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  “A good forger could do all of that, even the seals. They are not so hard to reproduce. I imagine your father’s seal and that of the other men are fairly well known,” replied Lucrio. “Sertorius had just such a man on his staff. He used to compose fake dispatches purporting to be from Roman commanders, claiming that Sertorius was putting them to rout and they needed reinforcements without delay, and then directing the soldiers to the wrong location. He found it extraordinarily funny.”

  Hortensia nodded slowly as she took this in, still drumming her fingertips restlessly against the tankard.

  “There’s something else that’s bothering me,” she said at last. “How did Tiberius get into the sanctuary in the first place?” She chewed her lip, while Lucrio watched her. “I suppose he could have bribed the guards and then slipped behind Helena without her noticing,” she said thoughtfully. “Crassus could certainly have provided enough money for that purpose. The only other way would be through the tunnel from the House of the Vestals. But that would mean someone from inside the Temple would have to have helped him …” Her voice tailed off and the restless tapping resumed.

  “I wonder what the letters are,” she said abruptly after another long silence. “The letters you heard them talking about, the ones they want to use against Papa.”

  Lucrio shrugged.

  “Most men have secrets, domina.”

  Hortensia’s eyes narrowed.

  “Just what are you implying?”

  “Nothing, domina. Only, that I think we never know the ones we love as well as we think we do.”

  Hortensia digested this for a while.

  “Well. Whatever they are, they won’t do Tiberius and Crassus any good. Papa will never give in to blackmail.”

  “Are you sure, domina? You don’t think he might in the end do what Crassus and Tiberius want just to prevent these letters, whatever they are, from becoming public? Even if his reputation – and the reputation of his family – were at stake?”

  “None whatsoever,” answered Hortensia in an icy tone of voice which clearly signaled that she would brook no further discussion of the matter. “You don’t know my Papa. He is completely honorable.”

  While Hortensia and Lucrio were talking, a shaven-headed man with a broken nose and wearing a grey tunic had entered the taberna and was now leaning up against the counter, exchanging familiar banter with the proprietor. The drunkard and the woman in the toga had disappeared. Hortensia, who unlike Lucrio now had a clear view of the counter, was immediately aware that she had seen the man before but could not decide why she recognized him. Had he been in the law court at Drusilla’s trial? She whispered to Lucrio, who turned around at the same moment that the shaven-headed man did. At that moment, Hortensia remembered why she knew the man’s face.

  “Oh no,” she whispered under her breath.

  The man observed them for a moment and then strolled over, a menacing leer on his face. The bones in his skull protruded unpleasantly from his scalp.

  “Well, well, well. Isn’t this cozy?” He picked up a chair, thrust it down with a loud bang on the dirty floor next to Hortensia and Lucrio’s table, and leant heavily on it, one hand on his hip, his eyes going back and forth suggestively between the pair of them. The hands of the men playing knucklebones stilled and the craftsman silently picked up his box of half-painted figurines and removed himself to another table.

  “That cut on your eye’s healing up nicely.” The man in grey nodded to Lucrio. “Didn’t put up much of a fight, did you? All the same, you Spaniards. My master had you read from the start though, didn’t he? There’s no fooling him. Little stumble getting away from a girlfriend wasn’t it?” He shook his head mockingly and shot a sly look at Hortensia. “Still, nice of you to take the mistress out. Not part of most slaves’ duties, is it? Not like most fine ladies to enjoy a drink of the good stuff.”

  He leant over the table, closer to Hortensia. She flinched away from his hot, stale breath.

  “How about it my lady?” he whispered lasciviously. “If you’re ready to slum it with this one, then maybe you’d fancy a go with me.”

  At which point, Lucrio, who had been observing the man with cold, still watchfulness, produced from under the table a small Diana figurine which he had secreted from the box next to the craftsman, and drove it like a small blunted dagger – arrow first – into the groin of his adversary.

  As the man clutched his hands around the affected area, howling like a spiked bull, Lucrio and Hortensia fled into the street to the accompaniment of the dog’s frenzied barking and ran down the slope of the Aventine, darting amongst the dock-workers carrying cargo to the ships. By the time they had reached the Forum Boarium once more and been swallowed up in the loud, bustling crowd, Hortensia was unable to hold back her laughter any longer, and although Lucrio did not join in, his face eventually relaxed in reluctant appreciation of her enjoyment.

  Once she had recovered, Hortensia asked Lucrio where they would be likely to discover the identity of a possible forger. He had an answer ready.

  “The Subura. There is a street where such individuals are known to operate. I have heard mention of it.”

  “Excellent. We can go there tomorrow,” began Hortensia, but Lucrio shook his head.

  “No, domina,” he said firmly. “The Subura is no place for you. I go alone. You may give me any instruction you choose to pass on.”

  XXV

  THE STREETS OF THE SUBURA WERE BATHED IN A GHOSTLY SHEEN OF silver. The cook shops heaved with customers as usual and some local residents were leaning out of their windows, chatting loudly to neighbors across the street. Two young boys hung out of their fifth-floor home ambushing passers-by on the street below with gobbets of well-aimed phlegm and provoking howls of fury from their victims. But a warning glance was all that was needed to spare Lucrio similar treatment. The boys maintained a respectful silence and allowed the tall Lusitanian to pass by unscathed.

  He wandered deeper into the neighborhood, turning this way and that until he came to a sign that read Mercury Street. Carefully avoiding the piles of excrement fouling the narrow avenue at regular intervals, he passed several brothels and a fuller’s through whose open door he could see barefooted young boys with their tunics tucked into their loincloths stamping around in laundry vats full of watered urine. Above his head, drying linens hung from cords strung across the street, grey liquid leeching out of them and puttering the ground. A group of men were sitting in a doorway, playing a game of dice. Lucrio paused to exchange words with them and was directed toward the end of the street. He continued on his way, now counting the numbered tiles on the apartment blocks under his breath. As he muttered, “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three …” a grim premonition suddenly took hold of him and he stopped before the number “twenty-four” had left his lips.

  He gazed for several minutes at the skeletal remains of the apartment block, resting on a small mountain of ash and rubble. He knew it for the same tower he had rescued the woman and her child from just days previously. There was bad scorching on the two adjacent buildings and the bitter tang of smoke still lingered in the air. Moonlight beamed through the vacant space, like ghostly sunlight through dark clouds, picking out jagged pieces of blackened timber and lead water pipes half-buried in the grey dust. Lucrio looked back toward the men playing dice, who were laughing at him and raising their drinking cups in ironic salute. A child’s wooden doll lay at his feet, its rough woollen hair singed on one side. He bent down and picked it up, slowly moving its jointed arms and legs back and forth in reluctant fascination until he was distracted by a burst of coughing from a nearby doorway.

  Lucrio crossed the street and hunkered down next to the old blind man, dropping a coin into the tin begging plate at his side. The wooden sign with the painted eye was propped up next to him, the curtain from his old alcove draped over him like a blanket.

  “Thought I knew your voice,” whispered the man. “Did you find your tribune?”

  “Yes
. But I’m looking for someone else now. A forger called Petro, the best in his trade so they say. I was told he lived at number twenty-four. But I see my timing is unfortunate.”

  The beggar nodded vaguely. “Yeah, yeah … he lived there. But the most you can hope to find of him now is his fingernails. So if he owes you money, forget it.” He wheezed with laughter and took a swig from his jar.

  “Did you know him?”

  “Sure, sure, everyone knew Petro,” muttered the old man. “Everyone knows everyone round here. In the same game, aren’t we? Or we were til …” the man waved his hand wildly in front of his sightless, bluish eyes. “Not much call for a blind forger is there?” An insane cackle suddenly burst out of him. “More money in the fortune-telling business.”

  “But you’re sure he’s dead?” pressed Lucrio.

  “Course he’s dead,” mumbled the man. “They’re all dead. Some had to jump from the top floors. I heard them landing. Dead, dead, dead … all dead and gone.” The faint grey pupils of the man’s eyes darted helplessly behind their sea-green veil as he began to wheeze and weep at the same time, and Lucrio withdrew quietly.

  He was passing the fuller’s once more when he heard himself being addressed by a sleepily caressing female voice.

  “Well hello again Spaniard.”

  He turned and saw that he was being regarded by an alarmingly pale-faced woman. But as he looked closer, he realized that it was an effect created by a thick layer of lead-paint and that underneath was the dark-skinned woman from the apartment block fire. This time her curly hair was elaborately twisted and coiled about her head, and by the fact that she wore a man’s toga over her flimsy, low-cut tunic, Lucrio understood what Hortensia had not in the taberna on the Aventine. Her mouth curved in a slight, challenging smile as she watched him.

  “What do you want with Petro?” she asked.

  Lucrio nodded. “I thought I might have been able to put some work his way. But I seem to be too late.” Lucrio jerked his thumb toward the rubble of the apartment block.

  The woman surveyed the Lusitanian for some time, apparently subjecting him to close scrutiny. “You can give me your message,” she said at last in her languid drawl. “I’ll see that it finds him.”

  Lucrio raised an eyebrow. “You know that he’s alive then?”

  The woman’s smile deepened and she bared her brown teeth.

  “Sure he’s alive,” she said in her strange, knowing voice. “Don’t you know Petro? Petro doesn’t burn.”

  After a moment’s pause, Lucrio produced the note written earlier that day in Hortensia’s hand.

  “If you find him, tell him to come to the slaves’ entrance of the address in that note and ask for Lucrio. It’s urgent, so if you do know where he is …” He handed her the note along with a silver denarius also provided by Hortensia.

  The painted woman examined the elegant writing on the thin slip of parchment, then tucked both it and the denarius inside the front of her tunic. “No problem, Lucrio. I’ll tell him.” She resumed her scrutiny from beneath heavily kohled eyelashes. “Anything else I can help you with?” she purred.

  Lucrio shook his head with a slight smile of his own. “No,” he replied simply, and with a last glance at the gently smoking pile of ashes where the tower had once stood, he turned back the way he had come and was soon lost in the shadows of Mercury Street.

  XXVI

  “FOR THE LOVE OF JUPITER, STOP FIDGETING, HORTENSIA.”

  Hortensia grimaced apologetically at her father and stopped playing with the crimson tassels on the litter drapes, instead leaning back so that she was shoulder to shoulder with her mother. She tried to resist the temptation to fiddle instead with the string of purple amethysts around her wrist, a wedding gift from her husband. They were rounding the spur of the Velia, halfway to the Carinae district atop the Esquiline Hill where Pompey lived. Hortensius and Caepio reclined opposite Hortensia and Lutatia, with Quintus forced to prop himself awkwardly on one elbow next to his mother. With so many other luxury vehicles making their way along the street, all of them carrying guests to the party, their progress was slow and Hortensia had plenty of time to wonder whether Lucrio’s latest search of the Subura was bearing any fruit.

  It had been three days since his hunt for the elusive forger began but there had been no reply to the note he had handed to the prostitute in Mercury Street. Hortensia was beginning to despair that Petro – whom Lucrio assured her was acknowledged by almost everyone he spoke to as the undisputed master of his craft – must indeed have perished in the apartment block inferno. She was under no illusion, particularly after Lucrio told her the identity of the condemned building’s owner, that the fire could have been the work of anyone but Crassus. He and Tiberius were eliminating anyone who could tie them to the false will in the archive. Hortensia fretted that her time was running out and more than once was on the verge of blurting out the new information she had discovered to Caepio. But she knew what the outcome of that conversation must be and something still held her back from telling her father what she knew. In part it was because she suspected that he would angrily deny any knowledge of the affair and claim that it was all a fabrication on Lucrio’s part – which would then of course lead to Lucrio’s banishment. She needed proof that would clearly demonstrate Tiberius and Crassus’s guilt and thus exonerate her father. Then there were the letters, the letters that could cause her father embarrassment … what could they be and how …

  Hortensia gave a start as she heard Hortensius addressing her, feeling guilty at the trend of her thoughts.

  “The Temple of Tellus, Hortensia, come on, just outside there, look – enlighten your brother as to the story behind it.”

  Quintus scowled and fired up. “I know all about Tellus! She’s the goddess of mother earth, the Roman sister of Gaia. I don’t need her to tell me.”

  “I would expect a six-year-old to know who Tellus is,” replied Hortensius witheringly. “It is the story of the temple itself that I was asking your sister to explain to you.”

  Hortensia glanced at Quintus, whose jaw was now set like a rebellious bull. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see wisps of smoke coming out of his nostrils. Feeling a pang of sympathy, she spoke with apologetic constraint.

  “I’m sure Quintus has heard it before Papa. The temple is built on the site of Spurius Cassius’s house. He was executed a few years after the fall of the Tarquins for trying to restore the monarchy and make himself king. The temple is about two hundred years old. It was built after an earthquake struck the city.”

  “Correct, and if you took your head out of those low-brow comedies you’re always devouring, you might have been able to tell us the story too, Quintus,” murmured Hortensius.

  There was a short, uncomfortable silence, eventually broken by Caepio.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much traffic in this part of town,” he observed conversationally. “That’s Cato’s litter I think, just up ahead of us. If we’ve gone past the Temple of Tellus we must be nearly there.”

  But such was the crush of vehicles that it was some time before they were eventually set down by the gate leading into Pompey’s private gardens. There they joined the chattering throng filing into the property, the women like butterflies in brightly-colored gowns of every hue from sky blue and violet to crocus yellow and myrtle green, the men swathed in their best togas, purple stripes advertising their rank. Tiny lantern-lights sparkled in the trees around them and two rows of pine torches lit up the path ahead, along which purple-liveried slaves were stationed like a guard of honor, some bearing baskets of exotic fruits, others proffering trays of drinks – wine for the men, orange-scented water for the women. The doors of Pompey’s villa had been thrown open, revealing a startling crimson color scheme and an atrium full of enormous, swirling murals beneath the blank-eyed death masks of Pompey’s ancestors. A bank of flute players welcomed the new arrivals and beyond the atrium the central corridor of the house opened up into an enorm
ous peristyle where jugglers and conjurors were entertaining a group of revelers, their spellbound faces lit up in childish delight. Pompey was standing in the atrium, greeting his guests alongside a plump woman whom Hortensia assumed must be his wife Mucia Tertia.

  Pompey was quick to notice Hortensius’s party arriving and, abandoning Mucia, he immediately made a beeline for them, his broad, broken face displaying every sign of pleasure.

  “Hortensius, my old friend and defender,” he boomed, slapping Hortensius on both shoulders. “Wonderful that you could make it, and your charming wife too” – he bowed formally to Lutatia, who smiled timidly in return. “You must forgive me being so remiss in not hosting you here sooner, madam, I’ve had so little time to entertain these past few years …” He spread his hands in the eloquently apologetic gesture of one who had been too busy winning Rome’s wars to host dinner parties. “Who’s this lad then, surely it can’t be your son?” Pompey indicated incredulously to Quintus, who was even more tongue-tied than usual at being in the presence of one of his heroes.

  “It seems impossible, doesn’t it?” replied Hortensius sweetly. “But apparently true – or so I’m told.”

  “Well I’ll be damned.” He gave Quintus a friendly punch in the ribs. “Are you going to be a lawyer like your father, young man, or a soldier like me?”

  Clutching the spot where Pompey had poked him, Quintus shot a quick glance at his father.

  “A s-s-soldier I hope,” he stammered half-eagerly, half-defiantly.

  But Pompey had already lost interest in Quintus and had turned to Hortensia.

  “No need to ask this young lady if she’s going to be a lawyer or a soldier. I shouldn’t be surprised if Hannibal himself were not foiled by her stratagems. A delight to see you again, my dear. I told you I would have you to dinner.”

  His restless gaze wandered to Caepio, who was looking faintly amused. Pompey’s grin deepened.