The Iron Hand of Mars Read Online Free

list? When is it?”
    I noticed her hesitate. “Thursday.”
    â€œAre you planning to go?”
    â€œI really don’t want to.”
    Her face was strained. If her respectable upper-crust family ever got wind of a possible liaison with the star of the imperial court, the pressure on Helena would become unbearable. It was one thing for her to leave home while her parents had no other plans. Given one unhappy marriage, her papa had told me frankly he felt diffident about ushering her into another. Camillus Verus was unusual: a conscientious father. Still, there must have been trouble after she ran off. Helena had shielded me from most of the barrage, but I can count the knots in a plank of wood. They wanted her back, before all Rome heard she was playing around with a hangdog informer, and satirical poets started putting the scandal into salacious odes.
    â€œMarcus, oh Marcus, I particularly want to spend that evening with you—” Helena seemed upset. She was thinking I ought to intervene, but there was nothing I could do about this ominous venture; rebuffing Titus could only come from her.
    â€œDon’t look at me, sweetheart. I never go where I am not invited.”
    â€œThat’s news!” I hate ironic women. “Marcus, I’m going to tell Papa I have a prior engagement which I cannot break, with you—”
    She was avoiding the issue, it seemed to me. “Sorry,” I said tersely. “I have a trip to Veii on Thursday. I need to check out a widow for one of my fortune-hunting clients.”
    â€œCan’t you travel another day?”
    â€œWe need the fee. You take your chance!” I sneered. “Go to the Palace and enjoy yourself. Titus Caesar is a soft piece of lard from a dull country family; you can handle him, my darling—assuming, of course, that you’re wanting to!”
    Helena went even whiter. “Marcus, I am asking you to stay here with me!” Something in her tone disturbed me. But by then I was feeling so sorry for myself I refused to alter my arrangements. “This means a lot to me,” Helena warned in a dangerous tone. “I’ll never forgive you…”
    That settled it. Threats from women bring out the worst in me. I went to Veii.
    *   *   *
    Veii was a dead end. Somehow I expected it.
    I found the widow easily enough; everyone in Veii had heard of her. She may or may not have possessed a fortune, but she was a pert brunette with sparkling eyes who freely admitted to me that she was stringing along four or five abject suitors—gents who had called themselves friends of her late husband and now thought they could be even better friends to her. One of them was a wine exporter, selling multiple consignments of foul Etruscan rot-gut to the Gauls—an obvious front runner if the wench remarried anyone. I doubted if she would bother; she was enjoying herself too much.
    I myself received certain hints from the widow that I might have profited from a stay in Veii, but on the journey there I had been plagued by the memory of Helena’s pleading expression. So, cursing, and by now fairly penitent, I rushed back to Rome.
    *   *   *
    Helena was not at the apartment. She must have already left for the Palace. I went out and got drunk with Petronius. He was a family man, so had strains of his own, and was always glad to make himself available for a night out cheering me up.
    I came home late, deliberately. It failed to annoy Helena because she never came home at all.
    I assumed she had stayed the night with her parents. That was bad enough. When she failed to show up at Fountain Court the next morning, I was horrified.

 
    V
    Now I was a real sprat drowning in fish pickle.
    I ruled out any thought that Titus had abducted her. He was too straight. Besides, Helena was a strong-minded girl; she would never stand for it.
    There was no way I could bring myself to turn up at the