Lindsey Davis - A Body In The Bath House

The official name-caller was still flustering over my details when the Emperor broke in and called out, 'It's Falco!' He was a big, blunt sixty-year-old who had worked up from nothing and he despised ceremonial.

The boy's job was to save his elite master from any perceived rudeness if he forgot eminent people. Trapped in routine, the child whispered, 'Falco, sir.' Vespasian, who could show kindliness to minions (though he never showed it to me), nodded patiently. Then I was free to go forward and exchange pleasantries with the lord of the known world.

This was no exquisite little Claudian, looking down his thin nose on the coinage like a self-satisfied Greek god. He was bald, tanned, his face full of character and heavily lined after years of squinting across deserts for rebellious tribes. Pale laughter seams ran at the corners of his eyes too, after decades of despising fools and honestly mocking himself. Vespasian was rooted in country stock like a true Roman (as I was myself on my mother's side). Over the years he had taken on all the snide establishment detractors; shamelessly grappled for high-level associates; craftily chosen long-term winners rather than temporary flash boys; doggedly made the best out of every career opportunity; then seized the throne so his accession seemed both amazing and inevitable at the same time.

The great one saluted me with his customary care for my welfare: 'I hope you're not going to say I owe you money.'

I expressed my own respect for his rank. 'Would there be any point, Caesar?'

'Glad I've set you at your ease!' He liked to joke. As Emperor, he must have felt inhibited with most people. For some reason I fell into a separate category. 'So what have you been up to, Falco?'

'Dibbling and dabbling.' I had been trying to expand my business, using Helena's two younger brothers. Neither possessed any informing talent. I intended to use them to lend tone, with a view to wooing more sophisticated (richer) clients: every businessman's hopeless dream. It was best not to mention to Vespasian that these two lads who ought to be donning white robes as candidates for the Curia were instead lowering themselves to work with me.

'I am enjoying my new rank,' I said, beaming, which was as close as I would let myself come to thanking him for promoting me.

'I hear you make a good poultry keeper.' Elevation to the equestrian stratum had brought tiresome responsibilities. I was Procurator of the Sacred Geese of the Temple of Juno with additional oversight of the augurs' chickens.

'Country background.' He looked surprised. I was stretching it, but Ma's family came from the Campagna. 'The prophetic fowl get pesty if you don't watch them, but Juno's geese are in fine fettle.'

Helena and I had plenty of down-stuffed cushions in our new home too. I had grasped equestrianism rapidly.

'How is that girl you kidnapped?' Had the disapproving old devil read my thoughts?

'Devoted to the domestic duties of a modest Roman matron – well, I can't get her to weave wool traditionally, though she did commandeer the house keys and she is nursing children. Helena Justina has just done me the honour of becoming mother to my second child.' I knew better than to expect a silver birth-gift from this skinflint.

'Boy or girl?' Helena would have liked the even-handed way he offered both possibilities.

'Another daughter, sir. Sosia Favonia.' Would it strike Vespasian that she was partly named after a relative of Helena's? A dear bright young girl called Sosia, who had been murdered as a consequence of the first mission I undertook for him, murdered by his son Domitian, though of course we never mentioned that.

'Charming.' If his eyes hardened briefly, it was impossible to detect. 'My congratulations to your -'

'Wife,' I said firmly. Vespasian glowered. Helena was a senator's daughter and should be married to a senator. Her intelligence, her money, and her child-bearing ability ought to be at the disposal of the half wits in the 'best' families. I pretended to see his point. 'Of course I explain to Helena Justina continually that the cheap appeal of an exciting life with me should not draw her from her inherited role as a member of patrician society but what can I do? The poor girl is besotted and refuses to leave me. Her pleas when I threaten to send her back to her noble father are heart-rending'

'That's enough, Falco!'

'Caesar.'

He flung a stylus aside. Watchful secretaries slid forward and collected a pile of waxed tablets in case he dashed them to the ground. Vespasian, however, was not that kind of spoiled hero. He had once had to budget cautiously; he knew the price of tablet wax.

'Well, I may want to put space between you two temporarily.'

'Ah. Anything to do with Julius Frontinus and the Isles of Mystery?' I preempted him.

The Emperor scowled. 'He's a good man. And he's known to you.'

'I think highly of Frontinus.'

Vespasian ignored the chance to flatter me with the provincial governor's opinion of me. 'There's nothing wrong with Britain.'

'Well, you know I know that, sir.' Like all subordinates, I hoped my commander-in-chief remembered my entire personal history. Like most generals, Vespasian forgot even episodes he had been involved with – but given time, he would recall that he himself had sent me to Britain four years ago. 'That is,' I said dryly, 'if you leave out the weather, the total lack of infrastructure, the women, the men, the food, the drink and the mammoth travelling distance from one's dear Roman heritage!'

'Can't lure you with some boar hunting?'

'Not my style.' Even if it had been, the Empire was packed with more thrilling places to chase wildlife across ghastly terrain. Most of the other places were sunny and had cities. 'Nor do I cherish a visionary wish to implant civilisation among the awe-struck British tribes.'

Vespasian grinned. 'Oh, I've despatched a bunch of lawyers and philosophers to do that.'

'I know, sir. They hadn't achieved much the last time you sent me north.' I had plenty more to say about Britain. 'As I recall, the pasty faced tribes had still not learned what to do with the sponge on the stick at public latrines. Where anybody had yet built any latrines.' Goose-pimples ran across my arm. Without intending it, I added, 'I was there during the Rebellion. That should be enough for anyone.'

Vespasian shifted slightly on the bench. The Rebellion was down to Nero, but it still made all Romans shudder. 'Well, somebody has to go, Falco.'

I said nothing.

He tried frankness. 'There is a monumental cock-up on a rather public project.'

'Yes, sir. Frontinus let me into his confidence.'

'Can't be worse than the troubles you sorted in the silver mines.' So he did remember sending me to Britain previously. 'A quick dash over there; audit the slapdash buggers; nail any frauds; then straight home. For you, it's a snip, Falco.'

'Should be a snip for anyone then, Caesar; I'm no demigod. Why don't you send Anacrites?' I suggested nastily. I always liked to think Vespasian reined in the Chief Spy because he distrusted the man's abilities. 'I am desolate to disappoint you, Caesar, though honoured by your faith in me-'

'Don't blather. So you won't go?' sneered Vespasian.

'New baby,' I offered as a let-out for both of us.

'Just the time to nip off.'

'Regrettably, Helena Justina has a pact with me that if ever I travel, she comes too.'

'Doesn't trust you?' he scoffed, clearly thinking that was probable.

'She trusts me absolutely, sir. Our pact is, that she is always present to supervise!'

Vespasian, who had met Helena in one of her fighting moods, decided to back off. He asked me at least to think about the job. I said I would. We both knew that was a lie.

Jupiter, Juno and Mars – I had enough to do that spring. The house move was complicated enough – even before the day when Pa and I smashed up the bath house floor. Having Mico under my feet at the new riverbank place constantly reminded me how much I hated my relatives. There was only one I would have liked to see here, my favourite nephew Larius. Larius was a fresco painter's apprentice in Campania. He could well have repaid all my kind treatment as his uncle by creating a few frescos in my house, but when I wrote to him there was no reply. Perhaps he was remembering that the main thrust of my wise advice had been telling him that painting walls was a dead-end job…