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Chapters (65)
  1. COVER
  2. NEMESIS
  3. ROME AND LATIUM: SUMMER, AD 77
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It was too risky to have official warrants for Nobilis or any other Claudii; Anacrites was liable to hear about it. Nonetheless, efforts were being made to trace the couple who were supposed to work in Rome, using word of mouth among the vigiles. There was also a port watch for Nobilis, arranged through the Customs service and the vigiles out-station at Ostia. Meanwhile Petronius was having his clerk go through the official records of undesirables, looking for members of the family listed in Rome. If the two called Pius and Virtus had become astrologers or joined a weird religious cult, that could turn them up.

Rubella would not permit Petronius to leave Rome again, so I was going back to Antium: I would be looking for the estranged wife of Claudius Nobilis, hoping to hear about life on the inside with the Pontine freedmen.

First, came an assignment close to home. When I returned, Helena met me at the door.

‘Marcus, you have to do something and it must be now, while Petronius is at the station house. Your sister sent a message; she sounds upset—’

‘What’s up?’

‘Maia needs to see you. She doesn’t want Lucius told, because he will be too angry. Maia had an unwelcome visitor. Anacrites went to see her.’

Never mind Lucius Petronius. I was damned angry myself.

26

My sister Maia Favonia had more locks on her door than most people. She had never recovered from coming home one day a couple of years ago to find everything in her home destroyed and a child’s doll nailed up where the knocker had been. Anacrites left no calling card. But he had been haunting her neighbourhood after she split from him; she knew who had given her the warning.

I had moved her out the same night. I took her away with us on a trip to Britain and by the time she came back, she and Petronius Longus were lovers; her children, a bright bunch, had democratically elected that friendly vagabond as their stepfather. Maia took a new apartment, closer to Ma’s building. Petro moved in. The children preened. Everything settled down. Even so, Maia installed a tumbler lock and a set of large bolts, and she never opened the door after dark unless she knew who was outside. She had been fearless, happy and sociable. Terror left its marks. Maia would never get over what the spy had done.

Petronius and I had sworn an oath together. One day we would exact retribution.

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