Lindsey Davis - The Silver Pigs

"No thanks. I'm just a bit cold. Please don't trouble."

"Oh it's no trouble!" he roared cheerfully. There are unlimited cup-bearers and flagon-pourers waiting up the corridor for a chance to show off their stuff I still shook my head. Rather to my surprise he continued rattling on. "Bringers-in and takers out Each of them some sort of exalted specialist. If you want one, they can probably produce a slave to pick the fluff out of your navel, complete with a fluff-picker's apron and a pearl handled fluff-picking tool!" He seemed to have settled down.

"Nice relaxing retirement, sir," I chivied him gravely, "coming into all that!"

"I stopped relaxing when I saw the wages bill," Vespasian said bitterly.

He turned those deep eyes on me and I realized, I could have handled Titus, but not him.

"I heard about your antics over the fee!"

"I did not mean to insult you, sir."

Vespasian was silent. It seemed to me the look of strain for which he was so famous could easily be the effect of years in public places trying not to laugh. He was not, however, laughing now.

"What you insult is your own undoubted intelligence!" I like a man to be frank. Just as well. "So what," enquired the Emperor more mildly, "is this latest piece of pantomime about?"

So that was when I explained to Vespasian what I had come here hoping to achieve.

I told him the tale and I said I was sorry; I begged for a second chance as a clerk. He asked why; I said her; he said no.

I said what? Then he said no again.

This was not what I expected, not what I expected at all. After that Vespasian offered me a job. It was my turn to say no. I pointed out he disliked informers and I disliked Emperors; we were hardly well matched. He explained that he did not dislike the informers as such, only the work that they did. I confided that I felt much the same about Emperors.

He looked at me for a long time, though did not seem particularly upset.

"So this visit is about the Camillus girl?" I said nothing. "Falco, I don't believe in unsuitable liaisons across the ranks. A senator's daughter has a duty to respect the honour of her family. I'm considered old-fashioned," the Emperor commented.

I could hardly avoid knowing, since it was the talk of Rome, that Vespasian himself had kept house for years with a freed slave who had first been his mistress forty years ago. It was said, though it seemed unlikely, he had even brought this loyal old body to the Palace with him now.

"Sir, with due respect, I won't interrogate you on these matters, so I don't expect to have to answer for myself."

I think he was offended this time but after a second he grinned. "Titus says she seems a sensible wench!"

"I thought so," I snapped back, "until she tangled with me!"

"My old friend Hilaris," Vespasian protested, refuting this, "would strongly disagree. I never argue with Gaius; it leads to too much paperwork. He thinks well of you. What am I to tell him now?"

I looked at the Emperor and he stared at me. We reached an agreement; it was my own idea. He just sat there with his arms folded until I came out with it. He would put me on the list for the second rank; he would do it when I produced the qualifying money myself.

I had committed myself to earning and saving four hundred thousand pieces of gold.

Before I left I insisted on one other thing.

"I want you to see this."

I took out the inkwell I found in the saffron vault; it came from my pocket in a scatter of peppercorns. The Emperor turned it over in the palm of his great hand. It was an ordinary inkwell, a simple shape with a retaining ledge inside to prevent spills. On the base was neatly scratched: T FL DOM, the initials of Vespasian's younger son.

Before he could speak, I took it back.

"Since it won't be needed in court, I'll keep this as a memento of the case."

To do Vespasian justice, he did let me take the thing away.

I went home.

As I descended from the Palatine, Rome in the dead of night lay all round me, like a series of deep black pools between the faint lights on the ridges of the Seven Hills. So I turned my footsteps through the sleeping streets and at last came back into the familiar squalor of my own places, and the grim apartment where I lived and to which I had once brought a girl called Sosia Camillina.

It was the worst day of my life, and when I walked into my office I realized that it had not ended yet. The folding door opposite stood open. As I entered, a shaft of cold air moved subtly within the room. There was somebody out on my balcony lying in wait.

My mother never came so late. Petronius was suspicious of the open air at night. I decided there was no chance whoever was lurking out there could be anybody I might wish to see.

I had bought some pottery lamps with my early fees from the senator, so I lit them all now for the first time to make it obvious that I had come to stay. Keeping one eye on the balcony door, I peeled off my clothes, poured myself a bowl of water, and washed all over until the smell of wealth and decadence was gone from my cold skin. I walked into the bedroom, making a lot of noise, found a clean tunic I was fond of, then combed my hair. It was still too short to curl.

All this time whoever it was went on waiting outside.

I wanted to go to bed. I went back into the main room, picked up one of my lamps, then steered my tired legs out onto the balcony. I was utterly exhausted and completely unarmed.

The air was soft, and faint noises of the city in the dark rose occasionally with that odd sharpness you get sometimes as sounds reach the sixth floor.

"Now there's a sight!"

She was standing by the balustrade staring out, but as soon as I spoke she turned around: eyes like warm caramel in a creamy almond face. The gods only know how long she had been there; or what doubts assailed her confidence while she waited for me to come home.

"Sosia wrote to me about your view."

"Not the view," I said.

And went on looking at Helena.

She stood there, and I stood here, she in the dark and I with my lamp, neither of us certain any longer if we were friends. Distressed moths began to zoom in from the night. One day we would talk about what had happened, but not now; there was too much to re-establish between us first.

"I thought you would never come. Are you drunk?" I had called at several all-night wine shops on my way home.

"I'm sobering rapidly. How long have you been waiting?"

"A long time. Are you surprised?"

I thought about that. No. Knowing her, I was not surprised.

"I thought I would never see you again. Lady, what can I say?"

"Now you've spat in my eye in public, perhaps you should call me Helena."

"Helena," I murmured obediently.

I had to sit down. Levering myself onto the bench I kept for dreaming out of doors. I groaned with weariness.

"You want me to go," she offered awkwardly.

"Too late," I said, echoing another day. "Too dark. Too dangerous I want you to stay. Sit by me, Helena; sit with a man on his balcony and listen to the night!" But she stayed where she was.

"Have you been with a woman?"

It was too dark for me to see her face.

"Business," I said.

Helena Justina turned away, looking over the city again. There was a tight band squeezing my ribcage from the side where I damaged myself in Britain right round to the side I was not hurt at all. "I'm so glad to see you!"

"Me?" She turned back fiercely. "Or just anyone at all?"

"You," I said.

"Oh Marcus, wherever have you been?" This time when she asked there was a different catch in her voice.

I told her about the Embankment, and I told her about Vespasian.

"Does that mean you're working for the Emperor?"