Poseidon_s Gold

'No, love-so we cannot prove the fraud. It's Orontes's word against Carus's.'

'Orontes could appear as a witness, though?'

'Oh yes!' I agreed gloomily. 'He can appear. If we can keep him alive, sober, and willing to testify-which Carus will try to prevent. If we can keep him more frightened of us than he is of Carus, so that when we haul him into court he tells our story. And if we can make this limp, lying, unreliable character look believable to a jury!'

'Carus will probably bribe the jury.' Helena kissed my ear. 'Orontes is a bad witness,' she added. 'He ignored your brother's instructions, then sold the receipt without a quiver. The opposing barrister only has to accuse him of perennial bad faith, and you've lost your case.'

By now I was ranting moodily. 'Orontes is completely flabby. Carus is rich and single-minded. In court he would come over as an honest citizen while our man would be quickly discredited… But we're not giving this to the barristers. Why pay fees on top, when you're already up to your nostrils in dung? Pa and I are determined to do something, however.'

'What can you do?' Her hands were wandering pleasantly in places that liked wandering hands.

'We haven't decided. But it has to be big.'

We both fell silent. Exacting revenge from the collectors needed time and careful thought. Tonight was not the moment. But even if my own ingenuity failed me, I half hoped to lure Helena into contributing some devious invention. Something had to be done. She would understand that. She hated injustice.

She had become completely still in my arms, though I could sense busy thoughts working in that needle brain.

Suddenly she exclaimed, 'Trust you to leave a gap in the story!' I started, afraid I had passed over something significant. 'The luscious nude model went missing from the scene halfway through!'

I laughed awkwardly. 'Oh her! She was there all the time. While the sculptor was unconscious we gave her the choice of shutting up and promising to stop kicking, or being tucked out of the way while we woke him up and questioned him. She preferred to stay volatile, so we penned her in the sarcophagus.'

'Dear gods, the poor thing! I hope Orontes will be allowed to let her out of it?'

'Hmm! I don't want to make sordid suggestions,' I mumbled, 'but I strongly suspect that when my ghastly parent gets bored with discussing theories of art, he will arrange that Orontes has enough wine to knock him senseless-then Geminus may surreptitiously let out the model himself.'

Helena pretended she had no idea what sordid suggestions I meant.

'So what next, Marcus?'

'Next,' I promised her with intense relief, 'you and I and my happy father, and the sculptor, and his luscious model if he wants to bring her, are all going home… I wonder if Smaractus will have bothered to fix the roof?'

Helena was silent again. Maybe she was contemplating sharing a trip home with Rubinia. Maybe she was worrying about our roof.

I had plenty to think about as well, and none of it was cheerful. Somehow I had to devise a scheme to punish Carus and Servia. Somehow I had to avoid us paying out to them half a million sesterces which we had never owed them anyway. To keep myself from exile I had to solve a murder that was beginning to look inexplicable. And somehow I had to explain to my mother that her beloved son the national hero may have been no more than a failed entrepreneur who took a long stride into oblivion simply because the pressure of his bungled business commitments was growing too much for him.

'What time is it?' asked Helena.

'Jupiter, I don't know! The middle of the night-tomorrow, probably.'

She smiled at me. It had nothing to do with anything we had been discussing. I knew that, even before she said gently, 'Happy birthday, then!'

My birthday.

I had known it was coming. I thought no one else here with me had realised. Ma would be thinking about me with her own scornful reverence, but she was in Rome, so I had escaped the nostalgia and damson cake. Pa had probably never known his children's anniversaries. And Helena… well. A year ago, Helena had been with me on my birthday. We had been strangers then, resisting any hint of attraction between us. All the same, I had given myself a brief birthday treat and kissed her, with unexpected results for both of us. From that moment I had wanted more of her; I had wanted it all. I had started the sequence that ended with me falling in love with her, while a small, dark, dangerous voice began whispering that it might be a challenge to make this unattainable creature love me.

It was a year since the first time I held her in my arms, assuming then that it would be the only occasion she ever let me come near her. A year since I saw that look in her eyes when I risked it. A year since I fled from her, stunned by my own feelings and misunderstanding hers, yet knowing that somehow I would have to hold this woman in my arms again.

'Remember?'

'I remember!'

I took a long slow breath against her hair, absorbing the sweet natural scent of her. Without moving, I enjoyed the now familiar shape of her body, cosseted against mine. Her fingers moved against my shoulder, tracing patterns that raised goose-pimples. 'Here we are in another stinking inn… I could never have dreamed I would still have you near me.'

'Oh Marcus, you were so angry with me.'

'I had to get angry before I dared touch you.'

She laughed. I could always make her laugh. 'You laughed me into adoring you!' she commented, as if I had spoken.

'Not that night! You locked yourself in your room, and refused to speak to me.'

'I was too terrified.'

'Of me?' I was amazed.

'Oh no! I knew that when you stopped playing iron-jawed demigods you would be a complete sweetheart… Of myself,' confessed Helena. 'Frightened of how much I wanted to be in your arms, how much I wanted you to go on kissing me, how much I wanted more than that-'

I could have kissed her then. Her dark eyes were soft and inviting; she was willing me to do it. But it was more fun to lean back so I could see her, and just think about it while she smiled at me.

No year of my life would ever bring me so much change. No trick of fate would ever give me anything so precious.

I put out the light so I could forget our dismal surroundings; then I ignored all the debts and disasters that were oppressing me. A man must have some comfort in his life. I said, 'I love you. I should have told you that right at the start a year ago-and this is what I should have done about it straight away…'

Then I let my thirty-first birthday begin with a celebration in the noblest Roman style.

LV

Our carriage-horse was still lame, so we hired a couple of litters, went across to the coast and took a ship home from Puteoli. I will pass over it briskly, though the journey seemed interminable. I spent most of it lying under a leather sail. The only times I poked my head out were when I needed to be ill.

That was often enough.

I believe the others found the weather fair, the sea air invigorating, and their various fellow passengers an enthralling mixture of types. Helena and my father got to know each other better, while they had the tact to keep the cheating sculptor and his blowzy mistress well away from me.

Even though I knew my taxes had paid for it, no sight was ever so welcome to me as the great lighthouse at Portus, the new complex at Ostia, unless it was the colossal statue of Neptune. When we sailed under Neptune's knees I knew our ship was inside the basin, and about to berth. We had to wait about before disembarking while the usual nautical business took precedence over passengers' eagerness to land. I managed to send a message ashore to the customs post, so the first sight that greeted us when our feet hit the quay was Gaius Baebius, my brother-in-law.

'You might have spared us!' muttered Father under his breath.