by AM Kirkby
***
As it turned out the dice fell right for Tarquinius; Gabii had been attacked by one of the smaller Faliscan cities, and requested help. Marcus hadn't wanted to go, but Ancus Marcius had insisted; it was one of his better days. “Get yourself gone!” he roared at his recalcitrant son; and Marcus Robur went.
The next part would be more difficult, Tanaquil knew. While Ancus Marcius was still capable of ruling, or at least of being publicly displayed as king, Tarquinius would have to win enough supporters to be elected once Ancus had gone. While he was canvassing, she would have to prevent anyone guessing the truth; that meant sticking close to the old man, and keeping anyone she couldn't trust away from him. She'd move into the palace, if she could; but that would give rise to the sort of rumour she was anxious to avoid. She could almost hear Faustus' comment; “Those Tarquinii are moving into the palace already, before the old man's even dead.” She wouldn't give him the pleasure.
Everyone was talking; Ancus' absence from business had been noted, and his increasing frailty was obvious. He was rarely without his stick, now, and his face had grown gaunt; his flesh seemed almost transparent, suffused with the frozen blue of his veins.
She sat with Ancus Marcius now whenever he was well enough to preside at the law courts, or the temple; but she made sure she sat on a lower level, on a small footstool, like a dutiful daughter. Secunda sometimes sat with her; it took both of them to support the old man, if he suddenly felt weak, which happened more and more often.
That day, he'd been sitting in judgment on a case of accidental death; a man killed by a house falling, and bringing the roof down on him. It should have been easy, but the dead man's brother deposed that he'd been staying with his son, who would inherit, and had weakened the woodwork deliberately to bring about his father's demise. The son had wanted to marry, apparently, and his father would not give him permission; when asked, the son admitted that was true. The uncle said the son hated his father; what was definitely true is that the son hated his uncle; Ancus Marcius had to instruct him twice to be quiet, when he started yelling at the older man.
“I was away in the vineyard when it happened! I wasn't even there!”
“Wait,” Ancus Marcius bellowed. The youth stood quivering with temper, but he didn't dare yell at the king. Tanaquil could see his jaws tight and his hands balled into fists; he was a man on the edge.
Uncle Tullius was a little stick of a man, with a tightly trimmed beard and a cast in one eye. Not the kind of uncle you would love, Tanaquil thought; not stupid enough to bring false witness, either. Who would, when the penalty for false testimony was death?
“Your allegation is a strange one,” Ancus Marcius said. “Most murderers are considerably more direct. And in any case, you can't prove that the son deliberately pulled his own house down. Will you retract your accusation?”
The uncle didn't even bother to say 'No'. Instead, he spoke with the voice of utter logic. “Of course you can't prove it. That's why he killed him that way. He knew you could never prove it.”
The court was suddenly full of whispers; Ancus Marcius put up his hand. “Tarquinius?”
That got silence immediately. No one understood why Tarquinius was being called; not even Tanaquil, though she had a shrewd idea there was a long game being played here.
“How would you go about pulling down a house?”
“Well, I could do it from inside or outside. Inside, I could saw through the main beam of the roof, say half way, and then it would eventually break.”
“And would you know when it was going to break?”
“No, not at all. It would break, eventually, but I'd have no way of knowing when. It would be easy to tell whether that had been done, of course.”
“And had it?”
“No.”
Ah; that was why Tarquinius had been out all of yesterday morning.
“And the other way?”
“I could take one of the posts that support the roof, and undermine it. Loosen it a bit, maybe scrape out a bit of the earth around it, like foxes do sometimes. Maybe the centre post, or perhaps one of the corners.”
“And you'd be able to tell when that was going to collapse?”
“No. It's the same thing. I wouldn't really know.”
“I see. So if it was my house...”
“I wouldn't want to be in it at the time. A trip away from home might be indicated.”
“And the son went to the vineyards two days before the accident.”
“Yes,” said Tarquinius. Tanaquil saw how the uncle grinned at this. She didn't like it; it looked like the grin a dog gives before he starts to bite, showing his teeth. The son quite obviously didn't believe what he was hearing; his face was working, but he didn't dare to speak.
“Could you prove that the house had been undermined?” Ancus Marcius was saying.
“You don't need to,” the uncle said stubbornly; but the king roared, “Silence!” and silence there was. No one had seen Ancus Marcius like this for months; skeletal as he looked, he was once again powerful, his hands trembling with the effort of holding back his temper.
“Tarquin,” he said, very softly, “Could you prove it?”
“No.”
Ancus Marcius nodded silently. It seemed he'd drifted away again; his head carried on nodding for a few moments. They'd reached an impasse in this case. But Tanaquil was not deceived; she'd seen the light of intelligence in his eye, the look he'd given Tarquinius just before he closed his eyes, and steepled his fingers together.
“Still,” Tarquinius said into the silence, “If I were going to pull down a house, I'd want to know when it was going to fall. And young Quintus here clearly didn't. Besides, if it took two whole days for the house to fall on his father, how could he know his father would be there when the house fell?”
Ancus Marcius was still nodding, his fingertips pressed together. He's heard all this before, Tanaquil realised.
“But the uncle would not have known, either.” Ancus Marcius' voice was very quiet when he said this; clever, Tanaquil thought, he's made everyone listen even harder. He must be preparing something. If the boy's guilty... that will be a death sentence, for sure. Parricide; tied in a leather bag with a dog and a snake, and thrown into the river. Drowning and bleeding and suffocating. No wonder his voice is soft. She shivered.
“It was Tullius who found Quintus senior's body in his son's house,” Tarquinius said evenly, recounting mere facts. “He had been to visit Quintus that morning, and tied his horse up outside the house. They spoke for only a few moments, and then Quintus sent Tullius off on some business he had in hand. That took some hours, and it was only when Tullius came back that he found the body.”
Tanaquil still didn't see how this was useful. The house had, or hadn't been undermined; the son had, or hadn't, killed the father. Though looking at young Quintus, she thought he might have killed in a fight, just losing his temper - he clearly was still having a struggle to keep it in; but not cold-bloodedly, not in the way that was being suggested. She must be missing something. It wasn't like her to be out-thought by her husband. Then she realised; the horse. He hadn't said what happened to the horse.
“This is getting us nowhere.” Tullius' voice was nasal, thin. “Quintus senior asked me to go and see about some neighbour whose tree was overhanging his garden. So I did. What matter? It's just fortunate the brat didn't manage to kill me, as well as his father.”
“But you left your horse behind,” said Tarquinius, very reasonably.
“Of course I did! I wasn't going to ride to the house next door, why should I?”
“And you left it tied to the house.”
Tullius looked at him sharply.
“But you'd run the rope around the corner post, hadn't you?”
Ancus Marcius took charge from that point, and the whole story became clear. It was the uncle who had made the father send young Quintus to the vineyard; it was the uncle who had scraped away the earth around the corner
post of the house; and it was the uncle who had tied his horse to that post, and then left for the neighbours' house. When a boy turned up and shied a stone at the horse...
“You can't prove I was responsible!” Tullius was on his feet again, indignant.
“That's him.” A surprisingly innocent child, about eight, with curly black hair and a pouting red mouth, stood up in the middle of the crowd. Behind him, a young woman patted his shoulder reassuringly. Tanaquil saw her hair was black and curly too, under the veil she wore.
“Thank you, Sextus.” Ancus Marcius' voice was warm; his smile was the warmest Tanaquil had seen for a while, even when he smiled at her. “What did this man tell you?”
“He said the horse was his friend's, and he wanted to play a trick on him and make it run away.”
“And did it?”
“No.” Sextus looked serious, and ashamed. “It was tied up too well. And it bucked, and it bucked, and...”
“And it pulled the house down?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ancus Marcius' smile was no longer warm; it was as vulpine as Tullius' had been when he thought young Quintus was about to be sentenced. “Tarquinius? If Quintus had been executed, who would have inherited?”
“Quintus the Elder had two daughters, as well as his son, but they would only have been given enough for their dowries. As for the vineyards, the house, the orchard?” He looked at Ancus Marcius, saw him nod, and went on. “His brother, Tullius.”
Tullius was already pushing through the crowd at the back of the hall; he'd seen it coming, Tanaquil realised. But so had Ancus Marcius; there was a brief scuffle at the door, and one of the guards brought him forward, holding him firmly by one scrawny shoulder.
Ancus Marcius rose. “I think false witness is enough to charge him with. No doubt we could think of more, if we had time. But he has an appointment. At the Tarpeian Rock. In an hour's time.”