I could not bear to watch the shaving process. Nothokleptes favoured the Egyptian pumice method: his beard was scratched off forcibly – along with many layers of skin.
I had skipped down the four steps from the Porticus into the main Forum and was heading off through the rostra intending to leave on the opposite side. Then a voice hailed me, with the self-satisfied tone of somebody who knew I would have avoided him if I had spotted him first.
Hades! It was Anacrites.
MARCUS, OLD friend!'
When he sounded so affable I could cheerfully have turned him upside down and placed him where the wild dogs come to pee.
`Anacrites. Here you are, standing beside the Black Stone. Well, that's an area of ill-omen, people say.' The Black Stone is an area of dark paving that marks an obviously very ancient spot, though whether it really is the grave of Romulus as some believe, who can say? Superstitions hang about the place, anyway, and seeing the Chief Spy there would set many grabbing at their amulets and muttering incantations against the evil eye.
`Same old Falco.'
I grinned nastily, acknowledging my old wish to have him dead. In the past fifteen months I had seen him twice nearly dying – and twice he had thwarted me. On at least one of those occasions, I had only had myself to blame.
He looked healthier now than for some while. An odd character. Odd, even for a Palace freedman. He could pass for someone of real consequence, or for any misshapen pebble on the track. He merged quietly into ordinary situations, yet if you looked closely his tunics verged on flash. Unusual embroidery in self-colours ran around custommade neck-holes that were tailored to a perfect fit. He succeeded in seeming neutral and invisible, while maintaining his own, suggestively expensive, style. This subtle social double act was probably the most successful thing he did. `Anacrites, I'm busy. What are you after?'
`Nothing particular.' He was lying, because immediately he offered, `Fancy a drink?' So he did want something.
`I've hardly had breakfast.' I started moving off.
He stayed on my heels as far as the Golden Milestone. Well, that was a better place for him to park himself. Spies like to imagine they are the centre of the world.
`So what's the agenda these days?' he begged, desperate to be taken into my confidence.
`A patron of the arts,' I condescended to inform him. He thought I meant that I was courting one, which was not entirely off the firing trajectory, because I had done it, briefly. He made a reference that now jarred, since my poetry recital seemed an age ago: `We enjoyed your performance the other evening.' With that `we' he was including himself in a clutch with my relatives, Ma and Maia specifically. `A refreshing occasion. It made me decide that I ought to go out much more. Life is not just about work, is it? Well' – he made an attempt at a joke – `you always take that attitude yourself'
I made no reply, leaving the conversation stranded.
`Look, Falco, I know you are very close to your family -'Wrong; if my relatives were allying themselves with Anacrites, I could not distance myself enough from them. `I just want to clear this with you – your mother feels it would help your sister recover from her bereavement if she started to go out sometimes -'
`Oh, Maia too?'
`Can I finish?'
He had said too much already. `What's this then?' I managed to hold down my anger and rely on a sneer. `Are you offering to mind Maia's children while she gads off to festivals? That's extremely decent, Anacrites, though four at once is a big gang to look after. Don't get on the wrong side of Marius, is my advice – and of course you need to ensure that people don't think you have an immoral interest in little girls.'
Anacrites flushed slightly. He gave up trying to interrupt. His plan was not acting as a nursemaid but escorting Maia, I was sure of that. I stared at him, trying to make out how old he was. It had never seemed relevant before: older than me; younger than he might have been to hold such a senior position as Chief Spy; certainly older than Maia yet not too old. His strange pale eyes held mine, annoyingly matter of fact. He thought he was one of the family. I wanted to choke.
`You'll have to take your chance,' I heard myself growl. `Maia Favonia has her own ideas about what she will do or not.'
`I don't want to upset you, that's all.'
Whenever he pretended to respect me, I wanted to knock him down and jump on him. `I don't upset that easily.'
All the time we had been in confrontation, he had been weighing his purse in one hand. `Just come from my bank,' he said, noticing my fixed stare on it (fixed on how fat his damned moneybag looked).
`Oh? Which do you use?' I asked, making it sound like a technical request for a friendly tip on which establishment was best.
`Private receivers that I've been with for years, Falco. You go to the Alexandrian in the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius, don't you?'
