`Don't give me that.' Silius was no fool either. `The apothecary will be a sinister ex-slave who probably poisoned his master in the recent past as a means of gaining his freedom – and with a forged will!' he added viciously.
`Luckily,' I teased, `we will be producing him in a murder case, not testing him before the Board of Citizenship.'
Even Silius was beginning to be seduced by our wry sense of humour. His eyes narrowed. `What's he like, this druggist?'
`Looks successful,' I said. `Works out of the usual booth. Sits there with a wicker chair and a footstool, surrounded by piles of medicine blocks which he cuts up as required by customers. He seems well respected in his trade. He owns some up-to-date equipment – a pill machine, where he pushes in the paste, then it comes out extruded into strips and he slices off individual dosages -'
`Yes, yes…' Silius had no time for technical marvels. More importantly, he could see we would not give up. `Oh Hades. I cannot be bothered to haggle with you rogues. The story hangs together consistently.' As soon as he said this, I could see its glaring holes. Silius seemed to have a sight problem, luckily. `Thanks for the work. Submit your bill. We'll call it quits.'
That may have sounded as though we had seen the last of Silius and the Metelli. Somehow, I doubted it.
X
IT WAS the off season for law. New cases have to be brought by the last day of September which was eight weeks gone, so even if Silius decided to take up our suggestions, he was too late. Autumn passed. We sent in our bill. This time Silius proved slow in paying it. That gave me an opportunity to train the two Camilli in techniques for squeezing stubborn debtors. Since at our level of informing it was a frequent occupation, I viewed this more as work experience than the annoyance it might have been. We had the money by Saturnalia.
By then we had re-established our presence in Rome. Clients were sluggish, but we knew there would be plenty as soon as the cries of `lo Saturnalia' died down. As always, that time of unrestricted relaxation and large family gatherings had brought out the worst in people. Marriages were breaking up on every street. As soon as Janus let in the New Year in a screaming gale, we would be offered missing persons to trace after violent fights with unknown assailants who were disguised in fancy dress (but who looked like that snotty swine from the bakery). Upset employees would hand us evidence of malpractice by employers whose Saturnalia gifts had been too miserly. Festive wax tapers had burned down homes, with the loss of crucial documents. Houses left empty had been broken into and stripped of their artworks. Could we recover the loot? The wrong people had been kissed in dark corners, only to be spied on by spouses who now wanted not only divorce, but also their rights (in the form of the family shop). Children had been abused by uncles and stepfathers during the ghost stories. Could we blackmail the bastards and stop it? Drunks had never come home. Slaves playing king-for-the-day acquired too much of a taste for role-swapping and locked crazy old masters and mistresses in cupboards while they took over the house permanently. Lonely recluses had died unnoticed, so their cadavers were now smelling out their apartments. Once long-lost offspring were found and lured back to arrange burials, a hunt would start for missing fortunes that had long ago been whisked away by swindlers, then there would be work hunting down the swindlers, then the swindlers would swear their innocence and want their names cleared – and so on.
We had plenty to do. Since dear Aulus and Quintus, my patrician assistants, thought such stuff was beneath them, I was doing it. It was beneath me, too, but I had been an informer through some desperate times and I had not learned to say no.
It had been the first Saturnalia when Julia Junilla was old enough to take an interest. Helena and I had our work cut out ensuring that she stayed awake when her grandparents came calling, or running after her when she snatched her darling little cousins' presents and insisted they were her own. Sosia Favonia, our baby, went down with some frightening sickness, which parents soon learn is inevitable at festivals; it comes to nothing as soon as you are both utterly worn out with panic, but you suffer first. Few doctors were answering their doors, even if patients were successfully rushed to them through the crowded streets. Who wants to hand their tiny baby to a medico who is falling down drunk? I tried the nearest, but when he threw up on me I just carried her home. Favonia could vomit all over my holiday tunic. She didn't need him giving her ideas.
After seven days the torture ended. Saturnalia, I mean. Favonia recovered in five.
Then Julia caught whatever Favonia had had, after which naturally Helena was stricken with it. We had a British girl living with us, who looked after the children, but she collapsed too. Albia had led a troubled life and was normally withdrawn; now she also felt terribly ill in a strange, enormous city where everyone had gone mad for a week. We were responsible for placing her in this nightmare. Helena dragged herself out of bed to comfort the poor girl, while I curled up on a couch in my office with the little ones, until I was rescued by Petronius.
My old friend Petro was escaping from the noise at the house he now shared with my sister Maia. Most of the racket was not caused by rowdy children, but by my mother and other sisters telling Maia she always made bad choices with men. The rest of the rumpus was Maia losing her temper and yelling back. Sometimes my father would be lurking on the sidelines; Maia helped with his business so he reckoned he could irritate Petro by appearing at every possible awkward moment and eavesdropping. Petronius, who until then had always thought I was hard on Pa, now understood why the sight of his grey curls and sly grin could make any sensible man climb out of a back window and leave town for three days.
He and I went to a bar. It was closed. We tried another, but it was full of the relics of riotous behaviour. I had had enough of that, looking after my sick children. The third bar was clean but still had the rioters; when they started being cheerful and friendly, we left. The only place where we could be morose was the Fourth Cohort's station house. Not for the first time, we ended up there. After seven long days and even longer nights of dousing fires caused by sheer stupidity, and then dealing with rapes, stabbings, and persons who had snapped and turned into maniacs, the vigiles were in a grim mood. That suited us fine.
`Nightmare!' Petronius uttered.
`You could have stayed single,' I reminded him. His wife, Arria Silvia, had divorced him and for a short while he had enjoyed his freedom.
`So could you!'
`Unfortunately, I loved the girl.'
It would have been good to hear Petro assure me that he loved my sister – but he was pushed to the limit and only growled angrily.
We would have been sharing a drink but we had forgotten to bring any. He leaned back against a wall, with his eyes closed. I stayed quiet. A few months beforehand, he had lost two of his daughters. Petronilla, the survivor, had been brought up to Rome to spend Saturnalia with her father. The child was taking life hard. So was her father. Enduring bereavement among the festivities had been grim; the fun and games that were always arranged by Maia's thriving brood were not the best solution for anyone. What choice was there, though? It would have been a desperate week for Petronilla alone with her mother.
`I thought I would never get through this month,' Petro admitted to me. I said nothing. He rarely broke into confidences. `Gods, I hate festivals!'
`Has Petronilla gone back to Silvia yet?'
`Tomorrow. I'm taking her.' He paused. I knew that since he had had to admit to Arria Silvia that he was now sharing a bed with Maia, he found it easier to avoid his ex-wife. My sister had played no part in their separation, but Silvia accused Petronius of having always lusted after Maia – and he stubbornly would not deny it. `I'd better see for myself. Can't be sure what we'll be walking into.' He paused a second time, trouble heavy in his voice. 'Silvia had a bust-up with that lousy boyfriend of hers. She was facing Saturnalia alone and not looking forward to it. She threatened -' He stopped altogether. Then he said, `She made wild threats about killing herself.'