Three Hands In The Fountain

I said nothing. I had been to the Campagna with that rascal before. Grape gathering with Petronius on various relatives farms had, taught me exactly how he intended to convalesce: Petro's idea of a nice country holiday was lying in the shade of a fig tree with a rough stone jar of Latium wine, and getting his arms around a buxom country girl.

Our final venture was to walk over to the Capena Gate to see Helena's family. Her father was out, taking his elder son on a vote-catching visit to some other senators. Her mother seized our baby with a rather public display of affection, implying that she was displeased with other members of her tribe. Claudia Rufina seemed very quiet. And Justinus only made a brief appearance looking serious, then slid off somewhere by himself. Julia Justa told Helena he was trying to reject the idea of entering the Senate, even though his papa had mortgaged himself deeply to make election funds available; the son had now been sentenced to take an improving trip abroad.,

`Where to, Mama?

`Anywhere,' commented the noble Julia, rather forcefully. We had a distinct feeling we were only being favoured with half the story, but everyone was being held on a tight rein so there was no chance of a private chat.

`Well, he won't be going before Aulus and Claudia's wedding presumably,' Helena consoled herself. Justinus was her favourite, and she would miss him if he were exiled from Rome.

`Claudia's grandparents are due here in a couple of weeks,' her mother replied. `One does one's best' Julia Justa sounded more depressed and hard-done-by than usual. I had always thought her a shrewd woman. She was that rarity among patricians, a good wife and mother. She and I had had our differences, but only because; she lived by high moral standards. If she was in difficulty with one of her sons, I sympathised. She would not want me to offer help.

Hoping to discover what was up, I tried to run the senator to earth at Glaucus' gym, which we both patronised, but Camillus Verus was not there.

A day later we were, all settled at Tibur. Frontinus was staying; with patrician friends in a lavishly equipped villa which had stunning views. Helena and I had rented a little farm down on the plain, just a couple' of outbuildings attached to a rustic dwelling. We installed Petro in bachelor lodgings above the shack where the winepress would operate if there was one, while his aunt shared a corridor with us. Sedina had insisted on coming along to continue nursing her darling. Petronius was livid, but there was nothing he could do. So much for his romantic aspirations. He was to be pampered, fussed over – and supervised.

`This is a dump, Falco.'

`You chose to come. Still, I agree. We could probably buy this place for not much more than we're paying in rent.'

Disastrous words.

`That's a good idea,' said Helena, coming upon us unexpectedly. `We can start your portfolio of Italian land, ready for when you decide to qualify for a higher rank. Then we can show, off talking about `bur summer residence at Tibur''.

I was alarmed. `Is that what you want?'

'Oh, I want what you want, Marcus Didius.' Helena smiled wickedly. She hadn't answered the question, as she well knew.

She looked more at ease and less weary already than she had been in Rome, so I spoke less grumpily than I intended. `Even to annoy my sister Junia with her fancy aspirations, I won't invest good money in anywhere as pitiful as this.'-

`It's good land, my lad,' reported Petro's waddling aunt, coming in with a bundle of limp greenery in her shawl. `There are wonderful nettles all over the back; I'm just going to conjure up a nice pan of soup for us all.' Like all townswomen, Auntie Sedina loved to come to the Campagna so she could demonstrate her domestic skills by producing dubious dishes from ghastly ingredients that would be shunned with shrieks of terror by the countryborn.

Buying a patch of six-foot-high wild nettles in the faint hope of becoming an equestrian sounded about my level of ambition. Only an idiot would do it. Nobody lived down here on the flat. It was unhealthy; and dingy. Anyone with taste and money acquired a minor palace on a plot surrounded by topiary among the picturesque crags over which the River Anio tumbled in a dramatic cascade.

The Anio was the pretty waterway into which, according to Bolanus, some local madman habitually threw dissected human body parts. -

FORTY EIGHT

I, had not come to enjoy the scenery.