Lindsey Davis - The Jupiter Myth

I was too grown-up to be lured by nasty girls with swords, though they might be sensational for some. Instead, I was trying to remember the last time I had any borage that was more than mildly interesting. Suddenly I became aware of excruciating pain. Somebody had jumped me.

I never saw him coming. He had slammed my face against a wall, pinioning me with such brutal force he nearly broke the arm that he had twisted up my back. I would have cursed, but it was impossible.

'Falco!' Hades, I knew that voice.

My fine Etruscan nose was squashed tightly against a wall that was so deeply rough-cast it would imprint me for a week with its hard pattern; the daub was bonded with cow dung, I could tell.

'Petro -' I gurgled.

'Stop drawing attention!' He might have been bullying some thief he had caught fingering women's bustbands off a laundry drying line. 'You sapheaded blunderer! You interfering, imbecilic rat's bane-' There were more hissed insults, all meticulously spittable, some obscene, and one I had never heard before. (I worked out what it meant.) 'Get this, you flakewit – leave it, or I'm a dead man!'

He released me abruptly. I nearly fell over. When I staggered round to tell the swine he had made himself quite clear enough, he had already gone.

I was having a frustrating time: when I retraced my steps to the Swan, Albia had disappeared too. 'Went off with a man,' the proprietor enjoyed telling me.

'You should be ashamed if people are using your bar as a pick-up point. Suppose she was my darling little daughter and you had let her be dragged off by a pervert!'

'But she's not your darling, is she?' he sneered. 'She's a street child. I've seen her around for years.'

'And was she always with men?' I asked, nervous now about what type of bad influence Helena had imposed on the children at the residence.

'No idea. Still, they all grow up.'

Albia was fourteen, if she really was an orphan of the Rebellion. Old enough to be married off, or at least politely betrothed to a poxy tribune, if she were a senatorial brood mare. Old enough to get pregnant by some layabout her father hated, if she were a plebeian needed in the family business. Old enough to be wise in ways I could not think about. Yet she was childishly slight, and if her life had been as hard as I suspected, she was young enough to deserve a chance, young enough to be capable of being saved – if she had stayed with us.

'She'll be at it all over the forum soon, even if she's a virgin now.'

'Sad,' I commented. He thought I had cracked. And I did not like the way he watched me walk away down the street.

I had no plan when I set off walking, just a need to get out of there. I felt there were too many eyes watching me, from people in doorways or even people unseen.

I had gone about three streets. I was starting to be aware that there was more activity in Londinium than most Romans would expect. All the regular commodities were sold. The dark little shops were open in the day; life in them just had a duller pace than I was used to. Buyers and sellers lurked inside, just as they always did; even when the sun was so hot that I was sweating after fifty strides, people here forgot they were allowed to sit out in the open air. Otherwise I felt at home. In the daily markets, selling fresh veg and sad-eyed dead game, the traders' shouts were vibrant and their wives' jokes were coarse. The men could have been tricky barrow boys around the Temple of Hope back home in the Tiberside Vegetable Market. The stench of old fish scales is the same anywhere. Walk your boots across a newly sluiced butchers' street, and the faint odour of animal blood will haunt you all day afterwards. Then pass a cheese stall and the warm, wholesome waft will draw you back to buy a piece – until you are sidetracked by those remarkably cheap belts on the stall next door that will fall apart when you get them home…

I turned my back on the belts eventually (since I would not be caught dead in brick red leather). Mooching into a shop full of jumbled hardware, I was trying to work out how I could carry back home with me ten stupendously good value, but heavy, black pottery bowls. Despite a generous discount offered by the pleasant shopkeeper, I said no and I started to inspect some interesting skeins of hairy twine. You can never have too much hairy twine around the house and he assured me it was the best goat's hair, neatly twisted, the skeins only going for a song because of over-production in the goat-hair-twine making trade. I loved this tempting hardware emporium, where next I spotted a quite hilarious lamp. It had naked young ladies either side of the hole, looking over their shoulders to compare the size of their bottoms -.

No chance to linger. I happened to glance out of doors and there were the two enforcers strolling past the shop.

The amiable seller caught the direction of my glance so I muttered, 'Know those two?'

'Splice and Pyro.'

'Know what they do?'

He smiled bleakly. Pyro obviously set the fires, while Splice must have some painful speciality on which I would not speculate.

In two heartbeats I was out of there and dodging after them. Informers learn not to load themselves up with shopping, just in case of such emergencies.

I held back as the pair walked unconcernedly. I had recognised them at once: Splice, the short, well-built one, who probably did the chat and the brutality, and his leaner chum Pro, who stayed on guard or played with flame. Splice had a square face decorated with two intriguing old scars; Pyro sported dirty beard-shadow and a speckled crop of moles. A snipper who knew how to wield steel had given them fine Roman haircuts. Both had muscled legs and arms that must have seen some nasty action. Neither looked like a man to argue with about the outcome of a horse race.

Watching from behind, I could sum them up from how they walked. They were confident. Unhurried but not loitering. A bulge under Splice's tunic hinted that he might be carrying swag. Once or twice they exchanged words with a stallholder, light greetings in passing. These men behaved like locals who were old faces about the district. Nobody showed much fear; they were an accepted part of the scenery. People almost seemed to like them. In Rome they could have been typical spoiled wastrels: everyday adulterers who avoided work, lived with their mothers, spent too much on clothes, drink and brothel bills, and dabbled with the sordid end of crime. Here, they stood out as Romans because of their Mediterranean colouring; they both had facial bone structure that was straight off the Tiber Embankment. Maybe that hint of the exotic attracted people.

They had melded in, apparently very fast and without effort. Londinium had accepted extortion as easily as it accepted mist every morning and rain four times a week. That was how the rackets worked. The enforcers arrived in a place and made out that their methods were a normal part of the high life. People could sniff money when near them. Moneyed bastards will always attract sad people who yearn for better things. These thugs – they were no better – soon acquired status. Once they had beaten up a few stubborn customers, they carried another smell too: danger. That also has a perverse attraction.

I saw it all working when they led me right back where I came from earlier, straight past the Swan to the other caupona, the Ganymede. They were well known to the waiter, who came out at once and chatted as he laid their table, a private one set slightly apart from the rest. It was lunchtime and a lot of people were calling for a hasty bite, but the enforcers were able to take all the time they liked over whether they wanted olives in brine or in aromatic oil. Wine came automatically, probably in their special cups.