"The Silver Pigs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Lindsey)

XV

The Praetorian Camp was on the far side of the city. I walked slowly. I was expecting when I got there to be crushed like an eggshell beneath a Guard's heavy boot…

I recognized Frontinus at once. He wore an enamelled breastplate and a great silver buckle on his belt, but he had once learned his alphabet sharing a stool under the primary school awning at the corner of our street, side by side with a curly haired rogue called Didius Festus. To Julius Frontinus, therefore, I was a national hero's baby brother and since he could no longer take Festus to a tavern and get him joyously drunk because Festus was dead in the desert in Judaea he took me.

It was a discreet, well-run winery, way out in the northeast corner of Rome, near the Viminal Gate, full of soldiers from the city regiments and very businesslike. There was no food. There were no women. There was every kind of liquor, warm and cold, spiced or straight, charged well over the odds, though I was not allowed to pay. On my own I would never have got a foot indoors. With Frontinus, no one gave me a second glance.

We sat among a group of tall, well-padded men who openly overheard but never spoke. Frontinus must have known them; they seemed to know whatever he was going to say. Getting him to say it took a while. When a man like that invites you out drinking it is understood that prior to business there must be ceremonial. Ours, in honour of me and as a pleasure for him, was to discuss heroes and their heroism until we were both maudlin drunk.

After we talked about Festus and before I passed out, I managed to ask some questions. Before Frontinus sent me home in a builder's waggon with a load of ridging tiles, he managed to answer them.

"Whyever did he do it?" Frontinus was still musing. "First up the town wall at Bethel, so first dead. Nothing to do for the rest of eternity but let his gravestone whiten in the desert sun. Lunatic!"

"Wanted to cash his deposit with the burial club. Couldn't bear losing all those stoppages from his pay. So, patriotic brother, Hail and Farewell!"

It was two years since Festus died, towards the end of Vespasian's Galilean campaign, though so much had happened in the city since then that it seemed much longer. Yet I could not believe he had gone. In some ways I never will. I am still waiting for a message to say Festus has landed back at Ostia so will I please bring him a waggon and some wine skins because he's run out of cash but has met some lads on the boat that he'd like to entertain… I shall probably be waiting for that message all my life.

It was good to say his name, but I had had enough. Perhaps it showed. I had drunk enough too, and may have given the impression I was likely to be sick. Despite this, Frontinus refilled our cups. Then he hunched up on the bench, obviously ready to talk.

"Falco – Falco, what's your given name?"

"Marcus," I admitted. Same as Festus, as Frontinus must have known.

"Marcus! Jupiter! I'll call you Falco. How are you knotted up in this, Falco?"

There's a reward for the silver pigs."

"Now, laddie, that's not on!" He became wonderfully paternal. This is political; leave it to the Guards! Festus would tell you, and as he's not here, you take it from me. Listen, I'll spell it out. After four new heads of state in less than twelve months, Vespasian makes a relaxing change, but some odd types are still after him. You know how it is they come sidling up when you're off duty, little men with something big to sell"

"Silver pigs!" Everything fell into place. "Ex Argentiis Britanniae. Financing a political plot! Who's behind this?"

That's what the Guards want to know," Frontinus told me grimly.

I sensed a movement in the men around him. I said carefully, not looking at any of them, "Loyalty to the Emperor!"

"If you like…" Julius Frontinus laughed.

They pride themselves on loyalty. In their time the Praetorians have physically hoiked new Emperors onto the throne. They crowned Claudius that way, and in the Year of the Four

Emperors even a barbered booby like Otho could snatch the Empire once he swung Praetorian support. To buy them would take a private mint. But someone had braved the British weather to arrange just that.

"When they approached me," Frontinus said, "I asked for proof. Stalling for time. They turned up two days afterwards with a hall marked bar. My troopers were tracking the weevils back to their biscuit when they scarpered and dropped the loot." Having tried to lift it, I could see why! "We lost them, and when we went back we had lost the bar too. Once we put spies into the waterfront drinking holes we soon heard of a drayman who was boasting he had found something that would win him a golden thank you from the Emperor himself. Someone less gentle than the Guards obviously heard of him too."

He gave me a heavy stare. There was a cold, wet patch on my under tunic against the hollow of my chest. It had nothing to do with the drink.

"Vespasian's no fool, Falco. He may have jumped up from nothing, but he did it on clever judgement and guts. We reckoned he must be onto this. And now here you are! You informing for the Palace, sunshine? You on some special payroll to cover Vespasian if the Guards let him down?"

"Not as far as I know, Julius…"

I was beginning to realize just how much I didn't know.