Time to Depart (34 page)

LXVII

I was in disgrace. Back at the wedding Lenia had called for her augury to be taken. This was the ceremony I had promised to supervise. Nobody could find me. Nobody knew where I was. It was, of course, considered untenable to proceed without the inspection of a sheep's liver. Respectable people would be shocked. Luckily the imperturbable Gaius Baebius had seized upon my absence and stepped into the breach.

'Oh I'm sure you did it better than I would have done, Gaius!'

And at least the head veil fitted him.

'He gave me some very nice promises,' said Lenia sniffily.

'I had never realised that Gaius Baebius was such a liar!' Helena whispered. Gaius explained to me very soberly that as part of his preparations for trying to join the priestly college of the Augustales, he had been taking lessons on sheep-skinning.

The bride was by now ensconced on her neatly hacked-off sheepskin, side by side with the slumped form of her husband, newly removed from the laundry basket. She was gripping his hand, not so much to symbolise union as to stop him falling onto the floor. A friend of Smaractus' was going around trying to get up ten witnesses for the contractual tablets, but most of the guests tried to wriggle out of this duty and privilege with weak excuses such as they had inadvertently left their seals at home. Nobody wanted to be blamed if the marriage failed, or be called upon to help sort out the dowry afterwards.

We all decided we had suffered enough and wanted our presents. This meant sending the bridegroom over the road to get them. It was obvious we would only get him over there once, so we combined this trip with sending him to sing the Fescennine verses (a raucous litany that nobody sober could remember, let alone your average bridegroom). Soon he was lighting the torches along the route for the bride's procession. Somebody supplied him with his fire and water for welcoming Lenia to his home. Smaractus revived enough to cry loudly that she could go to Hades for all he cared. Lenia had in fact gone to the lavatory, or the divorce could have been ratified that very day.

We kept the bride's procession short. This seemed wise because by then the bride herself was drunk as well as tearful. With no mother of her own from whose arms she could be dragged protesting, Lenia, overcome by a last-minute realisation of her stupidity, decided to cling to Ma instead. Ma told her to stop messing everyone about. Heartlessly jovial, we hauled Lenia away and set her up in proper fashion, with Marius and little Ancus taking her hands while Gaius gingerly carried the white-light torch ahead of them. Her veil had slipped and she was limping, as in her left shoe was one of the traditional coins she must take to her husband. 'As if I hadn't given him enough already!'

It had grown dark enough to lend some mystery. A hired flautist came to lead the happy throng. Throwing nuts and yelling, we all jogged up one side of Fountain Court, then danced inelegantly back again - tripping on the nuts. Children woke up and hecame really excited. People hung out of upstairs windows, watching and cheering. The night was still and the torchlight flickered handsomely. The air, on the last day of October, was chill enough to sober us slightly.

We reached the bakery. Jostling up the narrow outer stairs, I joined the group of delirious attendants who pulled the bride up the last few steps to the nuptial rooms. Smaractus appeared in the doorway, with one of his friends loyally propping him up from behind. He managed to cling on to his ritual torch-and-water vessel while Lenia spilled oil down her dress as she made an attempt to anoint the doorframe in the time-honoured way. Petronius and I braced ourselves, then linked hands under her backside and heaved her indoors.

Smaractus rallied abruptly. He saw Lenia, leered horribly, and made a sudden grab. Lenia proved a match for him. She let out a shriek of salacious delight and lunged for him.

Appalled, Petronius and I made a break for the outside and left hurriedly. Most of the other attendants followed us. Any tradition of witnessing what happened in that nuptial bed was too ghastly to contemplate. Besides, the remaining wine was in the laundry across the road

The street was packed with singing revellers. It took single-minded desperation (and thirst) to force a passage through. We made it as far as the laundry's garlanded doorway. We found Arria Silvia shrieking to Petro over the noise that she was taking their young daughters home to bed. She asked if he was going with them, and of course he said yes but not yet. Helena, looking wan, told me she was going up to our apartment. I too promised to follow my dear one 'very soon' - as the old lie has it.

Something made us look back across the road. Lenia had run out onto the first-floor landing, waving her arms about. Her veil flapped wildly and her gown was half oft. A raucous cheer rose from the crowd. Lenia shouted something and raced back in.

It was dark. There was plenty of smoke from the torches. Almost immediately the distraught bride reappeared in the doorway of the nuptial home. People had quietened down, most of them looking for something to drink. Lenia spotted Petronius and me. In a voice like a grindstone she shrieked to, us: 'Help, help, you bastards! Fetch the vigiles! The bed's collapsed and the apartment is on fire!'

LXVIII

Guests who had been prepared to fill the street when there was hope of free food and liquor found a sudden urge to go home quietly once they realised they might be asked to form a bucket chain. Others made sure they didn't help us, though they still hung around in doorways having a good gape.

The smell of real smoke had become apparent. Lenia had vanished again back into the first-floor apartment with a wild cry of 'My wedding presents! My husband! Help me get them out!' It was clear that the presents were to be given priority.

There was one saving feature: as soon as someone cried 'Fire', out from my own new apartment came a group of vigiles. My Fourth Cohort helpers were soon spotted by the excellent Petronius and chivied into action. They smartened up immediately. Someone went running to the patrol house for equipment, the rest were ordered straight into the laundry where there was a well and plenty of water carriers too. Petro and I then raced across to see what we could do for the disrupted bridal group.

Lenia was scuttling about the outer room, uselessly gathering armfuls of gifts. We shoved her outside, fairly roughly for fire has to be taken seriously; things could end up worse than she realised. In the second room we were met by a pitiful sight: the nuptial bed, complete with exotic purple coverlet, had crashed partway through the floor. My landlord, even more dishevelled than usual, was clinging on to one corner in terror. He was afraid to move a muscle in case the bed slipped completely and fell into the bakery store below. That was where the fire was, started when in the midst of his uncontrollable passion for Laeta, Smaractus had pounded his bride so heavily that the props beneath the floor had given way. A bridal torch had then rolled across the collapsing floor and fallen through the jagged hole onto the baker's well-dried logs.

'Dear gods, Smaractus, we never knew you were such a hot lover!'

'Shut up and get me out of here!'

Below us we could already hear battering as the vigiles tried to break into the bakery. Petro and I began to cross towards Smaractus, but the boards lurched beneath us too dangerously. We had to stay where we were, trying to calm the stricken bridegroom while we waited for helpers with proper equipment. At first the smoke seemed slight enough and we were not too worried. A pillow slid slowly across the tilting bed, then tumbled down into the fire, showing what could happen to Smaractus. He squealed. He was looking dangerously warm. Petronius started bellowing for help.

A setback occurred. Instead of dousing the fire immediately, the vigiles allowed themselves to be lured from their duty by the tragic spectacle of a heartbroken bride: I won't say Lenia offered bribes to them, but overcome by good nature (or something) they came galloping upstairs to save her precious wedding gifts. By the time more help arrived and operatives started flinging water and mats over the logs in flesh's' store, lively flames were at work. Upstairs with us Smaractus was now screaming as the mattress he was clutching caught light from the flames beneath. That was when Petro and I really started worrying.

Luckily a centurion with sense turned up, bringing more men with grappling hooks, axes and mattocks. A party below us were clearing space in the log store, although one side of it was now raging with fire. Before they were forced back, the landlord's prop was replaced beneath the bed, along with poles they had brought themselves, to give him more security until someone could rescue him. Ordered to this task, vigiles pressed past Petronius and me, at last working with speed and efficiency. They flung a huge espartograss mat across the room and commanded Smaractus to throw himself onto it. Just in time, he obeyed. They hauled. We helped. We dragged him clear at the very moment the flames shot up through the floor and devoured the bed. We all leapt back into the outer room, and heard the floor fall in accompanied by a huge roar of fire and sparks.

The blaze went racing up the walls. Smaractus had collapsed. He was picked up as if he were light as a leaf and rushed outside. A terrific gust of heat and smoke rushed through the building. Petro and I found ourselves coughing. The foul-tasting smoke was so thick it was diflicult to find the door. As we fell outside, covering our mouths and retching, a member of the vigiles ran up the stairs, axe in hand, gesturing upwards.

'Who lives in the other apartments?'

'No one. They're even more derelict than this one.' 

'Quick then. Get out of here!'

We all staggered down to street level, relieved to be out of it.

A syphon party came running up, towing their pumping engine. They forced a passage into the laundry, and soon there were more buckets being passed out at a fast pace. More foot patrols arrived. When Petronius found his breath, he began organising these into crowd control, gradually moving the sightseers back. A recruit with a bucket went up the street, dousing the wedding torches. We had enough light now without them. A ballista was dragged to the corner, though it got stuck trying to turn into the narrow lane. Smaractus saw it, panicked, and began wandering about drunkenly, threatening to sue if anyone made a firebreak by knocking down any other buildings owned by him. He was so much of a nuisance, the vigiles arrested him for failing to keep fire buckets, interfering with their duties, and (just to make certain) arson with his bridal torch.

The fire was now being contained, but with difficulty. One problem was the outer stairs. They had been rickety to start with, and the weight of heavy patrolmen thundering up in gangs with their buckets proved too much. The broken stonework gave way, luckily without too much damage to the fire-fighters. Petronius rushed forward to help them, and was knocked flat by a blazing shutter as it fell from above. I raced to pull him clear. At least he was conscious. Two patrolmen took charge of him, flapping cloths to give him air and checking him for broken bones. They knew their stuff.

I saw Cassius, standing with his arms folded, glumly watching the loss of his premises. Leaving Petro for a moment, I went over to commiserate.

'Could have been worse. You could have been in there.'

'Not with Lenia and Smaractus pounding all Hades out of the ceiling! But thanks, Falco.' I had turned away. 'By the way,' asked the baker, 'has anyone checked the upper floors?'

'Nobody lives there, do they?'

'I've seen an old woman going up a few times. Could be a new tenant - Smaractus will lease anything. Or a vagrant.'

'Dear gods. Any idea whereabouts she snuggles down?'

'Who knows?' Cassius shrugged, too absorbed in his own problems.

I stepped across to the centurion to warn him there might be a person trapped. At the same moment he noticed for himself: two floors up a shutter opened, and through the smoke we glimpsed a frightened face.

The vigiles had brought up ladders after the stairs collapsed. Without a word the centurion and I ran for a spare one, praying it would be long enough. We dragged it forwards and raised it below the right window. It barely reached the ledge. Whatever was in there had disappeared. We yelled, but there was no response.

The centurion swore. 'We'll make a bridge from across the street.' I had seen them do that, raising and lowering ladders on ropes to form a dangerous crossing point. Sooner them than me.

But it would take time to organise. There was nothing for it. The centurion had turned away to give orders. While his hack was turned I sprang onto the lower rungs of our own ladder and started up.

I was wearing the wrong clothes for this. The thin material of my Palmyrene suit shrivelled into little burnt holes every time sparks hit me. I kept on the hat, in the vague hope that it would protect my hair from being set alight. Below me I heard gasps as people realised what was happening.

I arrived below the window and shouted, but nobody appeared. Carefully I climbed higher. I reached up and managed to get one arm over the sill. Then it was necessary to climb with mere toeholds, knowing I had little chance of making my way back again. I pulled myself up, got halfway through the window, and felt the ladder move away front the wall. I let it fall back.

Now I was stuck clinging to the window. No choice but to go in. With a supreme effort I scrambled inside, falling headlong. I stood up, testing the floor beneatlt me nervously. 'Is anyone there?'

The room was full of smoke. It had seeped up from the two blazing storeys beneath, finding its way thickly through cracks and crannies in the ill-maintained building fabric. The air felt hot. The floor beneath my Syrian slippers burned the soles of my feet as if its underside must be smouldering like red-hot cinders. At any moment everything around me could explode into an inferno.

In the back of this apartment fire broke through. The noise was appalling. Walls and floors cracked open. Flames roared up as they gave way. Light flickered wildly through an open door.

Now I saw a human figure. Someone crouched in a far corner. Shorter than me, of course. Flowing female drapes. The head tightly wrapped against the smoke.

To calm any feminine fears I tried jovial reassurance: 'Madam, you need to get out of here!' I strode across. I was all set to do a shoulder hoist, though I was not sure where to turn with the burden afterwards.

Then I saw the glint of a knife. It was no time for being soft on frightened virginity. With a hard blow of my wrist I knocked the blade to the floor. A foot kicked out frantically. Alert for the knee-in-the-groin defence, I glanced downwards ready to protect myself. Beneath the flounced hem of a matronly skirt lashed a dark grey leather travelling boot - on a foot as big as mine. It was a boot I seen before somewhere - the quay at Ostia. This was Balbinus Pius.

I wrenched aside the stole. A hand was grabbing for my throat. I banged that upwards with my forearm. He ought to have used my surprise, but he was still fumbling at his disguise. He underestimated the threat. If Petronius had stumbled in here, Balbinus would really have gone for him; Petro would be dead. I was safer. Balbinus had not bothered to remember me.

But I knew him. I drew my Arabian blade. The scabbard was pure decoration; the weapon was vicious. I set the point straight against his ribs and rammed home the sword.

I heard my voice grating, 'Time to depart, Balbinus!' But he was already dead.