Titus Caesar rose, then came and clasped my hand. He had the good fortune to choose the nonfishy one. "I am extremely grateful, Falco." The one benefit of my new rank was that all my clients were perfectly polite to me. That did not mean the fees would arrive any quicker (or at all).
After his farewell to me, Titus had lifted Helena's hand. "I am glad to see you here tonight." He was speaking in a low voice. Helena looked nervous, though not as nervous as I was. "I want you to explain something discreetly to your brother."
"Aelianus?"
"He applied to join the Arval Brethren. Look; do let him know, they have nothing against him personally. He is well qualified. But there will have to be a period of readjustment after your uncle's unfortunate escapade."
"Oh, I see," replied Helena in an odd tone of voice. "This is a reference to unhappy Uncle Publius?" She meant the senator's brother, who some time before had unwisely plotted to destabilize the Empire and dethrone Vespasian. Misguided Uncle Publius was no threat now. He was out of it, his corpse rotting in the Great Sewer. I knew; I shoved him down there myself.
"You see what I mean?" asked Titus, eager for her acquiescence.
"Oh, I do," Helena answered. With a cool turn of her head, she offered her cheek for Titus Caesar to kiss, which he stalwartly did. Before I could stop her, she then leaned in like some old childhood friend who was about to kiss him back. Instead she added very, very gently, "It was four years ago; my uncle is dead; the conspiracy was completely unraveled; and no question marks ever hung over my father's or my brothers' loyalty. Sir, what I see is just a feeble excuse!"
Titus had turned back to his lustrous lady love, pretending to make a joke of it. "This is an exceptional couple!" Berenice looked as if she thought so too, though not for the same reasons. "I love them both dearly," Titus Caesar proclaimed.
I grabbed Helena's hand and tucked it firmly in my arm, pulling her back and keeping her close to me. Then I thanked Titus for his confidence in us, and took my defiant girl away.
She was extremely upset. I had seen it even before she answered. Titus, of course, had no idea. She would talk to me about it, although probably not for days. When she did speak, she would be raging. I could wait. I just kept my arm tightly around her while she controlled her immediate anger.
We walked together in silence for some distance. Since Helena was wrapped in her own thoughts, I could sink into mine. The pressure I felt upon me now was the same old dead weight. In addition to the domestic tragedy that I was trying to avert from the Laelii, my task had acquired much wider significance. This new burden, of saving Berenice from grief for Titus, was a tricky one.
So that was the ravishing Queen Berenice! If this had happened to my brother Festus, a scented notelet would have followed before he reached the street door.
Mind you, when Didius Festus visited fabulously beautiful women, he made sure that he went by himself.
XXXIX
In Nero's day the entire ground floor of the Esquiline Wing of the Golden House had been given over to dining rooms. There were matched pairs, one half looking into a spacious courtyard, the complementary mirrored groups facing out over the Forum, where Nero installed a wildlife park but where Vespasian was now building his Amphitheatre. With his rather different lifestyle, Nero had needed not one elegant hall for feeding flatterers-his best being the famous Octagonal Room-but complex suites in threes or fives that would contain the wild parties he loved. It was among the labyrinth of these that we had seen Titus.
The Flavians were another breed from Nero. They conducted most official imperial business in the old Palace of the Caesars, high on the Palatine. It was said they intended to dismantle the Golden House soon. It represented not just hated luxury, but Nero's contempt for the people he had deliberately burned out and displaced in order to build it. The Flavians respected the people. At any rate, they would do, so long as the people respected them. But they were also frugal. While their predecessor's mad, gloriously ornate dwelling still existed, it did seem proper to them that Rome-in the person of the frugal Flavians-should make use of it. It had cost a great deal and Vespasian was hot on the value-for-money principle.
I had been here for private meetings before, and for one formal conference held in the Octagon. Titus often lurked here when he was off duty. He would call me in sometimes for a staid heart-to-heart.
The place was vast. Tall frescoed corridors ran in all directions. Most of the rooms were not too ostentatious sizewise, but they ran into each other in a bemusing honeycomb. There were peculiar backdoubles and dead ends, due to this wing having been hewn from the naked rock under the Oppian Hill. Unescorted, it would have been easy to get lost.
There was a casual atmosphere. Occasional Praetorian Guards had parked themselves in corridors, not least because Titus was their commander now. On the whole, nobody looked at visitors too closely, and it seemed possible to wander at will.
Somehow, you never did. Somehow your feet were guided out of the building quite rapidly and on what I was coming to realize was a well-worn path. The result was that despite the huge number of rooms, with their variety of exits and entrances, and despite the temptation to tiptoe into them to collect ideas for home decor, if two groups of people were visiting Titus on the same evening for the same purpose, although it hardly seemed feasible, they would actually end up face-to-face.
That was how Helena and I met Rubella and Petronius.
Those two big snide bastards were not pleased.
"Looks like we got to the buffet first," I greeted them. I knew they would be hopping mad that the vigiles were firmly refused permission to investigate the Laelius house, whereas I had been called in specially. The gap between private informers and the vigiles would never close. "Don't worry; I gave Titus Caesar a thorough briefing. You can just show your faces, then bunk off back to your patrol house."
"Skip it, Falco," growled my onetime partner, Petro.
"All right. Owning-up time: I've failed to find any trace of the lost baby. How about you boys?"
"Nothing," Rubella deigned to say. The Fourth Cohort tribune was a wide, tough, shaven-headed ex-centurion who practiced the lowest degree of fairness and unpleasantness. In that, he was better than average. Fanatical ambition had hauled him up all the rungs in the vigiles; he really wanted to be a Praetorian. Still, so do lots of lads.
At his side Petronius looked taller, less wide in the body yet more powerful in the shoulder, quieter, a couple of pounds heavier because of his height, and far less intense. He was in brown leather, with a thong twisted around his head to hold down his straight hair during a tussle, triple-soled boots so heavy it made my feet tired just looking at them, and a night stick through his wide belt. He was a good-looking boy, my old tentmate.
I gave him an ironical grin of approval. "The luscious Berenice will love you!"
"As he said, skip it, Falco." That came from Helena. She was still subdued over the unfair snub to her brother. I introduced her to Rubella, though he had worked out who she was.
"Falco is tired," she announced. "I am taking him home to recover from gawping at flashy Judaean pulchritude."
"Have you given up the search?" Petro asked, sticking to the job in hand. He had a prudish streak. Alone with me, he would happily discuss leer-worthy women, but he believed it improper for women to know that that was what men did.