Lindsey Davis - Nemesis

'I thought they could put pressure on him?' said Silvius.

'We still don't know what – though Justinus and I have a theory we intend to check. I suggest you process Probus and Virtus here in Antium. Do it fast, Silvius. But if you can, please give me a couple of days, before you send word to Rome about Nobilis.'

'What's the plan, Falco? I can see you have one.'

'Let me keep it to myself. Silvius, you don't want to know.'

Silvius and the Urbans stayed in Latium to process the survivors' trial. I and mine set off for home. Lentullus was bringing Nero and the ox-cart for Petronius, which meant the usual maddening slow progress. It took us a day to reach Bovillae. Next morning, Justinus and I left Lentullus to drive in without us, while we rode on ahead up the Via Appia.

We passed through the necropolis where the corpse of Modestus had been found. After that came the Appian Gate, then a long straight run through garden suburbs until we hit the dark shade of two leaky aqueducts at the Capena Gate. I excused myself, and left Quintus to pass on greetings to his parents and his wife. We arranged that he and his brother would come to my house the next day, for a catch-up meeting.

I moved on, reached the southern end of the Circus Maximus, where I veered left. Since I had a mule to do the hard work, I pressed him up the hill. He carried me uncomplainingly to the crest of the Aventine, with its snooty ancient temples on the high crags, around which beetled the vibrant plebs of this place where I was born.

After life on the coast, I felt assailed by the busy racket. More shops and workshops were crammed together on this one hill out of seven than traded in the whole of Antium. The crowds were loud – singing, shouting, whistling and catcalling. The pace was fast. The tone was coarse. I drew in a deep breath, grinning with joy to be home again. In that breath I tasted a strange brew of garlic, sawdust, fresh fish, raw meat, marble dust, new rope, old jars and, from the dark doorways of ill-kept apartment blocks, the reek of uncollected sewage in flabbergasting quantities. My mule was jostled, insulted, barked at and cursed. Two hens flew up in our faces as we wove a passage through garland girls and water carriers, ducked out of the way as a burglar dropped down off a fire porch with his clanking swag, turned off a narrow road into one that was barely passable. At the end of that lay the disguised entrance of the sour alleyway called Fountain Court.

A pang of nostalgia hit me like last night's undigested Chicken Frontinian. The street was not much wider than the ravine where Nobilis killed himself. The sunny side was shady and the shady side was glum. A deplorable smell rose and wavered around like a bad genie outside the funeral parlour, while a fierce fight about a bill was spilling on to the pavement by the barber's. To call it a pavement was ridiculous. The customer who was threatening to kill Appius, the barber, was sliding on molten mud. To call it mud as it oozed in through gaps in his sandal straps was optimistic. I rode by without making eye contact, though my sympathy was with the barber. Anyone so stupid as to patronise a tonsure-teaser who had the sad comb-over Appius gave himself should expect to get fleeced. Even a quadrans was too much to pay.

I dismounted stiffly at the Eagle Laundry and tied up the mule among the wet flapping sheets in what passed for a colonnade. Lenia, the laundress emerged nosily: a familiar figure, all frenzied red hair and drinker's cough, tottering on high cork heels, unsteady after her afternoon bevvy. She winked heavily. She knew why I was here. I gave her a wave that passed for debonair, and as she snorted easy insults, I set off up the worn stone stairs. My rule was, three flights then take a breather; two more then pause a second time; take the last flight at a run before you collapsed among the woodlice and worse things that littered your path.

The doorpost of my old apartment still had the painted tile that advertised my name for clients. An old nail, carefully bent about ten years ago, was still hidden in a pot on the landing; as a spare latch-lifter it still worked. I put the nail back, pushed open the door very gently in case someone jumped me; I went in, feeling an odd patter of the heart.

It looked empty. There were two rooms. In the first stood a small wooden table, partly eaten away as if it were fossilised; two stools of different heights, one missing a leg; a cooking-bench; a shelf that once held pots and bowls but was now bare of fripperies. In the second room was just a narrow bed, made up neatly.

I called out that it was me. I heard pigeons flutter on the roof.

There was a folding door from the main room to a tiny balcony. I jerked the door with a special hitch that was needed to move it. Then I stepped out through the opening into the old, incongruously glamorous view over Rome, now bathed in warm afternoon sunlight. For a moment I soaked up that familiar scene, out over the northern Aventine to the Vaticanus Hill beyond the river.

Albia was basking on the small stone bench. Coming from Britain, she adored the sun. The building was so badly maintained by its landlord Smaractus that one day the whole balcony would fall off, taking the bench and anyone who was sitting on it. For the moment it held. It had held for the six or seven years that I lived here, in view of which it was easiest to continue to have blind faith than to try and make the unbearable Smaractus carry out repairs. The kind of builders he used would only weaken it fatally.

My fosterling wore an old blue dress, tight plaits, a simple bead necklace. She sat with her fingers linked, pretending to be happy, calm, and unafraid. There was no chance she was afraid of me. I was her father, just a joke. But she must know her situation. Someone else had terrified her.

'I thought I would find you here.' She made no answer. 'You had better stay until I have a chance to straighten things out with Anacrites. Are you all right, Albia? Do you have food money?'

'Lenia gave me a loan.'

'I hope you fixed a good rate of interest!'

'Helena came. She settled up.'

'Well, I'll send you an allowance until it's safe to come home.'

'I won't be coming,' Albia informed me suddenly and earnestly. 'I have something to say, Marcus Didius. I love you all, but it cannot be my home.'

I wanted to argue but I was too tired. Anyway, I understood. I experienced deep sadness for her. 'So we failed you, sweetheart.'

'No.' Albia spoke gently. 'Let's not have a family argument, like other tiresome people.'

'Why not? Arguments are what families are for. You have a family now, you know that. You're stuck, I'm afraid. Try not to be estranged from us, the way I was from my father.'

'Do you regret that?'

I grinned abruptly, even laughed out loud. 'Never for one moment – nor did he, the old menace!… Have you told Helena this big idea of yours? Striking out on your own?'

'She was upset.'

'She would be!'

Albia turned to me, her face pale, her blue-grey eyes dark with panic despite her attempted bravado. 'You gave me a chance; I am grateful. I want to stay in Rome. But I am going to make myself a life, a life that is suitable and sustainable. Don't tell me I cannot try.'

Huffing gently, I squashed in on the bench beside her. Albia moved up, grumbling on principle. 'So let's hear about it?'

Uncertain of my reaction, she confided, 'I cannot have the life you hoped to give me. Adoption only half works. I stay provincial – - if not a barbarian. Someone who hates us might find out where I came from. In this city, spiteful rumours could damage you and Helena.'

'Anacrites?'

'He intends to do it.' Albia spoke quietly; all self-confidence had drained out of her.

I wondered how he had so badly crushed her spirit. 'And what about you? Did he try something on?'