IX

I convinced myself it was now late enough to stop work for the day and attend to my personal life.

Helena, who took a stern view of my casual attitude to earning a living, seemed surprised to see me so early, but the Pincian confectionery persuaded her into a more lenient frame of mind. Enjoying my company may have helped too—but if so, she hid it well.

We sat in the garden at her parents’ house, devouring the pastry doves, while I told her about my new case. She noted that it was an enquiry packed with feminine interest.

Since she could tell when I was evading an issue I described my day as it had occurred, glamour and all. When I got to the part about Hortensia Atilia being like some dark oriental fruit, Helena suggested grimly, “A Bithynian prune!”

“Not so wrinkled!”

“Was she the one who did all the talking?”

“No; that was Pollia, the first tempting nibble.”

“How can you keep track of them?”

“Easy—for a connoisseur!” When she scowled I relented. “You know you can trust me!” I promised, grinning insincerely. I liked to keep my women guessing, particularly when I had nothing to hide.

“I know I can trust you to run after anything in a pair of silly sandals and a string of tawdry beads!”

I touched her cheek with one finger. “Eat your sticky cake, feather.”

Helena distrusted compliments; she looked at me as if some Forum layabout on the steps of the Temple of Castor had tried to lift up her skirt. I found myself mentioning a subject I had told myself I would let lie: “Thought any more about what I suggested yesterday?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“Think you’ll ever come?”

“Probably.”

“That sounds like ‘Probably not.’ ”

“I meant what I say!”

“So are you wondering whether I mean it?”

She smiled at me suddenly with vivid affection. “No, Marcus!” I felt my expression alter. When Helena Justina smiled like that, I was in imminent danger of overreacting …

Luckily her father came out to join us just then. A diffident figure with a sprout of straight untameable hair; he had the vague air of an innocent abroad—but I knew from experience he was nothing of the kind; I found myself sitting up straighter. Camillus shed his toga with relief, and a slave took it away. It was the Nones of the month so the Senate had been in session. He touched on today’s business, the usual wrangles over trifles; he was being polite, but eyeing our open cake basket. I broke up the must cake I had purchased as a present for my sister, and we handed it round. I had no objection to going back to Minnius’ stall another day to buy something else for Maia.

Once the basket was empty, Helena tried to decide what she could do with it; she settled on making a gift for my mother, filling it with Campania violets.

“She ought to like that,” I said. “Anything that sits in the house serving no useful purpose and gathering a layer of fluff reminds her of my father…”

“And someone else!”

I said to the Senator, “I like a girl who speaks her mind. Was your daughter always so cantankerous?”

“We brought her up,” he answered between mouthfuls, “to be a gentle, domestic treasure. As you see.” He was a likeable man, who could handle irony. He had two sons (both on foreign service), but if Helena had been less strong-minded she would probably have been his favourite. As it was, he viewed her warily but I reckoned their closeness was why Camillus Verus could never bring himself to send me packing; anyone who liked his daughter as much as I did was a liability he had to tolerate. “What are you working on nowadays, Falco?”

I described my case and the Hortensius freedmen. “It’s the usual story of the wealthy and self-possessed, fighting off an adventurous newcomer. What makes it so piquant is that they are nouveaux riches themselves. I’ll take the commission, sir, but I must say, I find their snobbery intolerable.”

“This is Rome, Marcus!” Camillus smiled. “Don’t forget, slaves from important households regard themselves as a superior species even to the freeborn poor.”

“Of which you’re one!” Helena grinned. I knew she was implying Sabina Pollia and Hortensia Atilia would be too finicky to tangle with me. I gave her a level stare, through half-closed eyes, intending to worry her. It failed as usual.

“One of the things I find interesting,” I mentioned to the Senator, “is that these people would probably admit they rose from next to nothing. The man who owned them polished marble. It’s a skilled job—which means the piecework rates hardly pay enough to keep a snail alive. Yet now the ostentation of his freedmens’ mansion suggests their fortunes must be greater than a consul’s birthright. Still; that’s Rome too!”

“How did they overcome their unpromising origins?”

“So far that’s a mystery…”

While we talked I had been licking honey off the vine leaves from the cake basket; it suddenly struck me a senator’s daughter might not wish to associate with an Aventine lout whose happy tongue cleaned up wrappings in public. Or at least, not associate with him in her father’s townhouse garden, amongst the expensive bronze nymphs and graceful bulbs from the Caucasus, especially while her noble father was sitting there …

I need not have worried. Helena was making sure no currants from the must cake were left behind in the basket. She had even found a way of forcing the corners open so she could recapture any crumbs that had worked themselves among the woven strands of cane.

*   *   *

The Senator caught my eye. We knew Helena was still grieving for the baby she had lost, but we both thought she was starting to look healthier.

Helena glanced up abruptly. Her father looked away. I refused to be embarrassed, so I continued to gaze at her thoughtfully while Helena gazed back, in peaceful communion about who knows what.

Then Camillus Verus frowned at me, rather curiously I thought.