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"How much is Malabathron?"

The per fumier must have been born wearing an insulting sneer. He told me the price. I could just about afford to let her sniff the stopper from the jar. I informed him with a proud stare that I would think about it, then walked home again.

Lenia saw me come back. I smiled in an aloof way that said I would not answer questions, then set off up the stairs.

When I got to my apartment I stood until inspiration struck. I went into my bedroom and dug around in my baggage roll until I found my little silver nugget from the Vebiodunum mine, then walked back down all six flights to the street. This time I went to a silversmiths. The pride of his collection was a twisted filigree strap, hung with tiny acorns all along its meticulous length, which perfectly matched the restrained taste of what I had seen her wear. I admired it profusely, heard the price, and pretended to decide on earrings instead. But I turned up my nose at all his current stock, then produced my piece of treasure and explained what I wanted him to make.

"I suppose," the smith remarked, "it would cause you some embarrassment if I asked where you got hold of this?"

"Not at all," I told him blithely. "I obtained it working as a slave in a British silver mine."

"Very funny!" scoffed the smith.

I walked home.

Lenia saw me again. She did not bother to ask any questions, and I did not bother to smile.

My problems were not yet over. I had evicted the hot-wine waiter; my mother was coming to scrub out my balcony. She aimed an unfriendly blow at me with her mop.

I smiled at my mother, a serious mistake.

"You've been with one of your rope dancers!"

"I have not." I captured the mop. "Sit down, share a cup of wine, and I'll tell you what the famous Titus Caesar says about your glorious son."

She did sit, though she rejected wine. I told her how Titus had praised Festus, laying on the compliments fairly thick. She listened, with no change that I could see, then sombrely requested wine after all. I poured; we tilted cups in his memory. She sipped in her usual way, sitting very upright, as if she merely drank to be sociable.

My mother's face would never age. Only her skin had grown tired in recent years, so it no longer fitted properly on her bones. After I came back from Britain she seemed smaller than before. Her black-rimmed eyes would stay bright and sharp-witted to the day she died. One day that would happen, and though I now spent so much effort fending off her encroachments, when she was gone I would be desolate.

I sat quiet, letting her absorb all I had said.

No one, not even his girlfriend, ever criticized what Festus had done. My mother had received the news, heard his self sacrifice hailed, ensured decent arrangements were made (by me) for Marina and the child. People talked about him; she never said a word. We all understood that losing that great, gaudy, generous character had swept away the underpinnings of her life.

Now, alone with me, quite suddenly she told me what she thought. When I made the mistake of calling him a hero, her face set even more. She drained off her cup and fiercely banged it down.

"No, Marcus," my mother said harshly. "Your brother was a fool!"

And at last she could cry, for Festus and his folly, in my arms, knowing I had always thought so too.

From that day it became accepted that in the presumably permanent absence of my father I came into my full authority as head of our family. To cope with that, ageing a generation seemed a good idea.

Lindsey Davis

The Silver Pigs

L

In the early afternoon I revisited Nap Lane.

Nothing had changed: the rubbish in the alley, the desolate air of neglect, even the sewer men doggedly lowering hods down the same manhole as before. Round the warehouse itself there were men of a military disposition stationed everywhere. Their scratchy-featured captain refused to let me in, though he did so with good manners, which suggested someone whose rank he took seriously had warned him I might call.

That left two courses of action: I could make a fool of myself handing in pots of pink carnations at a certain woman's door, or exercise my body at the gym. Rather than embarrass her, I went to the gym.

The one I used was run by an intelligent Cilician called Glaucus. It was attached to some private baths two streets from the Temple of Castor and had the unusual distinction of being respectable. Glaucus barred professional gladiators and the kind of hollow-cheeked aristocratic youths who yearn with dry throats after little boys. He kept a casual exercise ground where likeable citizens brought their bodies up to scratch with their minds (which were on the whole quite good), then enjoyed pleasant conversation in his bathhouse afterwards. There were clean towels, a small library in the colonnade, and an excellent pastry shop beside the portico steps.

The first man I saw when I ambled into the ball court was Decimus Camillus Verus, Helena's noble papa. He had taken up my jesting offer to introduce him with startling alacrity. Most of Glaucus' patrons were younger men, before they developed paunches and no sense of proportion about how much thwacking of sand-filled punch bags an elderly body can endure; Glaucus believed having fifty-year-old gentry expiring redfaced outside on his steps would discourage other clients. I had spoken to him already and advised him that the honourable Decimus would pay well, in view of which, drilling a tame senator in occasional light sword fencing might be, if not a sensible idea, at least remunerative.

So here my senator was. I gave him a bout with practice swords; I could already see him sharpening up, though Camillus Verus would never have much of an eye. Still, he would pay not promptly, but who does? and Glaucus would give him his money's worth in simple exercise, while making sure no casual blade ever nicked his noble hide.

We threw a handball around the yard rather than admit we were too tired, then relaxed in the baths. We could meet here easily, and whatever became of the case, our habit of friendship seemed likely to endure. The gymnasium would provide one place where we could be cronies despite the gulf of rank. His family could pretend not to know about it; mine already believed I had no sense of social tact.

But now we were exchanging news. After we sweated off our grime in the hot-rooms and plunged through the tepid pools, we lay on slabs, enjoying the attentions of the manicure girls while we waited our turn with the huge arm-wrenching masseur Glaucus had filched from the city baths in Tarsus. He was good, which is to say he was horrible. We would come out afterwards like boys from their first brothel, pretending we felt wonderful but really not at all sure.

"You go first, sir," I grinned. "Your time's more valuable."

We both gave way graciously and let someone else go first.

I noticed the senator was looking tired. I asked, and rather to my surprise he said without any hesitation, "I had a terrible interview this morning with Sosia Camillina's mother she had just returned from abroad and received the news. Falco, how are you getting on with your investigation? Is there any chance I will be able to tell her soon that we have at least identified who struck the blow? Will the man who killed Sosia ever be brought to book? The woman was very agitated; she even wanted to employ someone herself to take over the case."

"With respect to me, my rates are the cheapest she will get!"

"And with respect to us," the senator said rather stiffly, "my family are not wealthy, but we shall do all that can be done!"

"I thought Sosia did not know her mother?" I probed.

"No." He was silent for a moment, then finally explained. "It was all somewhat unfortunate, and I make no excuses for the way my brother behaved. Sosia's mother was a woman of some status, married as you may have realized, and there was never any suggestion that she wished to alter that. Her husband is an ex-consul now, with all that entails; even at the time he was a prominent man. The lady and my brother became friendly while her man was away on a three-year diplomatic tour; his absence from the scene meant that when she became pregnant it would have been impossible for her to pretend the child was their own."