I even had slaves to provide for. They liked to enjoy the full spectrum of Roman life. Galene and Jacinthus had now completely abandoned their duties. They were playing Soldiers on a board marked in the dust in the entrance hall. It was true the dust would not have been there if I had bought a cleaning-slave. So I might not have minded – but they were using my best dice.
'What will you do about Ganna and Veleda?' Helena fretted, as I brought her up to date on my day. I had sent all our legionaries to observe at the priestess's Aventine sanctuary. No point making too much of it; I strongly doubted Veleda was there. Helena thought the men had just gone out drinking. In case she decided I was planning some manoeuvre with the soldiers, I let her think it. I was a thoughtful husband. 'This is typical,' she said with a sigh. 'There is action at a temple – but you will be stuck in the wrong temple!' 'True, my darling.' I concentrated on fastening my party shoes. Glancing up, I saw her expression suddenly still. For a beautiful woman with a mainly placid temperament, Helena Justina had a stare that could bore holes in stone. Parts of me felt molten. I loved her as much as a man could love anyone, but I wished that girl would occasionally consent to be bamboozled.
She had detected that I was hoping I would not be in the wrong temple for long. The Temple of Saturn is the oldest in the Forum provided by a private sponsor. If you stand where the stairs used to come up from the Tabularium – I mean, where the Temple of Vespasian and Titus has since been squeezed in, under the shadow of the Capitol, forming that squash with the Temple of the Harmonious Gods and the Temple of Concord – that's assuming you can bear to be in an area of so much suffocating harmony and goodwill- then Saturn's antique shrine juts out straight in front of you. Clad in marble, hexastyle, adorned with Tritons, it will be blocking your view of the Basilica and the Temple of Castor. The ship's prows celebrating naval battles and the Golden Milestone with the distances to the world's major cities will be visible in front of it, if you are waiting for a friend and want a distraction to stop you attracting the notice of prostitutes.
The heavy vaults beneath the podium guard the civic treasury. The platform is high, to accommodate the slope of Capitol Hill, and the front steps are unusually narrow, to fit in against the sharp angle of the Clivus Capitolinus as it comes into the Forum, around the Tarpeian Rock. We arrived that way on foot; I glanced up as I always did, just in case any women traitors were being flung off the rock that night. With Veleda in town, it was a possibility. In the sharp night air, sounds carried; I even thought I heard honking from the Sacred Geese of Juno right up on the Arx, public birds whose official guardian I had once been, in a mad period of civic responsibility. Above, anxious crows and other birds were wheeling about the dark sky, upset by the multitude of lights that filled the Forum.
On the steps and in front of the temple, the banquet had been set out. Saturn's image, a large hollow statue, was made from ivory, so to keep it from cracking it was kept full of oil. The statue had been brought out from the interior. The ancient deity had his head veiled and was holding a hooked sickle. His feet were normally bound together with wool (no idea why; perhaps the sacred one is prone to absconding to seedy bars). The wool had been ceremonially unbound for this occasion. Oil had leaked out around the couch when he was put in position. The public slaves who moved him every year were efficient and reverent, but just you try shifting an outsize statue filled with viscous liquid. The weight was appalling, and as the oily ballast started slopping to and fro, the deity wobbled dangerously. The priests always got in the way trying to supervise, so the slaves grew ratty and lost concentration, with inevitable leakage. They would fill him up again, but not until they took him back indoors.
Helena and I, and her parents, were privileged, in theory. The whole city was supposed to attend tonight, but fitting them in would be ridiculous so hungry crowds were clustered in the darkness all around the periphery. Vespasian was a parsimonious emperor who loathed his obligation to supply endless public banquets. This feast was a lectisternium, a banquet offered to the god in thanks for the new harvest; Saturn's oversized, hoarily bearded, goggle-eyed image presided on a giant couch, before which were placed tables laden with rich fare. Traditionally, the fare was rich enough – and had been hanging around in kitchens long enough – to cause severe stomach upsets in the human diners who would eventually devour it (paupers, who were already queuing hopefully at the back of the temple). There were other tables, less opulently covered, where mediocre lukewarm foodstuffs in meagre quantities were available to us lucky invitees.
We had been told to come in informal Saturnalia dress. That still meant looking smart because the Emperor, Titus and Domitian would be present. They would patrol among us, pretending to be part of one giant family. So we had to concoct a reversed-rank version of formality, dressing up as we pretended to dress down. Most of the women had just borrowed their slaves' frocks then piled on as much jewellery as they could. The men looked uncomfortable because their wives had chosen their dinner robes and, according to recognised domestic rules, had chosen dinner robes their husbands hated. I had been put in blue. On men, blue is for floor designers and second-rate shellfish suppliers. Helena, who often wore blue and looked gorgeous, tonight was in unaccustomed brown, with rows of crimped hair that must have taken all afternoon to set. Unless it was a wig; I did wonder. She looked like a stranger. The ridged hair had added five years to her and seemed to belong to some impoverished orator's parchment skinned spinster sister. 'That's certainly a disguise.' 'Don't you like it?' 'I'll like you better when you take it off,' I affirmed salaciously. If you are going to abandon a mission for an evening, you may as well get into the festive spirit and while you are at it, try to seduce a girl. Helena reddened, so I reckoned I was in there.
Camillus Verus was wearing his normal white, complete with full senatorial purple stripes. 'Olympus, I'm overdressed for this fiasco, Falco!' Nobody had reminded him that he had to play the part of a slave tonight, and somehow he had omitted to consult on his outfit with his wife. Julia Justa must have been preoccupied; she was having problems remaining decent. She had decided that playing lowborn and low budget must mean wearing low-cut. Inexperienced at flaunting, she kept fiddling with the skimpy drape across her bosom. Her husband tried to stare in other directions, pretending not to notice her difficulties. He was terrified she would ask him to assist with pinning things.
'And who have you come as, Marcus dear?' chirped Julia, bright with embarrassment. Her discomfiture inevitably drew the eyes directly to its cause.
I must have been wearing the horrified rictus of any man in danger of glimpsing his mother-in-law's nipples. 'I think I'm a back-alley debt-collector. ' 'Isn't that rather similar to what you do normally?' 'I don't work in a damned skyblue tunic!' 'Indigo,' murmured Helena. 'I feel like a periwinkle.' 'Be good. It will soon be over.' Helena was fooling. It took us almost an hour merely to obtain seats. You needed to be fit. If there had ever been a table plan, nobody could find it. We squeezed in only by shoving harder than the people who were trying to climb on to benches ahead of us. 'As soon as the first course is over, everyone can get out their cloaks. Then it won't matter what you look like.' We did all have cloaks. We needed them too, dining under the stars on a gusty night in the middle of December. To do Saturnalia properly means celebrating the new crops in the wide outdoors. Helena and I were both longing for a warm brazier indoors and two comfortable armed chairs, each with a good scroll to read.