Lindsey Davis: Shadows in Bronze

‘Tullia, if Barnabas drops in for a drink, you could mention I'm looking for him -' Might as well make him feel nervous if I could. In my job you never won a laurel wreath being diffident with strangers who followed you home. 'Tell him if he comes to the house on the Quirinal – I think he'll know where I mean – I have a legacy to give him. I need him to identify himself in front of witnesses.'

'Will he know who you are?'

Just describe my fine-featured classical nose! Call me Falco. Will you do it for me?'

'Ask nicely then!'

That smile had promised favours to a hundred men before. A hundred and one of us must have decided we could overlook the others. Ignoring a pang of guilt about a certain senator's daughter, I asked Tullia in the nicest way I knew; it seemed to work.

'You've done that before!' she giggled when I let her go.

'Being kissed by beautiful women is a hazard of having a classical nose. You've done it too – what's your excuse?' Barmaids rarely need an excuse. She giggled again. 'Come back soon; I'll be waiting, Falco!'

'Rely on it, princess!' I assured her as I left.

Lies, probably. On both sides. But in the Transtiberina, which is even more grim than the Aventine, people have to live in hope.

The sun was still shining when I crossed by way of Tiber Island into Rome. On the first bridge, the Pons Cestius, where the current races fastest, I stopped for a moment and emptied my tunic pocket of the warehouse corpse's finger rings.

His emerald cameo was missing; I must have dropped it in the street.

The thought crossed my mind that the barmaid might have stolen it, but I decided she was far too pretty for that.

I trudged North, I bought a pancake stuffed with hot minced pork which I ate as I walked. A watchdog wagged his tail at me but I told him to take his smiling fangs elsewhere.

Life is unfair. Too unfair, too often, to ignore a friendly grin; went back and shared my pancake with the dog.

I was off to a house in the High Lanes Sector, on the Quirinal Mount. Its owner had been a young Senator who was involved in the same plot as the man Frontinus and I had dumped down the sewer. This one was dead too. He had been arrested for questioning, then found choked at the Mamertine prison – murdered by his fellow conspirators to ensure he would not talk.

Now his house was being emptied. Clearing property was a Didius family business, so when the subject came up at the Palace, I volunteered. Besides, the illustrious owner was once married to my special friend Helena Justina, so I wanted to see how they had lived.

The answer was, in lavish style. Seeing it had been a bad mistake. I approached their house in a melancholy mood.

Most Romans are driven demented by their neighbours: rubbish on the stairs and unemptied slop tanks; the rude salesmen with their slapdash shops at ground level and the crashing whores upstairs. Not his honour here; his fine spread occupied its own freehold block. The mansion sprawled on two levels against the Quirinal Jiffs. A discreet but heavily armoured door let me in from the street to a still corridor with two porters' cubicles. The main atrium stood open to the sky, so its tasteful wainscot of glazed tiles was sparkling in long shafts of brilliant light. A magnificent fountain in a second courtyard added to the cool and bright effect as it shimmered above exotic palms in shoulder- high bronze urns. Ornate, marble-lined corridors stretched in two directions. If the owner grew tired of his formal reception rooms, various little masculine snugs were hidden away behind heavy damask door curtains on an upper floor.

Before I could settle to my official work in the house, I needed to clear up my worry that the character who had been dogging me that morning had some link with this elegant Quirinal residence.

I turned back to the doorman.

'Remind me -which was that freed slave your master was so fond of?'

'Barnabas, you mean?'

'Yes. Did Barnabas ever own a repulsive green cloak?'

'Oh, that thing!' winced the porter fastidiously.

Barnabas the freedman had completely disappeared. To put him in perspective, if he had been a missing slave it would hardly be worthwhile posting up his name as a fugitive. Not even if he could read and write three alphabets, play the double-stemmed flute, and was a sixteen-year-old virgin built like a discus thrower, with a willing nature and liquid dark-brown eyes. His master had left behind so much saleable plunder that losing one piece of fine art – human or otherwise – was neither here nor there.

I had been finding it convenient to overlook this Barnabas. The Emperor, in the interests of his own reputation for good nature (a reputation he had never possessed, but wanted to acquire), had decided to honour the dead man's minor personal bequests; I was arranging it. The Senator's little leaving present to his favourite freedman was a cool half- million sesterces. I was protecting it in my bank-box in the Forum, where the interest had already provided a rose-bush in a black ceramic pot for my balcony. So until now I had reckoned that when Barnabas needed his legacy he could come to see me of his own accord.

Today's events brought me up sharp. Snooping round that warehouse displayed an unhealthy interest in events any sensible freedman would want to pretend he knew nothing about, and attacking me was a fool's game. I knew I could still not get on with my work with a clear mind, so I bestirred myself to make some more enquiries among the waifs we had not yet sent to the slave market.

'Who knows Barnabas?'

'What's in it for us?'

'Give me something else to think about and I may forget to beat you-'

Screwing facts out of these noodles was hard work. I gave up and hunted down Chrysosto, a Levantine secretary who would sell for a high price once we released him for auction, though at present I was using him to make up inventories.

Chrysosto was a limp bladder with seedy skin and a bleary-eyed look from poking his nose into crannies when a nose is best not applied. He was displaying a white tunic, much too short in the hem, though the legs he was so proud of were just the usual pale shanks that lurk in offices, finished off with hairy knobs for knees and crumpled sandals. You could knock in tent pegs with his hammertoes.

'Stop scribing a moment – what was special about Barnabas?'

'Oh, his honour and Barnabas grew up on the same farm.'

Under my gimlet gaze Chrysosto edged his skinny pins behind a table. He had probably started out with talent, but writing letters for a man with a slow brain and a short temper soon taught him to disguise his initiative.

'What's he like?'

'A Calabrian scruff'

'Did you like him?

'Not much.'

'Do you reckon he knew what your master was up to?'

'Barnabas reckoned he knew everything.'

This well-informed Calabrian had been made a free citizen, so in theory if he wanted to moonlight that was up to him. Since his patron was a traitor, I had originally sympathized if he thought skipping from home was a sensible move. Now I wondered if he had taken himself off because he was up to something slippery.

'Any idea why he should run away, Chrysosto? Was he very cut up about your master's death?'

'Probably, but no one saw him afterwards. He stayed in his room with the door bolted; he had his food left outside. None of us had ever got on with him, so no one tried to interfere. Even when he went to jail to ask for the body no one here knew. I only discovered he had organized the funeral when the undertaker brought a bill.'

'Did no one at all attend the cremation?

'No one knew. But the ashes are there in the family mausoleum; I went to pay my respects yesterday. There's a new urn; alabaster-'