Lindsey Davis - Three Hands in The Fountain

'It's yours. Provided,' I put in slyly, 'you explain to me how, if we're talking about a quarrel with your wife, you also end up being suspended by the Fourth. When did Rubella ever have a reason to accuse you of disloyalty?' Rubella was the tribune in charge of the Fourth Cohort, and Petro's immediate superior. He was a pain in the posterior, but otherwise fair.

'Silvia took it upon herself to inform Rubella that I was tangled up with a racketeer's relative.'

Well, he had asked for it, but that was hard. Petronius Longus could not have picked a mistress who compromised him more thoroughly. Once Rubella knew of the affair, he would have had no choice about suspending Petro from duty. Petro would be lucky even to keep his job. Arria Silvia must have understood that. To risk their livelihood she must be very angry indeed. It sounded as if my old friend was losing his wife too.

We were too disheartened even to drink. The amphora was down to the grit in the point anyway. But we were not ready to return home in this glum mood. The water board employee had not actually asked us to move out of his way, so we stayed where we were while he leaned around us cleaning the cockleshell spout with a disgusting sponge on a stick. When the plunger failed to work he burrowed in his tool satchel for a piece of wire. He poked and scraped. The fountain made a rude noise. Some sludge plopped out. Slowly water began to trickle through, encouraged by more waggling of the wire.

Petronius and I straightened up reluctantly. In Rome the water pressure is low, but eventually the bowl would fill and then overflow, providing the neighbourhood with not only its domestic supply but an endless trickle down the gutters to carry away muck from the streets. Tailors' Lane badly needed that but, drunk though we were, we didn't want to end up sitting in it.

Petronius applauded the workman sardonically. 'That all the problem was?'

'Seized up while it was off, legate.'

'Why was it off?'

'Empty delivery pipe. Blockage in the outlet at the castellum.'

The man dug his fist into the bucket he had brought with him, like a fisherman pulling out a crab. He came up with a blackened object which he held up by its single clawlike appendage so we could briefly inspect it: something old, and hard to identify, yet disturbingly familiar. He tossed it back in the bucket where it splash-landed surprisingly heavily. We both nearly ignored it. We would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Then Petro looked at me askance.

'Wait a moment!' I exclaimed.

The workman tried to reassure us. 'No panic, legate. Happens all the time.'

Petronius and I stepped closer and peered down into the filthy depths of the wooden pail. A nauseous smell rose to greet us. The cause of the blockage at the water tower now reposed in a bed of rubbish and mud.

It was a human hand.

None of my relatives had had the courtesy to leave. More had arrived, in fact. The only good news was, the newcomers did not include my father.

My sisters Allia and Galla made their excuses sniffily the moment I reappeared, though Verontius and bloody Lollius their husbands sat tight. Junia was squeezed into a corner with Gaius Baebius and their deaf son, as usual busy posing as a classic family group so they could avoid talking to anybody else. Mico, Victorina's widower, was grinning inanely and waiting in vain for somebody to tell him how well turned out his horrible offspring were. Famia, the drunk, was drunk. His wife Maia was somewhere in a back room helping Helena clear up. Various children were bored, but doing their best to entertain themselves by kicking dirty boots against my newly painted walls. All present cheered up as they watched me brace myself.

'Hello, Ma. Brought a footman, I see?' If I had been warned in advance I would have hired heavies just to eject this man. A couple of moonlighting gladiators with instructions to turn him away at the door, and break both his arms as an extra hint.

My mother scowled. She was a tiny, black-eyed old bundle who could rampage through a market like a barbarian army. She was holding my new baby daughter, who had begun to bawl her eyes out the moment I appeared. Julia's grief at beholding her father was not why Ma was scowling; I had insulted her favourite.

It was her lodger Anacrites. He looked smooth, but his habits were as savoury as a pigsty after months of neglect. He worked for the Emperor. He was the Chief Spy. He was also pale, silent, and reduced to a wraith after a serious head wound which unfortunately failed to finish him. My mother had saved his life. That meant she now felt obliged to treat him as some special demigod who was worth saving. He accepted the fuss smugly. I ground my teeth.

'Find a friendly greeting for Anacrites, Marcus.' Greet him? He was no friend of mine. He had once arranged to have me killed, though of course that had nothing to do with my loathing him. I could simply find no vacancy in my personal clique for a devious, dangerous manipulator with the morals of a slug.

I grabbed the screaming baby. She stopped crying. No one looked impressed. Against my ear she gurgled in a way I had learned meant she was soon going to be sick down the inside of my tunic. I laid her down in the fine cradle Petronius had made for her, hoping I could pretend any ensuing mess was a surprise to me. Ma began rocking the cradle, and the crisis seemed to pass.

'Hello, Falco.'

'Anacrites! You look terrible,' I told him cheerily. 'Turned back from the Underworld because you'd dirty Charon's punt?' I was determined to floor him before he had a chance to get at me. 'How's espionage these days? All the swallows over the Palatine are cheeping that Claudius Laeta has put a bid in for your job.'

'Oh no; Laeta's skulking in ditches.'

I grinned knowingly. Claudius Laeta was an ambitious administrator at the palace who hoped to incorporate Anacrites and the existing intelligence network in his own section; the two were locked in a struggle for power which I found highly amusing – so long as I could keep myself out of it.

'Poor Laeta!' I sneered. 'He should never have tangled with that Spanish business. I had to make a report to the Emperor which showed him in rather a bad light.'

Anacrites gave me a narrow look. He too had tangled with the Spanish business. He was wondering what I might have reported to Vespasian about him. Still convalescent, a film of sweat suddenly shone on his brow. He was worried. I liked that.

'Anacrites isn't fit to return to work yet.' Ma told us some details that had him crawling with embarrassment. I tutted with fake sympathy, letting him know that I was delighted he had terrible headaches and trouble with his bowels. I tried asking for further details, but my mother soon twigged what I was playing at. 'He has taken indefinite sick leave, approved by the Emperor.'

'Oho!' I scoffed, as if I thought that was the first step to enforced retirement. 'Some people who get hit very hard on the head have a personality change afterwards.' He seemed to have avoided that; it was a pity, because any change in Anacrites' personality would have been an improvement.

'I brought Anacrites so you and he can have a little chat.' I went cold. 'You'll have to sort out a decent business for yourself now you're a father,' my mother instructed me. You need a partner – someone to give you a few tips. Anacrites can help get you on your feet – on days when he feels fit enough.'

Now it was me who felt sick.

Lucius Petronius, my loyal friend, had been surreptitiously showing the dismembered hand from the water tower to my brothers-in-law in a corner. Those ghouls were always eager for anything sensational.

'Pooh!' I heard Lollius boasting. 'That's nothing. We fish worse out of the Tiber every week -'