Ode To A Banker (44 page)

LIX

IT SEEMED to take hours to conclude the formalities. The vigiles are hard, but even they dislike taking in parricides. The dire punishment strikes horror into everyone involved.

Petronius left the patrol-house with me. We went home via my mother's, where Helena had gone to fetch Julia. I told Ma what Lucrio had said about her money being safe. Naturally, Ma replied that she had been well aware of that. If it was any of my business, she informed me, she had already reclaimed her cash. I mentioned that Nothokleptes seemed a good bet as a banker to me, and Ma proclaimed that what she did with her precious sacks of cash was private. I gave up.

When she asked if I knew anything about stories that my father had been involved in an altercation with Anacrites the other day, I grabbed Julia and we all went home.

By chance, as we crossed the end of the street nearby where my sister lived, who should we see but Anacrites himself.

Petronius spotted him first and caught my arm. We watched him. He was leaving Maia's house, unexpectedly. He was walking along with both hands in his belt, his shoulders hunched up, and his head down. If he saw us, he pretended not to. Actually, I don't think he noticed us. He was in his own world. It did not appear to be a happy place.

Helena invited Petronius to dine with us that evening, but he said he wanted to set his apartment straight after the fight with Bos. After she and I had eaten, I sat out on the porch for some time, unwinding. I could hear Petro crashing about opposite. From time to time he tipped trash off the balcony in the traditional Aventine manner: making sure he shouted warnings, and sometimes even allowing long enough for pedestrians to scuttle out of danger in the street below.

Eventually, with Helena's approval, I sauntered off alone. I went to see Maia.

She let me in, and we went out onto her sun terrace. She had been having a drink, which she shared with me; it turned out to be nothing stronger than the goatsmilk she normally kept for the children. 'What do you want, Marcus?' She was always abrupt.

We had been too close for too long for me to mess about being delicate. 'Came to check you were all right. I saw Anacrites, looking grim. I thought you and he had had plans?'

'He had the plans. Far too many.'

'And too soon? You were not ready?'

'I was ready to dump him, anyway.'

She might have been crying earlier; it was impossible to tell. If so, she had gone past needing to shed her woes and was now calm. She looked sad, but unrepentant. There were no visible doubts. I wondered when she had made up her mind. Somehow, I did not think that Maia had ever heard the rumours about Anacrites and our mother. But she might know he had given Ma stupid advice fmancially. That would count against him with my sister, to a degree he might never have realised.

'I'm sorry if you have lost a friend.' I found that I really meant that.

'So am I,' said Maia quietly.

I scratched my ear. 'I see him around town. He is bound to ask me, when he can face me, whether I think you mean it.'

'Then tell him what you think,' she said, being her old awkward self. I shrugged, then drank my milk.

We heard someone knocking at her door. Maia went to answer, leaving me relaxing in the sun. If it was another close associate, she would bring them out here; if it was door-to-door lupin-sellers, she would see them off and come back cursing.

Low voices were talking. Far be it from me to eavesdrop, but I was an informer; the new visitor sounded familiar I leaned back, tucked the toe of my boot under the handle, and inched open the sun terrace door.

'My brother is here,' I heard Maia say, in an amused tone.

'Nice!' replied Petronius Longus, my supposed best friend, with what sounded like a sneaky grin. 'Family conference?'

'Why, what sort of conference were you planning?' quipped Maia in a slightly lower voice. Surely she must have known I could overhear them. 'What's this you've brought?' she demanded suspiciously.

I heard the squeak of the front door hinge, as if it was opening wider. There was a rustling noise. 'A garland of Vertumnus. It's his festival, you know -'

Maia laughed raucously. 'Oh don't say it's my turn to be backed into a corner by Lucius Petronius, the Aventine seduction king, and enticed into a night of festival fun.'

Maia was my favourite sister and a model of chaste Roman motherhood - but she gave me the impression that in the absence of action from Petro, she would consider cornering him. The innuendo was flagrant. He must have thought the same.

'Don't talk like that,' begged Petro, in a strange tone. 'Maia Favonia, you will break my heart.'

'You're serious!' Maia sounded surprised. Not as surprised as me.

'I don't want to be passing festival fun,' he bragged. What a fraud.

'I won't ask what you do want then.' Something was going on, something sufficiently intriguing to stop me calling out a ribald joke.'So?' asked Maia.

Then Petronius answered gravely in a formal tone, 'I am reconstructing my apartment. I want to buy some replacement pots and foliage to put on the balcony...'

Maia laughed again, more quietly this time. 'My dear Lucius, so that's how you do it! You murmur, "Don't touch me, I'm too honourable!" Then you talk about potted plants.'

Petronius carried on patiently as if she had not interrupted. 'They seem to have some good stuff at that stall below the cliff. Will you come and help me choose?'

There was a pause. Then Maia said suddenly: 'Good idea. I like that stall. I saw they are selling watering pots. You dunk them in a bucket of water, then you can rain a gentle shower onto your special plants...' She stopped, sounding wistful, remembering she could no longer afford treats.

'Let me buy you one,' offered Petronius.

'Wait there,' said Maia cheerfully.

My sister poked her head around the door and smiled brightly at me. Around her neck, she was wearing a ludicrous garland of leaves, twigs and fruit. I refused to remark on it.

'I'm just going on an expedition with a friend for a few horticultural sundries,' she told me in a sweet, inconsequential way. I loved gardening too, but there was no offer to include me. 'You can finish your milk. Make sure you pull the door closed when you go, please.'

I felt as if Anacrites was not the only person my sister Maia had dumped that day.

I went home, through streets full of slightly threatening revellers who were preparing for the festivals of Vertumnus and Diana. There were people jumping out from behind pillars, wearing animal skins. I could faintly smell smoke - perhaps singed fur. Others had bows and arrows and were targeting hapless passers-by. On the Aventine, nobody needed moonlight to behave crazily. Unpleasant mimes were enacted with horns, while phallic garden gods were everywhere. Mounds of greenery made alleyways impassable, street hawkers were flogging trays of congealed snacks, and drink was being consumed in fabulous quantities. Where the two happy festivals collided, rival groups were squaring up for a good fight. It was time to huddle safely indoors.

Back home, I told Helena that my sister was shamelessly leading on my friend, and that he was encouraging her.

'Dear gods. I never thought I would see Maia and Petronius canoodling over a balcony fern and a watering pot.'

'Don't watch then,' scoffed Helena, chewing the end of a pen. She had a codex spread open on her knee, a double pot of red and black ink, and was updating our accounts. 'Think nothing of it, you dear sentimentalist. They may be giggling over propagation pots tonight - but tomorrow is another day.'

'Sounds like some daft girl in a romance, trying to console herself.' I reached for a wine flagon and a good scroll to read. As I gripped the scroll rod and pulled out the first columns of words on the faintly yellowed papyrus, wafts of writing ink and cedar oil assailed me with nostalgia.

Helena Justina folded her arms and said nothing for a long time. As she did when she was letting her imagination roam. I stopped reading and gazed at her. Her eyes met mine, dark brown, intelligent, perturbingly deep with love and other mysteries.

I smiled at her, showing my own devotion honestly, then immersed myself in my scroll again. You never know with secretive, imaginative women what surprises they are dreaming up.

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