Lindsey Davis - A dying light in Corduba

The nick was short. It was nasty. Slowly his oxen brain realised more was called for than he generally had to use. He began to fight harder. I was enjoying the challenge, but I had to be careful. He possessed brute strength, and he had no qualms about how he used his body. I was staving him off with punches and kicks when he bore down on me and grappled me. His roars and the familiar smell of him were churning me up. Then I broke free for a moment. Someone else took a hand. A bystander I had hardly noticed stepped forward adroitly, and passed me a gallery prop. The roughhewn round timber weighed something terrible, though I hardly felt it. I swung the pole at chest height, with all my force. It felled Cornix with a pleasing crack of broken ribs.

'Oh nice! I learned that from you, Cornix!'

I could easily have brought the timber down on his skull. Why sink to his level? Instead, I raised the prop above my head and crashed it down across his shins. His scream sang sweetly in my ears. When I left he would never be able to follow me.

Suddenly I felt a lot better about a lot of things.

I turned to thank my rescuer and had a shock. For the second time I had escaped that brute's clutches through intervention of a female kind.

I knew I had seen her somewhere, though she lacked the kind of beauty that my brain catalogues. She was of an age where her age had ceased to matter, though clearly full of spirit and energy by the way she had helped me out. She looked nothing, just a dumpling you could see selling eggs on a market stall. She wore a brown outfit with extra swaddlings in unbleached linen, topped by untidy swags of straw-like hair emerging from a scarf. A battered satchel was slung across a bosom that wouldn't raise excitement in a galley-slave who had just set foot on land for the first time in five years. Eyes of an indeterminate colour were surveying me from a face as lively as wet plaster. She showed no reserve about being here on a site that seemed otherwise exclusively for men. Most of them had not even noticed her.

'You saved my life, madam.'

'You were coping. I just threw in some help.'

'We must have met before.' I was still gasping. 'Remind me of your name?'

She gave me a long stare. While I blinked back at her she stretched out one pointed shoe, and drew a sign in the dust with her toe: two curved lines with a smudge in between them. A human eye.

'I'm Perella,' she said matter-of-factly. Then I remembered her: the surly blonde who had originally been booked to dance for the entertainment of the Olive Oil Producers of Baetica.

Without another word we turned away from the procurator's office, leaving Cornix writhing on the ground. No one made a move to help him. Wherever he went he was a man with enemies.

Perella and I walked right through the mine environs to the gate where I had left my mules. She had a horse. She mounted without help. I swung up with an element of slickness too. For once.

We rode single file – me leading – down the one-way road from the settlement towards the major cross-country route through the Mariana mountains. When we reached a suitable quiet spot I signalled and reined in.

'I've been dodging another Spanish dancer, name of Selia. Nice little mover with castanets, and even better with a cleaver in her hand. She won't be titillating men any more though – or murdering them either. She's learning new dance steps in Hades. MI the breath's been squeezed out of her.'

'You don't say!' Perella marvelled. 'Persons unknown, would that be?'

'I believe so.'

'Better keep it that way.'

I let her see me looking her over. She was bundled up like a wet cheese. I could not see a weapon. If she carried one it could be anywhere. Her satchel, perhaps. But if she killed Selia, she had adequate skills even without weapons.

'I'm not after you, Falco.'

'You've been trying to track me down.'

'Only when I had a moment. You dodge about a lot. Falco, if we're intending to have a cosy chat we could get down and sit under a tree.'

'Far be it from me to refuse to exchange sweet nothings with a woman in a wood!'

'You don't look happy on a mule.'

Apt, though I was not sure I wanted to be cosy with Perella; still, she was right about me hating life in the saddle. I dismounted my mule. Perella jumped off her horse. She unwound a large sturdy shawl which formed one layer of her garments and spread it on the ground. Equipped for everything. Obviously if I wanted to vie with such a specialist I would have to improve myself.

We placed ourselves side by side like lovers on a picnic rug: lovers who had not known each other very long. Midges started to take an interest immediately.

'Well, this is nice! All we need is a flagon of wine and some rather stale rolls, and we can convince ourselves we're a couple of skivers enjoying a holiday.' I could see Perella was not one for light-hearted quips. 'Last time I saw you I believed you were a regular dancer who had lost an engagement due to trickery. You never told me you were employed by the Chief Spy.'

'Of course I didn't tell you. I'm a professional.'

'Even so, eliminating the beauteous Selia just because she pinched your dinner-date seems to be taking your rivalry too far.'

The woman regarded me with those mud-coloured eyes. 'What makes you think I killed her?'

'It was very neat. Professional.' I lay back with my hands folded under my head, gazing up through the oak tree boughs. Bits of leaf flittered down and tried to land in my eyes, while I felt that old forest dampness starting to seize up my joints. Going home to hold conversations sensibly in wine bars became an attractive thought.

She sighed, squirming on the rug so she could still see me. 'Too flash, that Selia. So painted up that everywhere she went she was unmissable.'

'Good intelligence agents know how to blend in, eh? Like informers! So the flash lass has had her lamp snuffed out by the decent working girl?'

Perella still managed not to admit it. 'Her time was up. I reckon the young fool quaestor had sent for her from Hispalis to finish you off, Falco.'

I owe somebody a thank-you then.'

She showed no interest in my gratitude. 'My bet is, Selia thought he was losing his nerve and she intended to do for him as well. If he talked she would have been in trouble.'

'Letting her remove Quadratus would have solved a problem.'

'If you say so, Falco.'

'Well, let's be practical. Apart from whether it's likely anyone can persuade a judge to try him, when any judge in Rome is liable to have his inclination to do so suborned by large gifts from Attractus – somebody has to catch the bastard first. You're chasing round the mines now, and so am I. I'm definitely looking for Quadratus, and you're either after him – or me.'

She turned around and grinned at me.

'What was the game?' I asked in a dangerous voice. 'You've been lurking around all my suspects – Annaeus, Licinius, Cyzacus – they've all had a visitation. I gather you even made a trip to see me.'

'Yes, I got to most of them ahead of you; what kept you dawdling?'

'Romantic mentality. I like to admire the scenery. You may have got to them first, but most of them talked to me for longer.'

'Learn anything?' she jeered.

I ignored it. 'You knew I was official. Why not make contact? We could have shared the work.'

Perella dismissed my quibbles as mere prissiness. 'Making contact with you took second place! Until I decided whether I could trust you I didn't want to give you any clue who I was or what I was there for. I nearly managed to get to you the night of the Parilia.'

'Was it you who hurled that rock at me?'

'Just a pebble,' she smirked.

'Then why make yourself invisible afterwards?' 'Because unbeknown to you, Quadratus was lurking up ahead.'