Helena finally turned around from a pot she had been scrubbing with grit and vinegar. Her eyes blazed. Through set teeth she hissed, “I really do not need anybody to tell me what Gloccus and Cotta are like. If I hear anyone else mention Gloccus and Cotta, I shall scream!”
It was from the heart. The picture at least had a chalk outline now. Pa had stuck her with a pair of his pet noodles; these boys had to be fixers in the building trade. I grinned and backed off.
It was now three days before the Nones of June, a festival of Bellona, Goddess of War: a deity to respect, naturally, but one with no direct poultry connections as far as I knew. Another voting day, so it was handy to flee from the Forum before anyone grabbed me for jury service.
We made good time out to my relatives’ disorganized patch of vegetable fields, where as usual the leeks and artichokes were struggling on their own, while the uncles busied themselves with lives of fervent emotional complexity. They were men of huge passionsgrafted onto absolutely mediocre personalities. I stayed long enough to hear that dopey Uncle Junius had finally broken his heart over his doomed affair with a neighbor’s flirty wife, and-after a terrible scene bang in the middle of the cress harvest-having failed to hang himself from a broken beam in the ox-harness room (which Great-Auntie Phoebe had repeatedly told him to mend), he had left home in a new huff over the ill-timed reappearance during a violent thunderstorm of his brother, Fabius, who had previously gone off in a huff over, I think, a crisis about what he did in life (since what Fabius actually did was to cause trouble in the lives of other people and then hang around apologizing, his huff had been encouraged by everyone else). All much as usual. The two brothers had a lifelong feud, a feud so old neither of them could remember what it had been about, but they were comfortable loathing each other. I had not seen Fabius for years; he had failed to improve.
Ma took Julia from us and settled in to shake heads with Phoebe over the lads and their troubles. Nux came with me. Nux had become anxious and clinging after the episode on the Capitol where she was arrested by the priestly acolytes who were looking for doggies to crucify. In addition to that, a succession of nasty male curs had occupied our front porch recently, suggesting Nux was in heat; this too was making her behavior unstable. I was annoyed; acting as midwife for my own child had been enough of a disturbing experience, one I was not keen to resume for a bunch of pups.
Helena knew I was checking up on the Laelius family, so once we dropped off Ma, she came on with me.
A hot June morning, ambling along with a mule who was tired enough to do as I instructed, feeling Helena’s knee against my own, and Helena’s lightly clad shoulder nuzzling my arm. Only the wet nose of Nux, squeezing between us from the back of the cart, spoiled what could have been an idyll.
“Well, here we are peacefully traveling together,” mused my beloved. “Your chance to lull me into telling what my secret is.”
“Would not dream of it.”
“I expect you to try.”
“If you need to share your troubles, you’ll come out and say so.”
“What if I really want you to squeeze the story out of me?”
“Child’s stuff. You are far too serious,” I proclaimed piously. “I love you because you and I never have to descend to such games.”
“Didius Falco, you are an aggravating swine.”
I smiled at her fondly. Whatever she was doing, I trusted her. For one thing, if she really wanted to deceive me, there was no way I would ever have noticed that anything was happening; Helena Justina was too clever for me.
I had my work. It tended to be a solitary occupation. She helped when it seemed appropriate-and sometimes when it was so dangerous I felt terrified that she was involved-but she deserved stimulus of her own. Even when our lives were separate, I would always seize any chance to extract her and take her apart so that we could lose ourselves…
Part of our early courtship had taken place in the countryside. It seemed a nostalgic treat to roll around with her while hard lumps of vegetation were sticking in our backs. Still, nostalgia is a dish for the young.
“Ow! Jupiter, let’s just concede that we have a bed at home. Fun’s fun-but we’re grown up now.”
Helena Justina looked at me tenderly. “Didius Falco, you will never be grown up!”
Nux, tied up to the cart, started to howl.
Anyway, it was later than it might have been when we found the farm. It was a neat smallholding that looked well run, though barely capable of supporting more than the people who were living there. They had rows of summer salad crops, occasional poultry pottering about in a soft fruit orchard, a couple of cows, and a large friendly pig. Two geese wandered out to greet us; I could have done without them.
