A man adept in violence crashed across the street towards me. He was locked in a hold with Tibullinus, a hold of painful illegality. As I winced, stepping back to give him space, he broke a bone somewhere in the centurion with a horrendous crack, then put in a punch like a pile-hammer. Tibullinus lay still. His assailant stood up. He jerked his chin up derisively as if despising the weak opposition.
Across the road, Petronius clung in the doorway of the Oily jug, catching his breath. He grinned at me wryly. The vanquisher of Tibullinus looked at both of us.
`Nice work,' I said. I meant it too.
Whatever we thought of him, Marcus Rubella had come good.
The turmoil continued. It was a head-to-head conflict of the foot patrols now; I stood back, near the tribune, and watched. Then I glimpsed through the fighting that Petro had someone with him. He was talking to Porcius.
The lad looked confused. He was shaking his head vigorously. Even though not a word was audible I knew what I was witnessing: my old friend had chosen this moment of grief and commotion to put his raw recruit through a disciplinary interview.
I knew why. Petronius had remembered the time when Balbinus Pius, awaiting sentence and his legal right to exile, was under house surveillance by the Sixth Cohort. He had been guarded by Tibullinus and Arica, whom we now knew were in his pocket. An officer of the Fourth had been assigned to them as an observer. That man was among the party, led by Tibullinus and Arica, that had brought Balbinus to Ostia. Presumably that officer had known Linus would be on watch once Balbinus joined his ship. The observer had been Porcius.
Petronius must have been suspicious for some time. This explained why he had been so hard on the recruit; why, too, when he needed the little black slave Porcius had been looking after, Petro had been so insistent it was Fusculus who fetched the child, protecting the witness against `accidents'. It explained why Petronius had lost his temper so badly with Porcius.
He was angry again now.
I saw Martinus and Fusculus conferring as they kept Petronius under scrutiny. They too had worked out what was going on. Marcus Rubella, completely expressionless, stood at my side with his arms folded, watching them all. Ex-centurions are the hardest men you can meet. When Martinus and Fusculus began walking grimly towards Porcius and their chief, Rubella and I both turned and left the scene.
LXIV
FOR DAYS ROME revelled in the stories: how down in the Eleventh region fighting had broken out among the vigiles, leaving several dead and many sorely hurt. It had been necessary for a Very Important Patrician, horrified by the breakdown of order, to send one of his own personal lictors to the Praetorian Camp to call out the Urban Cohorts, who, with the advantage of being armed to the teeth, speedily put down the riot. The Very Important Patrician was reputed to have composed a scroll for the Emperor denouncing the lax discipline of the foot patrols, the astonishing complacency of their officers, and the possibility that the whole event had been orchestrated by undesirable republican elements in the vigiles in order to distract attention from some sinister web of public-service fraud.
My contacts said that the Emperor was delighted to be supplied with the great man's views, though Vespasian was already taking action on the basis of another report that had been slapped in fast by Marcus Rubella and the official anti-corruption team.
Crushed by this rebuff, the Very Important Patrician had adopted a new interest. He was now devoting himself to opposing obscenity and reforming prostitutes. Obviously this meant he would have to force himself to survey brothels personally. Some of us thought this had its hilarious side.
The Sixth Cohort were to be broken up and re-formed under new officers. Their tribune and several centurions had resigned. Petronius Longus was delighted by this because Martinus was now devoting all his efforts to trying to get promoted into one of the vacant postings in the Sixth. Martinus was of the opinion that his talents for relaxed enquiry and demonic draughts would fit in well in the prestigious Palatine and Circus Maximus regions. Like a decent superior, Petronius was strongly supporting his bid to have these talents recognised.
The Fourth Cohort had been formally reprimanded by Rubella for running wild. They had been confined to their patrol houses overnight to calm them down. This had the useful side benefit of allowing Rubella to visit each station and ensure that the official story of their incursion into another cohort's district was understood by all. Luckily most civilians were unable to distinguish between one cohort and another anyway.
Among the dead, the Fourth had lost one of their youngest officers, Porcius. The burial club was to provide him with a basic funeral, though his tribune had to tell the family that regretfully his short time in service, and other factors, meant that no claim for compensation could be allowed.
Official annoyance about the disturbance had been mitigated by the night's other results. Arrested at the brothel called the Bower of Venus were an astonishing number of criminals. It was estimated that tracing and returning stolen property recovered would take the vigiles three months. So many runaway slaves had been rounded up that the Prefect of the Vigiles held a special all-day session for owners wanting to reclaim them (those owners, that is, who were prepared to give house room to a sullen slave who had been exposed to bad company at Plato's). The power of a notorious organised gang had been broken. Among the street operators rounded up were every kind of hustler, cat burgler and cudgel boy, and in addition there was evidence of a kidnap racket operated by some of the prostitutes.
The main evidence of this pin-money racket had been provided by Helena Justina. There was one intriguing aspect that we did not make public: Helena had obtained a confession that the baby I found in the rubbish skip had been stolen by the girls. One of the hags at Plato's had realised he was deaf. When his family refused to ransom him, he was taken up on the Aventine and dumped there by a onetime doorman at the brothel. Macra told us this was the man who did all their snatching – Castus, who had also stabbed the Lycian when Lalage and Nonnius were setting out to betray Balbinus Pius. Castus no longer worked at the brothel; he had been a Balbinus stooge, and Lalage had sent him packing after the trial. He had been apprehended and was awaiting his turn for detailed questioning.
Helena Justina knew who the stolen baby's family were. The last people on the list had finally spoken to her: they denied that they had ever had a baby, let alone that the child was missing, even though a frightened nurse had originally reported it. And who were these forgetful parents? None other than a certain Very Important Patrician and his well-connected, extremely wealthy wife. According to gossip the woman was now pregnant again. Helena and I had decided not to insist on restoring their son to them. We did not even tell them he had been identified.
The famous brothel-keeper at the Bower of Venus had been discovered dead. As a result the authorities believed that one of Rome's most sordid bordellos might now lapse into decline. (Not everyone shared this fond hope.) Its landlord had promised to take action, anyway.
I had met Florius standing outside Plato's Academy with a long scroll in his hand. He had been informed by the Prefect of the Vigiles that this was one of his properties. Horrified, he told me that he had called for a full list of the sites he had acquired with Milvia's dowry. Obviously, as a decent equestrian he would now inspect the estate, and do everything possible to clean it up.