Sometimes a case consists of a progression of facts that lead you from one to another in a logical sequence; with these an informer who has any sort of brain can do all the work himself, at his own pace. Sometimes it is different. All you can do is stir the mire, then keep prodding so pieces of flotsam float to the top, while you stand there and watch for some putrid relic to emerge and at last make sense. Something had swirled into view now; the only problem was, it must be Helena who had stirred the mire. But if Helena had found this bracelet where Sosia found her list of names, it made sense. And it meant Helena Justina now knew who the last conspirator was.
To keep it safe, I buckled the bracelet onto my belt.
When I walked into the alley some things had changed, some were exactly the same. Rank weeds lolled against decaying doorposts where fungus gleamed like shrimp roe; further on, new chains flaunted bright padlocks on businesslike new doors. It must be a place where property ownership constantly changed, shifting with the storms of commerce, be they blown up on the ocean by the gods in their wicked mood, or manufactured in the Emporium by speculating men.
At the Marcellus warehouse there seemed little alteration on the outside. In the lane a broken down waggon which I remembered had been shunted along a couple of yards; I was surprised it could be moved. I noticed the difference because there was a manhole with its cover off where the clapped-out vehicle had stood before in apparently permanent decay. The yard gates were closed, but unlocked. I walked in on hurried feet.
When I came here looking for Sosia, the Marcellus warehouse had appeared almost abandoned. Since then, the sea routes to Alexandria had reopened, and evidently several triremes laden to swamping-point had made the trip for Pertinax while he was still alive and operating in trade. This was obviously a working unit now. A line of carts stood against the yard wall, and when I approached the warehouse door I could smell the difference from five paces away. Someone had left a great key in the outside lock. The twelve-foot door gave with a creak, though I had to lean against it with my whole bodyweight to heave the monster ajar.
What a place! Now that Pertinax and his partner Camillus Meto had been using it again, the atmosphere was magical. But the dead silence told me nobody was here.
The pepper warehouse was a square, high, cluttered space, dimly lit from far above. Even now it was still less than half full, but on that warm afternoon the varied aromas of the rich goods inside hit me at the entrance like the whoomph of a well-sealed steam-room at the baths. Once my eyes focussed in the weird light I could see bell jars of root ginger standing in shadowy rows like pharaohs’ statues lining the route to the tombs in some silent city of the dead. Sacks were piled in the centre of the floor stuffed with cloves, coriander, cardamoms and cinnamon bark. One entire wall was lined with wooden stalls where I plunged to the elbow in peppercorns, black, white and green. I stuffed half a handful—worth a year’s salary—into my pocket absent-mindedly.
She was nowhere to be seen. I walked steadily up a long aisle of baskets and kegs to the back of the building, then returned. My eyes watered slightly. I stood in that dizzy fug of aromatic scents, like a man drowning in medicinal balsam.
“Helena!” I spoke her name, but not loudly. I waited, straining to find her presence, but I could tell she was not there.
“Helena…”
I walked out into the glare of the yard. Someone had been here. Someone had left the key. Someone intended coming back.
No one was in the yard. I stood looking again at the line of waiting carts. They were quite substantial. Spices were normally transported in panniers slung on mules.
I walked to the gate. Naïssa had gone. Nothing else had changed. I walked back to where the watchman had just woken up enough to look up at me in bleary happiness.
“I’m looking for a girl.”
“Good luck to you, sir!”
By now all the world was his friend. He insisted I share his next bottle, so I sat on the ground beside him while I tried to decide what to do. Sharing his bottle involved sharing his company, both of which explained why the watchman had been drinking alone, for his company was unendurable and his wine worse. Drinking seemed to sober him up, so to take my mind off his tedious personality and the foul taste of his liquor on the roof of my mouth I enquired after progress in the sewers. I should have known better. It turned out he was an opinionated orator who started to cackle on, imparting grimly-held theories about incompetent management by the aediles who ran the public works. He was right, but that did not make me keen to hear his views. I bit at a peppercorn, cursing myself.
“This work has been going on for almost a year. Why so long?” If I had been a lucky man, he would have answered he was only the watchman and had no idea; men who lecture you on local government are never so honest or so brief. After a slurred treatise on the art of sewer maintenance, wildly inaccurate on engineering facts and positively intolerable once he started drawing diagrams in the dust, I found out that quite simply the patched cracks consistently reappeared. The job was troublesome. The fault lay two hundred yards down Nap Lane. None of the self-important occupants would agree to have their yards dug up, so all the concrete had to be barrowed here then slung along in baskets underground…
“Can’t they use a manhole nearer the spot?” I asked.
He answered with the logic of the truly drunk, that there wasn’t one.
“Thanks!” I said, tipping down the brim of Maia’s hat over my face.
I knew without moving that I had found the silver pigs.
We lay there, side by side—a hopeless drunk with half his belly showing, and his companion under a country hat—while I got used to this idea. Somehow I felt no surprise when brisk footsteps approached us from the main street direction and passed by, striding down the lane. I lifted Maia’s hat a crack above my nose.
I saw a man I recognized go in through the warehouse gate.
There was just time for me to hop down the lane and flatten myself inside the clapped-out cart before he burst back out like an exploding lupin seed. He must have discovered the same key that I found, still in the lock. I kept well down, and heard him walk straight to the false manhole that had been hidden beneath the wrecked vehicle until it was moved. He seemed to pause, listening; I tried not to breathe. I heard him strike a sulphur match. He swung himself down the iron ladder, while I slid to the floor crabwise and approached the hole, circling around so that my shadow fell away from it. I stood back until the faint clang of his shoes had stopped ringing on the ladder, then I waited a few seconds longer in case when he reached the bottom he looked up.
No one in sight: I scrambled up and shinned down the ladder myself, silently planting the arches of my feet on the metal rungs.
There was a small chamber to turn in, from which an excavated passage ran under the yard wall. It was high enough to walk without crouching, and smooth underfoot. Everywhere was thoroughly lined with mortar, and quite dry. Enough light came from the manhole to fumble my way to a heavy open doorway where I stayed, secure in the outer darkness of the passage, to observe the man I had followed as he spoke to Helena. It was the younger Camillus brother, her Uncle Publius.
What I still did not know was whether he had come as a villain, anxious to secure his loot—or whether, like me, he was an innocent, merely curious citizen.