Nemesis

I had told Nothokleptes I would have to get used to this principle – - but that I was a fast learner.

I sat in the cubbyhole, thinking, until boredom took over. Then I sauntered along the Saepta's upper gallery, enjoying the vibrant life going on at this level and below, just as Pa used to do. I could see why he loved this place. There was never a dull moment, as fat jewellers and paranoid goldsmiths swaggered around trying to bamboozle would-be customers, while pickpockets tailed the customers and guards wondered absently whether to tackle the pickpockets. There were constant cries from food-sellers who wandered the building with gigantic trays or weighed down by garlands of drink flagons. Wafts of grilled meat and suet patties vied with the reek of garlic and the stench of pomade. Every now and then some man of note – - or a nobody who thought he was one – pressed through the throng with a train of arrogant slaves in livery, trailing sweaty secretaries and put-upon fan-danglers. Disdainful locals refused to be pushed around, resulting in loud altercations.

I enjoyed watching the gallery rage, then stepped over a vagrant and entered the office. My nephew Gaius, Galla's second eldest, was loafing there. He looked me over. 'You don't want to waste your time here, Uncle Marcus. Why not give me a couple of thousand a week and I'll run the place for you?'

He was at an indefinable point in his late teens, old enough to be useful, not old enough to trust. He looked like a tattooed barbarian, though with infected sores where the woad should be. He was a sweetie underneath; we sometimes used him for babysitting.

'Thanks for the kind offer, Gaius. I don't need help. We just put chipped old pots on show by the door and idiots rush in to pay huge sums for them.'

Gaius dropped into a stone throne, his favourite lounger, where he spread himself like a potentate. He was drinking Pa's flagon of Campagnan red, supposedly kept for celebrating big auction gains or for numbing the pain of losses. He waved me to a cheery cup that advised me to drink now for I would die tomorrow; as I poured a tot, Gaius warned me in serious tone, 'You want to take a lot of water with that, Uncle Marcus. It's probably too strong for you.'

'Yours is neat?'

'But I am used to it,' smiled Gaius. His brass-necked cheek came straight from my louche brother Festus, from Pa, and a long line of previous Didii. I made no attempt to remonstrate. Like Lucius Petronius, I was thirty-six and had learned when there was no point arguing.

We talked, with surprising sense from Gaius, about an auction held in my absence. 'Things are looking up again, no question. People stayed away to begin with, thinking nothing would be the same without Grandpa, but customers are trickling back.'

'They are learning you're up to it. One or two may even have heard good things about me.'

'Don't bank on that, Uncle Marcus! Yet again, we failed to shift that two-handed urn with the centaurs battling, but that's been around for over a year; the artwork's crap and people are bored with the subject. I'm going to organise fake bidders next time. See if we can force some interest.'

'Geminus didn't really want to sell that pot,' I said. 'It hung on so long, he grew fond of it.'

Young Gaius shook his head like a Greek sage. 'There's no scope for sentiment in this business!' Then, to my surprise, he asked shyly whether Helena and I were getting over the baby, and complimented me on my handling of Pa's funeral and memorial dinner.

Business over, I called in a passing peddler, bought Gaius a flatbread stuffed with chickpeas, and left him to it.

I sauntered back towards the centre of town, passing the Theatre of Balbus and the Porticus of Octavia as if I had no clear idea where I was going. I had made up my mind, however. I turned away from the river, then climbed up to the Palatine via the Clivus Victoriae. I gained entrance by telling the guards I needed to see Claudius Laeta. But I was going to see Momus.

XXIII

Falco! You cack-handed, two-timing, pompous backstairs bastard – - seems a century since I laid eyes on your ugly bum-crack!' Momus represented the refined element of the Palatine.

He was sprawling on a bench like a big blob of sea anemone, one that had let itself go. Even his headlice were low-grade. He had a paper of nuts lying next to him, but was too lethargic to dip in and munch. 'Torpor' would have been his cognomen, had he been refined enough to want his entitlement to three names.

Thinking about imperial freedmen, as I was for the case, I asked him what family name he used. Momus gave me a wide shrug, astonished anybody asked that question. He was so informal he had never bothered to work out his nomen.

'Who was on the throne when you got your cap of liberty?'

'Some useless pervert.'

'Sounds like Nero.'

'Probably the Divine Claudius.' Momus made 'Divine' sound like an obscenity, which in the case of that old duffer Claudius it traditionally was.

I leaned on a wall, as far away from his body odour as I could get without retreating into the corridor. There was nowhere to sit. Most people who came to see Momus were slaves he was brutalising. He didn't offer them a stool for beatings and buggery. He might be as low as a palace officer could get, but he was one level up from them so he took the traditional seat of power while they cringed in whatever desperate position he chose for them and waited for their punishment.

'So were you a contemporary of an obnoxious bunch of imperial freedmen called the Claudii? Most live in the Pontine Marshes, though I'm told they have connections with Rome.'

Momus took a long time rubbing his bleary eyes, then surprisingly he said no.

I said quietly, 'I thought you were famous for knowing the entire familia?'

He pulled a face. He was not intending to help me. That was unusual. Normally our loathing of Anacrites and our distrust of Laeta made us allies.

'Somebody knows them,' I said. 'Somebody is rumoured to protect them.'

'Not me, Falco.'

'No, I never saw you as the patron type!' Even just talking to Momus always made me feel I had let down my own moral standards. I may be an informer but I do have some.

Momus laughed, but no ice was broken in his reception of my joke.

'Half the towns in Latium are shit-scared of treading on their nasty toes,' I told him. 'And you claim you don't know them? Leaving me no choice, old crony, but to suppose you must be shit-scared of this somebody who watches over them.'

Momus did not move a muscle.

I blew out my cheeks slowly, as if impressed by the scale of the problem. That was easy. I was genuinely marvelling. Momus liked to be outspoken. His silence was not part of his routine sea-anemone lolling. If he had had tentacles, he would have stopped waving them as soon as I mentioned the Claudii. Momus was taking a lot of trouble to show no reaction, but his grime-engrained skin acquired extra sheen. I could have wiped his greasy, sweating face and then oiled a wheel-axle with the rag.

Eventually he growled, 'Don't mess with this, Falco. You're too young and sweet.'

He was being ironic, but the warning had a note of real concern. I thanked him for the advice and took myself to see Laeta.

I knew he would be there. In the first place, he enjoyed pretending his burden of work was terrible – and in the second, he really was the most important scroll-bug in the imperial bureaux. At this time in the summer, the betting was that all three of his masters, Vespasian and both his sons, were taking their ease at some family villa, perhaps out in the Sabine hills where they originated. When that happened, Claudius Laeta was left at the Palatine to run the Empire smoothly. Few people ever noticed that-power was temporarily in his hands.

As an informal gesture to the fact that it was after business hours, Laeta had a singer intoning an epode. The musician was heavily emphasising the iambic trimesters and dimeters in a long, slow, lugubrious piece that used the style aficionados call affected archaism. It was music you could never dance to, nor would it lull you to sleep, raise your spirits or encourage a fine-featured woman to sleep with you. Laeta had one finger placed against his brow to indicate subconscious delight. I wondered why men who listen to such torture always think themselves so superior.