Lindsey Davis - The Ides of April

Suddenly I wanted to be there. I wanted to be pampered by my sisters and feted as the queen of the day. I wanted familiarity. I would relax-indeed, I was starting to relax already. I would emerge from the girls' patting and primping at once more bright-eyed and fun-loving, and quite willing to enjoy my birthday. I even wanted, marginally, relief from Andronicus, because there is a subtle strain when you are with a new man, whose reactions remain uncertain. With him, I still felt constantly wary.

At home, I could simply be myself. They all knew and happily deplored me. That, as I had learned since my teens, was the point of a family.

Departing, I saw Rodan and demanded, "Have you let anyone up to the office in the past few days without telling me?"

"No." He was bound to say that. Who wants trouble?

"What about the other night? That man called Tiberius was looking for me, with Morellus from the vigiles."

"They came to my cubicle. I knew you weren't here."

"They believed you?"

"Why not?"

"Because anyone who knows you doesn't trust you to remember anything!"

Rodan looked at me and said slowly, "They never went up. They seemed to think they knew where you were that evening. They just danced off somewhere else."

I too spoke more levelly. "Rodan, I think someone has been in my room."

"Not that I know, Albia."

I gave up. "Well, keep your eyes peeled."

Rodan looked sheepish. "Happy birthday, by the way."

"Thank you, Rodan."

Yes, I had a wonderful birthday. My relatives can throw a party. As was traditional, it was so good, darkness fell before I realised. Admittedly bleary, I intended to call up the chair and toddle home, but was delayed at the last minute. Nobody was making good decisions at that point. I was prevailed upon to have a comforting word in private with my little brother.

Postumus was eleven now. We all knew his birth mother, a colourful character who ran a large entertainment company. Thalia might be maternal with baby lions, but had shrunk from ownership of a human child and handed him over to us. There were doubts over his paternity, but the story we all stuck with was that my grandfather had fathered him, just before he died. It was certainly what Grandpa in his vanity had wanted to believe.

My parents took the baby and because he too was adopted, it was always assumed he and I had a special bond. In truth, we shared neither blood nor sympathy. I felt sorry for him in some ways, but if I had to be honest (and I hoped this did not show to Postumus) I could never warm to him. He was none too keen on me either. Mind you, he was no lover of other people. My parents and sisters treated him kindly and fairly, but he endured it with suspicion, aware from the start that his existence obliged my father to share with him, as a half-brother, a major legacy; anyone who loved my father would therefore view Postumus as a cuckoo in the nest. Anyone who saw my pa as a much more wily operator would in fact suspect he only adopted the boy because, as his son, the legacy provision no longer applied… That was probably what my brother thought.

Postumus made few friends, within the family or outside, and seemed to enjoy his isolation. He had the kind of personality that makes you think a boy will grow up to be a public torturer. However, he harboured genuine anxieties. He had worried about his security during all his little life. Now, I was told, he felt convinced that his birth mother had her eye on him. He had reached an age when he could be useful to her in her work. Postumus feared she would be coming to claim him (he was a bright child, because not long after this she did).

"Cheer up," I told him, when I was asked to probe and intervene like a big sister. "Then you can be the only boy in history who, instead of running away from home to join a circus, has to run away from a circus to go home."

My brother bestowed on me his most baleful look. I would say he was going through a difficult phase, but with him, one difficult phase simply flowed into the next without a kink. "How would you feel, Albia, if those cabbage-sellers came from Londinium and fetched you back?"

"Trust me, child; life with the Didii has taught me to make exciting decisions. I would run away from the cabbages and become a lion-tamer."

I admitted to myself that I had been drinking wine for so long I might be viewing his unhappiness too flippantly. My brother stomped off, then I was so guilty I felt the need to drink more wine with my parents, who were similarly depressed by their helplessness in handling him. I abandoned any thought of returning to Fountain Court that day. They kept my old room there for me; as on many previous occasions, I stayed overnight.

I did pop home next morning, but only for a flying visit. I needed to pick up things because, at intervals during the party, we had had discussions about work. On the mysterious killings, everyone decided there was only one thing to do next. As relatives do, mine handed me their orders; as you do to avoid arguing, I caved in. So I was being despatched to Aricia where Laia Gratiana had sent her maid, Venusia.

Venusia had to be interviewed. Neither the vigiles nor the aediles' office would ever get around to it and, even if they did, we could be sure they would botch it. Morellus was a deadbeat; Faustus and his runner were implicated. I was not only a neutral party but female. I could bamboozle a maid. Crucially, unlike everybody else, I was efficient. Father would lend me a cart and driver next morning, so I could do it.

Someone I normally thought well of had the bright idea that the sullen one, my brother, could come along on the trip, to take him out of himself.

Thank you, Mother.

Some informers lead different lives from mine. Those big names will be insulted by satirists and historians, but hardly care because they retire on their profits to luxury villas with delicious cliff-top settings above gem-like azure seas. I mean the famous faces who prosecute in notorious court cases. True, they are despicable tools of despotic emperors, but they can balance public loathing against the simple joy of fine working conditions. Their offices are elegant. Discreet staff pad about, carrying silver salvers. Their hours are short and convenient. When they have to travel, assuming an emergency where no agents can be sent on the errand for them, it is in immense style and comfort, all plush litters and an enormous entourage, with many stops for sustenance, which will include vintage wines and potted lobster, served by naked Numidian boys under a demountable canopy. With tassels.

As a one-woman outfit, this was not my way. But for my father stepping in to loan me a ride, I would have been standing at the roadside on the Via Appia, trying to hitch a lift in a haycart. Those haycart drivers are all beasts, believe me.

Instead I was graced with a certain Felix and his mule, Kicker, the deathless team that made up the auction house's secret money-moving cart. This was by definition ramshackle. It had to look fifty years old with a rickety axle, a vehicle so unsophisticated nobody could be using it for anything other than transporting three chickens and a very smelly woolsack. In reality, the axle was well-oiled and the wheels were new. It had a false floor, beneath which lay a reinforced compartment to hold treasure and/or coinage in bulk. Kicker had knock-knees, but if you fed her as much fodder and water as she wanted, she could be a deceptively smooth mover. Felix was the most inappropriate person ever named Happy or Fortunate, living proof that nobody can tell how a babe-in-arms will turn out when they are imposing its lifetime label. We used him because he could be relied on in roadside inns; everyone would shun this glum-face, so he never got sozzled in the wrong company and told prospecting highway robbers he was carrying money. The hens, who had been named by my sisters, were called Piddle, Diddle and Willykins. They were devils for pecking passengers.