Shadows in Bronze (13 page)

XXVI

We had a hard day of it.

We spent the morning unloading ingots into our ox cart. Ventriculus rented a workshop in the Theatre quarter; the Stabian Gate was nearest but so steep that instead we trundled along to the Nuceria Road Necropolis, chipped off the corners of a few marble tombs, and turned into town there. Our ox, whom we called Nero, soon looked sick. He had a charitable nature but evidently thought hauling great baulks of lead went beyond the call of duty for a beast on holiday.

Ventriculus started work at once. I wanted him to turn the ingots into water pipes. This meant they had to be melted down, then rolled out into narrow strips about ten feet long. The sheet lead was cooled, then curved around wooden battens until the two edges could be pinched together and soldered with more melted lead. (Making this seam is what gives pipes their pear-shaped section if you look at them end on.) Ventriculus was willing to provide various widths, but we concentrated on a regular-sized bore: gnarls, about a digit and a quarter in diameter - the handy household size. Water pipes are unwieldy objects: even a ten-foot quinaria weighs sixty Roman pounds. I had to keep warning Larius, who was short on concentration, that he would know all about it if he dropped one on his foot.

As soon as we had transferred all the ingots to the workshop and the plumber had produced a batch of pipes, we sent the cart back to Oplontis; Ventriculus threw in gratis a sack of bronze taps and stopcocks, which shows what kind of profit he was making on the deal. The plan was that I should take round samples and make on-the-spot sales, but wherever possible I would fix up major contracts for Ventriculus to carry out at a later date. I wanted to take a large instalment back to Oplontis now, which meant only one driver and no passengers; Petronius would drive the load. He was big enough to protect himself, and got on well with Nero. Besides, although he had never complained I knew Petro wanted to speed back early, to placate his wife. I felt a real public benefactor when I sent him off.

I treated the plumber and Larius to a splash in the Stabian baths. Then before our hike home the lad and I trooped off via the harbour so I could have a last word with the captain of the Circe. I showed him the notebook I had brought home from Croton, and told him my theory that the list of names and dates referred to ships.

‘Could be, Falco. I know Parthenope and Venus of Paphos as Ostia corn transports...'

While we were talking I lost sight of my nephew yet again.

I had left him mooning on the quayside. Scratched graffiti of two gladiators gave witness to where he had been amusing himself last: instead of the pimply kneed rabbits we had seen adorning tavern walls in town, my scallywag's doodles had powerful lines; he could really draw. But artistic talent is no guarantee of sense. Keeping track of Larius was like housetraining a chameleon. Ships exerted a special fascination; soon I was dreading that he had slipped aboard one as a stowaway...

Suddenly he sauntered back in sight: gossiping with the well-tanned crow's-nest type I saw spying on us with such interest earlier.

‘Larius! You flea-brained young punk, where in Hades have you been?' He opened his mouth casually to answer, but I cut him short. 'Stop dodging off, will you? It's bad enough looking over one shoulder for some manic assassin, without constantly scouring the horizon for you?'

Perhaps he intended to apologize, but my fright had made me so annoyed I just nodded to the curious stevedore then dragged my nephew away by one ear. Remembering Barnabas brought another cold sweat under my tunic. Snatching a final glance around the port as if I feared the freedman might be watching us, I stormed off in the direction of the hole we were calling home.

Oplontis was a way station on the road to Herculaneum. It was not far, though more than anybody wanted to traipse after a day of lugging lead to and fro. Pompeii was sited on rising ground (an ancient lava field I suppose, though we had no reason to guess that then); as we turned north in the warm twilight a complete panorama of the shore confronted us. We stopped.

It was almost July. The nights grew dark without ever growing old. It was dusk now, with the steep cone of Vesuvius just vanishing from view. All along the beautiful Bay, from Surrentum to Neapolis, where the tycoons of Campania and various important Romans had built their seaside villas over the past fifty years, twinkled the lanterns that lit their fanciful porticos and romantic colonnades. At this time of year most were in residence. The entire sweep of the coastline was dotted with dancing yellow lights from bonfires on the beach.

'Very picturesque!' Larius commented wryly. I had paused for breath: allowing myself a moment of enrapturement. 'Uncle Marcus, this seems s good chance to have our embarrassing chat. "Larius," he mimicked, "why does your daft mother say you're being difficult?" '

He was half my age and twice as despondent but when he stopped being miserable he had a wonderful sense of fun. I was very fond of Larius.

'Well, why does she?' I grunted, irritated at being interrupted in a fit of reverie.

'No idea.' In the second it took me to bring out the helpful question he had reverted to being a morose lout.

While my nephew gazed at the scenery, I scrutinized him.

He had an intelligent brow under an unkempt swath of hair that drooped into solemn, deep brown eyes. Since I saw him throwing nuts at his little brothers last Saturnalia he must have shot up three digits in height. His body had stretched so fast it had left his brain trailing behind. His feet, and ears, and the parts he was suddenly too shy to talk about, were those of a man halt a foot taller than me. While he was expanding into them, Larius had convinced himself he looked ridiculous; in all honesty he did. And he might fill out handsomely-or he might not. My Great-uncle Scam looked like a listing amphora with out-of-proportion jug handles all his life.

In view of his surly answer, I decided a man-to-lad talk would be unprofitable tonight. We started to walk again but after another ten paces, he heaved a dramatic sigh and fetched out, 'Let's get it over with; I promise to co-operate!'

'Oh thanks!' I was trapped. Casting round in despair I asked him conventionally, 'What does your schoolmaster think of you?'

‘Not much.'

‘That's a good sign!' I heard his head turn doubtfully. ‘So what's causing your mother all this grid?'

'Didn't she tell you?'

‘She was well-primed for a torrent but I didn't have three days to spare. Tell me yourself.'

We must have marched on for half a minute. 'She caught me reading poetry,' he admitted in the end.

'Good gods!' I burst out laughing. 'What was it - rude verses from Catullus? Men with big noses, vindictive whores in the Forum, grubby lovers chomping at each other's private parts? Believe me, there's more pleasure, and much better nourishment, in a decent lunch of goat's cheese and bread rolls...' Larius shuffled. 'Your mother may have a point,' I murmured more kindly. 'The only person Galla knows who scribbles elegies in notebooks is her peculiar brother Marcus; he's always in trouble, short of cash, and usually has some scantily clad rope dancer in tow... She's right, Larius: forget poetry. It's just as disreputable, but much more remunerative, to sell green-tinted love potions or become an architect!'

'Or be an informer?' Larius jibed.

'No; being an informer rarely brings in cash!'

Out in the Bay other faint lights were bobbing, as the night fishermen uncovered their lamps to lure their catch. Much nearer at hand a single ship had appeared unnoticed while we walked; she must have come from the direction of Surrentum, hidden in the twilight as she hugged the shore below the Lactarii Mountains, but now she emerged proudly into the centre of the Bay. We could just make her out. She was much smaller than the Circe, altogether a different craft from Pertinax's huge merchantman. This was the sort of toy every rich man who owned a villa at Baiae kept tied up to his landing stage - like the other pleasure boat I had in my life at the moment, the one the conspirator Crispus had fled aboard so conveniently.

Larius and I both slowed our steps. Gliding in silence the ship made a lovely, slightly melancholy sight. We watched, enthralled, as this slender vision crossed the Bay - no doubt some plump young barrister proud of his senatorial ancestors was bringing home a dozen high-class girls with low-grade morals from a beach party on the Positanum coast; his expensive hull was sliding gracefully with a silver wake back towards one of his coastal properties...

My nephew exclaimed with a thrill of speculation he could hardly keep in, 'I wonder if that's the Isis Africans?'

'And what,' I asked him levelly, 'is the Isis Africans?'

And still bursting with the prospect, Larius piped up: 'She belongs to that man Aufidius Crispus. It's the name of the yacht you're looking for..?

XXVII

We quickened our pace again, our eyes still following the boat, but it grew darker and she was lost from us out in the Bay.

'Very clever!' I scoffed. 'I owe this to your tar-stained nark on the quayside, I presume?' Larius ignored me. I tried to contain my anger. 'Larius, we ought to have tipped him a denarius to stop him warning the owner that we asked.' We kept striding on. I made an attempt to restore peace. 'I apologize. Tell me I'm an ungrateful, bad-tempered swine.'

‘You're a swine... It's just his age; he'll grow out of it!' Larius announced to the ocean balefully.

I laughed, ruffling his hair.

'Being a private informer,' I confided, twenty paces later, 'is less glamorous than you think - it's not all hard knocks and easy women, but mostly bad dinners and ruining your feet!' Fresh air and exercise were doing the boy good, but I felt- glum.

'What shall we do when we find her, Uncle Marcus?' he fetched out unexpectedly. I had no idea what had brought us back on friendly terms.

'The Isis Africana? I shall have to decide my tactics when I've had a quiet look. But this Crispus sounds tricky-'

'What's tricky about him?'

'Big ideas.' I had done my homework before I left Rome. 'The illustrious Lucius Aufidius Crispus is a senator from Latium. He owns estates at Fregellae, Fundi, Norba, Formiae, Tarracina - good growing land in famous areas - plus a huge villa at the Sinuessa spa where he can sit in the sun and tot up his accounts. In his career in public service he landed jobs in all the wrong provinces: Noricum, for heaven's sake! You've been to school; where's Noricum?'

'Go up to the Alps and turn right?'

'Could well be - anyway, when Nero died and Rome came up for auction, nobody had heard of Noricum and nobody had heard of him. Despite that, Crispus sees imperial purple in his horoscope. What would be tricky is if he persuaded Fregellae, Fundi, Norba, Formiae and Tarracina to glimpse it too.'

'Local boy making good?'

‘Right! So he's dangerous, Larius. Your mother will never forgive me if I let you become involved.'

Disgust silenced him briefly, but he was too inquisitive to sulk for long. 'Uncle Marcus, you always called politics a fool's game-'

'It is! But I was tired of helping bad-tempered women divorce feeble stationer clerks, and working for the clerks was even worse; they always wanted to pay me in bottom- grade papyrus you wouldn't use to scribble a curse. Then I was invited to drudge for the Palatine. At least if the Emperor honours his commitments, there should be good pickings.'

'For the money then?' Larius sounded puzzled.

'Money is freedom, lad.'

If he had not been too soft to take the knocks and too shy to handle the women, this Larius would have made a good informer; he could persist with a line of enquiry until the person he was questioning wanted to thump his ear. (Also, his outsize puppy feet were bearing up to the Oplontis road far better than mine; I had a badly sore toe.)

'What do you want money for?' he grilled me relentlessly.

'Fresh meat, tunics that fit properly, all the books I can lay my hands on, a new bed with all four legs the same length, a lifetime's supply of Falernian to guzzle with Petro-'

'A woman?' he interrupted my happy flow.

'Oh, I doubt it! We were talking about freedom, weren't we?'

A vaguely reproachful silence ensued. Then Larius murmured, 'Uncle Marcus, don't you believe in love?'

'Not anymore.'

'There is a rumour you were smitten recently.'

'The lady in question left me. Due to my shortage of cash.'

'Oh,' he said.

'Oh indeed!'

'What was she like?' He was not even leering; he sounded genuinely intrigued.

'Marvellous. Don't make me remember. Right now,' I suggested, feeling older than my thirty years, 'what I'd settle for is a big copper bowl full of piping hot water to soak my tender feet!'

We trudged on.

'Was the lady -' persisted Larius.

'Larius, I'd like to pretend I'd drag off my boots for her, and walk barefoot over a cinder path for another hundred miles. Frankly I stop feeling romantic when I get a bulging blister on my toe!'

'Was she important?' Larius finished stubbornly.

'Not very,' I said. (On principle.)

'So not,' persisted Larius, "she whom, through living, gives your life its sweet reason"...? Catullus,' he added, as though he thought I might not know. (I knew all right; I had been fourteen myself once, and stuffed to the gills with dreams of sexual conquest and depressing poetry.)

'No,' I said. 'But she could have been - and for your private information, that's a Falco original!'

Larius murmured quietly that he was sorry about my sore toe.