He pulled up when he saw Dolazebol. Now on a stolen mule, the envoy rode straight at Ritellius. Ritellius turned away from him, kicked up his own faster mule and seemed intent on escape. Dolazebol pursued him.

  Abruptly, Ritellius turned in the saddle. Holding on with knees and thighs, he fetched out his bow. He raised both arms, nocked, aimed, released and fired off an arrow backwards. A Parthian shot. Exquisite.

  Dolazebol, with no protection, took the arrow in the chest. It had pierced some vital organ. He fell from his mount, dead even before he landed.

  The crazy Ritellius let out more whoops of triumph, more insults to the opposition. He set off in the direction the raeda had taken Squilla. Fiery arrows pursued him. He rode only a short distance. His adrenalin failed and he fell, now fatally wounded.

  His watching wife reached him a moment before she lost him. I ran after her.

  He was dying in front of us. Ilia sobbed, devastated. She dropped to her knees beside Ritellius.

  ‘You were the one, darling …’ His voice failed. His life gave out. But he left this final courtesy to his wife of forty years. She would always think those words meant something, and undoubtedly live comforted.

  But I had seen the look in his eyes as he saw off Squilla into what he hoped was safety. Ilia had been fooled again. Gaius Ritellius died lying.

  I turned away. Rubrius crouched beside the corpse, checking that the rogue agent really had been killed. They would want to be sure, when Eutrapelus theta-ed his personnel record.

  ‘Squilla?’ I asked. ‘Is she safe now with the Vestals?’

  ‘The Vestals won’t touch her,’ said Rubrius, rising. ‘She will be given to us.’

  I took it at face value. Since she had named the traitor, she should be allowed to exist in some very small town in an obscure province. If that never happened, her fate was not my business.

  Here in the street by the ivory workshop, the Parthian war drum at last fell silent. It was looted, and never seen again. Chaos ended. Marching feet in large numbers. Brisk orders. Trumpets. A batch of extremely haughty lictors arrived, men bearing rods and axes, escorting a most prestigious personage: Rutilius Gallicus, the City Prefect. He was in command of the Urban Cohorts. Their task is to quell riots. This they achieved with skill and efficiency, as usual. Locals, who knew what the Urbans are like, dived into their premises, out of the way. Foreigners were rounded up, not gently.

  Rutilius inspected the mopping up. Now that the trouble was all safely contained, other officials ventured down from the Palatine to look.

  Flavius Abascantus, the Secretary of Petitions, was heard to say to a colleague, Claudius Philippus, that this Parthian upset was deeply unfortunate. In my hearing the man blatantly claimed that his own relationship with Dolazebol and Bruzenus had been like going into enemy territory to make maps; a scientific experiment. The exploration had needed stealth – but it had had to be done. We all knew he was lying, but he brazened it out, still believing he was in control, still thinking himself untouchable.

  One last fiery arrow landed by the ivory workshop. A stray. No one knows who shot it. Fizzing, this alien firework stuck head down in a large cauldron full of fish glue that was standing in the open air.

  I saw Rubrius and the Princeps gape in horror. I covered my ears with both hands, eyes closed. There was no time to run. We all braced ourselves for what must happen next: an enormous explosion.

  60

  Nothing happened.

  Fish glue is an extremely stable commodity. Inert, it carries no risks when used in normal work situations. It is not a fire hazard.

  61

  It took a few moments more before we experienced the event that would supersede everything else when the Daily Gazette wrote up today’s events.

  After they had rounded up the Parthians, tidy-minded members of the Urban Cohorts collected all the arrows they could find, lest these be used as weapons in some other mêlée. Under Rutilius Gallicus, the Urbans were as keen on riot-prevention as they were on riot-quelling.

  One assiduous Urban found the burning bitumen pot, which he thought required safe disposal. He carried out no risk assessment and did not consult his superiors. Intending to pour the stuff away, he took the pot into the ancient public convenience, where it came into contact with a bubble of gas that was emerging from the drains. Sewer gas is a flammable medium.

  The lavatory was badly damaged. Many people suffered injury, some never recovered from the shock. Those with hairy posteriors experienced serious singeing, as the Gazette solemnly reported.

  When I could, I left the scene. I still had one more thing to do.

  62

  Marius lived in a single room, high up in a grim building. In this my young cousin was like most people in Rome. Until I married Manlius Faustus, I had done the same.

  His was a tenement full of metal workers and bale-laders, huge men who made much noise when they were around, though they went out early and worked long hours, which gave respite to late-sleepers. He lived there because he had refused the Eagle Building, saying my father charged too high a rent. Falco is a soft touch, so that tells you much about his finances. I never went there without seeing mice. The creaking stairs, with half their treads missing, housed the thickest spiders’ webs in Rome. The smells could be tolerated only by a young man.

  Nobody heard me enter the room, which was always unlocked. Burglars had given up on the place. Marius and his new friend were lying on the narrow bed, top to toe like brothers in a poor household.

  I opened the cranky shutters, one half missing. This let in light and let out the inevitable odours from a room where two young men had lain comatose for many hours after going on an all-night bender. Luckily neither had been sick.

  As I expected, the new friend of my cousin looked right. The plotters had chosen him well. He was thick-set. Older than Marius, he had overlong light-coloured hair, which curled on his muscular neck. His nose was straight, his chin jutted. As far as I could see through his half-closed lids as he lay snoring, he had blue eyes. He looked fairly clean, with his fingers well-manicured; his expression had pleasant potential.

  Against a wall stood his instrument, the finest ivory-inlaid cithara I had ever seen.

  I shouted curses until they both woke.

  ‘Now we’re in trouble!’ groaned Marius, kicking at his crony.

  I sat on the stool Marius used when practising his flute, a seat hand-whittled by his father Petro, who considered himself a dab hand as a carpenter. If you braced your legs, you could almost prevent it wobbling.

  Once they stopped comparing their hideous hangovers and were alert enough to listen, I told the pair that I knew about their night in the bar. So who had provided them with cash for it?

  ‘Corellius,’ said Marius. ‘He gave me a big purse yesterday and asked me to keep Nemo safely out of trouble while a crunch was going off.’ Corellius? Maybe Marcia’s double agent was a triple one.

  ‘Nemo?’ The new friend looked confused, although it must have been one of those mornings when many things felt confusing. I dismissed the pretension: ‘A letter’s wrong there, surely.’

  ‘Like Odysseus fooling the Cyclops,’ Marius said hastily, sounding proud of this half-baked allusion to Homer. ‘As in “I am nobody”.’

  ‘Very literate!’ I was sour. ‘Get real. He is somebody all right. This person’s name is Haxamanis, and knowing him is bloody dangerous. Being him is worse. Worst of all would be if he ever acted as the person he has been trained to impersonate. But that stunt ends here,’ I told Haxamanis, who looked relieved.

  ‘He just wants to be free to play his music!’ Marius complained, with fellow-feeling.

  ‘His music can be played all he likes,’ I replied crisply. ‘The dross he was learning, Nero’s compositions, he must never pluck or sing again. Is that clear, Haxamanis? Now, Marius, listen. This is the deal, which applies to you both.’

  ‘Will we like it?’ Give him credit, even with his head cracking and his tongue furry, Marius was valiant.

  ‘You will love it. I have screwed this from persons of influence.’ I had been to the palace. I had issued threats of non-cooperation, then promised compliance. I had made them see sense. Their offer was generous.

  ‘Does he have to go home to Parthia?’

  ‘No, he has to stay in Italy. He is never to go east again.’

  ‘Is he under arrest?’

  ‘Do I look like a death squad? First, take your new friend to the barber in Fountain Court, old Appius, and have his hair dyed very dark. Next, you and he will be provided with a ramshackle cart, plus enough money to live on for the next few months, depending how many bars you waste it in. Once the cash is gone, you must earn your living. Starting as soon as you have sobered up today, you are to drive away and lose yourselves. Down south, Bay of Neapolis or wherever you like. You can bum around busking. It’s your dream, I know it.’

  ‘Who will tell my mother?’ Marius had his priorities.

  ‘Leave Rome, then I will. And, Haxamanis, I shall tell your auntie.’

  The young Parthian looked thrilled, then wary. He could not quite believe it. They had taught him Latin, which he spoke well: ‘This is true for me? No more Nero?’

  ‘No, my dear,’ I comforted him gently. ‘All that is over. Trust me. You need never be Nero again.’

  63

  The plot was foiled. Philippus would survive, Trebianus also. The Princeps Peregrinorum would be awarded his ninth phalera, citation never stated, all details of his noble activity suppressed. Perella would go back into retirement, still brooding on the injustice done to her.

  Domitian would live to tyrannise another day. So far, Flavius Abascantus was still flaunting himself as secure in the Emperor’s trust, but unknown to him, Eutrapelus, the old record-keeper, had now looked out the personnel scroll of one Gnaeus Octavius Titinius Capito, an equestrian. Quiet hands would place that scroll in front of our Master and God after he came home. Quiet men would tell him why.

  Titinius Capito would take over from Flavius Abascantus, an appointment that the palace would achieve slickly and discreetly. Abascantus would disappear from the public record. Historians will no more understand the reasons for these changes than they can account for why, during the reign of Domitian, two serving provincial governors were executed. Capito would go on to serve as Petitions Secretary in the cabinets of four emperors.

  I would work with Titus Capito. I’d work against him too. In addition, another name from this investigation would resurface – mainly to my detriment: Karus. Julius Karus would become all too familiar.

  An aedile who had been struck by lightning would receive an award from our ever-benevolent emperor. The aedile would give the money to his wife, since they lived by plebeian principles and shared everything. Anyway, he conceded, she had earned it.

  After I had seen the boys off to the barber, I went to find my husband. He had been at the Circus Maximus but had returned to our quiet house for lunch. The two sinister observers had been removed from outside. Fortunately, I had brought food with me, or there would have been none.

  ‘Come home,’ ordered Tiberius. ‘I never see you. I am sick of this. We need to find a steward and staff. Come home to choose frescos, keep Dromo in hand, and look after your husband. Stay at home right now,’ he said, ‘and go to bed with me.’

  This is the life of a bread-winner. You work long hours, you crawl home, craving the long sleep of the exhausted only to find that your soulmate has spent all morning at the Circus; he is bright-eyed and wants love-making.

  My husband was himself again. So I had no complaints.

  Footnote

  Character List

  1 editor’s disclaimer: no cats were harmed in the making of this novel

 

 

  Lindsey Davis, The Third Nero

 

 

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