Read Online The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lindsey Davis
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swirled in a torrent of sensation and fierce noise back up from the whirlpool.
"He's coming round! Say something, Falco!" Lenia ordered.
My brain uttered words. I heard no sound; my cotton ball mouth never moved.
I felt sorry for this Falco if he hurt as much as me. I had left the world for perhaps thirty seconds, perhaps a hundred years. Wherever I had been was better than here, and I wanted to go back.
"Marcus!" Not Lenia any more. "Don't try to talk, son." Lenia had sent for my mother. Good heavens.
Slowly the red blur behind my eyelids solidified. Slowly I and that other poor man they called Falco fused together.
This is Who said that? Me or Falco? Him I think.
My mother's voice, acid with relief, spoke: "This is why people keep up with their rent!"
Lenia loomed over me, her neck haggard as a giant lizard. "Lie still!" she said. I sat up.
My mother had helped. Anything to lie down again, but her arm at my back held me upright like a puppeteer's softwood stick.
My mother raised my head, holding me under the chin with the firm, neutral grip of a lifelong nurse. She treats me like a hopeless case. She speaks to me as if I were a delinquent child. The loss of my great-hearted brother burns between us like wormwood in the throat, a perpetual reproach. I don't even know what she reproaches me for. I suspect she doesn't know herself.
She seemed to believe in me now. Mother said, in a voice that forced sense deep into the mash that had once been my brain, "Marcus! I am worried about the little girl. We read her note. I sent Petronius to find her, but you ought to go"
I reached the Forum in a litter, shouldered through the crowds like some gross eunuch with more money than taste. We jostled to the Golden Milestone, from which all the roads in the Empire take their distance. I thought of her, waiting to meet me at the heart of the world. No sign of her now. One of Petro's troopers gave me a message to meet his captain in Nap Lane. The man held back, still expecting someone else. I set off on foot.
Hunting for the right back alley I found some sewer men ferreting round a manhole as sewer men like to do. They were working with more energy than usual. Concrete was being shovelled underground frantically, with not a wine gourd of refreshment in sight.
I addressed them with a formality of tone I reserve for specialists: "Sorry to interrupt. Have you possibly had a moment to spot Petronius Longus, the captain of the Aventine watch?"
The foreman gave me the benefit of his philosophy of life: "Listen centurion, when the Great Drain starts gulping the Sacred Way into the shit after five hundred years, the nav vies shoring up the culvert have better things to do than take a census of passersby!"
Thanks for your trouble," I replied politely. For once it worked.
"Back of the pepper warehouses," he admitted gruffly. "Whole crowd of silly devils stirring up the dust." I was already half way there, calling my thanks.
There was no rush.
Nap Lane lay on the south side of the Forum near the spice markets. It was typical of the steep, twisty side routes that dive off our major streets, only just wide enough for a waggon to force through, clogged with dry mud, littered with broken spars of wood and waste. Shutters leaned off their hinges overhead where the buildings jutted over the street, hiding the sky. There was a musty smell of night-time occupation by degenerates. A cat yowled viciously as I went past. It was the sort of hole where you worry if you see someone coming and worry if you don't. It seemed a sorry end for the stately caravans that swung the treasures of Arabia, India and China halfway across the world for sale in Rome.
The warehouse I wanted looked abandoned; there was lush vegetation clogging the ruts in its gateway and a wrecked waggon lurching on one axle outside. I found them in an open yard, Petronius Longus and nearly a dozen men. Even before I turned in at the gate, the voices of saddened professionals warned
"He's coming round! Say something, Falco!" Lenia ordered.
My brain uttered words. I heard no sound; my cotton ball mouth never moved.
I felt sorry for this Falco if he hurt as much as me. I had left the world for perhaps thirty seconds, perhaps a hundred years. Wherever I had been was better than here, and I wanted to go back.
"Marcus!" Not Lenia any more. "Don't try to talk, son." Lenia had sent for my mother. Good heavens.
Slowly the red blur behind my eyelids solidified. Slowly I and that other poor man they called Falco fused together.
This is Who said that? Me or Falco? Him I think.
My mother's voice, acid with relief, spoke: "This is why people keep up with their rent!"
Lenia loomed over me, her neck haggard as a giant lizard. "Lie still!" she said. I sat up.
My mother had helped. Anything to lie down again, but her arm at my back held me upright like a puppeteer's softwood stick.
My mother raised my head, holding me under the chin with the firm, neutral grip of a lifelong nurse. She treats me like a hopeless case. She speaks to me as if I were a delinquent child. The loss of my great-hearted brother burns between us like wormwood in the throat, a perpetual reproach. I don't even know what she reproaches me for. I suspect she doesn't know herself.
She seemed to believe in me now. Mother said, in a voice that forced sense deep into the mash that had once been my brain, "Marcus! I am worried about the little girl. We read her note. I sent Petronius to find her, but you ought to go"
I reached the Forum in a litter, shouldered through the crowds like some gross eunuch with more money than taste. We jostled to the Golden Milestone, from which all the roads in the Empire take their distance. I thought of her, waiting to meet me at the heart of the world. No sign of her now. One of Petro's troopers gave me a message to meet his captain in Nap Lane. The man held back, still expecting someone else. I set off on foot.
Hunting for the right back alley I found some sewer men ferreting round a manhole as sewer men like to do. They were working with more energy than usual. Concrete was being shovelled underground frantically, with not a wine gourd of refreshment in sight.
I addressed them with a formality of tone I reserve for specialists: "Sorry to interrupt. Have you possibly had a moment to spot Petronius Longus, the captain of the Aventine watch?"
The foreman gave me the benefit of his philosophy of life: "Listen centurion, when the Great Drain starts gulping the Sacred Way into the shit after five hundred years, the nav vies shoring up the culvert have better things to do than take a census of passersby!"
Thanks for your trouble," I replied politely. For once it worked.
"Back of the pepper warehouses," he admitted gruffly. "Whole crowd of silly devils stirring up the dust." I was already half way there, calling my thanks.
There was no rush.
Nap Lane lay on the south side of the Forum near the spice markets. It was typical of the steep, twisty side routes that dive off our major streets, only just wide enough for a waggon to force through, clogged with dry mud, littered with broken spars of wood and waste. Shutters leaned off their hinges overhead where the buildings jutted over the street, hiding the sky. There was a musty smell of night-time occupation by degenerates. A cat yowled viciously as I went past. It was the sort of hole where you worry if you see someone coming and worry if you don't. It seemed a sorry end for the stately caravans that swung the treasures of Arabia, India and China halfway across the world for sale in Rome.
The warehouse I wanted looked abandoned; there was lush vegetation clogging the ruts in its gateway and a wrecked waggon lurching on one axle outside. I found them in an open yard, Petronius Longus and nearly a dozen men. Even before I turned in at the gate, the voices of saddened professionals warned
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