Was she safe? somebody asked me afterwards. I avoided answering. To this day I don't know, really, whether Sosia Camillina was safe with me that night or not.
To Sosia I said gruffly, "Guests take the reading couch. Blankets in the wooden box."
I watched her construct an elaborate cocoon. She made a terrible job of it. Like a tentful of legionary recruits, eight lackadaisical lads wearing scratchy new tunics who had never made up a camp bed before. She fidgeted round the couch for ages, tucking in far too many covers far too tight.
"I need a pillow," she complained finally in a small, serious voice, like a child who could only sleep if she followed a fixed nightly routine. I was blissful with wine and excitement; I did not care whether I had a pillow or not. I hooked one hand behind my head then flung her mine, wide, but she caught it.
Sosia Camillina inspected my pillow as though it might harbour fleas. Another charge of resentment against the nobility. Possibly it did, but any wildlife was tightly sewn inside a cheerful red and purple cover inflicted on me by my mama. I did not care to have snooty chits of girls casting aspersions on my household goods.
"It's perfectly clean! Use it and be grateful."
She laid the pillow very neatly at the end of her bed. I blew out the light. Private informers can be gentlemen when they are too drunk for anything else.
I slept like a babe. I have no idea whether my visitor did the same. Probably not.
VI
The senator Decimus Camillas Verus lived in the Capena Gate Sector. The Capena Gate was the district next but one to mine, so I walked. On the way I passed my youngest sister Maia and at least two little roughnecks off our family tree.
Some informers give the impression we are solitary men. Perhaps that was where I went wrong. Every time I was surreptitiously trailing some adulterous clerk in a shiny tunic, I looked up to find one of these midgets wiping his nose on his arm and bawling my name across the street. I was a hobbled donkey in Rome. I must have been related to most people between the Tiber and the Ardeatine Gate. I had five sisters, the poor girl my brother Festus never found the time to marry, thirteen nephews and four nieces, with several more visibly on the way. That excludes what lawyers call my heirs of the fourth and fifth degree: my mother's brothers, and my father's sisters, and all the second cousins of the first marriage children of the stepfathers of my grandfather's aunts.
I had a mother too, though I tried to ignore that.
I waved back at the roughnecks. I keep them sweet. One or two of them are. Anyway, I use these artful urchins to trail the adulterers when I slope off to the races instead.
Decimus Camillus owned a freehold mansion on his own square of land among quiet domestic streets. He had purchased the right to draw water direct from the old Appian aqueduct nearby. He felt no financial necessity to lease his frontage out as shops, nor his upper storey as lodging rooms, though he did share his desirable plot with the owner of an identical house next door. From which I deduced that this senator was by no means extravagantly rich. Like the rest of us, the poor muffin was struggling to keep up the way of life appropriate to his rank. The difference between him and most of us being that to qualify for the senate Decimus Camillus Verus must be a millionaire.
Since I was visiting a million sesterces I risked my throat under a barber's razor. I wore a worn white toga with the holes folded out of sight, a short clean tunic, my best belt with the Celtic buckle, and brown boots. A free citizen, his importance signalled by the length of his train of slaves in my case, none.
There were spanking new escutcheon plates on the senator's door locks but a hangdog porter with a badly bruised cheekbone looked through his grille and opened up as soon as I pulled at the rope on the big copper bell. They were expecting someone. Probably the same someone who socked the porter yesterday and carried off the girl.
We crossed a black and white tiled hall, with a spluttery fountain and faded cinnabar paint. Camillus was a diffident man in his fifties who lurked in a library among a mass of paperwork, a bust of the Emperor, and one or two decent bronze lamps. He looked normal, but he wasn't. For one thing, he was polite.
"Good morning. How can I help you?"
The name's Didius Falco. Credentials, sir." I bowled him one of Sosia's bracelets. It was British jet, the stuff they ship down from the northeast coast, carved in interlocking pieces like whale's teeth. She had told me her cousin sent it. I knew the style from my army days, but they were rare in Rome.
He inspected it gently.
"May I ask where you obtained this?"
"Off the arm of a decorative party I rescued yesterday from two thieving hulks."
Ts she hurt?"
"No, sir."
He had heavy eyebrows above decently spaced eyes that looked at me directly. His hair bristled straight up from his head even though it was not particularly short, giving him a cheerful, boyish look. I saw him brace himself to ask what I wanted. I put on my helpful face.
"Senator, would you like me to bring her back?"
"What are your terms?"
"Any idea who took her, sir?"
"None." If I had realized he was lying, I should have admired the brisk way the man spoke. As it was, I liked his insistence. Your terms please?"
"Just professional curiosity. I've tucked her away somewhere safe. I'm a private informer. A watch captain called Petronius Longus in the Thirteenth will vouch for me"
He reached for his ink pot and made some notes across the corner of a letter he had been reading. I liked that too. He intended to check.
I suggested, without pressure, that if he was grateful he might hire me to help. He looked thoughtful. I outlined my rates, adding something for his rank since it would all take slightly longer if I had to keep calling him "sir'. He showed some reluctance, which I reckoned was because he did not want me hanging round the girl, but eventually we agreed I would advise him on household security and keep an ear to the ground about the kidnappers.
"You may be right about keeping Sosia Camillina out of sight," he said. "Is your hideout respectable?"
"Supervised by my own mother, sir!" True: she scoured my rooms regularly for evidence of loose women. Sometimes she found it, sometimes I hustled them out in time.
This senator was no idiot. He decided someone had to come back with me to make sure the wench was safe. I advised him against that. I had seen some greasy meatballs in the cook shop opposite, watching visitors to his home. There was nothing to say they were connected with Sosia, they could have been casual burglars who had picked an unlucky day to size up a future break-in. Since he was walking me round his property anyway, we went to look.
On the front door they had a sound wooden lock with a six inch, three-toothed iron rotary key, plus four brass bolts, an inspection grille with a natty little slider, and a great holm oak beam inside to sling across on two well-bedded cradles at night. The door porter lived in a cubbyhole at the side.
"Adequate?" remarked the senator.
I gave him a long look, including the dozy sprite they used as a doorman the slack-mouthed strip of wind who had let Sosia's abductors walk in.
"Oh yes, sir! A wonderful system, so let me offer some advice: use it!" I could see he took the point.
I made him peer through the grille to inspect the two loafers in the cook shop
"Those peepers saw me come. I'll hop out over your back wall; give me a chance to survey the rear of the house. Send a slave to the local lockup and get them arrested for causing a breach of the peace."
"But they are not"