Helena Justina was looking at me so steadily I felt odd. I stood my ground against them both.
Titus Caesar ran the fingers of both hands through his wellkept hair.
"You are perfectly right. My barber's a villain," he said.
He gazed at me for a moment. "People underestimate you, Falco." "People underrated Vespasian for sixty years!" "Fools still do. Let me tell you his instructions." They had tried to bamboozle me. Titus still wanted to shuffle me off and allow the case against Domitian to die quietly, but I noticed he had a speech ready in case the attempt should fail. He leaned forward earnestly.
"Omit my brother's name from your enquiries. Find the silver and the murderer of that innocent young girl. Most importantly, identify the man who planned all this."
I suggested increasing my rates; he decided that for the same enquiry they would pay the same. Always a fool for logic, I accepted it.
"But I cannot omit Domitian -"
"You must," Titus told me flatly.
Then the curtain behind us suddenly swung open. I began to twist round to investigate, when the person who had come in unannounced started whistling. With a shock, I recognized the tune.
It was a song about Vespasian; about Titus; about Berenice. Soldiers sang it with a slow, low, leery lurch at the end of the night. They sang it in bars and in brothels, with both envy and approval, but no soldier I had ever met would repeat it here. The words went:
Oh the old man smiled!
Then the young man smiled!
So the Queen of all the Jews
She really couldn't lose
All she had to do was choose When the old man, And the young man smiled!
Only one person would dare to whistle so outrageously in the presence of a Caesar: another Caesar. Vespasian was presiding over his banquet, so I knew who our rash visitor must be.
Domitian, Titus Caesar's younger brother: the imperial playboy who was implicated in our plot.
XLIV
"That must have been a contest, brother!"
"Not all of life is a contest," Titus calmly said.
For Domitian, the courtesy title of Caesar seemed a fragile irony. He had the family curls, the creased Flavian chin, the bull neck, square body and stocky build. Somehow he failed to convince. He was ten years younger than Titus, which explained both his resentment and his brother's protective loyalty. He was twenty, his face still cherubic and soft.
"Sorry!" he exclaimed. My first impression was that he shared his brother's ability to disarm. My second impression was, he acted well. "What's this affairs of state?" I remembered how Domitian's role in the state had been terminated briskly by their imperial papa.
"Man called Didius Falco," Titus told him, sounding the general. "Relation of a decurion in my legion in Judaea."
It finally struck me that I owed this commission to my own brother. Vespasian and Titus knew Festus, so they trusted me. Not for the first time in my life, I viewed big brother with mixed feelings. Not for the first time in this case, I felt hideously slow.
As if it had been prearranged, a servant issued me with a sack of coin I could hardly lift. Titus declared in a measured voice, That is my personal gift to your mother, Didius Falco, as commander of the Fifteenth Legion Apollinaris. A small compensation for the support she has lost. Didius Festus was irreplaceable to both of us."
"You knew him?" I asked, not because I wanted to hear, but when I told my mother all this gilt-edged rubbish she would ask me.
"He was one of my soldiers; I tried to know them all."
Domitian broke in, with a laugh that sounded genuine: "We are both lucky, Didius Falco, having brothers with such well earned reputations!"
In that moment he enjoyed all the gifts of the Flavian house: grace, high intelligence, respect for the task in hand, sturdy wit, good sense. He could have been no less a statesman than his father or his brother; sometimes he managed it. Vespasian had shared his own talents with an even hand; the difference was, only one of his sons handled them with a truly sure grip.
Titus brought our interview to a close. Tell your mother to be proud, Falco."
I managed to keep my peace.
As I turned, Domitian stepped aside.
"Who's the lady?" he asked me openly, when Helena Justina slipped to her feet in a sparkle of gold and a whisper of silk. His shameless eyes raked her, implying the wander of decadent hands.
Her discomfort made me so angry, I retaliated: "The ex-wife of a dead aedile called Atius Pertinax."
And saw his flicker of anxiety at that name.
Titus had come down to us at the door, also putting his brother to the test: The aedile has left his lady a curious legacy. Now this fortune-hunter trails after her everywhere, keeping one eye on her interests at all turns…"
Domitian gave no further sign of nerves. He kissed Helena's hand, with the half-closed gaze of a very young man who imagines he is brilliant in bed. She stared at him stonily. Titus intervened, with a smoothness I envied, kissing her cheek like a relative as we reached the door. I let him. If she wanted, she was perfectly capable of stopping him herself.
I hoped she realized these two came from an old-fashioned Sabine family. Stripped of their purple, they were provincial and ordinary: close with their money, ruled by their women, and obsessed with work. They both had paunches already, and neither of them was as tall as me.
I had to leave Helena alone while I found someone to roust out her chair. The empty atrium seemed so vast I reeled, trying to take it in, but as soon as I returned I spotted her, a shaft of deep sea green sitting on a fountain edge. Overshadowed by the hundred-foot-high statue of Nero as the Sun God, she looked anxious and shy.
A man in a senator's wide purple stripes was addressing her; the type who leans back with his gut heaving over his belt. Her replies were abrupt. Her glance settled on me gratefully as I skipped across.
"Where else should I look for a naiad but in front of a water-splash? There's a delay finding our chair but it will come"
I planted myself alongside. Sir-in-the-stripes looked annoyed; I cheered up. She would not introduce us. After he took his leave I noticed her relax.
"Friend of yours?"
"No. Oddly enough, I'm a friend of his wife!"
"Well, just tip me a nod if you want me to disappear."
"Oh thanks!" she stormed bleakly.
I sat down beside her on the fountain bowl, musing, "Funny thing, divorce. Seems to hang a sign saying "vulnerable" round a woman's neck."
We hit one of those rare moments when she allowed me to see her under private strain.
"Is this common? I was starting to feel I must be odd!" I saw her chair coming, so merely smiled in reply. "Didius Falco, will you see me safe to the house?"
"Good gods, yes! This is Rome at night! Will your chair take me and my bag of gold?"
Dining out with the Caesars had given me extravagant ideas. Still she nodded, then coolly informed the bearers they were taking me as well.
We climbed aboard, both twisting diagonally to avoid bumping knees. The bearers set off, down the north side of the Palatine, going slowly because of the extra weight. It was not quite dark.
Helena Justina was looking so unhappy I had to say, "Don't think about what happened to Pertinax."
"No."
"And don't try to convince yourself he was sorry when you divorced him"
"No, Falco!" I leaned back in my corner of the chair, twisting my lip. In the near darkness she apologized. "You're so passionate when you give advice! Did your hero brother have a wife?"
"A girl and a child he never heard about."
"Marcia!" she exclaimed. Her tone changed. "I thought she must be yours."
"I told you not!"
"Yes."
"I don't lie to you!"
"No. I beg your pardon… Who looks after them now?"