Shadows in Bronze

'You were going to come and see me, Falco.'

'I know when I'm not wanted.'

A tired expression crossed her face. 'Were you surprised to find me here?'

'Nothing women do surprises me!'

'Oh don't be so conventional!'

'Excuse me!' I grinned. 'Princess, if had had the slightest inkling you featured on today's job list, I would have spruced up my togs before I came barging in. I do prefer to look like a man whose departure a woman might regret!'

'Yes, I realized you wanted to leave me,' Helena stated suddenly.

The ladybird flew off, but she soon found some other six-legged friend to study on the back of her hand. She was sitting extremely still, not to disturb the bug.

I thought of all the things I ought to say; none of them came out. I managed to ask, 'What do you think?'

'Oh… it does seem best.'

I stretched my chin and studied the space ahead of my nose. Somehow the fact she was making no difficulties only created more. 'People were going to get hurt,' I insisted. 'Two of them were people I particularly cared about: me and you.'

'Don't worry about it, Falco… just a passing fling.'

'A special one,' I told her gallantly, having problems with my throat.

'Was it?' she queried, in that thin, light voice.

'I thought so… Are we still friends?'

'Of course.'

I smiled miserably. 'Ah that's what I like about senators' daughters – always so civilized!'

Helena Justina rapidly shook the wildlife off her hand. There was a scuffle behind us and my nephew tumbled into the grove.

'Sorry, Uncle Marcus!' His diffidence was pointless since there was nothing going on. 'I think that pest with the sunshade is coming down!'

I rocked to my feet fast. 'Your new bodyguard seems a persistent type!' I offered my hand as Helena scrambled up too but she ignored it.

'He's not mine,' she said shortly. I felt an uneasy twinge, as if a drunk in a bar had lurched to his feet, staring straight at me.

We all headed back to the track. At the ox cart, Helena urged us, 'Drive under the trees and stay out of sight-'

I nodded to Larius to drive under cover. Still no sign of her minder. Abruptly I grasped her shoulders, confronting her. 'Listen lady, when I was your bodyguard, there were no conflicts of interest. I took my orders from you – and when you wanted your privacy I stepped back!'

A splash of colour moved among the cypresses above. I shot a warning glance then dropped my fists as I let her go. Her left hand brushed through mine – but made no attempt to answer my pressure as she slipped free.

Something had been bothering me; I realized what:

On the finger where people display their wedding rings a twist of metal had run beneath my thumb like an old friend. It was a ring made of British silver which I had given to Helena myself.

She must have forgotten it. I said nothing, in case she became embarrassed and felt obliged to take it off now our affair was supposed to be at an end.

I started to turn away under the trees, then came back. 'If you're going to Nola – no; it's nothing.'

'Don't be so irritating! What?'

Nola was famous for its bronze. My mother expected a present from Campania so had tactfully suggested what to get. I told Helena. The Senator's elegant daughter gave me a cool look.

'I'll see what I can do. Goodbye, Falco!'

Larius and I sat under the olive trees while I counted off the time for a tall girl, striding furiously, to storm up past the terrace and the riding range, then back into the house. 'Are you seeing her again?' my nephew quizzed.

'Sort of'

'Assignation?'

'I've sent her out to buy something.'

'What?' Suspicion was already darkening his romantic soul as he guessed I had done something outrageous.

'A bronze bucket,' I confessed.

XXXV

Just before we reached the road we passed an aristocratic litter borne by half a dozen slaves, progressing at a stately pace towards the house. Tall windows hid the occupant but his slaves' gold-braided livery and the spanking crimson carriagework said it all. Luckily the Marcellus approach road was wide enough for both of us, since my nephew made it a point of honour never to give way to anyone of a higher rank.

All the way back to Oplontis Larius was so annoyed at my treatment of Helena that he refused to speak to me. Damned romantic!

Still in silence we bedded Nero down.

We went in to change our grimy clothes. Our landlady had been dyeing her wardrobe a deeper shade of black so the filthy stink of oak gall extract pervaded the whole inn.

'You'll never see her again!' Larius exploded, as his disgust finally broke.

'Yes I will.'

She would buy me my bucket; then he would probably be right.

The Petronius offspring were all in the inn courtyard, crouched in the dust with their heads together, playing elaborate games with myrtle twigs and mud. They turned their backs as a sign we should not interrupt the intensity of their play Their kittens lolloped round them. No one appeared to be in charge.

We strolled outside. The nursemaid Ollia was lying on the beach while her fisherboy displayed his glossy pectorals alongside. He was talking, as they like to; Ollia stared out to sea, stuck with listening. She had a wistful look on her face.

I gave the girl a grim nod 'Petronius?'

'Gone for a walk.'

Her fisherboy was no older than my nephew; he had the kind of moustache I really hate – a skinny black lugworm stitched on above his feeble mouth.

Larius skulked along with me. 'We ought to rescue Ollia.' 'Let her have her fun!'

My nephew scowled, then to my surprise abandoned me. Feeling my age, I watched him lope over to the pair then squat down too. The two lads glared at each other while young Ollia continued to stare at the horizon, an overweight, overemotional monody paralysed by her first social success.

I left this awkward tableau and kicked my heels along the shore. I was thinking about Pertinax and Barnabas. I was thinking about Crispus. I was wondering why I had started to feel that Crispus and Barnabas had me constantly struggling at some tangent to the truth…

After that, I was thinking about other things, irrelevant to work.

I hunched irritably on the tideline, playing with a desiccated dogfish eggcase, until I gradually began to feel like Odysseus in Polyphemus' cave: a huge single eye was watching me balefully.

It was painted on a ship. Scarlet and black, with the shameless elongation of a painted Egyptian god; there was presumably a matching one around the vessel's haughty prow but she lay sideways to shore, so without a tame dolphin to tow me out behind there was no way I could check. She was riding at anchor, safely beyond the reach of holiday-makers' curiosity. Apart from reeking of the kind of happy affluence that loves to be viewed by wide sectors of the public while supposedly enjoying its privacy, she was not the kind of precious toy to be brought in and belted against the ratty bales of straw which formed a rough-and-ready bump rail on the Oplontis mooring stage.

Whoever designed this nautical beauty had a statement to make. There was along written all over his ship. She was forty feet of blatant artistry. She had a short, single bank of red ochre oars which were perfectly aligned at rest, dark sails, a mainmast for her square rig plus a second for a foresail, and lines so suave they hurt. Somehow the shipwright had managed to combine a slim keel like a warship with enough cabin and deck space to make life aboard a pleasure for the financier who possessed the stupendous capital that had created her.

At a slight shift of the incoming evening breeze, the gilding on her duck tail stern and her masthead goddess flashed restlessly. There was a nippy little bumboat trailing behind in a perfectly matching rig – identical steering paddles, identical toy sail, and the same painted eye. While I gawked, the bumboat was pulled closer and after some distant activity I watched it set off shorewards, sculled at a fast and elegant pace.