Contractually, right was on our side. That didn't matter a damn.
To strengthen our case, I mentioned that our work had first been discussed with Vespasian's lady, Antonia Caenis, implying in the most delicate way that I was subject to her patronage. I still had faith in her. Anyway, I was certain she had taken a shine to Helena.
Claudius Laeta managed to disguise his undoubted relish and assume a suitable doleful face: "It is with regret that I have to inform you Antonia Caenis recently passed away."
Disaster.
For a moment I did wonder if he might be lying. Senior bureaucrats are adept at misinforming unwelcome suppliants. But not even Laeta, a snake if I ever met one, would compromise his professional standing with a lie that could be so easily checked and disproved. His deceit was always the unquantifiable kind. This had to be true.
I managed to keep my face expressionless. Laeta and I had a history. I was determined not to show him how I felt.
In fact he appeared slightly subdued. I had no doubt that cutting the rate was his idea, yet he seemed daunted by the personal damage to me. He had his own reasons: if he ever wanted to use me in future for off-color official work, this knock-back would inspire me to new flights of rhetoric in telling him to disappear up his own rear end-and without leaving a clue of thread to find his way out.
Like a true bureaucrat he was keeping options open. He even asked if I wanted to make a formal request for an interview with Vespasian. I said yes please. Laeta then admitted that the old man was currently keeping to himself. Titus might be prevailed upon to look into my problem; he had a sympathetic reputation, and was known to favor me. Domitian's name never even came up; Laeta knew how I felt about him. Possibly he shared my views. He was the kind of smooth senior politician who would regard the young prince's open vindictiveness as unprofessional.
I shook my head. Only Vespasian would do. However, he had just lost his female partner of forty years; I could not intrude. I knew how I would behave if I ever lost Helena Justina. I did not suppose that the grieving Emperor would feel in a mood to approve exceptional payouts to informers (whom he used, but famously despised), even if their rates had been agreed. I did not know for sure that Antonia Caenis had ever spoken to him about me; anyway now was the wrong moment to remind him of her interest.
"I can make you a payment on account," said Laeta, "pending formal clarification of your fees."
I knew what that meant. Payments on account are made to keep you happy. A sop. Payments on account are volunteered when you can be damned sure that is all that you will ever get. Turn down the offer, though, and you go home with nothing at all.
I accepted the stage-payment with the necessary grace, took my signed voucher for the release of the cash, and turned to leave.
"Oh by the way, Falco." Laeta had one final jab. "I understand you have been working with Anacrites. Will you tell him that his salary as an intelligence officer on sick leave will have to be deducted from what we pay to your partnership?"
Dear gods.
Even then the bastard had to have one more go at flaying us. "Incidentally, Falco, we must be seen to do everything properly. I suppose I ought to ask: have you completed a Census declaration on your own account?"
Without a word, I left.
As I was storming from Laeta's office a clerk rushed after me. "You're Didius Falco? I've a message from the Bureau of Beaks."
"The what? "
"Joke name! It's where Laeta pensions off incompetents. They're a pokey section who do nothing all day; they have special responsibilities for traditional augury-sacred chickens and the like."
"What do they want with me?"
"Some query about geese."
I thanked him for his trouble then continued on my way.
For once I turned away from the Cryptoporticus, my customary route down to the Forum. I was spurning public life. Instead, I worked my way through the complex of pompous old buildings on the crest of the Palatine, out past the Temples of Apollo, Victory, and Cybele, to the supposedly unassuming House of Augustus, that miniature palace with every pampering amenity where our first emperor liked to pretend he was just a common man. Devastated by the blow Laeta had delivered, I let myself stand high on the hill's crest above the Circus Maximus, looking across the valley, homeward to the Aventine. I needed to prepare myself. Telling Helena Justina I had worked myself into the ground just for a sack of hay would be hard. Listening to Anacrites whining was even worse to contemplate.
I bared my teeth in a bitter grin. I knew what I had done, and it was a grand old irony. Falco & Partner had spent four months gloating about the draconian powers of audit we could exercise over our poor victims: our authoritarian Census remit, from which there was so famously no appeal.
Now we had been shafted with exactly the same rules.
Thirty-eight
TO CHEER ME UP, Helena Justina attempted to distract me by using her own money to hire a lecture hall to stage the recital of poetry over which I had been dreaming for as long as she had known me. I spent a long time preparing the best pieces I had written, practicing how to recite them, and thinking up witty introductions. As well as advertising in the Forum, I invited all my friends and family.
Nobody came.
Thirty-nine
A DIPPY DOG called Anethum, the property of Thalia, did his best to cheer me up that spring. He was a big, warm, floppy old thing who rolled the whites of his eyes manically, and who had been trained to act in pantomimes. He could play dead. A useful trick for anyone.
Anethum was making his debut as a warm-up act at the Megalesian Games in honor of Cybele. These are a welcome highlight, starting off the theater season in April when the weather improves, and are preceded by a drawn-out series of dauntingly peculiar Phrygian rites. As usual the whole business had started back in the middle of March with a procession of persons bearing reeds, which are sacred to Attis, the Great Mother's beloved, whom she apparently first discovered lurking in a bed of bullrushes. (A perfectly understandable act if he had any inkling that his future role was to castrate himself with a potsherd while in a crazed frenzy.)
A week later the Sacred Pine tree of Attis, cut at the dead of night, had been borne to the Temple of Cybele on the Palatine and hung up with wool and with violet crowns while the blood of sacrificial animals was splashed about. If you have a sacred pine tree, obviously you like it treated with reverence. This was followed by a street procession of the Priests of Mars, who leapt about vigorously to the accompaniment of sacred trumpets, causing a few stares in our sober city even though they did it every year.
Then, in honor of the wounds Attis inflicted on himself, the chief priest of the cult ritually slashed his own arm with a knife; given the very specific nature of what Attis had endured, the fact it was only the priest's arm had always caused me great amusement. At the same time, a wild dance was being enacted around the Sacred Pine tree; to keep up his spirits the chief priest flagellated himself and his fellows with a whip hung with knucklebones; the priests' mutilations were later turned into permanent tattoos as a sign of their dedication. There were screams and yells from devotees, faint from fasting and hysterical from the dance.