Venus in copper

Helena's dark eyes constantly watched over my guests; she and Maia were doing good work for me, nudging along the conversation and passing round the food. Helena was beyond my reach. If I called out she would never hear me. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to go across and fetch her, then take her to one of my empty rooms and make passionate love until neither of us could move ...

'Where did you find her?' squealed Maia's voice behind my right ear, as she lurched up to spoon more of the glutinous turbot onto my plate.

'She found me, I think ...'

'Poor girl, she adores you!'

I felt like a man stumbling out of the desert. 'Why's that?

'The way she looks at you!' giggled Maia, the only one of my sisters who was actually fond of me.

I toyed with my second helping. Then across the hubbub of eight people talking at once Helena raised her head, and noticed me watching her. Her face had always contained a mixture of intelligence and character which jolted me. She smiled slightly. A private signal between us, to tell me everybody was enjoying my party; men a shared moment of stillness after that.

Titus Caesar bent sideways to say something to Helena; she was answering him in the quiet way she conversed with people publicly-nothing like the tyrant who trampled over me. Titus seemed to admire her as much as I did. Somebody should tell him that when an Emperor's son indulges himself with a visitation to a poor man's house, he could eat the fish and swig the wine and leave his guards outside to amaze the neighbours-but he should draw the line at flirting with the poor man's girl... He had effortlessly impressed all my relations. I hated him for his happy Flavian skill at mucking in.

'Cheer up!' someone chaffed me, the way people do.

Helena Justina appeared to be lecturing Titus; she glanced at me, so I realised I was me subject. Helena must be attacking him over the way the Palace treated me. I winked at him; he smiled back sheepishly.

My sister Junia squeezed past me on her way somewhere. She tossed a glance at Helena. 'Idiot! You must be heading for a tumble there!' she chortled, not bothering to wait and see if I was upset.

Once again I was the typical host: tired and left out. My fish had gone cold while I brooded. I noticed glumly that where my landlord had has a wall replastered it must have dried out and now there was a crack the whole length of the corridor, wide enough to insert my thumb. So here I was, presiding over an ideal Roman evening: a tasteful di

One good feature of my family was that once they had eaten and drunk everything they could get their hands on, they vanished speedily. My mother, with the excuse of her age, was leaving first, though not before Petro's wife Silvia had shrieked to prevent Titus from helpfully throwing away the turbot remains. Of course Ma had fixed on carrying off the skeleton and the jelly from the serving tray for stock. Petronius and Silvia were taking my mother home (with her bucket of bones). Titus remembered to say something complimentary to her about Festus (who had served under Titus in Judea). Still reeling from his near disaster with the fish tray his honour decided it would be tactful if he left too. He had already thanked me and was taking Helena lightly by the hand.

'Camillus Verus' daughter has been defending your interests, Falco!' I wondered if he had heard that my relationship with Helena was more than professional and if he knew how intensely I was trying to keep her here. He appeared unaware of it. A smooth operator, this one.

I shook my head at her gently. 'I thought we agreed: your role here tonight was to pass round the olives nicely and to count up the winecups before anybody left!'

Titus was offering Helena transport home.

'Thank you, sir,' she responded in her firm style. 'Didius Falco has a commission to look after me-'(I used to be her bodyguard.) Titus tried to insist. 'He needs the money!' she hissed, quite openly.

Titus laughed. 'Oh, I'll give him the money -'

'No use, sir,' Helena quipped. 'Without the work he won't take any payment-you know how touchy Falco is!'

But she was a senator's daughter. I had no public claim on her. It was impossible to cause the Emperor's son offence by quarrelling on the doorstep over a matter of simple etiquette, so finally I lost Helena among the noisy throng which was escorting Titus downstairs to the street.

It was rude of me, but I felt so depressed I stayed upstairs. Once my relatives had trampled down three flights to the thoroughfare and waved my Imperial visitor back to the Palantine, they saw no reason to march back up again, merely to say goodbye to me. They went home. The respectable citizens of the Piscina Publica must have winced at the racket as they left.

The apartment was dismally quiet. I braced myself for a long night clearing up. I flipped some strands of watercress into a rubbish pail, straightened a couple of cups lethargically, then collapsed on a bench in the traditional ma

A door closed behind me. Someone with gentle fingers and a delicate sense of timing tickled my neck. I bent forwards to give her more scope. 'Is mat you?'

'It's me.' A girl with a conscience. Naturally she had stayed behind to help me wash the plates.

Chapter XLV

I should have expected it. The real question was, whether I could persuade her to stay with me afterwards.

I decided to do the housework first, and the hard stuff when I was too tired to feel any pain.

Helena and I made a useful team. I could square up to hard work. She was fastidious, but shrank from nothing that needed to be done. 'Which end of the street is the midden?' Grasping two disagreeable slop buckets she paused in the outer doorway.

'Stand them out on the landing tonight. The neighbourhood seems peaceful, but never take the risk in the dark.' Helena was sensible, but there were a lot of things I needed to teach her about plebian domestic life.

Still from the corridor she called, 'Marcus, have you seen this crack in your wall? Is it structural?'

'Probably!'

We finished in the end. The smell of fish still pervaded the house but everything was clean except the floor, which I could wash down tomorrow. 'Thanks; you're a gem.'

'I quite enjoyed it.'

'I enjoy knowing it's finished! There's a difference, my love, between doing the work of twenty servants once for fun-and doing it every day.' I sat for some minutes, polishing my good bronze spoons; taking my time. 'Something you're not telling me?' Helena said nothing. 'You might as well spill it; you've run away from home.' Even when we were on the best of terms she grew restless if I seemed to understand her private motives too well. In fact with Helena, nudging her into opening up had always been part of the challenge. She scowled. I scowled back at her. 'I am a professional informer, Helena-I can decipher clues! As well as your father's reading couch, there's a box here with your second-best dress and your life savings -'

'I'm wearing my second-best dress,' she contradicted me.

'The box is for the title deeds from my Aunt Valeria's legacy -'

When I fall in love as heavily as I had done with Helena Justina, I soon enquire what I have let myself in for. I knew her aunt's Sabine farm was a fraction of Helena's portfolio. I knew Helena too; it sounded as if she was deliberately turning her back on any income which her father had allowed her.