Lindsey Davis - Shadows in Bronze

I had forgotten Galla would be furious about my nephew's future plans.

‘You promised to look after him,' she greeted me ferociously. Fending off her younger children, four dedicated scavengers who could instantly spot an uncle who might have presents in his backpack, I kissed Galla. 'What's that for?' she growled at me. ‘If you're looking for dinner there's only tripe!'

'Oh thanks! I love tripe!' Untrue, as all my family knew, but I was ravenous. Tripe was all there ever was at Galla's house. Her street possessed a tripe-and-trotter stall, and she was a lazy cook. 'What's the problem with Larius? I sent him home fit, sane and happy, in possession of a fat little girlfriend who knows what she wants from him – plus a famous reputation for saving drowning men.'

'A fresco painter!' Galla jibed in disgust.

'Why not? He's good at it, it fetches in the money, and he'll always be in work.'

'I might have known if there was a chance of him being pushed into something stupid, I could rely on you! His father,' complained my sister pointedly, 'is extremely upset!'

I gave my sister my opinion of the father of her children, and she mentioned that if I felt like that I was not obliged to loaf on her sun terrace eating her food.

Home again! Nothing like it. Spooning in the unctuous oral, I smiled quietly to myself.

Larius turned up, not before I was ready for him, and helped me with my luggage the rest of the way: a chance to talk. 'How was the journey, Larius?'

'We managed.'

'Petronius find it hard going? Is he all right?'

'You know him; he never makes a fuss.'

My nephew seemed rather tight-lipped. 'What about you?' I persisted.

'Nothing worries me either. Are you going to ask about your lady-love?'

'As soon as I have a rest and a trip to the bathhouse I intend to see my lady-love for myself. Why? If there is something I should know first, come out with it!'

Larius shrugged.

We had reached the Ostia Road. I was nearly back on my own midden. I halted in the loggia of a cold- meat shop; it was closed but the smell of smoked hams and preservative herbs lingered tauntingly. I screwed the neckbraid of my nephew's tunic angrily round one hand. 'The word is, Pertinax may have come to Rome. Is it something about him that you don't want to say to me?'

'Uncle Marcus, nothing happened.' He shook me off. 'Helena Justina was unwell some of the time, but Silvia looked after her. Anyone can be a poor traveller-'

I had once journeyed fourteen hundred miles in Helena's calm, uncomplaining company; I knew exactly how good a traveller she was. I felt my mouth twist. I wondered what I had come home to. Then, before I let myself start guessing, I swung up my baggage and started down the narrow alley that led to the old familiar odours of Fountain Court.

After Larius left me, I stood out on my balcony. Our tenement stood half-way up the Aventine Hill, and its one great advantage was a fabulous view. Even when I closed my dry, tired eyes there was plenty to absorb: creaking carts and barking watchdogs; distant cries from river boatmen; leery wineshop choruses and wavering temple flutes; screams from young girls, from either terror or hysterical amusement, it was impossible to tell.

Down there, Rome must be harbouring plenty of fugitives. Men running from their mothers; their debts; their business partners; their own inadequacy. Or like Gnaeus Atius Pertinax Caprenius Marcellus: running from Fate.

I wanted to see Helena, but a small knot of doubt had started tightening inside me.

It was still evening when I took my travel-grimed body for a bathe. The gymnasium I often went to stood near the Temple of Castor; its clients were mostly dining at this hour – decent men who did not object strongly to eating in with their families, or whose idea of entertainment out was a plain three-course meal among old friends with light music and pleasant talk. Glaucus the proprietor would be at home himself by now. I was glad, because Glaucus would certainly make free with snide comments about the havoc two months in Campania had wreaked on my physique. As soon as he saw me he would want to bash me back into shape. I was too tired to let him start tonight.

The bath-house usually stayed open until after dinner time. It was well lit, with pottery lamps lining all the corridors, yet at this time of night the place assumed a certain eeriness. There were attendants lurking somewhere who would scrape you with a strigil if you wanted to shout out for them, yet most people who came at dusk managed alone.

Many clients were middle-class grafters with proper jobs of work. Designers of aqueduct systems and harbour engineers who sometimes worked late at emergencies on site. An academic type who had lost all sense of time in the library at the Portico of Octavia and then come here stiff and bleary-eyed. Men in trade, arriving from Ostia after an afternoon tide.

And one or two offbeat, freelance freaks like me, whose weapons training Glaucus personally supervised and who worked at odd hours for reasons which his other customers politely never asked about.

I left my clothes in the changing room, hardly glancing at the stuff on other pegs. I had a good scrape in the hot room, swilled off, then pushed through the heavy retaining door to relax in the dry steam. Someone else was already there. I nodded. At this hour it was traditional to pass in silence, but as my eyes became accustomed to the humidity I recognized the other man. He was in his fifties, with a pleasant expression. He too was slumped in private thought, but knew me just as I took in his vibrant eyebrows and spiked, boyish hair: Helena's papa.

'Didius Falco!'

'Camillus Verus!'

Our greeting was unforced. He took an affectionate view of my rough-and-ready attitude, and I liked his shrewd good humour. I realigned my exhausted frame alongside.

'You've been in Campania, I heard.'

"Just got back. You're late, Senator!'

'Seeking refuge,' he admitted, with an honest grin. 'I'm glad I've seen you here tonight.'

I lifted an eyebrow, with a definite feeling I was waiting for bad news. 'Something special, sir?'

'Didius Falco, I am hoping,' declared the Senator with significant formality, 'you can tell me who has done me the honour of making me a grandfather.'

A long trickle of perspiration had already started from the damp curls at my hairline; I let it run, slowly across my left temple, then with a sudden rush past my ear, down my neck and onto my chest. It splashed off, onto the towel across my lap.

'Do I take it this is news to you? The Senator asked levelly.

'True.'

My reluctance to believe that she could keep back something so vital clashed against vivid memories of Helena fainting; unwell; turning back from climbing Vesuvius; worried about money… Helena crying in my arms for reasons I had never found out. Then other memories, more intimate and more intense. 'Evidently not my business to know!'

‘Ah,' said her father, accepting this bleakly. ‘I'll be blunt: my wife and I assumed it was.' I said nothing. He began to look more doubtful. 'Are you denying that it is possible?

'No.' I never doubted that Camillus Verus had guessed my feelings for his daughter early on. I adopted professional banter as a temporary defence; 'Look, a private informer who leads a lively social life is bound to find women who want more from him than he bargained for. So far I never had any difficulty persuading a magistrate they were vexatious claims!'

'Be serious, Falco.'

I drew a harsh breath. 'I don't suppose you want me to congratulate you, sir. I don't imagine you are congratulating me…' If I sounded irritable, that was because I was starting to burn with a furious sense of injustice.

'Would it be so terrible?