I badly wanted to sort this. The one thing that had always bothered me about accusing Calpurnia was that her family had a secret, one I still did not know. I was working blind. And that meant I could be caught out by some angle I had failed to anticipate. I was right to be wary: by the end of that evening I would know it too.
I was keen to pressurise Zeuko. Anything Perseus had known was likely to have been passed on by him to her – unless he had learned it from Zeuko in the first place. Unfortunately, since the wet-nurse had stupidly run to the Second's patrol house when she heard Perseus was in custody, the Second were now holding Zeuko herself as a suspected accomplice of the dead slave. (They had had no charge against Perseus – except that he had let himself be killed under torture, clearly a suspicious act.) To mollify me, Petro volunteered to try to inveigle himself in to examine Zeuko, but he warned me the Second were jumpy.
`I'm doing you a big favour, Falco -'
`Ah well,' I sneered, throwing his own words back to him. 'What are friends for?'
That left the Metellus steward. As the Second could not touch him because he was a free man, they had released him and he had gone home. Although it was late, I returned to the Fifth Region to attempt an interview. I went alone. Justinus had pressing reasons; to unload his travel packs at the senator's house; he needed to make his peace with his wife over absconding to Lanuvium. He was upset about losing Perseus too. He would tell me the full story of his journey tomorrow.
I found the Metellus spread in darkness, apparently deserted. Maybe Calpurnia had gone into retreat. Perhaps one of her daughters had offered her hospitality. The trial was bound to be distressing her. And she had no slaves, because they were all being processed by the vigiles.
Even the steward had failed to gain entry to the house. He possessed no latch-lifter or key; well, there had always been a porter to let people in. I found him drinking himself senseless at the nasty bar opposite. I told him about Perseus, hoping shock would make him open up. No use. He was still singing the old song: he knew that a secret shadowed the Metellus family, but had no idea what. Perseus had discovered it, but never revealed his blackmail material. Perseus had boasted that the family were at his mercy – and he intended to keep it that way.
The door porter had not been entirely immune, however. He was a slave still. His age was under thirty, so in law he could not be manumitted. And because he was a slave, when he finally went too far, Calpurnia had lost her temper and dispatched him to Lanuvium to be kept under control by the trusted freedman, Julius Alexander.
`So Alexander knows the secret?'
`He must do, but he's one of the family. He won't tell. Anyway,' maundered the steward. `Alexander is in Lanuvium.'
No he was not. Justinus had persuaded him to come to Rome. I kept that to myself.
I offered to help the steward break in to the house, but he was content to stay in a room above the bar that night. I had the impression he would probably not bother to crawl up the stairs to a sleeping-pallet, but would remain propped up against the counter, pouring in drink like a man who had just discovered wine. He had lost all his elegance. He was as dishevelled and inarticulate as any street dosser who was down on his luck. It looked as if this steward was heading for a grim future.
Once more I encouraged him to go home. Drunkenly refusing to budge, he repaid me for my thoughtfulness by dropping me right in it.
`You asked me once, Falco – what was the last meal my master ate. I do remember -' He had never forgotten. `It was cold meats and salad. What we always had. But my master had been sent a present, she said it was to seek his forgiveness… Lying little cow.'
Something cold tickled my upper spine. `What present?'
`Two nice quails in a silver dish. We never had quails. Calpurnia finds little birds creepy. I never buy larks or fig-peckers… But my master liked them. He laughed and told me he would never forgive the woman, but he was very fond of game so he told me not to mention the present – then he ate the quails.'
You can feed hemlock to quails, and then eat the quails… `Have you told anyone else about this?'
`Nobody asked me.'
That old nonsense! This steward was either too scared – or-he had hoped for some gain for himself.
`So who sent the present? Who are we talking about?'
`Who do you think? Saffia.'
I warned the steward to take life easy, then I left him and went home. I walked slowly. I took the longest route I could think of. I had a lot to think about.
There was no doubt from the way the trial had been going – and the other side's desperate reactions – that we were winning. We could convict Calpurnia Cara successfully. But somebody else had killed Metellus.
For my partners and me, this was disastrous. No way out: we had to look into it. If the steward's claim was substantiated, our charge was untenable. Everything had been for nothing. And before I even dared to break the news to the others, I knew we could not sustain the damage. We had wrongly accused a woman of senatorial rank. She had a top defender on her side. The charge was a dreadful slur on the innocent; the case had been a terrible ordeal for her. Paccius Africanus, whom I had so fiercely humiliated two days ago, would demand compensation – on a grand scale.
Marponius would lose his chance of glory with the case, so he would hate us. Why blame him? We had made the accusation and if we withdrew, we were liable. Damaging a person of status with a fraudulent petition had always been slammed with heavy penalties. Marponius would award our victim whatever Paccius asked.
I dared not even think how high the price would be.
I knew the result, though. Falco and Associates were finished. The two young Camillus boys and Honorius would be named jointly in the penalty award. I could not shield them, even if I wanted to. I had some savings, but no financial capacity to cover their commitment. Nor could we recoup our loss through a petition for murder against Saffia Donata; Saffia was dead. My resources would go nowhere. My future, and the future of my family, had just been wiped out. We were all ruined.
LII
I HAD PLANNED to keep it to myself Helena winkled it out of me. She seemed less troubled than I was, but then she had never lived too long in abject poverty. Our days in my old apartment up in Fountain Court had passed like an adventure for her. The cramped conditions, leaky roof and unpleasant, violent neighbours had been soon superseded by a larger, quieter set of rooms. Though not much better than our first dreadful nest, for Helena even they had now faded to a memory.
It all came back to me readily. The bugs. The creaking joists, threatening to cave in at any heavy footfall. The dirt. The noise. The theft and battery; the disease and debt. The threats from fellow lodgers, the smoke from wonky cooking benches, the screaming children. The smell of urine on the stairs – not all of it coming from the vats in Lenia's laundry. Lenia bawling drunkenly. The filthy, filthy-hearted landlord…
`If you were just to withdraw, honestly telling Marponius that you made a mistake, Marcus -'
`No. It's no let-out.'
`So you began the case – and you have to finish or become liable?'
`We could keep quiet, of course. Convict Calpurnia, and send her to her death… My conscience won't cope with that.'
`Anyway,' murmured my sensible girl, `somebody else might come forward with evidence. Keeping quiet would be too dangerous.'
I fell asleep shortly afterwards. I was holding Helena, smiling against her hair – smiling at the ridiculous thought that this model of rectitude might have let us cover up the truth if she thought we could get away with it. She had lived with me too long. She was becoming a pragmatist.
Helena herself must have lain awake for much longer. She knew how to keep still, shielding her busy thoughts from me. For her, if we could not hold back the new evidence, then we would damn well fight to minimise the damage. She was planning how. Her first move was to ensure that the steward's tale was true.