Lindsey Davis - The Iron Hand of Mars

'That should cause a sensation when I'm next asked to a dinner party! It's lovely…' The sight of Helena wearing nothing but her birthday present encouraged me to further reconciliation, especially as I had managed to keep our physical union intact even when stretching sideways to my bedside table. 'Marcus, you ought to be exhausted – '

'I had a good night's sleep.'

'Are you afraid you might have forgotten how to do it?' she taunted wickedly, but accepting my attentions. Helena knew how to be gracious after she had received a well-chosen necklace of daunting cost. 'Or had you just forgotten how good it is?'

'Forgotten? Sweetheart, when you leave me pining, the problem is that I remember all too well.'

For some reason this manly reassurance worked on Helena so well she responded with what might have been a sob, though it was well muffled. 'Oh hold me – touch me – '

'Where?'

'There – anywhere – everywhere.'

Nearby in the house something fell over with a loud crash.

Something large. A statue of museum proportions, or an immense vase.

No one squealed. But after a second, we heard small desperate feet scampering.

'That's a child!' I was amazed.

'Oh Juno, I forgot – ' Helena reached the door first. The child was fleeing down the long corridor, leaving the giant shards behind. Unluckily for her, she had fled towards us.

What she had pushed over was a dramatic, two-handled vessel that was trying to pass for a middle-period Hellenic black-figure wine crater. It almost succeeded, but I had been trained by experts and I knew a fake, even when it was the kind of high-class fake that has better workmanship than the original (and costs more). It had been displayed on the plinth where I had once written Falco was here in the dust to annoy the tribune's servants. The crater had been big enough for a Treasury clerk to bury his savings in, and was probably the most expensive item Camillus Justinus possessed. The first piece in his lifetime collection, possibly.

'Stop! Stand still at once!'

Helena justina could fix me in my tracks when she wanted to; she had no trouble with an eight-year-old. It was, however, the culprit who demanded: 'What are you doing there?' The rude defiance seemed familiar.

'Escaping from you!' I growled, for this must be the unwelcome soul I had observed snoring in Helena's bedroom earlier. I strode to the remains and picked up a curved fragment. Odysseus with a jutting spade beard was enjoying being tempted by some female; she had a tantalising ankle, but the rest of her was broken off.

I turned back angrily and surveyed the infant. She had a plain face and a petulant expression, with five or six thin little plaits tied together with a skinny rag on top of her head. My brain struggled to pin down which potbellied little disaster this was, and what relationship she bore to me. For it was one of ours all right. The gods only knew how she came to be in Upper Germany, but I could spot a member of the rampant Didius clan even before the wail of, 'I was only playing – it fell over on its own!'

She was hip-high, wearing a tunic that ought to have been decent, though she managed to have it hitched up so her bottom showed. That settled it; I knew her parentage all right. Augustinilla. An elaborate name, but a very straightforward personality – dumb insolence. She was my most hated sister Victorina's most objectionable child.

Victorina was the eldest in our family, the bane of my childhood and my worst social embarrassment since then. As a child she had been a tough little tyke with a constant runny nose and her loincloth at half-mast around her scabby knees. All the local mothers had warned their children not to play with us because Victorina was so violent; Victorina made them play with her anyway. When she grew up she played only with the boys. There were plenty. I could never understand why.

Of all the naughty children who could have walked in on my tender reunion with Helena, it had to be one of hers…

'Uncle Marcus has got nothing on!' The reason was that the tunic Helena had plunged into as she rushed to the door was mine. With a good amber necklace it looked highly incongruous, increasing the impression that a Bacchanalia had been occurring in my room. The child's accusing eyes went to Helena too, but there she had better sense than to comment. Presumably Augustinilla had witnessed at close quarters how Helena Justina had dealt with the wild bandit chief.

I took up an athletic pose; a mistake. Flashing the oiled muscles of a handsome physique may succeed in a sunlit stadium within sniff of the Mediterranean, but in a dim domestic corridor halfway across Europe being unclad only makes you feel cold. In a dark mood, I waited for Helena to utter the traditional imperative: 'She's your niece; you deal with her.'

She said it, and I issued the traditional rude reply. Helena tried not to let the child see she was annoyed.

'You are the head of the Didius family, Marcus!'

'Purely notional.'

Being head of our family was so punishing that the real claimant to the title, my father, had abandoned his ancestors and completely changed his identity to avoid the ghastly task. Now the role fell to me. This explains why I was no longer on speaking terms with my papa the auctioneer. It may even explain why I myself had felt no qualms about entering a profession which most of Rome despises. I was used to being cursed and treated with contempt; my family had been doing that for years. And being a private informer had the great advantage of taking me undercover or right away from home.

Perhaps all families are the same. Perhaps the idea that paternal power holds sway was put about by a few hopeful lawmakers who had no sisters or daughters of their own.

'You brought her; you can have the joy of beating her,' I said coolly to Helena. I knew she would never strike a child.

I strode back inside my room. I felt depressed. Since we were not married there was no reason for Helena to take notice of my relatives; if she did, it boded the kind of serious pressure I had come to dread.

Sure enough, after a few rapid words, followed by a surprisingly meek reply from Augustinilla, Helena came in and began to explain: 'Your sister is in trouble – '

'When was Victorina ever out of it?'

'Hush, Marcus. Women's trouble.'

'That's a change; her trouble is usually men.'

I sighed and told her to spare me the details. Victorina had always been a moaner about her insides. Her wild life must have strained her system intolerably, most of all after her marriage to an inane plasterer who in his ability to father horrid children in rapid succession outshone every rodent in Rome. I would never wish surgery on anyone, however. Let alone those painful, rarely successful businesses with forceps and dilators that I vaguely knew were inflicted on women.

'Marcus, the children were being parcelled out to give your sister a chance of recovery, and in the lottery you won Augustinilla.' Some lottery – a blatant fix. 'No one knew where you were.' That had been deliberate.

'So they asked you! Augustinilla is the worst of the bunch. Couldn't Maia take her in?' Maia was my one half-likeable sister, which worked against her whenever problems were being handed out by the rest. Her amiable nature meant she was frequently leeched on even by me.

'Maia had no more room. And why should Maia always have to be the obliging one?'

'That sounds like Maia talking! I still don't understand. Why ever did you have to bring the nipper here?'

'What else could I do with her?' she snapped crossly. I had a few suggestions, but sense prevailed. Helena scowled. 'As a matter of fact, I didn't want to admit to other people that I was running around Europe after you.' She meant that she had refused to say she was storming off after we had had a fight.