35

  Corellius seemed sure of what he was about, but he had frightened us. Our hearts pounded; we were too jumpy for safety. Still, we followed his orders and did not give ourselves away.

  While he was re-locking his bedroom, Marcia and I scuttled down the passage. As soon as he unbarred the street door, we slipped out. No time for relief: we were still too close for comfort. The three of us made off quickly. I noticed Corellius had the limp Marcia had mentioned, though it seemed not to hamper him.

  He steered us around the side of the house, then away. There was no pursuit.

  I let him choose a place to talk. Most people would have gone into a bar. He whipped along the Forum to the Shrine of Juturna. This sacred spring, where in legend Castor and Pollux had once been seen letting their horses drink after a battle, is famed for its wholesome water. Coming from a family in which everyone believes the best cure for anything is wine, or at my wedding over-drinking it, I could see Marcia having second thoughts. Now Corellius was a drag.

  Ignoring the newer basin, we moved around to the more sheltered area behind. There we stood beneath the very tall entrance to Juturna’s ancient shrine, with its two slender columns and elegant pediment. This was a quiet, private nook, mainly out of sight from the Forum.

  ‘You locked us in!’ Marcia accused the steward in a cold voice. She treated them rough. Those who responded well stood a chance with her; wimps were discarded.

  ‘I saved you, I’d say.’ Corellius defended himself calmly. ‘Excuse me, but I never leave my room unlocked. I am there to watch them; I do not let them check up on me.’

  ‘You are acting as their housekeeper?’ I was determined to appear professional. Who knew what my mad cousin was after? I hoped he never twigged that we had searched his things. ‘Is this only to watch Dolazebol, or have you been there longer?’

  ‘Five years. Stewarding is my speciality. I organise refurbishments to match foreign tastes, change locks, mend shutters and supervise the other staff – general man-of-all-work.’

  ‘Folding tablecloths? You could make someone a wonderful husband!’ Marcia had warmed to him again.

  ‘I am unmarried.’ Corellius confirmed he was available.

  She smiled, knowing she had a nice smile. Corellius unbent enough to smile back.

  ‘What caused your limp?’ the brazen girl demanded.

  ‘Fell off a horse, rolled on me. Put an end to my career, scouting for the army. Unfair – but in a while I learned: adapt or die. In a strange way, the routine of folding tablecloths saved my sanity. So!’ Corellius took the initiative. I was annoyed, but hid it. ‘What exactly were you two doing today?’

  Pulling together the shreds of my dignity, I said we went to the house for Trebianus, though I myself had felt doubtful all along. We wanted to ask Squilla about Ritellius, since Squilla was the only person who might pinpoint his whereabouts.

  ‘What is so urgent about him?’ asked Corellius.

  I decided to be open: ‘Trebianus believes he knows the identity of a palace mole.’

  Intriguingly, Corellius received this as if potential betrayal was not unheard of. ‘Is this a new mole, or the ones we have had digging tunnels under the security fence for decades?’

  ‘It’s thought this one colludes with Parthia. Ritellius was asked to sniff him out at the Ctesiphon end—’

  ‘That went pear-shaped?’

  ‘Ritellius did a disappearing act. Now the palace moguls have learned he returned to Rome, potentially bearing information, though he seems to have turned renegade. He ceased all contact. His wife here refused to co-operate; she claims to have kicked him out – though we don’t buy the story. Have you ever come across Ritellius?’

  ‘He is something of a legend.’ Corellius balanced respect for a good agent against what I thought was more dubious admiration. ‘He was a generation ahead of me. We never met. Well, not until he caused such trouble at the Parthia house that it became my task to eject him.’

  Folding his arms, he described what had happened that day. Ritellius had knocked at the door, asking to see Squilla. Normally no male, a stranger and a foreigner, would ever be admitted uninvited. I myself had got in with Marcia only because we looked like respectable women, bringing goodwill.

  ‘But Squilla is not Parthian?’ I suggested. ‘Do eastern restrictions apply to her?’

  Corellius looked disapproving. ‘She makes her own rules. Her having a maverick caller will not have seemed too odd. The guards assumed Rome is her home town. They let Ritellius convince them he was some old friend from way back, maybe even a relative, and that he had visitation rights.’

  He was allowed inside, but Squilla had refused to see him.

  ‘If she wants to keep Dolazebol,’ Corellius said, ‘she had no choice. At least it was clear she had not invited Ritellius to come. A visit from a father or brother might just have been acceptable, but if Dolazebol ever thought she was engaging with a lover, even an ex-lover, the Parthian would kill her.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Drunk or sober (it was impossible to tell which), Ritellius grew agitated. He was a big man, throwing his weight about, as he shouted for Squilla to appear and talk to him. This was unacceptable behaviour in any private house, let alone an eastern residence that contained close-confined women.

  ‘I bet the women were thrilled,’ said Marcia.

  I thought Corellius was taken with her, but he fixed his attention firmly on the Pool of Juturna. The well-head was a fine round marble structure installed by one Marcus Barbatius Pollio, who, I noticed with peculiar pleasure, had been a curule aedile.

  ‘Ritellius,’ said Corellius, ‘began fighting the Parthian guards. I heard the racket so I weighed in, thinking I could speak Latin to calm him. He was too crazy or too wine-soaked to be a real problem. I pinned his arms behind his back, then frogmarched him through the gates. For some time he continued raving out in the street; the guards threw stones and chucked buckets of water, so in the end he wandered off. Wet through. Still shouting.’

  I could see Marcia sizing up how strong Corellius must be to have tackled a raving intruder. Any moment now they would be exchanging gymnasium details.

  ‘What happened afterwards?’ I asked. ‘Between Squilla and Dolazebol? How has she managed to keep in with him?’

  Corellius looked serious. ‘There was a bad quarrel but he kept it private. He locked her away in a room with him; when she emerged, she was bruised all over.’

  ‘It doesn’t show,’ Marcia commented.

  ‘Two weeks ago,’ I said. Trebianus had told me.

  Corellius looked dour. ‘She manages to disguise a beating.’

  ‘Risk of her trade,’ I told him. ‘I imagine it wasn’t her first experience.’

  Corellius looked surprised. ‘Trade? You see her as a professional?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘If so, I do not envy her life. When the room was cleared next morning, my staff found hanks of that gorgeous hair pulled out. Even so, the Parthian must have taken her to bed again that same night; I imagine it was rough. But next day they were billing and cooing just as usual.’

  ‘How do the other women react to her?’ I asked.

  ‘Loathe her, but never intervene. I assume they feel whenever he is with the foreign whore he will not bother them. Bruzenus has a go at him about her, but Bruzenus is jealous of Dolazebol’s position generally.’

  ‘Where does Squilla come from?’ Marcia asked. ‘Her cat is called Vindobona – is it significant?’

  Our informant nodded. ‘Home town. She came out of Pannonia. Vindobona is one of the big legionary forts on the Danube frontier; Domitian is in the area at the moment. I served there, so I asked her. She was cagey about her past, but I gathered enough. There are civilian settlements, but it is restless country under constant threat of war, so a girl with hope for a better life might slip away with a passing trader. Then, being passed from hand to hand, she could easily end up far from home – and Squilla pitched up in Parthia.’

  Marcia whistled. ‘Pannonia! Can it be that the white-blonde hair is actually genuine?’ she asked me snidely.

  I smiled it away, refusing to be jealous of a Celt, however fair-haired and willowy. ‘So, Corellius, you sometimes get to talk to her? Can you ask our question? Does she know where Ritellius is in Rome? In fact,’ I said, ‘I am surprised Trebianus never put this request to you.’

  ‘That could be,’ replied Corellius drily, ‘because Trebianus is the Parthia-watcher. I am attached to Philippus. Any instructions for me would have to come from him.’

  Oh, spit. Palace politics again. Corellius did not elaborate but I could see his rule was to choose one master and stick to him. It was the only way to negotiate secretariat touchiness. Ultimately, apart from the traitor, all the upper-echelon freedmen wanted the security of Rome, but only to preserve their own positions. It never helped them collaborate. Their staff had to negotiate their tireless ambition and jealousy. Now so did I.

  Marcia suggested that, since the answer was needed for state safety, maybe Corellius could ask the question for us? We were neutral. Corellius, who had a po-faced stubbornness, said that would depend on whether he could see Squilla alone. But if a chance arose, he would.

  I then asked whether he had noticed any questionable communication between the Parthians and palace freedmen. ‘Anything clandestine? Anything out of the usual?’

  ‘Yes. Philippus whispered there may be a problem.’

  ‘Seen anything?’

  ‘Only normal courtesies. Philippus came down to formally welcome Dolazebol as an attaché. He is their official contact. The Parthians must know who Trebianus is, but he keeps away.’

  ‘Abascantus?’ I asked.

  ‘Flavius Abascantus, no.’ Well, I had had to ask. ‘If the envoys are holding hands with someone outside the accepted conventions,’ Corellius responded dourly, ‘they are never going to do it where they will be seen. They know they are watched. It is my job to notice any connections they make in Rome, any at all. Mind, the Parthians are skilled at stopping me.’

  I put it to him politely that at this stage he need not clear with Philippus any actions he might take for Trebianus. I spoke the language: if anything came out of his intervention with Squilla, we could ensure retrospectively that lines of communication were not compromised between the rival palace specialisms.

  ‘Very elegant gobbledegook!’ exclaimed Corellius, finally redeemed by humour. ‘You don’t want to snaggle any lines!’

  I did not give a merman’s conch for palace sensitivities – I simply required somebody to turn up an address for Ritellius, so I could claim my fee.

  We made an arrangement. I was to send a messenger that afternoon. Corellius unbent and now seemed confident he could obtain a private word with Squilla, and soon. Marcia volunteered herself as go-between but I refused to let her near the house again. I would send a different cousin, a male one.

  ‘You know a boy in our family you can trust?’ scoffed Marcia. ‘Who is this – Postumus?’ Postumus was my eleven-year-old brother. I wouldn’t trust him even if he was asleep.

  ‘Marius. He’s a philosopher and a flautist so on both counts he is sensible, yet he’s terminally short of cash.’ I gave him bits of extra work; he was reliable. He could certainly be trusted not to bat his eyes at Corellius.

  Marius would ask for the steward in person, saying he had come about the night-soil cart. The aesthetic Marius would love this disguise; he had a dry sense of humour. Lavatory matters were guaranteed to make anybody else who opened the door opt out and run for their supervisor.

  ‘Will you send notes in invisible ink?’ teased Marcia. Only to her, smooched Corellius − a spy’s chat-up line. At least he did not sink to ‘How was Mount Olympus when you left it, Venus?’

  Yes, I have had that one tried on me.

  Of course, a man whose notion of a good meeting-place was the Pool of Juturna would never make cheesy advances. Luckily for him, he could rely on Marcia Didia to do it.

  Marcia was probably still hoping for ‘Dreamboat, if I follow you home, will you keep me as your pet?’ but he left us with a prim salute and walked back with his near-unnoticeable limp towards the chief spy’s house. My cousin and I bought flatbreads from a Forum hawker, then we, too, went our separate ways.

  The streets throbbed with midday heat. People washed to and fro along the Sacred Way and Via Nova, like a contaminated tide. In the foaming crud of the Roman crowd, someone could well have been watching us. I gazed at their tense, self-obsessed faces, but saw only the usual Forum occupants: businessmen, slaves, idlers, temple acolytes, women who were past their prime hoping to encounter their lovers ‘by accident’, pickpockets sidling up behind bemused tourists, the occasional morose poet looking as if a sharp stone in his sandal was giving him gyp, lawyers.

  High above, on the Palatine, the secretariats awaited the return of their emperor with fear, based on old knowledge of his whims. Domitian would be back among us any day. In the lofty marble corridors suspicion – of him, of the public, of their colleagues – would redouble. Normal bureaucratic rivalry would become more vicious, inter-secretariat intrigue much more intense. If there really was a traitor among them, the Emperor’s return would bring new urgency to any plots that man was hatching. The return could be the moment his plotting fully flared into life.

  Out of respect for decent public service, I had tossed a copper into the well-head of Marcus Barbatius Pollio. Then I walked home to my own aedile.

  36

  Marius was a couple of years younger than me. I felt a special bond with him because he was among the few people I had known back in Londinium, before Falco and Helena had brought me to Rome. His mother, Aunt Maia, had been travelling with my parents; Petronius Longus, then about to become his stepfather, had been there too. It was a moment of transition for both Marius and me. We spoke of it sometimes, when no one else was listening. We treated that family upheaval as a shared trauma.

  On the long journey from Britain to Italy, Marius, at the time aged about what my brother Postumus was now, had taken it upon himself to teach me Roman history. I bore him no grudge. He had flogged through from the Seven Kings as far as the Battle of Trasimene before good nature got the better of him. He had let it rest, but we still sometimes croaked ‘Numa Pompilius!’ then went off into giggles while other people stared at us.

  Numa had what Marius and I still regarded as a quaint relationship with a very pale water nymph. Egeria ‘communicated Law to him’; that was their story. Even for myth, it was shaky.

  Marius was now twenty-five. His build must have come from his birth father, a vet who had looked after the horses for one of the chariot factions; Marius was short and stocky. He had also inherited implements that could be used for horrible purposes. Every time I had a female client whose husband needed castrating, I wondered whether to borrow them.

  He was blessed with his mother’s attractive features, which worked better on him than on his brother or his two sisters. He always had a dog at his heels, which was another way we bonded.

  When this intellectual boy, an oddity among the Didii, announced he wanted to be a philosopher, Maia and Petro went through the usual dramatic stages of trying to dissuade him. Philosophy was equated with political subversion; there were imperial purges. After everything failed, even threats to sell him into slavery, they wisely caved in; however, they insisted he took up a paying trade as well, something suitable to help him survive if he was expelled from Rome.

  So Marius, who was an unusually practical philosopher, had learned the flute. He reasoned it was light to carry if he went on the run. I knew he harboured a romantic vision of playing his music around a campfire for a raggledy group of passionate fellow activists. So far, political exile had not happened.

  I had no idea which branch of philosophy he followed because he said it was too dangerous to talk about. It is possible that Marius did not know either.

  Marius lived in a one-room eyrie, much like my office at Fountain Court, though higher and smaller and even more ghastly. This was a deliberate choice. He wanted to suffer, to elevate his mind above the physical. His mother worried, his stepfather made bad jokes about the dangers of the neighbourhood, but Marius managed. He had skills. He could make friends with beggars, stay cheerful even if it rained, darn holes in his tunic.

  Despite the tunic-maintenance, he looked unusual. It was part of his image as a thinker, an image he cultivated to the point of not cutting his hair (though on his mother’s orders he had to wash it, so long as he wanted to come home for family dinners). Sometimes our Marius spent more time and effort on how he appeared to the world than on actually thinking about what the earth and a man’s place thereupon should be. He wore battered sandals (it had taken hours of work to make them sufficiently distressed), an ankle-length robe that he tripped over, and what passed for a long Greek beard. When he remembered, he carried a full-length knobby staff. It was better if he forgot, because leaning on it made him walk lopsidedly. His beard was the big problem. All beards risk being dire, but his was the Aventine’s worst.

  You may think me wrong to entrust an intelligence mission to someone so unusual. Surely a spy’s messenger needs to be invisible. My thinking was: people would assume no one who stood out like Marius could possibly be spying.

  Besides, he was always a joy to work with and he needed my small payment. My other male cousins were either working or idiots. As an informer, I had to take what I could get.

  Summoned by Marcia, who was good-natured about him replacing her, Cousin Marius duly arrived at my house. For a short while he played to Tiberius, though with less good effect than the Fabulous Stertinius. Marius was a competent musician, who had played for our wedding procession, but as a competent philosopher, too, his mind constantly wandered off into fundamental problems of existence. Then the flute wavered.