Three Hands In The Fountain

The: man dug his fist into the bucket he had brought with him, like a fisherman pulling out a crab. He came up with a blackened object which he held up by its single clawlike appendage so we could briefly inspect it: something old, and hard to identify, yet disturbingly familiar. He tossed it back in the bucket where it splash-landed surprisingly heavily. We both nearly ignored it. We would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Then Petro looked at me askance.

`Wait a moment!' I exclaimed.

The workman tried to reassure us. `No panic, legate. Happens all the time.'

Petronius and I stepped closer and peered down into the filthy depths of the wooden pail. A nauseous smell rose to greet us. The cause of the blockage at the water tower now reposed in a bed of rubbish and mud.

It was a human hand.

None of my relatives had had the courtesy to leave. More had arrived, in fact. The only good news was, the newcomers did not include my father.

My sisters Allia and Galla made their excuses sniffily the moment I reappeared, though Verontius and bloody Lollius their husbands sat tight. Junia was squeezed into a corner with Gaius Baebius and their deaf son, as usual busy posing as a classic family group so they could avoid talking to anybody else. Mico, Victorina's widower, was grinning inanely and waiting in vain for somebody to tell him how well turned out his horrible offspring were. Famia, the drunk, was drunk. His wife Maia was somewhere in a back room helping Helena clear up. Various children were bored, but doing their best to entertain themselves by kicking dirty boots against my newly painted walls. All present cheered up as they watched me brace myself.,

`Hello, Ma. Brought a footman, I see?' If I had been warned in advance I would have hired heavies just to eject this man. A couple of moonlighting gladiators with instructions to turn him away at the door, and break both his arms as an extra hint.

My mother scowled. She was a tiny, black-eyed old bundle who could rampage through a market like a barbarian army. She was holding my new baby daughter, who had begun to bawl her eyes out the moment I appeared. Julia's grief at beholding her father was not why Ma was scowling; I had insulted her favourite.

It was her lodger Anacrites. He looked smooth, but his habits were as savoury as a pigsty after months of neglect. He worked for the Emperor. He was the Chief Spy. He was also pale, silent, and reduced to a wraith after a serious head wound which unfortunately failed to finish him. Mymother had saved his life. That meant she now felt obliged to treat him as some special demigod who was worth saving. He accepted the fuss smugly. I ground my teeth.

`Find a friendly greeting for Anacrites, Marcus.

' Greet him? He was no friend' of mine. He had once arranged to have me killed, though of course that had nothing to do with my loathing him. I could simply find no vacancy in my personal clique for a devious, dangerous manipulator, with the morals of a slug.

I grabbed, the screaming baby. She stopped crying. No one looked impressed. Against my car she gurgled in a way I' had learned meant she was soon going to be sick down the inside of my tunic. I laid her down in the fine cradle Petronius had made for her, hoping I could pretend any ensuing mess was a surprise to me. Ma began rocking the cradle, and the crisis seemed to pass.

`Hello, Falco.'

`Anacrites! You look terrible,' I told him cheerily. `Turned back from the Underworld because you'd dirty Charon's punt?' I was determined to floor him before he had a chance to get at me. `How's espionage these days? All the swallows over the Palatine are cheeping that Claudius Laeta has put a bid in for your job.'

`Oh no; Laeta's skulking in ditches.'

I grinned knowingly. Claudius Laeta was an ambitious administrator at the palace who hoped to incorporate Anacrites and the existing intelligence network in his own section; the two were locked in a struggle for power which I found highly amusing so long as I could keep myself out of it.

`Poor, Laeta!' I sneered. `He should never have tangled with that Spanish business. I had to make a report to the Emperor which showed him in rather a bad light.'

Anacrites gave me a narrow look. He too had tangled with the Spanish business. He was wondering what I might have reported to Vespasian about him. Still convalescent, a film of sweat suddenly shone on his brow. He was worried. I liked that.

`Anacrites isn't fit to return to work yet.' Ma told us some details that had him crawling with embarrassment. I tutted with fake sympathy, letting him know that I was delighted he had terrible headaches and trouble with his bowels. I tried asking for further details, but my mother soon twigged what I was playing at. `He has taken indefinite sick leave, approved by the Emperor.'