She went whiter still.
We heard shouts. Footsteps scuffled. The trooper on guard at the end of the alley called out in a low voice. Petronius moved forward anxiously.
"Petro, help us out of this dead end?"
"Why not?" He shrugged. "Let's shift He stopped. "Ladyship, I can take you"
"Back off, Petro," I interjected sourly. "The princess is with me."
"Trust him, lady," he condescended to say kindly to Helena. "He's wonderful in a crisis!"
"Oh he's wonderful anywhere," Helena Justina capitulated reluctantly. "According to him!"
From a senator's daughter, this startled him as much as it did me.
We all squeezed out of the cul-de-sac into the noisy thoroughfare. His man muttered. We ducked back. Petronius growled back over his shoulder at me, "They're swarming like honeybees in Hybla. If we cause a diversion"
"Steer them away from the river," I agreed quickly.
"Shriek if the lady shoves you in the Tiber, so we can all watch you drown! Lend me this With a swift grin, Petronius unwound Helena Justina from the white mantle that she wore outdoors. He draped it round the smallest of his lads, who pranced out into the traffic followed by appreciative cheers from the rest.
At the Ostian Way crossroad, Petro posted his men on traffic duty. I knew what to expect; everything ground to a standstill within seconds. I glimpsed a raised arm as Helena's mantle flickered white amid the screaming drivers, all standing up on their footboards, hurling abuse at the watch.
In the chaos, we slipped away. To shed its weight while I was looking after Helena, I left the bag of gold for Petronius to take to mother's for me warning him it belonged to ma, so he had better not risk milking the contents for himself. Then I headed back fast on the way we had first come. Soon we were much too far west, but in quieter streets, the river side of the Aventine, near the Probus Bridge. I brought us south past the Atrium of Liberty, stopping by Pollio's Library to catch a hasty drink from a fountain. While I was about it, I washed my filthy shoes and legs. Helena Justina tentatively began to do the same, so I gripped her heels and swabbed her feet like a very brisk banquet slave.
Thank you," she murmured quietly. I gave my grimmest attention to cleaning off her beaded shoes. "Are we safe now?"
"No, lady. We're in Rome, in the dark. If anyone jumps us they will probably knife us out of sheer disappointment that we've nothing left to steal."
"Oh don't fight!" she cajoled me.
I did not reply.
I was trying to decide what to do. I reckoned both our homes might be being watched. Helena Justina had no friends nearby; everyone she knew lived further north. I settled on taking her to stay with my mother.
"Have you realized what this is all about, ladyship?"
She read my thoughts. "The silver pigs are at Nap Lane!" It was the only explanation for her ungracious husband's last-minute legacy. "His name was in our stolen letter; he realized he was now proscribed. He created that codicil in case he was betrayed by his collaborators, to deprive them of funds in revenge but what did he imagine I would do with the ingots if I found them?"
"Return them to the Emperor. You're honest, aren't you?" I asked her in a dry tone.
I tucked her feet into her shoes again and began to walk.
"Falco, why are they chasing us?"
"Domitian overreacting? Titus hinted we were suspicious about your legacy. And he may have listened outside the door before he came whistling in. What's that?"
I caught a chuckle of sound. A bevy of horsemen swirled out of nowhere. A tall-sided garden rubbish cart was grumbling past empty; I dragged Helena aboard, jammed up the backboard, and we lay, petrified, while the horses dashed by.
Perhaps it was coincidence; perhaps not.
Two hours had passed since we left the Palace; the strain was beginning to tell. I peered out, saw a man on horseback, then ducked so hard I banged myself half-unconscious before I realized I had only glimpsed a statue of some ancient general going green about the wreath. Something snapped.
"This cart seems to know where it's going," I muttered. "Let's just keep down!"
It was an arthritic waggon pulled by an asthmatic horse, eratically steered by the oldest gardener in the world; I guessed they would not be going far.
We hid until we came to a stable, then the old man unhitched the horse and pottered off home. He left a guttering taper, despite the risk of fire, so either he was utterly drunk or the horse was afraid of the dark.
We were alone. We were safe. There was only one problem: when we looked outside we were in a public garden. It had eight-foot-high railings and as he left the man had locked the gates.
"I'll cry for my mother," I murmured to Helena. "You climb out and fetch help!"
"If we can't get out, no one else can get in…"
"I am not bedding down with a horse!"
"Oh Falco, where's your sense of adventure?"
"Where's your sense?"
We bedded down with the horse.
XLVII
In the stall next to the horse was some straw which various ticks and fleas had decided was clean. I spread out my toga, framing an apology to Festus, though that glad spark would have found this a huge joke. In less respectable company, I might have giggled myself.
I undipped my belt, threw my sandals aside, hurled myself back on the straw and watched Helena Justina straighten my shoes tidily alongside hers. She distanced herself with her back turned, pulling out her ivory hairpins in despair. She dropped the pins into her shoe while her hair untwined in one loosened tangle down her back. I decided against reaching out for a friendly tug. You have to know a woman very well before you pull her hair.
She sat hugging her knees. Without her mantle she was obviously cold.
"Here our quaint national garment can make a cosy bedspread. Snuggle up and get warm. Hush! Who's to know?" I dragged her back beside me, pinned her with one elbow and rapidly flung the long ends of my toga round us both. "My own theory is, warming up women was what the founding fathers had in mind when they invented this…"
The senator's daughter had landed in my ceremonial cocoon with her head just below my chin. She was too chilled to resist. She shuddered once, then lay stiff as a post in a wattle fence. As soon as she realized she could only escape with a great deal of effort, she fell diplomatically asleep. She does hate fuss.
I lay awake; she could probably hear my brain creaking as I turned over the night's events. I settled into what I now realized was my favourite position for thinking: leaning my cheek against a peaceful woman's head. I had never discovered this before; Libyan dancing girls wriggle far too much.
Dancing girls had actually become a trial to me in several ways. In a manhunt a bare-wasted panicking dancer would be death. They have their place; they give avidly though they take with equal enthusiasm, as my banker could confirm. Associating with dancing girls had cost me more than loss of face tonight. One way and another, I had had my fill of them.
Once Helena Justina was asleep, I gradually relaxed.
She was no great weight, but I could hardly forget she was there. She fitted perfectly into the crook of my arm, and by turning my head I could breathe warm draughts of the scent which lingered in her hair. Fine, clean, shining hair that resisted the curling irons and soon dropped into smoother folds than maids in charge of fashionable women like to see. She was wearing Malabathron again. Her black swine of a husband must have given her a mighty great pot unless of course this girl of strange surprises was saving it for me… (A man can dream.)
I was too exhausted to achieve much by thinking, even when I felt so comfortable. I nuzzled Helena's scented hair, ready to doze off. I may have sighed, in the slow, sombre way of a man who has failed to solve his problem despite half an hour of thought. At the point when I gave up the struggle it seemed perfectly natural to be lying in a bale of straw with my arm around Helena Justina, and since by that time I had settled close enough to manage it, and since she was asleep, it also seemed natural to kiss her very gently on the forehead before I drifted off myself.