Nemesis

Only Albia tried to avoid anything to do with me, but I took her out anyway. That would teach her to tell Anacrites she could do an informer's job.

I was taking the cameo to Petronius. By the time we reached Maia's apartment, it was so near to evening we only just caught him before he left for duty.

'Hold on. I want to show you this, off vigiles premises.'

He got the message.

With Albia watching, we inspected the jewel. It was carved from sardonyx, the redder form of onyx. 'It's like an agate, Albia – layered hard stone.'

'More education!'

'Listen and learn, girl.'

Petronius held the gemstone in his mighty paw while he tried to work out what was going on in the picture. It was a two-layered cut, in low relief. The onyx banding was white and red-brown, beautifully executed. The lower half of the design showed a gloomy bunch of captured barbarians. On an upper frieze, gathered around twirly horns of plenty, minor deities were applying triumphal crowns to the noble brows of bare-chested noble personages. An eagle, probably representing Jove, was trying to muscle in. 'Claudian imperial family,' Petronius guessed. 'They always have that clean-cut, very close-shaven look. They were all untrustworthy midgets really.'

Albia giggled.

'He's exaggerating, Albia. Lucius Petronius, being a great hulk himself, likes to make out anyone dainty is deformed. However, this is so special it may even have belonged to Augustus or someone in that family, either commissioned by them or given as a gift by a sycophant.'

Petro's eyebrows shot up. 'It's that good?'

'Trust me; I'm an antique dealer. Without provenance it's hard to be sure, but I would say this could be the work of Dioscurides. If not his own piece, it certainly came from his workshop.'

'Dio who?'

'Augustus' favourite cameo-cutter. Well, look at the workmanship! Whoever carved this was brilliant.'

Petronius leaned towards Albia and growled, 'Have you noticed how Falco keeps sounding like a bent auctioneer these days?'

'Yes, at home we all feel we are living with a fake-winejug seller.'

'Rag away!' I grinned. 'Whoever owned this – I don't mean some mystery lodger at the spy's house – knew its worth. The purchaser, who may have been a woman because it has been a necklace pendant, had the money and the knowledge to buy real quality.'

'Someone in mind?' asked Petro.

'I hope we can tie it to Modestus' wife, Livia Primilla. From the nephew's vagueness when I asked about any distinguishing jewellery she wore, I don't think he would recognise it, but he said she wore good stuff.'

Petronius perked up. 'If it was her, and if she was wearing this when she disappeared, there is a chance we can identify it.'

He told us that the Fifth Cohort had picked up a runaway slave living rough near the Porta Metrovia, who was called Syrus. They were bringing him over to the Fourth that night, for quizzing about whether he was the Syrus given to the butcher by Sextus Silanus – - the one who had waved Primilla off when she went to see the Claudii.

'Couldn't the Fifth have asked him for themselves?'

'They could have tried,' said Petro. 'But the slave's scared to talk and everyone knows Sergius is the best in the business.'

Sergius was the Fourth Cohort's torturer.

At this point I would have left Albia at Maia's house; sensing a brush-off, she insisted on coming to the station house with us.

Sergius was waiting for Petronius to arrive before he started. He had stashed Syrus in a small cell, like someone marinating a choice cut of meat for a few hours before grilling.

'You could just ask the man,' Albia suggested. It could have been Helena talking.

'Not half the fun,' said Sergius. 'Besides, the slave's evidence will only count if he screams it out while I'm thrashing him. The theory is, pain will make him honest.'

'Does it work in practice, Sergius?'

'Once in a while.'

'How can you tell whether what he says is true or not?'

'You can't. But then you can't tell when you're questioning a free citizen either. Most of them lie. That applies whether they have something real to hide – - or are just being buggers on principle.'

I thought Albia might have been upset by the whip man's attitude, but young girls are tough. She listened quietly, filing away the details in that strange little head of hers. 'If this is the right slave, what will happen to him?'

'He will be whipped hard, for causing us trouble, then returned to whoever owns him.'

'No choice?'

'Certainly not. He is their property.'

'A non-person?'

'That's the definition.'

Albia accepted this as one more fact that showed Romans were cruel – assuming that idea was what caused her enquiry. Sometimes she was unreadable.

Albia turned her pale little face to me. 'Do you think coming from a rough, hard background, being treated badly in their slave generation, explains why those Claudii turned out as they are?'

'Maybe. But some groups, some families are feckless by nature. People carry their character defects from birth, whatever their origin. You find freedmen who are loyal, kind-hearted, hard-working and decent to live with. Then you find noblemen who are vicious, deceitful and intolerable to be around.'

Albia smiled. 'Helena would say, "I blame their mothers!" '

Petronius clapped her on the shoulder. 'There may be some truth in that.'

'So how does this theory explain Anacrites the spy?'

Petro and I both laughed. I said it: 'He is just a poor sad boy who never had a mother!'

Albia gave me a long look. She did not say, since she could see I had just remembered it, that until Helena picked her off the streets in Londinium, she herself had struggled with neither parent.

Petronius, a father of girls, recognised her mood. 'Falco is right. Most people do seem to be born with a character inbuilt. So you, Flavia Albia, are destined to be decent, sweet and true.'

'Don't patronise me!' Of course, being Lucius Petronius, he had charmed her.

We left it there. Sergius, with his long whip, was impatient to begin.

He got as far as ascertaining that the terrified fellow the Fifth had brought us was indeed the slave Livia Primilla owned. When she went to see the Claudii, she had given him instructions to wait three days then if she failed to come home, to go to tell her nephew. Syrus, who looked as if he had come from the interior deserts of Africa, was able to describe the scene: Primilla mounted on a donkey, wearing a round-brimmed travel hat. The slave was poor on garments but thought her outfit was in shades of dark red, with a long fringed stole that was also red or damson coloured. Petronius showed him the sardonyx cameo; he failed to recognise it.

One new piece of information emerged. Petronius demanded: how could her staff, despite their duty of care to their mistress, have let Primilla go off alone to see the Claudii – especially after Modestus had already gone missing? Syrus said Primilla had intended to meet up with someone: the overseer who looked after the property and who had first found the broken fences, a man called Macer. This was a development. This man had not previously figured in the disappearances. He must be one of the family slaves who had run away.

At that point, we were thwarted. Loud hammering at the mighty gates of the station house announced unwelcome visitors. The gates were kicked open. In burst a small group of large armoured men. Plumes danced in their glittering helmets. Violence curdled the air.

Three tiers of military cohorts kept law and order in the city; neither law nor order had much to do with the feud between them all. The Praetorian Guards despised the Urban Cohorts and they both hated the vigiles. But the Praetorians protected the Emperor and were commanded by Titus Caesar now; whenever those thrusting bullyboys strode from their camp and appeared in public, there could be no contest.