"Davis, Lindsey - Falco 01 - Silver Pigs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Lindsey)

Lindsey Davis - Falco 01 - Silver Pigs

Copyright 1989 by Lindsey Davis

Introduction

Rome: AD 70.

A city in confusion, as the death of Nero ended the ruling dynasty founded by Augustus Caesar.

A city which governed a vast Empire: most of Europe, North Africa and parts of the Middle East. The Emperor Claudius (aided by an unknown young general called Vespasian) had even gained a foothold in a wild location which Romans regarded with unrelieved horror: Britain! Thirty years later it was Vespasian who had emerged triumphant from the struggle for power after Nero.

This had cost Rome a bitter civil war. The Empire was in chaos. The Treasury was bankrupt. Vespasian urgently needed to convince his critics that he and his two sons, Titus and Domitian, represented the best hope of good government and peace.

Meanwhile in Britain, which was slowly recovering from Queen Boudicca's Rebellion, Nero's slack administration had taken its toll. Important mineral rights were leased out to local contractors, including management of the main imperial silver mine in the Mendip Hills. The mines were badly run: four stolen ingots franked at Charterhouse in the First Century AD have been discovered hidden beneath a cairn of stones. Who stole them and hid them so carefully, then never returned? And how did this faraway local fraud affect the new Emperor Vespasian, struggling to maintain his position in Rome?

Marcus Didius Falco who disapproved of Emperors but who served the state in his own private way knew the truth...

PART I

ROME

Summer-Autumn, AD 70

I

When the girl came rushing up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes.

It was late summer. Rome frizzled like a pancake on a griddle plate People unlaced their shoes but had to keep them on; not even an elephant could cross the streets unshod. People flopped on stools in shadowed doorways, bare knees apart, naked to the waist and in the backstreets of the Aventine Sector where I lived, that was just the women.

I was standing in the Forum. She was running. She looked overdressed and dangerously hot, but sunstroke or suffocation had not yet finished her off. She was shining and sticky as a glazed pastry plait, and when she hurtled up the steps of the Temple of Saturn straight towards me, I made no attempt to move aside. She missed me, just. Some men are born lucky; others are called Didius Falco.

Close at hand, I still thought she would be better off without so many tunics. Though don't misunderstand me. I like my women in a few wisps of drapery: then I can hope for a chance to remove the wisps. If they start out with nothing I tend to get depressed because either they have just stripped off for someone else or, in my line of work, they are usually dead. This one was vibrantly alive.

Perhaps in a fine mansion with marble veneers, fountains, garden courtyards deep in shade, a leisured young lady might keep cool, even swaddled in embroidered finery with jet and amber bangles from her elbow to her wrist. If she ran out in a hurry she would instantly regret it. The heat haze would melt her. Those light robes would stick to all the lines of her slim figure. That clean hair would cling in tantalizing tendrils against her neck. Her feet would slip against the wet soles of her sandals, runnels of sweat dash down her warm throat into interesting crevices under all that fancy bodice work...

"Excuse me she gasped.

"Excuse me!"

She veered around me; I sidestepped politely. She dodged; I dodged. I had come to the Forum to visit my banker; I felt glum. I greeted this smouldering apparition with the keenness of a man who needs troubles taking off his mind.

She was a slight thing. I liked them tall, but I was prepared to compromise. She was wickedly young. At the time I lusted after older women but this one would grow up, and I could certainly wait. While we sashayed on the steps, she glanced back, panic-struck. I admired her shapely shoulder, then squinted over it myself. Then I had a shock.

There were two of them. Two ugly lumps of jail-fodder, jelly brained and broad as they were high, were pushing through the crowds towards her, just ten paces off. The little lass was obviously terrified.

"Get out of my way!" she pleaded.

I wondered what to do. "Manners!" I chided thoughtfully, as the jelly brains came within five paces.