Petro popped up at his country cousins' farm to borrow his investment.

'How is Nero meant to be shared then?' Larius asked.

'Oh, the other four tell me it's a leg each for them, and I get his balls,' Petronius replied gravely; the big-city innocent. He shoved in a last sheaf of hay then gave up.

Larius, who was sharp but not yet sharp enough, squatted down to check, then leapt up proclaiming, 'He's an ox! He's been castrated; he hasn't any-'

Catching sight of our faces, he clammed up as the joke slowly dawned.

‘Anyway,' I commented, 'this ox must be four years old; what lunatic named him Nero while the Emperor was alive?'

‘I did it,' Petronius answered, 'when I picked him up last week; the others call him Spot. Apart from the fact he has a curly topknot and heavy jowls, whoever clipped his equipment bungled it, so he shares with our glorious late Emperor indiscriminate lechery: bullocks, heifers, five- barred gates; the fool will jump on anything-'

Petronius Longus had fierce views on government; trying to keep public order among citizens who knew they were ruled by a mad lyre player had filled him with frustration, though this was the only open political gesture I had seen him make.

Trailing a long dribble of saliva, Nero, who hardly looked equal to jumping on anything, closed his dun- coloured eyelids and leaned against the stall; changing his mind, he lunged forward fondly towards Petronius. Petro jumped back, and we all jammed up the gate, trying to look nonchalant.

‘One bit of news,' I told Petro. 'Our ship is called the Isis Africa: - Larius has been using his initiative.'

‘Intelligent boy!' Petro applauded, pinching his cheek (knowing Larius hated it). 'And I've got something for you, Falco. I stopped by a turning to one of those upland villages-'

'What had you stopped for?' Larius interrupted.

'Don't be nosy. Picking flowers. Falco, I was asking one of the locals about who is important hereabouts. Do you recollect that antiquated ex-consul we investigated in connection with the Pertinax conspiracy?'

'Caprenius Marcellus? His father? The invalid?'

I myself had never met him but I certainly remembered Marcellus: one of Rome's elderly senators, with seven previous consuls in his glorious pedigree. He had possessed an enormous fortune and no heir, until Pertinax caught his eye and was taken on as his adopted son. (Either he was very shortsighted, or being descended from consuls did not make a senator astute.)

'I saw the old bird at Setia,' Petro remmisced. 'Good wine country! But he was rich as Crassus. He owns vineyards all over Campania - one up on Vesuvius.'

'Officially,' I mused, 'Marcellus was cleared of conspiracy.' Even though he owned the warehouse the plotters used for storing their bullion, having a good pedigree and a massive fortune had largely protected him; we had made routine enquiries, then respectfully backed off. 'He's supposed to be much too ill for politics - and if so he won't be here; he couldn't travel if the story's genuine. His place might be worth a visit though-'

It struck me that this villa Rustics could be harbouring Barnabas. In fact, a villa on Mount Vesuvius whose owner was ill elsewhere could provide a perfect hideaway. I was sure Petronius reckoned the same, though in his cautious way he said nothing.

Changing the subject, I mentioned the two secretive figures I had noticed earlier on the beach. Planting Larius behind us, Petro and I armed ourselves with a lantern and marched out to look.

They were still there. If they were lying in wait, they were completely unprofessional; a murmur of surreptitious voices met our ears. As our footfalls disturbed them, the smaller shadow detached itself and ran into the inn with a squeak. My nose twitched at rancid, second-rate rose-water, then I glimpsed a familiar top-heavy bosom and anxious, moon-shaped face. I thudded.

'Ollin's quick off the mark! She's found her fisherboy!'

She had too. He sauntered up past us with the self-assured, curious stare these gigolos always possess. A dim girl's dream. He had the lovingly tended haircut, short sturdy legs and brawny brown shoulders that were made for showing off to city girls as he practised hurling nets.

‘Goodnight!' Petro called firmly, in the voice of a watch captain who can handle himself. The young lobster-catcher sloped off without answering. His features were not up to much by Aventine standards, and I guessed that as a boatman's apprentice he was pretty slovenly.

We left Petronius in the courtyard: a man who took life seriously, strolling round to see that all was in order before he turned in.

As Larius preceded me up to our room, he turned back to whisper thoughtfully, 'He can't have a girlfriend, not with his family here. So who is he picking flowers for?'

'Arria Silvia?' I suggested, trying to sound neutral. Then my nephew (who was growing in sophistication daily) squinted down at me sideways, in a way that had me snorting with helpless laughter all up the stairs.

Arria Silvia was asleep. Through the tangled spread of her hair on the pillow her face looked flushed. She was breathing with the deep contentment of a woman who had been wined and dined, then walked home through the summer night and warmed up again afterwards by a husband who was famous for his thoroughness. Beside her bed she had a large bunch of dog roses, stuck in a dead fish-pickle jar.

As he came upstairs later we could hear Petronius humming to himself.

XXIX

Every householder knows the hazard; a man and a boy at the door selling something you don't want. Unless you feel strong, these whey-faced inadequates land you with anything from false horoscopes or wobbly iron saucepans to a second-hand chariot with mock-silver wheel finials and a very small Medusa stencilled on the side, which you subsequently discover used to be painted crimson and had to have its bodywork remodelled after being battered to all Hades in a crash...

Larius and I became a man and a boy. Our load of black-market fitments gave us carts blanche to enter private estates. No one sent for the vigilantes. We shuffled round the coast, taking Nero up clinkered carriage-drives and sometimes back down them again five minutes afterwards; surprisingly often though, our visits took longer and our list of orders was longer when we left. Plenty of fine villas around the Bay of Neapolis now have British water pipes, and most did not acquire the goods as official ex-government stock. Several people took advantage of our cheap rates to renew their entire supplies.

I was not surprised; we had come knocking at the Corinthian portals of the rich. Their great-great-grandfathers may have filled the family coffers through honest toil in their olive groves or awards for political service (foreign booty, I mean), but subsequent generations kept themselves in credit by haggling for bargains kept under the counter after being smuggled into Italy without paying harbour-dues. They were matched in iniquity by their household stewards. These snooty rascals were getting new pipework for the price of cobnuts (and then creaming off a premium from their masters' accounts), but they still tried to slip us old iron rivets and funny Macedonian small change when they paid.

After a few days completely tongue-tied, Larius found his voice and worked up a sales pattern that sounded as though he had been born in a basket under a market stall; what was more, I could trust him with the arithmetic. Soon we were quite enjoying selling pipes. The weather stayed wonderful, Nero was behaving, and we sometimes managed to arrive at a friendly kitchen door just as they were serving lunch.

Information seemed harder to come by than corn-meal cakes. We had called at almost every maritime villa between Baiae and Stabiae. Even the friendly ones denied knowledge of Crispus and his boat. I had wasted hours allowing arthritic door porters to reminisce about marching through Pannonia with some low-grade legion led by a syphilitic legate who was later cashiered. Meanwhile Larius was sauntering along piers to look for the Isis and grinned; any day now some lad with a fishing line would suspect him of immoral overtures and push him in the drink.

Against such a negative background, huckstering lead began to pall. This was the dreary side of being an informer asking routine questions which never produced results; weasing myself out while I strongly suspected I had missed the real point. My work dragged. Because of it I could never relax and enjoy my friends' companionship. My stomach felt queasy. All the mosquitoes in the Phlegraean marshes had discovered my presence and homed in for their seasonal treat. I missed Rome. I wanted a new woman, but although there were plenty available I never liked any I saw.

I was trying to keep cheerful in front of Larius, though his basic good nature was coming under strain. One day it rained as well. Even when the skies cleared, dampness seemed to hang around our clothes. Nero became bad- tempered; controlling him was such hard work we soon let him amble aimlessly.

In this way we found ourselves on yet another dusty Campanian road that led between lush vineyards and vegetable allotments. Healthy cabbages stood to attention in little hollows dug round them to conserve the dew. Distant labourers poked at the black soil with long-handled hoes. Nearby there was a trellised arch marking the entrance to an estate, with a flurry of brown hens around its feet, and an extremely pretty country maiden climbing out over a field gate in a way that showed us most of her legs and a lot of what went on higher up.

Nero had stopped to talk to the chickens while Larius gawked at the girl. She smiled at him as she approached.

'Time we made a call,' Larius decided, with a deadpan face. The lassie was too short, too young and too rosy for my taste, but a heart-stopper otherwise.

'That's your assessment is it, tribune?'

'Absolutely, legate!' Larius exclaimed. The girl passed us; she seemed used to being sized up admiringly by racketeers in carts.

'If she goes in,' I decided quietly. She went in.

Larius told me to amble on ahead; his intestines were suffering the twitchiness that makes being away from home such a joy. I set off to soften up his ladyfriend while he got himself fit. As I passed under the entrance arch the pallid sun ran behind another ominous cloud.

Something told me hobblehoys hawking clothes pegs probably gave this establishment a miss. It was a run-down, beaten-up tip, full of dirt and disease, seeming to consist of out-buildings that had been knocked together from broken doors and planks; as I strolled in among them I was met by a whiff of goats' pee and cabbage-leaves. From all quarters came a drone of fat, warm flies. The hen coops looked dilapidated, and the byres a foot deep in mud. Three stove-in beehives leaned against a wattle screen; no neat, clean bee would zoom in here.

The girl had disappeared. Beyond the initial squalor some absentee landlord's tumbledown farmhouse, which he probably bought as an investment and had never even seen, was gradually dying from lack of management.

I never made it to the house. Common sense overruled: there was a horrendous dog with a matted tail, who was chained to a rocky post and raising havoc. The studs on his collar were as big as Indian emeralds. The links of his twelve-foot-long chain must have weighed two pounds apiece, but Fido was tossing the metalwork around as lightly as a banquet wreath of rosebuds while he raced from side to side, evidently thinking his next banquet might be me. In response to the racket, round a corner loomed a black-chinned lout with a cudgel. He went straight towards the dog, who redoubled his efforts to tear at my throat.

Without waiting to be told that the mutt was only being friendly I turned round, plucked my boot out of a cowpat, and set off back to the road. The man left his dog, but thundered after me. He was gaining fast as I burst out through the arch, bawling for Larius, and saw he had already turned Nero round for a quick getaway. I fell aboard. Nero mooed anxiously and set off. Larius, who had stationed himself in the back of the cart, was swinging an off cut from a quinaria wildly from side to side. The farmer could easily have grabbed the lead pipe's end and grounded Larius, but he soon gave up.

'Bit of luck!' I grinned, when my sister's pride and joy climbed over to join me on the front.

'It had struck me she might have a husband,' Larius answered demurely, getting his breath.

'No chance to ask... Sorry!'

'That's all right. I was thinking of you.'

'Nice lad, my nephew!' I commented to the countryside at large. (Though barley-fed pullets with red cheeks and straws in their hair had never been my type.) I lapsed into sadness, recalling women who were.

Larius sighed. 'Uncle Marcus, the omens seem hostile; shall we give up for today?'

I considered this option, glancing round to get my bearings. 'Damn Crispus! Let's drive up the mountain, find a cheery Vesuvian vintner, and get ourselves roaring drunk!'

I turned Nero off the coast road and up towards the mountain above Pompeii. According to what Petronius had told us, unless we found a winery first we would be driving past the farmland owned by Caprenius Marcellus, that rich old consul who once made the mistake of adopting Atius Pertinax.

It was about midday, but I think I had already realized the Villa Marcella was not a place where Larius and I would be offered a free lunch.