Lindsey Davis - Shadows in Bronze

'One duff racehorse and a sacred goat! The goat has gone into retirement but next time you break a molar on a gristly meat rissole, say hello to Falco's horse – Rome is richer too,' I reminded him. 'By a good part of fifteen billion bushels that could have gone astray…'

He seemed not to hear me. 'Titus wants to know this horse's name.'

Brilliant. I had only been back in Rome six hours, but news of my ghastly windfall had reached the Emperor's elder son! 'Little Sweetheart. Tell Titus Caesar to save his stake! I'm only running the nag as a favour to the bookmakers, who say they have been short of laughs lately-'

'That's honest for a horse owner!'

'Oh, sir, I wish I had the nerve to steal and lie like other people, but conditions in jail are notorious and I'm frightened of the rats. When I want a laugh I tell myself my children will be proud of me.'

'What children?' whipped back the Emperor aggressively. 'O Caesar, the ten little Aventine urchins I cannot afford to acknowledge!'

Vespasian shifted his big, square-bodied frame while his brow creased and his mouth compressed in the way he was famous for. I always knew that when his mood altered and he stopped baiting we had reached the crux of the interview. The lord of the world tutted at me gently like a great cuddly uncle who was letting himself forget how much he disapproved of me.

'What you accomplished with the grain ships was excellent. The Prefect of Supply has been requested to report on a suitable level of reward -' I knew what that meant: I would never hear anything about it again. 'I shall give you a thousand for Gordianus – and I'll make that ten if you can also settle Pertinax Marcellus without publicity.'

Miserly; though on Vespasian's scale of public remuneration, madly generous. I nodded.

‘Pertinax is officially dead. There will be no need to announce it in the Daily Gawk again.'

‘What I would really like,' the Emperor suggested, 'is some proof of his guilt.'

‘You mean, it may have to come to trial?'

'No. But if we deal with him without a trial,' Vespasian commented drily, 'perhaps there is even more reason to have some evidence!'

I was a republican. Finding an Emperor with moral values always startled me.

At this late stage, proof against Pertinax was a near impossibility. The only one of his victims who had ever survived was Petronius Longus and even he had nothing to tell a court. That left as our only material witness Milo, the Gordianus steward. Milo was a slave. Which meant we could only accept his evidence if it was extracted under torture.

But Milo was the sort of stupid stalwart whose response to the challenge of a professional torturer would be to grit his teeth, brace his mighty muscle and die before he broke.

'I shall do my best to find something!' I promised the Emperor solemnly.

He grinned.

I was leaving the Palace, with the sardonic taste of this interview still pursing my mouth, when someone in a doorway greeted me derisively.

‘Didius Falco, you disreputable beggar! Thought you were wearing yourself out on the women around Neapolis!'

I wheeled cautiously, ever on my guard in the Palace environs, and recognized the grim presence. ‘Momus!' The slave overseer who had helped with the dispersal of the Pertinax estate. He seemed grubbier than ever as he grinned through half toothless gums. ‘Momus, the widespread assumption that I fill all my free time fornicating is beginning to get me down! Has somebody been saying something I might want to dispute?

'Plenty!' he chaffed. 'Your name seems to come up everywhere these days. Have you seen Anacrites?'

'Should I?'

'Keep your head down,' Momus warned. There was no love lost between him and the Chief Spy; they had different priorities.

'Anacrites never bothered me. Last I saw, he was demoted to book-keeping.'

‘Never trust an accountant! He keeps bouncing in saying he wants to examine you about a certain lost consignment of Treasury lead -' I groaned, though I made sure I did so under my breath. The word is that Anacrites has booked a pallet in the name of Didius Falco in a long-term cell in the Mamertine.'

'Don't worry,' I told Momus, as if I believed it. 'I'm in on it. Prison is just a ruse to escape the indignant fathers of all the women I have deceived…'

He grinned, and let me go. Pausing only to shout after me, 'By the way, Falco, what's this about a horse?'

'He's called Hard Luck,' I answered. ‘By Short Commons, out of Come to Grief! Don't bet on him; he's bound to break a leg.'

I strode out of the Palace on the north side of Palatine Hill. Half-way back to my own sector I passed an open winery. So I changed my mind, mined into it, and got drunk after all.

I was woken by the sound of a very brisk broom.

This told me two things. Someone thought it was their duty to wake me up. And last night I did find my way home.

When you fall down in a gutter people leave you there in peace.

I groaned and grumbled a few times, to give warning I might emerge; the broom fell silent huffily. I hauled on a tunic, decided it was dirty, so covered the stains with a second one. I washed my face, rinsed my teeth and combed my hair, all without achieving any improvement in how I felt. My belt was missing and I could only find one boot. I stumbled out.

The woman who made it her business to keep my apartment in order had been working quiet miracles for some time before she started that stuff with the broom. Her familiar black eyes seared me with piercing disgust. She had done the room; next she would tackle me.

'I came to make you breakfast, but it had better be lunch!'

'Hello mother,' I said.

I sat down at the table because my legs were objecting to holding me up. I assured my mother it was good to be home, having a decent lunch prepared for me by my loving ma.

‘So you're in trouble again!' snarled my mother, undeceived by flattery.

She fed me lunch while she washed out the balcony. She had found her new bronze bucket for herself. She had also found my spoons.

‘Those are nice!'

'A nice person gave them to me.'

'Have you seen her?'

'No.'

‘Have you seen Petronius Longus?

'No.'

'What are you planning today?'

Most men who do my job have the shrewd sense to free themselves from the attentions of their curious family. What client wants to employ an informer who has to tell his mother every time he ventures out?

'Someone to find.' My strength of mind had been weakened by the lunch.

'Why are you so irritable? What do you want this poor fellow for?'

'Murder.'

'Oh well,' sighed my mother. 'There are worse things he could have done!'

I inferred that she meant things done by me.

'On second thoughts,' I muttered, washing the spoon I had eaten my lunch with, then wiping it with a cloth as I had been instructed by Helena, 'I'll go to a wineshop instead!'

I refused to admit to a hangover, but the thought of more liquor did have a vinegary effect on my insides. Belching painfully, I went to visit Petronius.

He was moping at home, still too weak to patrol the streets yet, and fretting that in his absence his deputy was obtaining too much sway among the ranks. The first thing he said was, 'Falco, why is the Palace fraud squad after you?'

Anacrites.

'Misunderstanding about my expenses-'

'Liar! He told me what commodity was named on the warrant.'

'Oh did he?'

'He tried to bribe me!'

'To do what, Petro?

'Turn you in!'

'If we're talking arrests-'

'Don't be stupid!'

'As a matter of interest, how much did he offer? Petronius grinned at me. 'Not quite enough!'

There was no chance that Petronius would ever cooperate with a Palace spy, but Anacrites must be well aware he only had to spread the whisper that there might be money in it and the next time my landlord Smaractus was sending round his rent squad, some penniless runt on an Aventine backstair would think of fingering me. Getting out of this pickle looked likely to involve personal inconvenience of some sort.