On his own then, the old man was dragged out into the road.
‘Did they harm him?’ asked Faustus. ‘Did they knock him about?’
The witnesses said no; the attackers only surrounded him and yelled at him. He bravely stood there, giving them shirty answers. He was certainly alive, when the witnesses last saw him, because he was tied up and marched away by his assailants, back towards Rome.
I asked, ‘How exactly was he tied up?’ Ropes round his arms.
Faustus asked if the witnesses could describe him. This elicited a picture of a mature or elderly man, sturdy-looking, fit enough to walk and to seem capable of making it to Rome.
‘What was he wearing?’ A blue tunic (they settled on this after a dispute about other colours) and good boots (no contention about that). Faustus looked at me; I nodded. This all matched Strongbox Man.
‘What happened to his luggage?’ Nobody knew. The country people swore devoutly that the men from Rome must have taken everything. Faustus and I wondered. But we were never going to identify who had plundered the litter. Primus had told me his father travelled light, taking nothing of real value. We did not pursue the subject.
The litter was originally left standing by the road, though it had vanished by the next day. We showed the pieces we had recovered, with mixed reactions. Nobody wanted to commit themselves to saying these parts came from the same vehicle, lest they be accused of knowing too much.
Taking away the victim seemed strange. We rounded up helpers and conducted a search of the immediate area, looking either for a body or for indications of a grave being dug recently. We found neither. It seemed definite that Callistus Valens had been forcibly returned to Rome. Either he was murdered there, or he died of stress during or after his ordeal: the shock of the ambush, the tiring, unexpected walk in extremely hot weather. Then his attackers had disposed of his body in his family’s chest in store.
They had known about the chest, so they had known who he was. The attack and abduction had been planned.
Faustus bought rope from a man who had a table beside the road, where he sold nails and small hand tools for emergency repairs to carts. In weight and colour, the rope looked very like that I had seen binding Strongbox Man. The seller denied providing any for the assailants and maintained that he was asleep when the attack happened. Faustus only nodded grimly, then set about tying the litter parts we had salvaged to the roof of our own carpentum, aided by his driver.
We thanked everyone. Now old friends, they cheered us off.
‘Were you prepared for this?’ I asked Faustus, as we finally resumed our drive. ‘Tiberius, were you looking out for signs of the attack?’
‘I hardly dared hope to find clues. But I thought it was worth keeping an eye open. Callistus must have used this road if he was travelling to Crustumerium. That’s beyond where we’re going. It’s a long drive in one day, but doable by a fit traveller. I know this road. The bridge over the Anio seemed a good place for an ambush.’
That was when the significance struck me. ‘We are going to where you were brought up, aren’t we?’ He nodded. ‘Shall I see your old home?’
‘No.’
A monosyllable hardly answered me. I would have pressed a suspect who answered like that, but did not nag Tiberius.
After a while he opened up of his own accord, as I expected. He told me the estate where he had spent his childhood had been sold by his uncle straight after his parents died. I already knew that his father and mother had passed away within a short time of one another, when Tiberius was sixteen. For a moment I thought Tullius had been insensitive, but Tiberius assured me selling the estate had been at his own request. ‘I could never go back. Uncle Tullius wanted to wait in case I changed my mind. I insisted.’
To me, it seemed strange to give up your childhood. But I had never really had such roots and happy memories.
‘You learn to live for today,’ commented Tiberius, when I said so, ‘if yesterday becomes too painful. At sixteen, it seemed the end of the world. I never expected a tomorrow.’ Well, that was something with which I could identify. More willing to talk now, he added, ‘This is partly why Marcella Vibia complains they saw so little of me. Apart from the fact we lived on the Aventine, when other people came to the country for the summer I would stay in Rome. Tullius has a villa by the sea at Neapolis. Occasionally I join him there.’
I took this opportunity to talk to him about personal things, as we rarely did. ‘So that estate beyond Fidenae was your inheritance, or part of it?’
Tiberius chortled. ‘Checking up whether I am solvent?’
I dug him in the ribs. ‘I already know. My father gave you one of his searches.’
He turned to me. ‘So give! What does he say?’
‘Now I will tell you – but only because you mentioned Marcella Vibia. She wants you to make something of yourself. If you do try to spread your wings, wing-spreading needs collateral.’
‘I’m not short of a bean.’
‘You could be. Falco’s verdict is that your uncle has fully absorbed your inheritance into his business. He spent it on adding to his suite of warehouses and he keeps complete control.’ Tiberius nodded thoughtfully. ‘That may seem normal in a family, but will he release anything to you? You may find him tricky to deal with, should you ever want funds. Luckily, my father said if he can see the history after a cursory enquiry, the truth should be demonstrable in court. To be safe, you ought to get your hands on the old records and have copies made.’
‘I don’t envisage my uncle and me going to court!’ exclaimed Tiberius.
‘No. Avoid going to court. Father says you just need to convince Tullius you could do it.’
‘Uncle Tullius has always been generous, especially when he supported me for aedile.’
‘Still, make him acknowledge that some money is yours.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, you asked me.’
‘I did.’ At first I could not tell if Tiberius was annoyed. Then he said, ‘I agree. It’s easy to assume that one day my uncle will pass on and I shall inherit everything, so I don’t need to bother now … But I am not a complete idiot, you know.’
‘I never said you were.’
‘No, but you think Tullius has grabbed everything and only grants me small change for sundries.’
‘You never have to borrow for a bar bill … But I have no idea how you arrange your day-to-day finances. Why would I?’
‘Do you care?’
‘I care if he is cheating you. As your good friend, naturally I care.’
‘It is not the same as the non-emancipated Callisti,’ Tiberius assured me. ‘I am not his son. Uncle Tullius never adopted me – which, to be honest, makes it easier. Strictly speaking, my head of household used to be a very remote male relative on my father’s side, though even he died recently. So I am fully independent.’
‘That’s good!’ I said, sounding cheerful.
‘It is!’ he agreed meaningfully.
‘So, if you go to your uncle’s banker, does the man hand over whatever you want?’
‘Actually, yes, he does.’
‘You never ask for much, though,’ I guessed.
Suddenly Tiberius grinned. ‘Don’t be so sure! I bought a house last month.’
While I got over my surprise, he explained that during my time convalescing at the coast, he had felt at a loose end. Looking around for something to do, he saw and bought an investment property, which he intended to renovate. His uncle was as startled as I, but made no objection. It was somewhere I knew: on the Aventine, a house with a builder’s yard alongside it, in Lesser Laurel Street. A client of mine, a woman who had died, once owned it. Faustus and I still knew her heir, a cheese-maker we both patronised.
‘A hobby for you?’ I suggested.
‘Tullius saw it as that.’
‘Stretching yourself?’ I asked carefully. ‘An addition to the family business?’
‘Funnily enough, I seem to have the pr
operty deeds in my own name.’ Tiberius kept his eyes on the road ahead. ‘A little project to keep me out of trouble … Well, that is what my uncle thinks,’ he murmured.
44
The long delay at the Anio bridge had upset our plans. As we approached the small town of Fidenae, we discussed what to do. If we continued to the Vibius estate, we would arrive so late we would have to ask to stay the night. Given that we might not receive a warm welcome from Julia Optata, we decided it was best-mannered to send our driver to warn her we were coming; we would stop at an inn and travel to the house first thing the next morning.
‘Then she has time to think about it.’
‘She has time to bunk off!’ I warned.
Faustus risked sending Sextus’s letter to Julia right away. Nervous of the effect it would have, I asked if he had seen it.
‘Yes, he showed me. It’s very bland. Not what I would write to you!’
‘You did write to me.’ We had exchanged brief notes a couple of times while I was at the coast.
‘What did you think?’ He was like a lad, flirting.
‘I thought you composed your words too carefully – as if you feared my entire family would read it.’
‘Did they? Sneak into your bedroom and look under your pillow?’
I answered him snootily: ‘I have trained my sisters to be too scared of me; my brother would not be interested. My father leaves that sort of thing to my mother. My mother is beyond reproach, a condition not to be trusted, so I keep my letters in a locked box.’
He grinned. ‘Ah, you kept them, then!’
By that time I was too tired from travelling to contrive a good riposte.
We had to stay at a Travellers’ Rest, one that ever since has been known to us as the Cow with No Tail. That is the polite version. It had a real, more mundane name, the Mansio at Fidenae or similar. It was an ordinary mansio, indeed, a no-star mansio of such miserable ordinariness that it had no baths, no real kitchen, one dormitory, with six hard beds where we and several snoring travellers off the Via Salaria had to sleep in our clothes on top of rough covers with no pillows, trying to ignore each other. That was made easier by only having one very small window so it was quite dark, though very hot. Faustus put me in a corner, with himself on the outside in case any of the lumps in the other beds attempted molestation. After an evening at that mansio, they were too gloomy to try.
We had foolishly eaten there. A cauldron of vegetable water had had a lamb knuckle waved over it, with results that caused my still-weak insides to protest. Faustus said even he had indigestion. Once he realised I was feeling ill, which had made me anxious, he pushed his bed up against mine. I was curled up. Despite the suffocating heat, I was shivering. He wrapped himself round me, holding me still, sharing his warmth. ‘Don’t start anything!’
Only he could have said that. Only I could have found myself the last chaste man in Rome. Why, then, did I think he was close to giggling?
After a time, I demanded quietly, ‘Why not?’ Silence. ‘Why don’t you want me?’
On the back of my neck I felt hot breath as Tiberius muttered his reply. Somewhat intense, it seemed to be, ‘I don’t want a precious memory to be tied for ever to a sordid inn in a tiresome town that I meant never to come back to on, an errand that makes me uneasy, with three hairy nail-sellers from Noricum listening in.’
They were certainly nail-sellers: they had spent the whole evening discussing among themselves the best way to sell Norican nails. My companion had politely gone over for a few words, in the course of which he somehow obtained a bag clinking with samples. I queried this. He seemed very pleased with his free gift and said good nails always come in. I mused to myself on how, unknown to me before, the aedile Faustus was a typical man.
Now, despite the Norican presence, Tiberius whispered, ‘Never, ever believe I do not want you, Albia.’
Accepting the situation, I relaxed in his grip. With nothing else worth doing, we both fell fast asleep.
The Norican nailers must have left and hit the road again before dawn. I think of them quite kindly now.
When a trickle of light finally forced its way through the tiny window, we awoke. During the night we must have adjusted position, maybe more than once. Faustus was now lying on his back, with me against his side. He still had an arm round me. It felt natural and familiar, as if we had been sleeping together in one bed for years.
‘Stop thinking.’
‘What?’
‘Every time a busy little thought wafts through your brain, your eyes move about and your lashes tickle.’
Everything seemed to tickle him. He was as ticklish as a baby. Hair, eyelashes … His responses to me seemed ridiculously acute.
The room was quiet. We were the only people left. I fidgeted, scratching a forearm. Creatures who lived in mattress straw had emerged during the darkness and eaten me. Tiberius stilled my wild scraping with a light hand on my wrist, stopping me drawing blood. He spat on a finger and applied it to my weals, so the drying spittle cooled the irritation.
I needed to stretch and must have edged closer against his hip. More of a squeeze than a movement. I never started anything. It was him, all his fault, all his choice.
He turned. Now he was lying over me, extremely close. In the dim light, his familiar face seemed soft and boyish after sleep. I had seen him absorbed yesterday, but nowhere near as single-minded as he was now. He sighed, but if it was resignation, he had given in and welcomed his decision.
‘Tiberius—’
‘Don’t talk.’
I know people who would think this demanded half a scroll of comic dialogue as in a Greek drama. I, however, did not talk.
Tiberius dropped his head and began kissing me. We had kissed once before, pretending it was for disguise, once when on surveillance. The taste of him was just the same, but this was deliberate, him choosing me, me openly showing my response to him.
Whatever he had intended, or had not intended, neither of us could help ourselves any longer. We hardly changed position. We never undressed. The Cow with No Tail was not a place for nakedness. We made necessary adjustments, then held our breath for what would happen very fast and with profound intensity.
My waiting was over. Tiberius Manlius Faustus was making his move.
45
Our driver had chosen to remain at the Vibius estate last night. He had viewed the mansio stabling and guessed the rest. The stalls were not good enough for the wonderful mules of Tullius; the facilities for humans, where they existed, would disgust him. He came back for us early enough. If he thought us strangely silent, he made no comment.
He had delivered her husband’s letter for Julia Optata last night, though had not personally seen her. That remained for us. She was a contained, dark-haired woman, still youthful, although she must be closer in age to Sextus than wives tended to be. She was the oldest of Julia Verecunda’s children, the first daughter to have been subjected to the mother’s hateful régime. She was plainly dressed, perhaps because she was in the country, though since we were coming she had put on earrings and a single-strand silver necklace.
People had called her quiet, and also sweet. I saw nothing of that. I found her guarded, and generally a blank.
There was a physical likeness to the sister I had met, Julia Laurentina. For reasons I could not explain, I liked the wife of Firmus better, even though she had been so aggressive: Julia Laurentina had seemed more honest. This secretive sister greeted Tiberius with a cool nod, then viewed the pair of us suspiciously.
It may not be tactful to visit a woman with marital difficulties when you are dreamy with new-found sexual fulfilment. We could not help that.
The way Julia played it was that she had come to the country because of her anxious sister, who never appeared. I did believe she existed: she had had her baby; we could hear it crying. I worked out what was going on: ‘Your sister has problems with her husband? She has left her marital home and she does not want her man to find her?�
��
Julia Optata nervously confirmed this, begging us not to reveal to anyone that her sister was there.
Quarrels can happen during pregnancies. I don’t mean, as male doctors have it, that women are full of turbulent emotions as their poor hysterical wombs expand. My work had taught me that impending children make men think hard about their lives. Not always for good reasons.
If the new mother’s husband had reacted to fatherhood badly, it would explain all the mystery surrounding Julia Optata’s exodus. They did not want him to know where his wife was. It would explain why the pregnant sister had fled to the Vibius estate. If the husband had behaved really badly, Julia and Sextus were giving her a safe and secret refuge.
Questioned by Faustus, Julia Optata said her sister’s name was Julia Pomponia and the husband was Aspicius. Faustus did not know the man. Julia Optata lowered her voice and confided that, some years before, this sister had abandoned an approved first marriage, and shocked everyone by running away with somebody of a very much lower social status. What Laia Gratiana would snobbishly call ‘a bit of rough’, I supposed.
He turned out to be too rough. The couple never had enough money and Aspicius was a villain. Julia Pomponia’s relatives had tended to gloat, though one or two were helpful – but not her mother.
I asked, was this why Julia Verecunda had no idea she was to gain a grandchild? ‘Presumably she was not best pleased when one of her daughters went, let us say, down-market?’ Optata agreed. Pomponia was estranged from their mother. ‘What is her rough husband – a soldier? Don’t tell me she fell for that terrible cliché, a gladiator?’
Julia Optata looked shocked. ‘No, he works in decorative crafts!’ She came clean: ‘Actually I’m afraid Aspicius is a hod-carrier on building sites.’
I managed not to snort at her snobbery. ‘What’s wrong with an honest job?’ One thing that might be wrong was that the couple could not afford a child on a hod-carrier’s wages. It’s poorly paid, fitful work, depending on who gets hired for the day. ‘I guess your brick-toting brother-in-law is good-looking?’ Julia blushed and said yes, you could say that. But he toted not brick, but plaster, for frescos.
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