"How's my favourite nephew?" I asked, since she was holding her latest pug-faced progeny. He had the wrinkled face and tearful gaze of a hundred-year-old man. He stared at me over her shoulder with visible contempt: barely crawling yet, but he could recognize a fraud.
Victorina shot me a tired look. She knew my heart belonged to Marcia, our three-year-old niece.
My mother sedated Petronius with a casket of raisins while she extracted impertinent facts about his relations with his wife. I managed to get hold of a melon slice, but Victorina's infant seized the other end. He had the grip of a Liburnian wrestler. We struggled for some minutes, then I gave way to the better chap. The wretch hurled the melon onto the floor.
Sosia watched everything with immense, solemn eyes. I suppose she had never been anywhere where there was so much going on in such good-humoured chaos.
"Hello, Falco!"
"Hello, Sosia!" I smiled, in tones that were meant to lap her body in liquid gold. My sister and mother exchanged a derisory glance. I put one foot on the bench beside Sosia and gazed down with a simmering leer until my mother noticed.
"Get your boot off my bench!"
I took my boot off the bench.
"Little goddess, you and I need a private talk."
"Whatever you need," ma informed me, "can be discussed right here!"
Grinning more than I thought necessary, Petronius Longus sat down at the table and leaned his chin on his hands while he waited for me to begin. Everyone knew that I had no idea what I wanted to say.
On several occasions before that, indignant females had described to me the expression on my mother's face when she met some painted madam with a scented skirt in my rooms. Sometimes I never saw them again. In fairness to my mother, my conquests had included bad mistakes.
"What's going on here?" my mother had rapped at Sosia when she discovered her during my enforced chat with Pertinax.
"Good morning," responded Sosia. My mother sniffed. She strode to the bedroom, flung aside the curtain, and weighed up the situation with the camp bed.
"Well! I can see what's going on! Client?"
"I am not allowed to say," Sosia said.
My mother replied that she would be the judge of what was allowed. Then she sat Sosia down and gave her something to eat. She has her methods. Pretty soon she had wormed out the whole tale. She demanded what Sosia's noble mama would think, so Sosia unwisely mentioned having no noble mama. My own sweet parent was appalled.
"Right! You can come with me!" Sosia murmured that she felt safe enough. Mother gave her a sharp look; Sosia went with my mama.
Now Petronius, bless him, weighed in to help me out.
"Time we took you home, little lady!"
I told Sosia how the senator had engaged me. From which she assumed rather too much.
"So he explained? I thought Uncle Decimus was being overcautious at first' She stopped, then rounded on me accusingly, "You don't know what I'm talking about!"
"Tell me then," I said very gently.
She was deeply troubled. Her great eyes flew towards my mother. People always trust my mother. "I don't know what to do!" she pleaded.
My mother answered huffily, "Don't look at me, I never interfere."
I snorted at this. Ma ignored it, but even Petro had let slip a stifled guffaw of amusement.
"Oh, tell him about your bank box, child. The worst he can do is steal it," mother said. Such wonderful faith! I suppose you can't blame her. My elder brother Festus for some peculiar reason made himself a military hero. I can't compete with that.
"Uncle Decimus is hiding something very important in my bank box in the Forum," Sosia muttered guiltily. "I'm the only person who knows the number to open the box. Those men were taking me there."
I stared at her with a set face, making her suffer. In the end I turned man-to-man to Petronius. "What do you think?" I had no doubt of his answer.
"Stroll along and look!"
Sosia Camillina was behaving very meekly, but she did pipe up to warn us we should need to take a handcart to carry the loot.
XI
The Forum was cooler and quieter than when I was here with Sosia before, especially in the long colonnade where moneychangers offered safe deposits for nervous citizens. The Camillus family banked with a grinning Bithynian who had invested unhealthily in excess body fat. Sosia whispered a number to identify her property; happy face unlocked her box. It was a large box, although what was inside turned out to be comparatively small.
The box lid fell back. Sosia Camillina stood to one side. When Petro and I peered in, her savings were even less impressive than mine. Her uncle hired her this strongbox as a sensible discipline, but she owned no more than ten gold coins and a few decent pieces of jewellery that her aunt thought she was too young yet to wear. (It was a point of view. She was old enough for me.)
Our object of enquiry was folded up in felt and roped around with hemp. Since the banker was watching us with frank Bithynian curiosity, Petronius gave me a hand to drag it out unwrapped. It seemed impossibly heavy. It was lucky we had borrowed a handcart from my brother-in-law the plasterer, who was out of work as usual. (My brother-in-law was not out of work because all the walls in Rome were sound and smooth. It was because people in Rome would rather look at bare slats than employ a cross-eyed, bone idle swine like him.) We staggered off with our trolley creaking under the weight. Petro let me do most of the work.
"Don't hurt yourself!" Sosia had the grace to exclaim.
Petronius winked at her. "Not as puny as he looks. Does secret weight training in a gladiators' gym. Use your muscles, blossom"
"You must tell me some time," I gasped in retaliation, "why my sister Victorina calls you Primrose!"
He said nothing. But he blushed, I swear he did.
Fortunately Rome is a sophisticated city. Two men with a girl and a handcart can crawl into a wine shop without causing comment. We moved down a shady side street and plunged indoors. I bagged a table in a dark corner while Petro laid on some hot pies. It took both of us to raise the precious object up onto the table with a thud. Cautiously we peeled back the felt.
"Shades of Hades!" Petronius let out.
I could see why Uncle Decimus did not want this new baby announced in the Daily Gazette.
Sosia Camillina had no idea what it was.
Petro and I knew. Both of us felt slightly sick. Petro, with his iron stomach, nevertheless leaned back on his joint-stool and snapped his teeth into a vegetable pie. Rather than surrender to unhappy memories, I bit into one too. Mine was basically rabbit, with chicken livers and, I think, juniper not bad. There was a plate of pork tit bits we let Sosia chew on those.
That lonely hole of a customs post," Petro reminisced in horror. "Stuck on the Sabrina Estuary the wrong side of the frontier. Nothing to do but count the coracles floating in the mist, and keep one eye open in case the dark little men came over the river on a raid. Oh dear gods, Falco, remember the rain!"
I remembered the rain. The long, drear rain in southwest Britain is unforgettable.
"Falco, whatever is it?" Sosia hissed.
I said, relishing the drama, "Sosia Camillina, this is a silver Pig!"
XII
It was an ingot of lead.
It weighed two hundred Roman pounds. I tried to explain once to a woman I knew, how heavy that was:
"Not a lot heavier than you. You're a tall girl, quite a solid piece. A bridegroom could just about heave you over his threshold and not lose his silly smile…" The wench I was insulting happened to be a substantial armful, though by no means overweight. It sounds unkind, but if you've ever tried picking up a well fed young lady you'll appreciate the comparison was fairly exact. In fact, lifting this dense grey slab before we knew what we were doing had left two of us with bad backs.