Postumus gazed back. Many people found his stare disconcerting. Even in my weary state, I found amusement in watching how Andronicus would react. Both were used to taking a specific position, observing everybody else disdainfully.
"She has to take me home now." Postumus claimed me casually, but effectively.
"Must you?" Andronicus was pleading in his most winning way. My heart fluttered. He knew how to make his attentions fervent. He knew, too, how to seduce and disorientate a woman who thought she had decided she wanted to be left alone. "Since when have you been a pedagogue, dragging little pupils through the streets?"
"Afraid I must."
"But what about me?"
"Andronicus, he is eleven. It's getting dark; he cannot be out on his own on the Aventine. He would frighten the muggers. Either he stays the night with me here-" I could see that would not fit whatever plans my friend had "-or I have to take him."
There was no reason why Andronicus should not have walked down the hill with us, then come back with me. Nobody suggested that.
Instead he demanded abruptly, "What was so urgent, to send you chasing after Venusia?"
Oh Juno. Not here, not now. "I had to ask if she saw something."
"Any luck?" challenged Andronicus. I was conscious of Postumus assessing my friend like a scientific experiment put in front of him by his tutor (a cheap academic, but sincere and whom, you guessed, Postumus derided).
"No, none."
"So where is she?"
"Some place in the country. Do you need to know?"
"Of course not," Andronicus replied, so immediately and so reasonably I felt chastened. "We seem to be having an argument, Albia."
Though he spoke lightly, and wore his open-eyed innocent expression, Andronicus was tense. The people I knew called this kind of talk a discussion. Arguments were when you threw dinner bowls, first making sure they were full. Mostly we had those with bad-tempered toddlers. There had been many with Postumus.
"So your trip was pointless?" Andronicus asked, when I failed to respond to the argument comment. I wasn't ready for discord tonight.
"No, but it made me sure I need to see Faustus."
"I told you not to." While I was taking that in, Andronicus insisted, "You should do what I say!"
He should have known better. Anyone could see I was tired and tetchy, but in any case that was a bad move. "Because you are the man?
"I am not your head of household," he conceded, as if making a belated attempt to cool the tension. I let the moment pass. Or so it seemed. When men start handing out orders to me, I can be a good actress.
Postumus slipped one hand into mine. That was unusual. I saw what he was up to. He loved a stand-off. He loved to stir one. My brother spoke up with his eerie self-assurance: "Flavia Albia's head of household is our father, Marcus Didius Falco."
With what seemed a single breath, Andronicus became all silki-ness again. "Of course he is, little man, and we must certainly get you home to him! You go, Albia."
"If our father dies," Postumus announced, as if he had been working this out, "Albia's head of household will be me!"
That was too much. With a wince at me, Andronicus went off, swinging down the alley, after saying significantly, "Well, I may come along again later!"
I made no comment.
"You ought to stay with us tonight," my potential head of household instructed me. As a go-between in a love affair, Postumus made an efficient hatchet-man.
I left the luggage with Rodan and set off with the boy. I started at a fast march, but slowed down. We had to watch our step. In our absence, the Cerialia ceremonies must have continued on a daily basis; wherever a procession had snaked around the Aventine, remains of the nuts thrown at bystanders-Ceres' bounty-still lurked on the sidewalks, ready to make the unwary twist an ankle. I was wearing the wrong shoes. Even my brother was so tired, his feet were all over the place and I had to steady him when he stumbled. The last thing I wanted was for him to drop the ferret, and for us to have to persuade the slinky beggar to come out of a drain.
When we arrived home, my brother broke away from me, and scampered ahead into the house shouting cheerily, "Guess what! Ferret killed Diddle and he's eaten her!" He knew my sisters would start wailing.
He was eleven. Just a child. He seemed wise beyond his years, yet sometimes we overestimated him. Half the time he did not understand the significance of things he said and did. Never try to reason with a boy; it's pointless. We, who knew and tried to love him, accepted his eccentricities and even his rudeness. But other people could take him badly amiss.
I wished I did not at that moment remember the oyster-shucker, Lupus. It reminded me that what a boy says or does too casually to the wrong person may have terrible results.
I was grateful that my own little brother lived a sheltered life, kept in at home. He was never out on the streets where mysterious attackers prowled.
XLII
I could have stayed the night with my folks, as Postumus had slyly suggested, but I was not in the mood for company-theirs or anyone else's.
Andronicus did return to Fountain Court. It was almost as if he knew I preferred not to see him. I felt he was trying to impose his will, never a good trick for a man who wanted to impress me. I was in my apartment, the one on the second floor. I had not even undressed, but was lying on my bed as if I expected more to happen that night.
In Rome there would be other women lying in the centres of beds alone while men in separate rooms cursed them for it. One of the rites of the Cerialia required that as a gesture to chastity, women should preserve themselves from any male touch; to make sure, men had to sleep elsewhere. Of course this was a rite for the rich. The poor did not own enough beds.
I had heard that ladies who stayed celibate for Ceres drank a concoction of barley and pennyroyal to suppress their sexual appetite. Rumour had it, drugs were incorporated too, since grains and simple hedgerow herbs were not enough, supposedly, to overcome female lust. I needed neither herbs nor drugs. Nothing beats seeing a man in a new light to kill your passion.
Did you know, even in low doses, the oil of pennyroyal is poisonous? People happily cook with it, or make infusions, yet midwives are said to use it to bring about abortions. And it can kill. Was the mystery killer using some similar, readily available household poison? Or was he in a position to access something more specialised?
So, true to his promise, Andronicus returned. I wasn't surprised.
How many times do women lie awake, longing for a lover to appear, only to be disappointed? I had done it. This requires a degree of excitement about a relationship that I knew I had abruptly lost. Somewhere on the road out to Aricia, or returning home today, the Via Appia had claimed all my joy in the archivist. Tonight, I genuinely wanted to be chaste. It had nothing to do with religious observance, but reflected a cold drench of sense. I had lost the urge. Our rift was permanent. I would never again want Andronicus to touch me.
Did he know? Would he accept it? Was he a man who would let a disaffected lover go?
I heard him banging and shouting to be admitted, then Rodan growled in answer. I crept to the door, opening it quietly and not making my presence known. If the archivist gained entrance to the building, I was ready to press the door closed quickly and bolt it, then tremble on the inside, hiding from him.
It is odd how it happens: that subtle slither from being entirely wrapped up with a man, into not wanting him.
"Orders is orders," Rodan was maintaining, like some officious clerk. That was a change, and utter hypocrisy. With him, orders were for forgetting or ignoring. "The owners of this building are very particular. Once I lock up the grille, I can't let anybody in."
"What if I lived here?"
"But you don't, do you?" Sometimes I forgot how Rodan had spent many years as a landlord's enforcer. He knew how to remain unmoved, and indeed do it with a low-level threat of violence that would drain anyone's courage.
"I'm sick of this!" Even A
ndronicus sounded ready for a fight. I was against that happening. Rodan might be a failed gladiator, but he was still big enough to inflict damage; in pain, the archivist would probably turn vicious. Being selfish, I did not want to have to find a new porter, if Andronicus managed to hurt Rodan. He was cheap, too stupid to rob us, and had been known to the family for many years; who likes change?
Andronicus was still ranting. "First the woman is continually missing, then she thinks she can run rings around me-I'd like to kill that pestilential brat she had with her."
"Better not try it." That must have been the tone Rodan once used for putting frighteners on slow-paying tenants. With the grille safely between them, he was happy to play tough. It was a slow, easy offer to hook someone's organs out of them via an unusual orifice. Like an Egyptian embalmer-but with you still alive-at least you would be when Rodan started.
"I am not being made a fool of-somebody will pay for the inconvenience!"
"Send your bill!" jeered Rodan.
"You or her! It's all the same to me who suffers." Andronicus' Parthian shot was intended to chill. I could not help wondering if he guessed I might be listening.
When I was sure he had gone, I emerged from the shadows. In the entrance lobby, after I walked down, a couple of crude oil lamps at floor level shed a sickly glow in feeble patches. It was enough for me to make out Rodan as he stood, looking out through the grille, ox-like but flabby in his ragged one-armed tunic. He heard me and turned, showing no surprise.
We exchanged a long look.
"Thank you, Rodan. Do not let him in," I said quietly. "If ever he comes looking for me, say I am not here. Make any excuse."
Rodan said nothing; he just nodded.
I went back to my rooms. I made sure all the doors were barred. I was not frightened exactly, yet my heart was hammering.
It might be a difficult task to free myself from this situation safely. But I would have to do it.
XLIII
Next morning I wanted to be out of the house, somewhere people could not find me.
I went to the baths, partly to do yet more thinking. That never works. Physically and mentally I was so drained by yesterday, my mind just drifted.
Out of it did come two benefits. One, I was clean. An informer should start a hard day feeling neat. Two, I revived enough to decide on action. I dispensed with the interminable circles of speculation about the killing of Ino, Venusia's position, the crazy connections to the aedile and his long-ago adultery. Instead, I would use the informing trick that rarely fails: go back and re-check every event where questions still remained.
I went first to see Cassiana Clara. She could clear up immediately Andronicus' claim that the aedile had tried to assault her. But Fate was against me. She was not at home. I learned she had gone out of Rome (another fugitive?). Clara had not taken refuge in a shrine, but was staying at an estate belonging to her future second husband, at the seaside, way south in Campania.
I could only wonder whether this was to allow her to get to know her fiance, or if it had some darker explanation. It was definitely too far for me to travel, and I felt the location could have been chosen for that reason. Nobody at the house would tell me more. I was refused admittance to ask questions of her parents. I could only curse the door porter, a bland functionary who hooked thumbs in his belt in a way that said he was used to being cursed and wouldn't give a fig for it, even if figs had been in season.
I had more success with my next attempt. I looped back over the Hill, using up more shoe leather as I made my way to the Fourth Cohort's station house; luckily I had made it a day for sensible shoes. I wanted to plead with the vigiles to let me interview Celendina's son, Kylo. That was assuming he had not been put before a magistrate and sent to an appalling death for matricide.
They still had him. In fact, it looked as if any case against him for killing his mother had been allowed to drop quietly. Hard men have to have a break from being bullies. Kylo was the latest fledgling sparrow who had tumbled into the exercise yard. He had been absorbed into the vigiles. They laughed at him, but they fed him, housed him, let him hang around on the fringes when groups were lolling in the yard. He even went out to bars with them.
If they could slim him down and make him mobile, he might even become a firefighter, though that was a long way off. Meanwhile, the men were using Kylo as a trusty, guarding the bare cells where they locked up temporary prisoners. The large young man looked more threatening than he probably was, and he devoted himself to the task solemnly. He was well able to subdue drunks and hush indignant arsonists. If the vigiles chose to foster him, it was his best chance. So long as no interfering official who needed something to do raised the issue, Kylo now had a job for life here. In a crude way, the vigiles were his replacement family.
They didn't care if I interviewed him. We sat on the ground together in the inner courtyard. One of the vigiles oversaw the interview, squatting on an upturned bucket, taking no notice, picking his nose. Morellus sauntered up, however; he propped himself against a pillar and pretended to be whittling a stick. Anything I learned, he was determined to know too.
Kylo's treatment here had transformed him from the terrified prisoner I saw first. The young man had settled and was more confident among people.
I spoke very gently. "Kylo, you do remember your mother, don't you?" He nodded. A slight frown of perturbation creased his forehead, nothing serious. "Do you think about her?" He dribbled a bit but wiped it on his arm. "She would like to think you do. You must miss her badly. I met her, you know. We had a lovely chat at somebody's funeral. I thought she was a wonderful lady."
Kylo was looking uncomfortable but, so far, he understood he ought to talk to me, and not scarper. I carried on, keeping my voice low.
"You know who I am, don't you? I am called Flavia Albia." He stared at the ground. "You saw me once before, Kylo; I came and talked to you. And your new friends here in the vigiles all know me and are friends with me too. But we had never met at the time your mother died, had we? So when something happened to her, I am wondering why you said my name to people?"
Kylo suddenly looked straight in my direction. "Do you live here?" It seemed he could talk, and perfectly well, when he wanted to. I had no difficulty understanding him.
"No, Kylo, I have my own place. Why?"
"I was supposed to fetch you."
"When your mother was poorly?"
"She lay down. She said, 'I'm feeling funny, Kylo. Kylo, fetch Flavia Albia'-but I didn't know where I had to go."
"Kylo, this is important. Did your mother say why she wanted me?" He looked confused. "Kylo, had she mentioned meeting me that afternoon?"
He pondered. I waited quietly. "She always told me about where she had been out. She told it like a story."
"So what was this story, Kylo? Can you remember?"
"Oh I like stories. I always remember them."
"I like stories too. Will you tell me this one?"
He seemed wary to begin with, but my smiling stillness reassured him. Kylo sat up and in a rather formal manner related what happened, as if he was a street-corner entertainer reciting folk tales for money in the hat. He made little gestures to indicate new speakers and even altered his voice accordingly. "She said, 'I met that investigator. Nice little thing. Better than I expected.'" On the sidelines, I heard Morellus snort at that. Kylo glared at him as if he was a naughty child disturbing the class. "I answered, 'Oh, that is interesting, Mother.' Then she told me, 'When I was leaving, some man was waiting on the road by the tombs. He asked me, "Did you see Flavia Albia at the Salvidia funeral?" but I didn't like him so I told him to get lost. He really put my back up, Kylo, I really told him!' That," said Kylo, "is the whole story my mother told me that day."
I tried not to feel shocked by the connection to me. "I bet when your mother decided she didn't like someone, she could really let rip!"
Kylo and I laughed, thinking about it.
"And Kylo, one last thing. When your
mother started feeling funny, did she tell you she thought someone had done something to her?"
"Oh yes."
"Who did she say, Kylo?"
"Am I supposed to tell you?"
"Yes, please."
"She said, 'It must have been him, the nasty little bugger. He jabbed me. The one who asked me if I had seen Albia.' Was it that man?" asked Kylo.
"Yes. I'm afraid it most likely was, Kylo. But don't worry. We are going to catch him and punish him."
"The nasty little bugger!" Kylo roared at the top of his voice, making us all jump.
"The nasty little bugger," I agreed, much more quietly.
Morellus bestirred himself and walked me to the gate. "Worried?"
"Not me."
"Don't be brave, this is serious, Albia. He wanted you. Celendina may have saved your life that day."
"At the price of her own."
"So yes, it's serious. You must know him. Why would some perverted bastard want to find you, Albia?"
"I don't know." I had an idea. "Well, look after the son carefully, Morellus."
"If we put him behind bars, I'd be afraid you would sneak along and set him free."
"Have your little dig!"
"You would do it."
"Oh, I would."
We stood for a moment, both thinking about other things.
This did not provide identification. Kylo himself had not seen the man. But this showed motivation. A psychopathic killer asked a simple question-"Did you see Albia there?" Celendina disliked his manner. Alone, on a road outside a necropolis at dusk, her first reaction might well have been alarm. Maybe he was too persistent, with a madman's arrogance and urgency. She snapped. So he was rebuffed with a tart answer by a tired old woman, anxious about the son she had left alone.
"Celendina took a shine to you, Albia. She tried to protect you."
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