A Body in the Bathhouse Read Online Free

feet the Emperor might expire very tastefully.
    The Praetorians tried to rouse themselves to treat me as a suspicious character, but they knew my name was on an appointment scroll. I waved my invitation. I was not in the mood for idiots with shiny javelins and no manners. Seeing the official seal, they allowed me through, making the gesture as offensive as possible.
    “Thanks, boys!” I saved my patronizing grin until I had marched into the safety of Vespasian’s line of vision. He was seated on a plain stone bench in the shade while an elderly slave handed him tablets and scrolls.
    The official name-caller was still flustering over my details when the Emperor broke in and called out, “It’s Falco!” He was a big, blunt sixty-year-old who had worked up from nothing and he despised the ceremonial.
    The boy’s job was to save his elite master from any perceived rudeness if he forgot eminent people. Trapped in routine, the child whispered,
“Falco, sir!”
Vespasian, who could show kindliness to minions (though he never showed it to me), nodded patiently. Then I was free to go forward and exchange pleasantries with the lord of the known world.
    This was no exquisite little Claudian, looking down his thin nose on the coinage like a self-satisfied Greek god. He was bald and tanned, his face full of character and heavily lined after years of squinting across deserts for rebellious tribes. Pale laughter seams ran at the corners of his eyes too, after decades of despising fools and honestly mocking himself. Vespasian was rooted in country stock like a true Roman (as I was myself on my mother’s side). Over the years he had taken on all the snide establishment detractors; shamelessly grappled for high-level associates; craftily chosen long-term winners rather than temporary flash boys; doggedly made the best out of every career opportunity; then seized the throne so his accession seemed both amazing and inevitable at the same time.
    The great one saluted me with his customary care for my welfare: “I hope you’re not going to say I owe you money.”
    I expressed my own respect for his rank. “Would there be any point, Caesar?”
    “Glad I’ve set you at your ease!” He liked to joke. As Emperor, he must have felt inhibited with most people. For some reason I fell into a separate category. “So what have you been up to, Falco?”
    “Dibbling and dabbling.” I had been trying to expand my business, using Helena’s two younger brothers. Neither possessed any informing talent. I intended to use them to lend tone, with a view to wooing more sophisticated (richer) clients: every businessman’s hopeless dream. It was best not to mention to Vespasian that these two lads who ought to be donning white robes as candidates for the Curia were instead lowering themselves to work with me. “I am enjoying my new rank,” I said, beaming, which was as close as I would let myself come to thanking him for promoting me.
    “I hear you make a good poultry-keeper.” Elevation to the equestrian stratum had brought tiresome responsibilities. I was Procurator of the sacred Geese of the Temple of Juno, with additional oversight of the augurs’ chickens.
    “Country background.” He looked surprised. I was stretching it, but Ma’s family came from the Campagna. “The prophetic fowl get pesty if you don’t watch them, but Juno’s geese are in fine fettle.”
    Helena and I had plenty of down-stuffed cushions in our new home too. I had grasped equestrianism rapidly.
    “How is that girl you kidnapped?” Had the disapproving old devil read my thoughts?
    “Devoted to the domestic duties of a modest Roman matron—well, I can’t get her to weave wool traditionally, though she did commandeer the house keys and she is nursing children. Helena Justina has just done me the honor of becoming mother to my second child.” I knew better than to expect a silver birth gift from this skinflint.
    “Boy or girl?” Helena would have liked the