Shadows in Bronze

I strolled back to the atrium with a pain in my gullet, and happened upon Geminus.

'You look seedy!'

'Picking up tips on decor.'

'Get yourself a proper job and earn some decent cash!'

We had cleared out the statues, but while we were gossiping a new one turned up. Geminus valued the artwork privately then openly leered at the wench. She was superbly carved, then cast in bronze, a joy to inspect: Helena Justina herself.

I whistled softly. It was a clever work of art. I wondered how it was possible to capture in metal that sense of angry outrage always waiting to break out, and the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth… I flicked off a huddle of woodlice from the angle of her elbow, then patted her neat bronze behind.

Geminus was the auctioneer Anacrites had libelled as the parent who inflicted me on the world. I could see why people might think so. (As, looking at my family, I could see why my father had chosen to escape.) He was a stocky, secretive, moody man, about sixty years old, with rampant grey hair, all curls. He was good-looking (though less good-looking than he thought). His profile swooped in one strong line without a ledge between the eyes – a real Etruscan nose. He had a nose for a scandal and an eye for a woman that had made him a legend even in the Saepta Julia where the antique dealers congregate. If one of my clients had an heirloom to sell, I pushed it his way (if the client was a woman, and I happened to be busy, I pushed her too).

We stood playing at art critics. Helena's statue was unsigned but had been made by a good Greek sculptor, from life. It was magnificent, with gilding on the headdress and tinted eyes. It showed Helena at about eighteen years old, with her hair folded up in the old-fashioned style. She was formally robed – in a way which cleverly hinted how she looked underneath.

'Very nice,' commented Geminus. 'A very nice piece!'

'Where had they hidden this beauty?' I asked the porters.

'Shoved in a cubbyhole, next to the kitchen latrine.'

I could cope with that. I did not fancy Pertinax brooding over her in his private suite. (All the fool had kept in his bedroom and study were silver statuettes of his racehorses and paintings of his ships.)

Geminus and I admired her stately workmanship. He must have noticed my face.

'Castor and Pollux! You chasing her, Marcus?'

'No,' I said.

'Liar!' he retorted.

'True.'

In fact, when her ladyship had wanted a closer acquaintance she chased me. But that was no business of his.

Women change a lot between eighteen and twenty-three. It was painful to see her untouched by her trials with Pertinax, and to wish I had known her first. Something in her expression, even at that age, made me uneasily aware I had been flirting too busily elsewhere today – and all my life.

'Too submissive. He's missed her,' I murmured. 'In real life the lady glares out as though she'd bite your nose off if you stepped too close-'

Inspecting my snout for damage, Geminus reached to give it a possessive tweak; my arm jerked up to fend him off. ‘So how close do you generally step?'

'Met her. Last year in Britain. She hired me as her bodyguard back to Rome – all perfectly straight and free from scandal, see-'

'You losing your touch?' he mocked. 'Not many noble young ladies could ride fourteen hundred miles with a likely lad and not allow themselves some consolation for the rigours of the road!' He peered at her. I felt a moment of uncertainty, as if two people I cared about had just been introduced.

I was still clutching her recipe.

'What's that?'

'How to cook Turbot in Caraway. No doubt her husband's favourite midday snack -' I sighed grimly. 'You know what they say: for the price of three horses you may buy a decent cook, and with three cooks you can possibly bid for a turbot – I don't even own a horse!'

He eyed me evilly. 'Want her, Marcus?'

'Nowhere to keep her.'

'That statue?' he asked, with a broad grin.

'Oh the statue!' I answered, smiling sadly too.

We decided it would be highly improper to sell a noblewoman's portrait in the public marketplace. Vespasian would agree; he would make her family buy it back at some exorbitant price. Geminus disapproved of emperors as much as I did, so we omitted Helena Justina from the Imperial inventory.

I sent the statue to her father. I wrapped it myself for transit, in a costly Egyptian carpet which had not been inventoried either. (The auctioneer had tagged it for himself.)

The brain can play strange tricks, late at night in an unfurnished house.

Gornia and his porters had already departed; Geminus went ahead of me. I stepped into a reception room to collect my crumpled toga; when I came out I was rubbing my eyes from weariness. The lamplight was dim, but I half noticed someone in the atrium – one of the slaves, presumably.

He was looking at the statue.

In the moment when I was turning to close the door of the room behind me, he disappeared. He was a light-haired, slender man of about my own age, with sharp features that reminded me of someone I had once met… Impossible. For one chilling moment I thought I had glimpsed the ghost of Atius Pertinax.

I must have been brooding too much lately; I had a fertile imagination and was overtired. Thinking about dead men all day had turned my brain. I did not believe that dispossessed spirits ever returned resentfully to stalk their silent homes.

I strode to the atrium. I opened doors but failed to find anyone. I returned to the bronze figure and stared at her boldly myself. Only her face showed, above the hem of the carpet I had earlier furled round her.

'So it's you, me and him; sweetheart. He's a ghost, you're a statue, and I'm probably a lunatic…'

The grave image of the young Helena looked back at me with bright, painted eyes and the suggestion of a smile that was ethereal, sweet and true.

'You're all woman, princess!' I told her, giving her carpetwrapped posterior another playful spank. 'Thoroughly unreliable!'

The ghost had melted into some marble panelwork; the statue looked superior. The lunatic shivered, then hurried out after Geminus on his way home.

XI

It's my opinion Rome's best houses are not the fine shuttered mansions on Pincian Hill, but the character dwellings that line the Tiber's bank in my own sector, with their quiet steps down to the river and wonderful views. Geminus lived there. He had money and taste and had been born in the Aventine; he would.

To make me feel better he always said they flooded. Well; he could field enough slaves to sweep the Tiber out again. And if an auctioneer finds his furniture wet, he can easily get more.

He was travelling back tonight in his normal quiet style – a lordly litter with six massive bearers, a gaudy troop of torchmen and his two private bodyguards; I hitched a lift. On the way he whistled through his teeth in the annoying way he had, while I hardly spoke. When he dropped me off two dirt tracks from home, he gave me a dark stare.

'Stick with your roots, Marcus; keep the nobility for fleecing, not flirting!' I was in no mood to argue. Besides, the man was right. 'Talk about it?'

'No.'

'You want to find yourself-'

'Please don't tell me what I want!' I sneered unpleasantly. I climbed out.

Geminus leaned after me to ask, 'Would money help?'

'No.'

'You mean, not from me-'

'Not from anyone.' I stood stubbornly in the street while his litter moved off.

'I never understand you!' he grumbled back at me.

'Good!' I said.

Reaching my apartment block, I heard the sinister cackle of Smaractus my landlord being entertained with raw wine and ribaldry by Lenia. I was exhausted. The sixth floor seemed a mile away. I had intended to bunk down at laundry level in some hamper of grubby togas, but the self-assurance of Smaractus had fired me with so much bad temper I went surging upstairs without a second thought.