Lindsey Davis - Three Hands in The Fountain

On the opposite side of the Sacred Way, near the old Rostrum and the Temple of Janus, is the ancient Shrine of Venus Claocina, the Purifier. This too had its posse of clamouring protesters. Venus definitely needed to gird her beauteous thighs for action.

From a fellow observer I heard that the new hand had been found yesterday in the Claudian Aqueduct, one of the newest, which poured into a collection system near the great Temple of Claudius opposite the end of the Palatine. That explained these scenes in the Forum. The citizens of Rome had finally realised that their water contained suspicious fragments that might be poisoning them. Physicians and apothecaries were being besieged by patients with as many kinds of nausea as a sick Nile crocodile.

The crowd was more noisy than violent. That would not stop the authorities cracking down heavily. The vigiles would have known how to move people on with a few shoves and curses, but some idiot had called up the Urban Cohorts. These happy fellows assisted the Urban Prefect. Their job description is 'keeping down the servile element, and curbing insolence'; to do it they are armed with a sword and a knife each, and they don't mind where they stick them.

Barracked with the Praetorian Guard, the Urbans are equally arrogant. They love any peaceful demonstration they can mishandle until it turns into a bloody riot. It justifies their existence. As soon as I glimpsed them marching up in ugly phalanxes, I hopped down the back of the Temple on to the Via Nova and strolled off up the Vicus Tuscus. I managed to leave the troublespot without having my head split open. Others cannot have been so fortunate.

Since I was near to Glaucus' baths, I swerved inside and stayed there in the deserted gymnasium shifting weights and battering a practice sword against a post until the danger had passed. It would take more than the Urbans to get past Glaucus; when he said 'Entry by invitation only' it stuck.

The streets were quiet again when I emerged. There was not too much blood on the pavements.

Abandoning the Games, I headed back to the office in the faint hope of finding Petronius. As I sauntered along Fountain Court I could see something was up. This was too much excitement for one day. I backtracked immediately to the barber's; it was illegally open, since men like to look smart on public holidays in the hope that some floozy will fall for them, and anyway the barber in our street usually had no idea of the calendar. I ordered myself a leisurely trim, and surveyed the scene cautiously.

'We're having a visitation,' sneered the barber, who harboured little respect for authority. His name was Apius. He was fat, florid, and had the worst head of hair between here and Rhegium. Thin, greasy strands were strung over a flaking scalp. He hardly ever shaved himself either.

He too had noticed the highly unusual presence of some tired lictors. Desperate for shade, they were flopping under the portico outside Lenia's laundry. Women brazenly stopped to stare at them, probably making coarse jokes. Children crept up giggling, then dared one another to risk their little fingers against the ceremonial axe blades that lurked in the bundles of rods that the lictors had let fall. Lictors are freed slaves or destitute citizens: rough, but willing to rehabilitate themselves through work.

'Who rates six?' I asked Apius. The barber always talked as if he knew everything, though I had yet to hear him answer a straight question accurately.

'Someone who wants to be announced a long way ahead of himself.' Lictors traditionally walk in single file in front of the personage they escort.

Six was an unusual number. Two was a praetor or other high oflicial. Twelve meant the Emperor, though he would be escorted by the Praetorians too. I knew Vespasian would be chained to his box at the Circus today

'A consul,' decided Apius. He knew nothing. Consuls also had twelve.

'Why would a consul be visiting Lenia?'

'To complain about dirty marks when she returned his smalls?'

'Or a dull finish to the nap of his best toga? Jupiter, Apius – it's the Ludi Romani and the laundry's closed! You're useless. I'll pay you tomorrow for the haircut. It offends me to part with money during a festival. I'm off to see what's going on.'

Everyone believes a barber is the source of all gossip. Not ours. And Apius was typical. The myth about barbers being up to date with scandal has as much truth as that tale foreigners are always being spun about Romans socialising in the public latrines. Excuse me! When you're straining your heart out after last night's rather runny rabbit-in-its-own gravy, the last thing you want is some friendly fellow with an inane grin popping up to ask your opinion of this week's Senate decree about freemen co-habiting with slaves. If anyone tried it with me, I'd ram him somewhere tender with a well-used gutter sponge.

These elevated thoughts entertained me as I walked along Fountain Court. At the laundry the lictors told me they were escorting an ex-consul, one who had served earlier in the year but had stood down to give some other big bean a chance. He was over the road visiting someone called Falco, apparently.

That put me in a happy mood. If there's one thing I hate more than high officials burdened with office, it's officials who have just shed the burden and who are looking for trouble they can cause. I bounced indoors, all set to try to insult him, bearing in mind that if he was still in his named year as consul I was about to be rude to the most revered and highest ranking ex-magistrate in Rome.

There are women who would panic when presented with a consul. One benefit of importing a senator's daughter to be my unpaid secretary was that instead of shrieking with horror, Helena Justina was more likely to greet the prestigious one as an honorary uncle and calmly ask after his haemorrhoids.

The fellow had been supplied with a bowl of refreshing hot cinnamon, which I happened to know Helena could brew up with honey and a hint of wine until it tasted like ambrosia. He already looked impressed by her suave hospitality and crisp common sense. So when I marched in, hooking my thumbs in my festival belt like an irritated Cyclops, I was presented with an ex-consul who was already tame.

'Afternoon. My name's Falco.'

'My husband,' smiled Helena, being especially respectable.

'Her devoted slave,' I returned, honouring her courteously with this blithe romantic note. Well, it was a public holiday.

'Julius Frontinus,' said the eminent man, in a plain tone. I nodded. He shadowed the gesture.

I took a seat at the table and was handed my personal bowl by the elegant hostess. Helena was striking in white, the proper colour for the Circus; although she wore no jewellery because of the marauding pickpockets, she was bound up in braided ribbons which made her frivolously neat. To emphasise how things were in this house, I pulled up another bowl and poured her a drink too. Then we both raised our cups solemnly to the Consul, while I took a good look at him.

If he was the usual age for a consul he was forty three; forty four if he had had this year's birthday by now. Clean-shaven and close-shorn. A Vespasian appointment, so bound to be competent, confident and shrewd. Undeterred by my scrutiny and unfazed by his poor surroundings. He was a man with a solid career behind him, yet the energy to carry him through several more top-notch roles before he went senile. Physically spare, a trim weight, undebauched. Someone to respect – or walking trouble: primed to stir things up.

He was assessing me too. Fresh from the gym and in festive clothes, but with militaristic boots. I lived in a squalid area, with a girl who had high social standards: a sophisticated mix. He knew he was facing plebeian aggression, yet he had been soothed with expensive cinnamon from the luxurious east. He was being bombarded by the peppery scent from late summer lilies in a Campanian bronze vase. And his drink came in a high-gloss redware bowl, decorated with exquisite running antelopes. We had taste. We had interesting trade connections – or were travellers ourselves – or could win friends who gave us handsome gifts.