Ahead of me scavenging seagulls wheeled above the wooded area where the carts were parked. I could smell woodsmoke again from the camp. I walked up the track quietly, passing the mosaicist's hut, which seemed devoid of life. I stopped at the adjoining home of Blandus and his lad. Its door was open; someone was inside. It was not Blandus.
He had his back to me, but was standing at a slight angle so I could see he was working on a small still life. It was fresh fruit in a glass bowl. He had created the arrangement of apples and was now adding delicate white lines to represent the ribs of a translucent comport. Unsure whether he had heard me, I stood still, admiring the flushed rotundity of the ripened fruit and the exquisitely hinted glassware. The young painter seemed absorbed.
He was a big lad. I could see one protruding ear, half covered by unkempt dark hair which would have been improved by a serious trim and work with a teasing comb. His clothes were covered with multicoloured paint splashes, though the rest of him looked clean enough, given that he was about eighteen and a thousand miles from home. He worked steadily, adept and confident. His design was already live in his head, needing only those thoughtful, rhythmic brush strokes to create it on the wooden panel.
I cleared my throat. He did not react. He knew I was there.
I folded my arms. "Creativity for your own pleasure is a high ideal but my advice is, never waste effort unless you persuade some half wit client to pay for it."
Most painters would have spun about ready to thump me. This one only grunted. He kept going. The glass bowl acquired a thread of painted light to indicate a handle.
"The project team plotters have decided who eliminated Pomponius," I said. "They've settled on the smart arse from Stabiae. A stippling brush with some incriminating initials has been dumped on the body-just where I was bound to find it and shriek Ooh, look at this! So tell me, smart arse did you kill him?"
"No I bloody well did not." The artist stopped painting and turned around to face me. I was screwing a girl from a bar in Noviomagus -she wasn't as good as I hoped she would be, but at least I can tell Justinus that I got there first!"
I gave him a long cold stare. "The only good thing about that story is that you were screwing the floosie, not my brother-in-law."
"Plus another good thing." He scowled, as unabashed as he had always been. "You know the story's true, Falco."
I knew him, so I did believe it. He was my nephew Larius.
XL
I tossed him the brush from the bath house. He caught it one handed, the other hand still holding the finer one he had been working with, plus his thumb palette. "That's your pig's bristle?"
"LL. That's me. Larius Lollius."
"Thank Juno you were not born under a laurel tree," I scoffed. "A third L would have been obscene."
"Two names are sufficient for me and Mark Antony."
"Listen, bigshot, when you've finished aligning yourself with the famous, you are to get yourself to Novio and ensure that your luscious Virginia is not bribed to forget your romantic alibi."
Larius looked coy. "She'll remember. I said she was a disappointment. I didn't mention my own performance."
I reined in my reaction and merely answered quietly, "Ask somebody sophisticated to explain about two-way pleasure. Incidentally, how is dear Ollia?" Ollia was his wife.
"Fine when we parted company," Larius said tersely.
"You parted? Is this a permanent phase? Had the union of you two fresh hopefuls produced offspring?"
"Not as far as I know."
"Still, I hate to see young love waning."
"Skip the family talk," he chided me. He did not ask after Helena, though they had met. While he and Ollia had been assuring the world they shared eternal devotion, the world had prophesied that the teenagers were doomed then also decreed that I was a philandering louse, destined to abandon my woman. Assuming I could manage it before Helena ditched me first… Larius cut through my wandering thoughts. "We need to know why people want to frame me for Pomponius."
"They are not framing you," I told him. "They are implicating me."
He brightened up. "How's that?"
"I bring my nephew on site and he kills the top man? That's bound to diminish my status as the Emperor's troubleshooter!"
"Status bollocks!" Since I List saw him when he was fourteen Larius had coarsened up. Tin not connected with your work. Blandus brought me here. I've come to do miniatures- and I do not want to be dragged into any of your slimy political stews."
"You are already neck deep in fish-pickle sauce. Have you told people you are my nephew?"
"Why not?"
"You should have told me first!"
"You were never there to tell."
"All right. Larius, how did anyone else acquire this paintbrush?"
"From the hut while I was out, I suppose. I leave everything here."
"Any chance Pomponius himself might have borrowed it?"
"What, to tickle his balls at the baths?" mocked Larius. "Or cleaning his ears out. I hear it's a new fashion among the arty fraternity- better than a plebeian scoop."
"Answer the question."
"As for pinching a brush, I don't suppose that snooty beggar ever knew where our site huts were."
"What happened when you wanted to show him a proposed design?"
"We carried sketches to the great man's audience chamber and waited in a queue for two hours."
"You did not like Pomponius?"
"Architects? I never do," scoffed Larius offhandedly. "Loathing self important people is a churlish habit I picked up from you."
"And why are you so ripe for incrimination, happy nephew? Whom have you upset?"
"What, me?"
"Is Camillus Justinus the only man you've beaten up recently?"
"Oh yes."
"Have you slept with anybody other than Virginia?"
"Certainly not!" He was a real rogue. A total hypocrite.
"Has Virginia another lover?"
"Famous for it, I should say."
"So is she attached to anyone who bears grudges?"
"She's a girl who gets herself attached. No one regular, if that's any help."
"And what about you, Larius? Everyone knows you? Everyone knows what you're like nowadays?"
"What do you mean- what I'm like?"
"Start with layabout," I suggested cruelly. "Try a wine-swigging, fornicating, quarrelsome byword for trouble."
"You're thinking of my uncle," said Larius, as ever surprising me with sudden caustic repartee.
"True."
"I get around," confessed the lad. I remembered him as a shy, poetry-loving dreamer the single-minded romantic who had once spurned my dirty profession in favour of high ideals and art. Now he had learned to hold his own in rough company- and to despise me.
"You'd better come along to my quarters," I said quietly. "On reflection, I'm taking you into custody until this is sorted out. Let's get this clear- I have young children and polite nursing mothers in my party, not to mention the noble Aelianus withering away from his doggie bite, so we'll have no drinking and no riots."