'I'll fetch my toga.' Helena caught me in the unusual activity, so I lured her into the expedition. That was not hard. After our late night with Maia and Petro, the children were over-tired and squabbling fretfully. Both Helena and I could have coped with the children, but their nursemaid, Galene, was screaming in a hideous storm of foreign frustration. Albia had refused assistance. Currendy she was locked in her room. She was a teenaged girl; Helena let her act like one. Nux was in hiding with Albia. We tapped at the door and called out that we had to go somewhere. 'Get going then!' snarled Albia from within. Well, it was better than 'I hate you', and much better than 'I hate myself. In about six months we would be facing both.
We sent Galene to the kitchen, telling her to make good use of it and cook something. Jacinthus was there, but unlikely to be productive. Galene bounced off happily. Helena looked rueful. 'Maybe we should just accept this, Marcus.' 'Right. First step to degeneracy: be ruled by your slaves.' We put our daughters into cute little matching tunics with bows in their hair and took them with us. Anyone who wants to offer a better solution can just keep quiet. 'What extremely advanced parents!' Claudius Laeta hooted with disdain. 'Your soldiers have disrupted my quiet household routine,' retorted Helena.
Laeta said he would be happy to remove the soldiers – when I earned my fee and found Veleda. Feigning anxiety, Helena and I relaxed. Julia and Favonia sat on our laps as good as gold, fascinated by riding in the litter. If Laeta took us anywhere with slaves, we were sure of a welcome for these deceptively sweet cupids.
I had assumed the conference was in the Palace. Instead, I soon realised we were going down the Via Aurelia; Laeta admitted we were going to the villa of Quadrumatus Labeo. 'One of his Saturnalia guests needs a progress report.' 'We answer to Quadrumatus?' I snorted with astonishment. 'Not him.' Laeta lost some of his pomposity. 'Out-of-town is more discreet, Falco.' I let Laeta deal with the bloody-minded Lusitanian doorkeeper.
While he struggled to declare his invited status and the porter sneered at that idea, Helena wiped up Favonia's dribble. Although I had kept a close grip on Julia, she had managed to get black door hinge oil on her; I dealt with that by the time we carried them indoors, where entranced slave girls fell on them. After hardly any training from us, my children both knew how to gaze at strangers with big appealing eyes. 'Don't give them any food!' I ordered sternly, as Scaeva's ex-girlfriends carried them off in delight.
They took the hint. 'Oh the dear little things must have some must cake to celebrate the festival!' Good. It was bound to be made properly here, with wine-lees from the estate. After running around the peristyles playing hide-and-seek with the sewing girls, mild intoxication would work magic. Our little monsters would be fast asleep when we collected them.
There were plenty of grand ladies on whom Julia and Favonia could practise their techniques of begging for jewellery and toys, for the place was full of stiffs, and since it was Saturnalia, the stiffs had brought their stately wives. The Quadrumati were bravely putting bereavement behind them and going ahead with their annual house party. 'Invitations will have been sent months ago,' Helena sneered. 'And the hospitable Quadrumati would not want to disappoint their many friends.' 'I seem to recall Quadrumatus asserting "We are a very private family"! Yet half the Senate have congregated, in the hope of blood on the marble.'
'Marcus, I bet most of them will slip a servant a denarius to sneak them into the crime scene.' Apart from the fact they looked a mean bunch who would think a whole denarius was too much, Helena was bound to be right. Snobs are the worst gawkers. It explained why the Quadrumati had tried to hush up what happened.
Laeta bustled off importantly to see where the meeting would be. We moved among the milling groups of notables, marvelling that none of the family was anywhere in evidence.
'Entertaining the fashionable way,' Helena enlightened me. 'You invite hordes of people, whom you know only slighdy, then you keep out of sight but let them wander at will admiring all you own.' 'Giving them a good shake-down for stolen silverware when they leave?' 'I suppose the message is that the hosts have so much money, Marcus, that even if everybody steals something, they won't miss it.'
We worked out that the gathering was mixed, in fact. We identified various off-duty hired entertainers, and Drusilla's troupe of dwarfs were stomping about being offensive. They were all drunk. Perhaps they knew where Drusilla kept her wine stash. The men the dwarfs were insulting seemed to be tradesmen. Although it was still mid-morning, they were digging into trays of pre-lunch snacks and aperitifs; perhaps it was the only way they could guarantee themselves a Saturnalia bonus. Of course the senators ignored them, and the tradesmen were even more snobbish about sticking together and not conversing with the senators. While such a melange could appear egalitarian, Helena and I thought that the groups had just been bunged together in a perfunctory and rather tasteless manner. 'It makes you wonder what they would have done with Veleda,' said Helena. 'I suspect they would have let everyone know they had her – and made her a sideshow.' Among the retainers who had gathered to grab festive gifts, we found a knot of medical specialists. Aedemon's bulk made him instantly visible; he was talking to a man 1 remembered as Pylaemenes, the Chaldean interpreter of dreams in his shabby robe. 1 would have ignored them, but 1 spotted Anacrites nuzzling up to them. He must be here for the same meeting as me. When 1 walked Helena over to see what he was up to with the physicians, 1 also recognised the third man. He was Cleander, who on my previous visit had turned up for a consultation with Drusilla Gratiana. He had an oval face, round eyes, and a restrained manner which probably meant he could be savage if he fell out with anyone. 'Name's Falco. We passed in a doorway. You look after the lady of the house.' 'And you're the bloody sleuth.'
Cleander looked too busy to speak. His bedside manner must be brisk. He made it plain he had no time for meaningless socialising. Nonetheless, the others treated him as a respected colleague.
'Anacrites!' 1 gave my own colleague a brush-off nod. 'Falco.' He was equally indifferent. 'Dear Anacrites.' Helena forced him to acknowledge her. 'Helena Justina!' When he clasped her hand, greeting her formally, he bent his head obsequiously, showing the grease he always lathered too thickly on his hair. He was wearing a heavy tunic, with a sweaty nap like a mushroom, in a shade of ochre that reflected off his face and made him look bilious.
'So you're all here, to receive your rewards for a year's hard work!' Helena exclaimed to the doctors, trying to dissipate the heat between the Spy and me. She must have worked out that Mastarna, the goatee bearded consultant who used to attend the deceased Gratianus Scaeva, was absent. 'It's rather hard on him to lose out on his Saturnalia bonus, just because his patient happened to have had his head lopped off.' The others were silent, not meeting each other's eyes.
Turning to Cleander, 1 tried the friendly chat which is an informer's trademark: 'We haven't had an opportunity to get to know each other.' He despised the offer. 'As I remember, I was informed you are a "Hippocratic pneumatist"?'
'He's a good doctor despite that!' Aedemon joshed him, while Cleander himself merely inclined his head snootily. He thought it degrading to discuss his craft with me. 'All his patients will tell you how wonderful he is,' Aedemon continued. 'I'm hanging around trying to poach them, but they all adore Cleander far too much.'
'As I understand it,' Helena joined in gamely, 'the Hippocratic approach is a sensible, comfortable regime, encouraging health by diet, exercise and rest. I know someone who is being treated that way,' she told Cleander. It was Zosime's prescription for Veleda. Since he himself was not the favoured physician, Cleander obviously didn't care if the patient was Helena's favourite donkey. She noted it, and changed the subject: 'Of course, any treatment must be very difficult when some patients refuse to help themselves.' Still playing dangerously, this was a veiled reference to Drusilla's alleged habit of over-imbibing wine. Unwilling to talk about his patient, Cleander made a sudden excuse and left us. 'Sometimes gruff ones are the best doctors… Is he a bit of a loner?' 'Married with children,' Aedemon disabused Helena. 'You mean quite normal?' I laughed. 'Horrible to his wife, and distant with his offspring?'