Lindsey Davis - Three Hands in The Fountain

'Please remove your baby,' mouthed the clerk. Tactful, but not friendly. He unravelled a scroll of thick parchment, prepared an inferior one (our copy), and applied himself to filling a pen from a well of oakgall ink. He had black and red; we were favoured with black. I wondered what the difference was.

He dipped the pen then touched it to the lip of the well to release unnecessary ink. His gestures were precise and formal. Helena and I cooed over our daughter while he steadily wrote the date for the entry that would confer her civic status and rights. 'Name?'

'Julia Junilla -'

He looked up sharply. 'Your name!'

'Marcus Didius Falco, son of Marcus. Citizen of Rome.' It did not impress him. He must have heard the Didii were a swarm of quarrelsome roughnecks. Our ancestors may have caused trouble for Romulus, but being offensive for centuries doesn't count as a pedigree.

'Rank?'

'Plebeian.' He was already writing it.

'Address?'

'Fountain Court, off the Via Ostiana on the Aventine.' The mother's name?' He was still addressing me. 'Helena Justina,' the mother crisply answered for herself. 'Mother's father's name?' The clerk continued to aim his questions at me, so Helena gave in with an audible crunch of teeth. Why waste breath? She let a man do the work. 'Decimus Camillus Verus.' I realised I was going to be stuck if the clerk wanted her father's father's personal name. Helena realised it too. 'Son of Publius,' she muttered, making it plain she was telling me in private and the clerk could go begging. He wrote it down without a thank you. 'Rank?'

'Patrician.'

The clerk looked up again. This time he let himself scrutinise both of us. The Censor's office was responsible for public morals. 'And where do you live?' he demanded, directly of Helena.

'Fountain Court.'

'Just checking,' he murmured, and resumed his task. 'She lives with me,' I pointed out unnecessarily. 'Apparently so.'

'Want to make something of it?'

Once again the clerk raised his eyes from the document. 'I am sure you are both fully aware of the implications.'

Oh yes. And in a decade or two there would no doubt be tears and tantrums when we tried explaining them to the child.

Helena Justina was a senator's daughter and I was one of the plebs. She had married once, unhappily, at her own level in society, then after her divorce she had had the luck or the misfortune to meet and fall for me. After a few false moves we decided to live together. We intended to make it permanent. That decision made us, by strict legal definitions, married.

In real social terms we were a scandal. If the excellent Camillus Verus had chosen to make trouble over my theft of his noble daughter, my life could have been extremely difficult. Hers too.

Our relationship was our business, but Julia's existence called for a change. People kept asking us when we intended marrying, but there was no need for formality. We were both free to marry and if we both chose to live together that was all the law required. We had considered denying it. In that case our children would take their mother's social rank, although any advantage was theoretical. As long as their father lacked honorific titles to cite on public occasions, they would be stuck in the mud like me.

So when we came home from Spain we had decided to acknowledge our position publicly. Helena had stepped down to my level. She knew what she was doing: she had seen my style of life, and faced up to the consequences. Our daughters were debarred from good marriages. Our sons stood no chance of holding Public office, no matter how much their noble grandfather the senator would like to see them stand for election. The upper class would close against them, while the lower ranks would probably despise them as outsiders too.

For the sake of Helena Justina and our children, I accepted my duty to improve my position. I had tried to achieve the middle rank, which would minimise awkwardness. The attempt had been a disaster. I was not intending to make a fool of myself again. Even so, everyone else was determined that I should.

The Censor's clerk surveyed me as if he were having second thoughts. 'Have you completed the Census?'

'Not yet.' I would be dodging it if possible. The point of Vespasian's new Census was not to count heads out of bureaucratic curiosity, but to assess property for tax. 'I've been abroad.'

He gave me the old they all say that expression. 'Military service?'

'Special duties.' Since he did not query it, I added tantalisingly, 'Don't ask me to specify.' He still didn't care. 'So you haven't reported yet? Are you head of a family?' 'Yes.'

'Father dead?'

'No such luck.'

'You are emancipated from your father's authority?' 'Yes,' I lied. Pa would never dream of doing anything so civilised. It made no difference to me, however.

'Didius Falco, are you to your knowledge and belief, and by your own intention, living in a valid state of marriage?'

'Yes.'

'Thanks.' His interest was cursory. He had only asked me to cover his own tracks.

'You should ask me the same question,' Helena sniped.

'Heads of household only,' I said, grinning at her. She regarded her role in our household as at least equal to my own. So did I, since I knew what was good for me.

'Name of the child?' The clerk's indifference suggested that mismatched couples like us turned up every week. Rome was supposed to be a moral sink, so perhaps it was true – though we had never encountered anyone else who took the same risks so openly. For one thing, most women born into luxury cling on to it. And most men who try to lure them away from home get beaten up by troops of very large slaves.

'Julia Junilla Laeitana,' I said proudly.

'Spelling?'

He looked up in silence.

'L,' said Helena patiently, as if aware that the man she lived with was an idiot, 'A-E-I-T-A-N-A.'

'Three names? This is a girl child?' Most females had two names.

'She needs a good start in life.' Why did I feel I was having to apologise? I had the right to name her as I chose. He scowled. He had had enough of whimsical young parents for one day.

'Birthdate?'

'Seven days before the Kalends of June -'

This time the clerk flung his pen down on the table. I knew what had upset him. 'We accept registrations on the naming day only!'

I was supposed to name a daughter within eight days of her birth. (It was nine days for boys; as Helena said, men need longer for everything.) Custom decreed that a family trip to the Forum for a birth certificate would be made at the same time. Julia Junilla had been born in May; it was August now. The clerk had his standards. He would not permit such a flagrant breach of the rules.

It took me an hour to explain why my child had been born in Tarraconensis. I had done nothing wrong and this was nothing unusual. Trade, the army and imperial business take plenty of fathers abroad; strong-minded womenfolk (especially those who regard foreign girls as a walking temptation) go with them. In summer most births in self-respecting families occur at fancy villas outside Rome in any case. Even being born outside Italy is perfectly acceptable; only parental status matters. I did not intend my daughter to lose her civic rights because the inconvenient timing of an investigation for the Palace had forced us to introduce her to the world at a distant port called Barcino.

I had taken all the steps I could. Various freeborn women had been present at the birth and could act as witnesses. I had immediately notified the town council at Barcino (who ignored me as a foreigner) and I had made a formal declaration within the proper time limit at the provincial governor's residence in Tarraco. I had the bastard's seal on a blurred chit to prove it.