"Thank you," this one said. "My name is Publius Camillus Meto. I am her father. Perhaps I can ask you now."
I closed my eyes. It was quite true nobody had actually told me the senator's relationship to Sosia. This must be his younger brother, the man who lived in the frosty house next door. So my client was only her uncle. All the rights of ownership would lie with her papa.
In response to further questioning, as they say, I agreed to take her father and his pleasant friends to fetch her.
Back at the laundry Lenia popped out, intrigued by the uncoordinated tramping of large numbers of feet. Seeing me under arrest caused no surprise.
"Falco? Your mother says Oh!"
"Out of the way, you filthy old bladder!" shouted the aedile Pertinax, flinging her to one side.
To spare him the indignity of being fruit-pressed to a pulp by a woman, I interceded gently: "Not the time, Lenia!"
After twenty years of wringing out heavily wet togas, she possessed deceptive strength. He could have been badly damaged. I wish that he had been. I wish I had held him down for Lenia while she did it. I wish I had damaged him myself.
By then the momentum of our arrival had carried us up the stairs. Their visit was brief. When we all burst into my apartment, Sosia Camillina was not there.
IX
Pertinax was furious. I felt depressed. Her father looked weary. I offered to help him find her: I saw him snap.
"Stay away from my daughter, Falco!" he cried angrily.
Understandable. He could probably guess my interest. Keeping layabouts away from a daughter like that must occupy a lot of his time. I murmured, in a responsible tone:
"So I'm off the case"
"You were never on it, Falco!" the aedile Pertinax crowed.
I knew better than to argue with a touchy politician. Especially one with such a pained face and pointy nose.
Pertinax let his men rummage through my apartment for evidence. They found nothing: even the sardine plates had been washed, though not by me. Before they left, they rearranged my furniture into handy cordwood sticks. And when I protested, one of them smashed me in the face so hard he all but broke my nose.
If Atius Pertinax wanted me to think him a frowsty lout with the habits of a gutter rat, he was halfway home.
As soon as they had gone, Lenia rushed upstairs to see whether she could inform Smaractus that one of his tenants had expired. My wrecked belongings stopped her short.
"Juno! Your room and your face, Falco!"
The room was nothing special, but I had once been proud of my face.
"I needed a new table," I groaned wittily. "You can buy wonderful ones nowadays. Decent slice of maple six feet across, bolted on a simple marble stand, just right with my bronze candelabrum I used to light my room with a tallow-dipped rush.
"Fool! Your mother says"
"Spare me," I said.
"Suit yourself!" She flounced off with her I'm just the baggage who takes messages face.
Things were not going so well. Still, my brain was not completely pulverized. I was too keen on good health to ignore a message from my ma. No need to trouble Lenia; I knew what it would be. And regarding my lost moppet with the mellifluous brown eyes, I did have an idea where she was.
News travels fast in the Aventine. Petronius turned up, fussing and none too pleased, while I was still exclaiming in agony as I bathed my face.
"Falco! Keep your filthy-mannered civic friends off my patch-" He whistled. Then at once took the black pottery jug from my shaking hand and poured for me himself. It was like old times, after a bad night's brawling outside the centurions' dining club in Isca Dumnoniorum. At twenty nine it hurt much more than when we were nineteen.
After a while he propped up what remained of my bench on two bricks from my stove, then sat me down.
"Who did this to you, Falco?"
I managed to tell him, using only the left half of my mouth. "An overexcited aedile called Atius Pertinax. I'd like to open him out like a spatchcock chicken, completely boned, on a very hot grill!"
Petronius growled. He hates aediles even more than I do. They get in his way, they upset local loyalties, they take all the credit, then leave him to tidy up their mess.
He prised up my loose floorboard and brought me some wine, but it stung me too much, so he drank it himself. We both hate waste.
"You all right?" I nodded, and let him do the talking. "I've been checking on the Camillus family. The senator's daughter is away on travel leave. There are two sons, one doing his year in the army in Germany, one bashing a desk wiping the governor's nose in Baetican Spain. Your little girlfriend is some hushed up indiscretion of the senator's brother. He's not married don't ask me how he gets away with that! According to the Censor's office Sosia was recorded as the child of one of his slaves, acknowledged then adopted by him. Could just be her father is a decent type. Or could be her mother was someone more important than he can say."
"Met him," I squeezed out like a sour pip. "Bit thin-lipped. Why not in the senate too?"
"Usual story. Family could only buy in the political votes once: elder son was put into purple stripes, younger foisted into commerce instead. Lucky old commerce! Is it true that you've lost her?"
I tried to grin. What a failure. Petro winced.
"She's not lost. Come with me, Petro. If she's where I think, I need your support…"
Sosia Camillina was where I thought.
X
Petro and I ducked down a tiled entry between a cutler's and a cheese shop. We took the stairs before the elegant ground floor apartment that was occupied by the idle ex-slave who owned the whole block (and several other blocks too; they know how to live). We were in a flaky grey building behind the Emporium, not far from the river but not so near that it flooded in the spring. It was a poor neighbourhood, but there were green creepers wound round all the pillars on the street side, sleek cats asleep in window boxes summer bulbs brightening the balconies; someone always kept the steps swept here. It seemed to me a friendly sort of place, but I had known it a long time.
On the first floor landing we banged at a brick-red door, which I had under pressure painted myself, and were admitted by a tiny waif of a slave. We found our own way to the room where I knew everyone would be.
"Hah! Wine shops all closed early?"
"Hello, Mother," I said.
My mother was in her kitchen, supervising her cook, which meant the cook was nowhere in sight but ma was doing something rapid to a vegetable with a sharp knife. She works on the principle that if you want anything done properly, do it yourself. All around were other people's children, with their steely jaws clamped into loaves and fruit. When we arrived, Sosia Camillina sat at the kitchen table gorging a piece of cinnamon cake with a gusto that told me she was already well at home, as people in my parents' house tend to be.
Where was my father? Best not to enquire. He went out to a game of draughts when I was seven. Must be a long game, because he still hasn't come home.
I kissed my mother's cheek like a dutiful son, hoping Sosia would notice, and was whacked with a colander for my trouble.
Ma greeted Petronius with an affectionate smile. (Such a good boy; such a hard-working wife; such a regular well-paid job!)
My eldest sister Victorina was there. Petronius and I both withdrew into ourselves. I was terrified Victorina would call me Trouble in front of Sosia. I could not imagine why he looked so worried.
"Hello, Trouble," said my sister, then to Petronius, "Hello, Primrose!"
She was married now to a plasterer, but in some ways she had not changed since she tyrannized the Thirteenth when we were small. Petronius had not known the rest of us in those days, but like everyone for miles around he knew our Victorina.