“No, my lady. That’s all I saw or heard.” Rhoda drew a deep breath and exhaled with a sniffle, like someone who has been crying.
“Thank you, Rhoda,” I said. “This has been helpful. You can go now.”
“Do you want someone to go with you?” Julia asked.
“My friend Thais is waiting outside, my lady. She’s been sitting with me.”
“Good,” Julia said. As Rhoda stood, Julia got up and embraced her.
Aurora opened the door and closed it behind Rhoda, then sat down beside me again.
“I can’t believe that Pompeius kidnapped his own niece,” I said, “but I suspect he knows something about whatever is behind all of this. I’m not quite sure, though, how to go about questioning him without seeming to accuse him.”
“You can ask him if he has any idea who might have done it,” Tacitus said. “You don‘t have to suggest that you see any connection between the kidnapping and the body in the wall.”
“You could pay him a visit,” Aurora said, “to talk about the kidnapping and ask for his help in finding Livia.”
I nodded. “I certainly want to see his reaction when I tell him about the kidnapping.”
“Pompeia has a good reason to visit her elderly brother under these circumstances,” Aurora said, “with us to accompany her.” She pointed to herself and Julia.
“No,” I said quickly. “You women are not to get involved in this. These people are not playing a game. Do I need to remind you that they’ve killed a man already?”
Aurora touched the nick in her earlobe, a habit she has acquired when thinking. “It would be helpful to see with our own eyes how they react when they’re told and not just have a disinterested servant’s description.”
“She’s right,” Julia said. “I think it’s an excellent idea. You men never suspect that we women are capable of observing. Look at what Aurora learned from Barbatus. We can sense if there’s anything odd in the air at Pompeius’ house. Now, if your mother went with us—”
I stood up in alarm. “No! Absolutely not! Pompeia certainly has a legitimate reason for going over there, but I will not let you drag my mother into this mess.”
* * *
Even on a nice day, a closed raeda gets very warm. I opened the small window over my head, but it didn’t help. Julia said she would have let me ride with her, Plinia, and Pompeia in the other raeda—Pompeia’s open one—but she knew Pompeia wouldn’t stand for it. Only a servant like Naomi, who’s practically a sister to her mistress, gets that privilege. And I can’t ride a horse out in the fresh air, like Gaius and Tacitus and the men accompanying us. I’m crammed into this rickety old wagon with splinters in my bottom and six women—servants of Pompeia and Julia—whose names I barely know and who are only slightly less annoying than the splinters.
Maybe if I could get this hair off my neck…
As soon as I pulled my hair back, the girl sitting closest to me noticed the missing piece of my ear. Somebody always does. At least she didn’t reach up and touch it, as some people do without even asking if I mind.
“What happened to your ear?” she asked.
“A man tried to attack me,” I lied. Every time someone asks, I try to devise a new story. I’ve always loved Odysseus, that “man of many turns.” He had the scar on his leg. I wonder how many different ways he explained that.
“What happened to him?”
I leaned toward her, as if taking her into my confidence. “Let’s just say he lost something a man would consider more valuable than a piece of his ear.”
The girl’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking…aren’t you?”
She edged away from me and all the chatter in the wagon trailed off. I knew I wasn’t winning any friends, but I’ve never felt accepted among the other servants because of my mother’s relationship with Gaius’ uncle and now because others are aware of my friendship with Gaius. No one would hurt me or say anything to my face. Reprisal would come from Gaius, not me, but—
The wagon drew to a halt, jolting us into more intimate contact than any of us wanted.
“This is where Livia was kidnapped,” I heard Gaius say. He was showing the spot to Pompeia and Plinia. So we were about half an hour from Tertia’s house. It was actually Pompeius’ house, I had gathered from the conversation as we were preparing to leave. Tertia’s husband was serving on the staff of the governor of Baetica but she had stayed behind to take care of her ailing father. Although the third daughter, she was the only one who had lived to adulthood and survived childbirth, twice.
I rested a hand on my belly. How would I find the courage to tell Gaius that I was carrying his child? How would he react? I’m sure he would want to emancipate me and acknowledge the child. I could hardly imagine Livia’s reaction. On the other hand, she’s made it clear she’s not going to give him a child.…
“If any of you need to relieve yourselves,” Gaius said, putting his head in the door at the back of the raeda, “this is your chance. We’ll get underway again shortly.”
The other women piled out of the wagon and headed into the woods on either side of the road. I got out, but just to stand and stretch. I’ve heard pregnant women talk about how often they have to pee, but I hadn’t been affected in that way yet. Gaius looked down at me from his horse and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” I patted his horse and managed to rub his leg.
The rest of the trip went by quickly enough. When we arrived and sorted ourselves out, I attached myself to Gaius, with the two men he had brought with him. I knew everybody wondered why I was here, since I wasn’t a servant of any of the women.
Tertia’s steward looked dismayed when twenty people landed on his doorstep. The baskets of food we brought with us seemed to ease the worry lines on his face. We hadn’t brought any extra rooms or beds, though. I could have offered to share a bed with Gaius, just to save space, but I knew I would be crammed into a small room with two or three other women. Sitting right on the lake, the house was large by comparison with its neighbors, but nothing like our house in Rome, or even the villa at Laurentum.
The atrium was decorated with the types of frescoes one sees in any well-to-do Roman house. At regular intervals around the wall, though, were niches holding busts of members of the family, including several women. As we passed through into the garden, I noticed one, in an inconspicuous corner, of a woman identified as POMP PAUL.
“Why, Aunt Pompeia!” Tertia said as our company entered the garden where she was sitting, watching her two young boys toss a ball. “What a delightful surprise.” She stood and scanned our faces. “Did cousin Livia come back with you?”
“That’s why we’re here, dear,” Pompeia said dolefully.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m afraid Livia was kidnapped yesterday as she was leaving here.”
“Kidnapped? By the gods!” Tertia clutched her sons closely to her. “Who—”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Gaius said.
“This is my son-in-law, Gaius Pliny,” Pompeia said. “This is his friend, Cornelius Tacitus and his wife, Julia. And you know my cousin, Plinia.”
“Of course,” Tertia said, “although it has been a long time.”
Plinia nodded and offered Tertia a quick embrace. “It’s nice to see you again, my dear. And your handsome sons.”
Tertia had the boys step forward. They were sturdy children, with the black hair that seemed to characterize this family. “This is Marcus. He’s six. And this is Lucius. He’s four.”
“Pompeius is blessed to have lived to see his grandchildren,” Plinia said, rubbing each boy on the shoulder. “Blessed indeed.”
“We’ve come to tell Pompeius this difficult news about Livia,” Pompeia said, “and to see if he can tell us anything that might help us find her.”
“Well, I’m delighted to see you,” Tertia said, “but my father isn’t here.”
“We need to talk to him.” Gaius’ voice took on a new urgency. “Where is he? When will he
be back?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer either question, Gaius Pliny. He left sometime during the night while cousin Livia was here. One of our horses is gone. I don’t know where he went or when he’ll be back.”
“He didn’t say anything to anyone?”
“No. That’s what’s so odd. He didn’t take anyone with him either. No one knew he was gone until the next morning.”
“Weren’t you worried?” I asked.
“It’s not the first time he’s done something like this. I suspect he’s seeing some woman.”
“I thought he was getting old and feeble,” Pompeia said.
“Apparently not as feeble as he seemed to be,” Tertia said. “He harnessed the horse and left without anyone hearing him.”
X
Fortune is like glass—the brighter its glitter, the more easily broken.
—Publilius Syrus
There’s no way I can track him,” Aurora said as she studied the whirlwind of hoofprints around the stable. “If we had known he’d taken a horse, we could have kept ours out of here until we examined the area. This is hopeless.” In a soft voice she added, “I’m sorry, Gaius.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for. You can’t do the impossible.” I looked down the lane leading from the house to the main road. Our arrival had obliterated any trace of hoofprints that might have been left before Pompeius reached the paved main road. “Let’s go back to the house. I imagine dinner will be ready soon. We’ll spend the night and leave first thing in the morning.”
“When we go back in,” Aurora said, “take a look at the busts in the atrium. I guess they’re all members of the family.”
“I would assume so.”
“One of them is inscribed ‘Pompeia Paulina.’ Why would your mother-in-law not want to talk about her?”
“As she said the other evening, there are people that you just don’t want to be related to. If you are, you’d like for everyone to forget it, especially certain highly placed people.”
“Her brother obviously didn’t feel that way.”
“I’ll look into it. It could even be another woman by the same name and not Seneca’s wife.”
I simply didn’t know what to do. Staying here wasn’t going to get me any closer to finding the document I needed to rescue Livia. Because Pompeius had bolted the way he did and when he did, I suspected that he knew something about the kidnapping or knew who did. Tertia claimed to have no idea where he might have gone. This was not her home. She had been here only a few months, since her husband left for his province, so she was not aware of her father’s habits or his current associates. But I found it hard to imagine a man of his age carrying on with a woman.
We got back to the house as the women were finishing a quick bath. By the time Tacitus and I had walked around the atrium and then bathed, dinner—consisting mostly of the provisions we had brought—was ready. With only six of us reclining, the dining room offered plenty of space. Tertia, a very subdued Pompeia, and my mother occupied the high couch. I was given the guest of honor’s position on the middle couch, with Tacitus and Julia reclining above me. I noticed the other servant women glancing oddly at Aurora as she took her place behind me and resolved to ask her what that was about.
Conversation around the triclinium was desultory. I didn’t want to bring up the subject of Pompeia Paulina again in front of my mother-in-law. Tertia had told us everything she could about Pompeius’ business dealings, which was nothing. Their scribe was supposed to be looking through Pompeius’ records to see if he could find any reference to a collegium involving my father or a sealed document that my father might have left with Pompeius. I held out little hope that he would. We had all expressed our dismay over Livia’s kidnapping, so there was nothing new to be said about that.
As a rule I don’t drink heavily at dinner, but tonight so many things were wrong that I wanted to plunge into a bowl of wine and just forget all the unsolvable problems and unanswerable questions facing me. It didn’t help that the wine was a very good Chian.
The only topic of conversation left seemed to be the décor in the triclinium. That would have been unexceptional—garden scenes on the walls and a mosaic on the floor—had it not been for the subject of the mosaic. As Rhoda had told us, it was a human skeleton, but she had not known what she was looking at. The skeleton was decked out in a regal robe and wore the crown of the goddess Tyche/Fortuna. A meander pattern ran around the edge. Over the skeleton’s head was a quotation from Horace: “Fortune makes fools of those she favors too much.”
“Who designed the floor?” I asked Tertia.
“My father.”
“Blame my bluntness on this excellent wine, but I’ve never seen Fortuna portrayed in so gruesome a fashion. And the quotation from Horace isn’t the sort of uplifting apothegm people usually put in a decoration like this.”
“My father is very fatalistic,” Tertia said, “about daily life and about life in general.”
“He’s always been that way,” Pompeia said, “since we were children. He used to say, ‘Fortune has us by the balls, and can give us a squeeze when we least expect it.’ Of course, he is thinking of just you men.”
“That’s still his favorite expression,” Tertia said ruefully. “He wanted to have it worked into this mosaic floor, but Mother persuaded him to use that quotation from Horace instead.”
“Your mother always did have better sense than your father,” Pompeia said. “And I can say that because he is my own dear brother.”
My mother crooked her head over her shoulder to hear something that Naomi had to say, then turned back to the rest of us. “Naomi tells me there’s a phrase in one of the Jewish holy books, by a man named Isaiah, that says, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’”
“Was this Isaiah a gladiator?” Tacitus asked. “I’ve heard gladiators say pretty much the same words at their feasts the night before a bout. And Petronius has Trimalchio display a silver skeleton to the guests at his dinner in the Satyricon. The thing is strung together so he can flop it around like a child’s doll. He recites a little ditty about it.… Oh, how does it go?”
From behind me Aurora said, “Forgive me, my lord, but I can quote it.”
“Please do.”
Aurora stood like a student reciting before a class. “He says,
‘What a pitiful little wretch is man.
We’ll all be thus under death’s hand.
So let’s live well, while live we can.’”
“Yes, exactly,” Tacitus said, applauding. “I knew it was something cheerful and uplifting like that.” He raised his cup in a toast. “I guess it’s a universal sentiment.”
“And a universal fate,” I muttered to myself. But I wasn’t ready to surrender Livia to it. I drained my cup, sat up, and handed it to Aurora to refill.
She gave it back to me half-full with a disapproving look and, as she bowed her head to me, whispered, “Getting drunk isn’t going to solve anything, my lord.”
I drained the cup in a gulp and pushed it back into her hands.
* * *
The next morning I was awakened by a pounding on my door, which was in rhythm with the pounding in my head.
“Gaius,” Tacitus said through the thick wood, “we need to get going. We’re waiting for you in the stable.”
It took me a moment to recall that we had decided after dinner the previous evening that Tacitus, Aurora, and I would ride back to my villa. The key to saving Livia was a document of my father’s, and we weren’t going to find that at Pompeius’ house. Since Pompeius himself wasn’t around, there was no point in spending any more time here. My mother, Pompeia, Julia, and the servants would stay on here for a couple of more days to visit. It would be a relief to me to have them out of the way for that time.
I used a chamber pot, decided yesterday’s tunic was clean enough, and stumbled out to the stable.
“You look awful,” Tacitus said. “Are you going to be able to s
tay on a horse?”
I blinked a couple of times and looked in Aurora’s direction. “I just might need some assistance.” To me my voice seemed to slur.
Julia gave Tacitus a lingering kiss before a servant helped him mount.
I moved close to Julia and lowered my voice. “You agreed that you would try to find out anything you can about Pompeius’ activities. Do it when my mother-in-law isn’t around.”
She pulled away from me and looked up at her husband. I realized the wine must still be noticeable on my breath.
“Sometimes,” I reminded Julia without getting any closer to her, “people reveal more in a casual conversation than under direct questioning. Just keep your ears open.” I stepped on the mounting stone and got a boost from the servant.
“See if he has a personal favorite among the servant women,” Tacitus said without looking at Aurora or me.
“Well yes, that, too,” I said, settling on my horse and extending my hand to pull Aurora up behind me, to the surprise of the stable boy who was helping us. “If Pompeius returns or you learn where he might be, send a servant to notify me at once. And tell him not to spare the horse.”
My mother and Pompeia appeared at the edge of the stable yard. Pompeia’s mouth fell open at the sight of Aurora on my horse, with her arms clasped tightly around me.
“We’ll see you ladies in a few days,” I said with a wave of my hand.
My mood was no less morose than it had been at dinner last night—how could it be, if we were no closer to finding Livia?—but having Aurora’s arms around me and her body pressed against mine did make the day seem more bearable.
“You know,” Aurora said in my ear, “after seeing us like this, Pompeia probably suspects that you had Livia kidnapped.”
I grunted. “I won’t deny that the idea has crossed my mind. I will deny that I would ever do it. We shouldn’t be punished for what we think.”
* * *
I hate to see Gaius so troubled that he resorts to wine. I held him tightly and put my head on his shoulder. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you what Eustachius, the quarry owner, told me about building the wall in your house.”
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