“Ah, there you are at last,” Durus snarled at me. “This poor boy’s been sick all night. He’s as weak as a kitten now, just look at him. It’s your fault, you or your staff. Someone’s poisoned him.”
“Poisoned? Of course we haven’t,” I snapped back. His anger was making me angry too, and I made an effort to stay calm. “Look, I’m sorry he’s poorly. This sort of attack is horrible. But surely it’s just an ordinary stomach upset, the kind of unlucky mishap that can hit anyone. It’s really unpleasant for the person who’s got it, but there’s no question of poison.”
“What else can it be? He was fine until he got here. It must be something he’s eaten, and the food came from your kitchen.”
“You cooked his food yourself. You made a point of it, you even brought the bull’s meat with you. Perhaps it had gone bad on your journey?”
“No, it was perfect. Your cook tried some, ask him. But he or his people prepared the vegetables and baked the bread and the cakes.”
“We all ate those. Are you suggesting all the food was poisoned?”
“Of course not, but there was something wrong with some of it. There must have been.” He glanced down at Ferox. “He was in peak condition when we got here yesterday. One meal and a few mugs of beer, and he’s half dead. I seriously doubt whether he can fight tomorrow.”
The gladiator stirred for the first time. “I can fight. I will fight.” His voice was weak, but his words were strong. “I’ve never missed a bout yet, and nobody’s going to accuse me of trying to get out of this one. I can’t have people saying I’ve lost my nerve.”
“Nobody will,” Durus reassured him. “I’ll see to it there’ll be no questioning your courage. And if someone has deliberately tried to put you out of action and you’re too sick to face the Lion, everyone will understand. That’s what I think has happened. This local Lion has a lot of supporters, including here at the Oak Tree, I’ve no doubt. My guess is someone saw you and realised that their own lad doesn’t have a cat’s chance of beating you…so they decided to give him a helping hand.”
Ferox gave a kind of growl. “If someone’s tried to poison me, I’ll kill the swine with my bare hands.” He swung his feet to the floor and stood up, glaring round the room as if he wanted an opponent to take on there and then. “I still intend to fight tomorrow. So let’s get moving.”
“Good boy,” the trainer said. “But we’ll have to see. I won’t have you risking yourself if you’re not fit. Now drink some more of your water.”
“Water’s no good. Get me some wine, that’ll ease my guts.”
Durus shook his head. “You know the rules. No wine. Water’s what you need.”
“Get me some wine!” Ferox looked like a fighter then, even in his weakened state, and Durus backed down.
“All right, all right, just this once. But I’m not leaving you alone here. You may still be in danger.” He went to the door and called their servant, who was waiting just outside. “Fetch some of the wine we brought with us. I’m not letting him touch any food or drink from this place.”
“But you surely don’t think…?”
Durus interrupted me. “By the gods, you’ll be sorry for this. Trying to hurt my gladiator! Your poxy mansion won’t get another customer ever again.”
I kept my temper, but it was an effort. “Nobody’s trying to hurt him. He’s got a horrible stomach upset, either from your meat, or more likely it’s a sickness he could have caught anywhere. For all I know half the people here are down with it too.”
“You think so? That’s easily proved. If other folk here have the same symptoms, maybe I’ll have to accept that this is an illness, not deliberate poisoning. But frankly I don’t believe that. After all I’m fit enough, and so are you and your sister. But then you’re not due to fight in the arena tomorrow.”
“That’s outrageous!” Albia objected.
“Prove it. Go and find out whether anyone else has been ill overnight.”
We hurried out, glad to be away from his terrible accusation, not to mention the foul stench and the sad sight of a magnificent athlete laid low. And I was worried by Durus’ threats. If I couldn’t find out what had made Ferox ill, and the trainer started spreading rumours that we poisoned our customers, we were in deep trouble.
We summoned the bar servants into the empty bar-room, and discovered they were all fit and well, except for a few sore heads from over-indulgence last night. They were all concerned about poor Ferox, and none of them had any idea what could be wrong with him. I didn’t mention the trainer’s theory, but I realised I must start considering it seriously. Suppose he was right? Suppose someone at the Oak Tree, staff or customer, had decided to try to make Ferox lose at the games? Perhaps someone with a large bet on the Lion of Brigantia? No, it just wasn’t believable. And yet…
Albia and I went into the kitchen. Everything seemed normal there, all the servants busy getting breakfast ready, the room full of the wonderful early-morning smell of new bread. Everyone stopped as we entered, and Cook came over, frowning. “This is a bad business. They’re saying that trainer thinks his boy has been poisoned. In his dinner, if you please. In other words he’s accusing me!”
“He’s accusing all of us,” I said, “if that’s any comfort. Of course it’s nonsense. But if he goes all round Eburacum saying it…We must discover what’s really happened. I’ve been assuming Ferox is suffering from a bad stomach sickness, and I’ve been hoping some others might have gone down with it too. Well, not hoping, exactly, but you know what I mean.”
He nodded. “The sort of trouble that if one person gets it, everyone does. None of my lot have had it.”
“You’re sure?” Albia glanced round the room at the kitchen boys and girls. “Let’s be clear: have any of you been ill overnight?”
They all shook their heads, and Cook said, “Gavo complained of stomach pains first thing this morning, said he couldn’t work in here because the food smells made him queasy. That was just a hangover, though. I’ve sent him to help in the vegetable garden. That’ll teach him. Everyone else is fine.”
“Well, then,” I said, “we’re back to what the Wild Man had for dinner.”
“Or to drink,” Cook suggested. “He was on the beer, wasn’t he?”
“He was, but not much, and anyway lots of other customers drank beer too. Ferox had bull’s meat, which nobody else did. Could there have been anything wrong with that? The trainer said you tasted it, Cook.”
“I did, just before supper, I was asking Durus about the fancy herbs in the sauce. He said would I like to try some. It seemed all right to me. I mean, as all right as bull’s meat ever is. And I’m feeling fine.”
“Nobody else tried the beef?”
“No, Durus was guarding it like a purse of gold coins.”
But I noticed one of the girls looking uneasy, and I spoke to her directly. “Did you have some, Crispa?”
“Not me, Mistress,” she answered, a little too virtuously.
“Then who? Come on, girl, this is important.”
“Gavo did,” she admitted.
“Gavo?” The boy with the stomach pains. Gods, sometimes I’m so slow I’d have trouble catching a tortoise. “Go and fetch him, please, Crispa.”
He came in looking pale but not really ill. He was one of the brightest of the kitchen-boys, and he gave me and Albia a rueful smile. “I’m afraid I’m in trouble for eating a bit of the gladiator’s food. Only I’ve never tasted bull’s meat, and the Wild Man had all he wanted. The trainer brought the pot back in here after their supper, and there was a bit left in it, and he said to throw it out, but I thought that was a waste.”
“What did it taste like?” I asked. “Did you think there was anything wrong with it?”
“Not exactly wrong, but sort of funny. I suppose it was all the herbs in the sauce. I didn’t like it much, really. I only had on
e spoonful. I gave the rest to the black cat, but she didn’t like it either, so we did throw it out in the end. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any harm by it.”
“Luckily for you, no great harm was done. But I believe it was the meat that has made the Wild Man ill, and that’s why it made you feel ill too.”
He frowned. “Could be, I suppose. I just thought I’d had too much beer. I wasn’t anything like as bad…they say he nearly died. I just had gut-ache and felt a bit sick.”
“But you only had a small taste. The Wild Man had a bowlful.”
Cook said, “Still, it didn’t hurt me, did it? I ate a good couple of spoonfuls. Why didn’t it make me feel bad?”
Suddenly I saw the answer. “Because the meat was all right before the meal, but not after.”
Albia said slowly, “So if poison really was added, it was during the meal itself. Who could have got at the pot of beef after it left here?”
Cook scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Nobody except the trainer. He served them both in the private dining-room. He wouldn’t even have their own servant there.”
“Did the trainer eat the meat too?” I asked.
“No idea,” Cook answered. “The vegetables were in a separate dish. Maybe he didn’t touch the meat. Because he’d tampered with it? No, look, that’s a daft idea. Why would Durus poison his fighter, who was about to win a very important bout?”
“Then there must have been someone else involved. My guess is the servant. Does anyone know where he spent last evening?”
Gavo said, “He told us his boss had given him the evening off, and he asked where he could get a beer and a game of dice. I took him over to the stables to eat with the horse-boys, and he must have stayed there till bedtime, because he never came near the kitchen again.”
“Which means,” I said, “that if anybody really did poison that meat—and I still don’t know if I believe it—then there’s only one man it could have been.”
“Two,” Albia corrected. “It’s true Durus could have wanted to kill the Wild Man, though the gods alone know why. But what if Ferox wanted to poison Durus? He put something in the meat, but accidentally got the bowls mixed up and…”
“Oh, come on now, Albia. If you decide to poison someone, you don’t accidentally get the bowls mixed up. And I don’t believe Ferox would poison Durus. He needs him.”
She nodded. “They need one another. You’d think so, anyway. But I was watching them in the bar, and they didn’t seem to be all that friendly together. Perhaps they’d fallen out.”
“I noticed that too. They were hardly on speaking terms. I thought it was just that Durus was stopping Ferox from drinking too much, and making him go to bed alone.”
The barmaid Pluma came in just then. “Please, Mistress, Durus says he and the Wild Man are leaving very soon.”
“Already? Ferox is fit enough to travel?”
“He says so, although if you ask me he’s still very weak. But he’s had a hot bath, he’s getting dressed, and he insists on setting off as soon as he can, because he means to fight tomorrow.”
“Right. I’ll come and see them off.” We walked out into the empty hallway. “Albia, will you come with me? I’d like a witness. I don’t think it’ll be a very friendly interview.”
“Of course I’ll come. Will you tell him what we’ve found out? That it was definitely the meat that caused Ferox to be ill?”
“I certainly will. But whether I dare go one stage further and tell him I suspect he might have poisoned it himself…what do you think?”
“Please, Mistress.” I hadn’t noticed that Pluma was still in the hall. She was shifting from foot to foot, looking worried. “I don’t want to speak out of turn, but there’s something not right.”
“What is it?” I remembered suddenly that Pluma was the girl Durus had taken to bed last night.
“I was with Durus when he heard the Wild Man had been taken ill. And, Mistress, you just said you suspect Durus poisoned the Wild Man’s meat.” She took a deep breath. “I think you’re right”
“Why?” I felt sudden rising excitement. Were we at last getting to the truth?
“Something he said which didn’t mean anything to me last night, but it does now. He was pretty far gone when we went to bed. Some men get happier when they’re in drink, but he was the sort that gets grumpier.”
“He seemed fairly grumpy to begin with,” Albia commented.
“Yes, he was. I felt a bit sorry for him, with Ferox getting all the attention, so I did my best to brighten him up. But he just got more miserable. He kept on complaining how he had no money, he was in debt, the great lord who owns Wild Man never paid his bills, he worked so hard and yet nobody appreciated him. I tried to cheer him up, saying what a brilliant fighter Wild Man is, and how they’d make a fortune at Eburacum. And Durus said, ‘Oh yes, after Eburacum everything will be fine. I’ll have money enough to get out of the fight game altogether then. And listen, don’t bother betting on Ferox, girl. He isn’t going to tame any lions.’”
We must have looked sceptical, because she went on quickly. “I couldn’t believe it either. I thought I must have heard wrong. I started to ask him what he meant, and he sort of pulled up short, as if he’d said too much, and told me he was just a silly drunken old fool and to take no notice. But he did say it.”
Albia frowned. “But surely he said it because Ferox was ill and far too weak to fight properly.”
“No, that’s the whole point. This was before he heard Ferox was poorly. It wasn’t till later on that their boy came in and told him Wild Man was in trouble.”
“And then what happened?” I could hardly get the words out.
“I offered to stay and help, but he gave me a silver piece and told me to run away and say nothing to anyone about his drunken nonsense. And I thought that’s what it was. Only now I think different.”
“By the gods,” I said, “well done, Pluma. That’s the missing piece in the mosaic. Durus poisoned the meat…but not to kill Ferox, only to make him so weak that he can’t defeat the Lion.”
It was Pluma’s turn to look sceptical. “He’s trained a winning fighter, and now he wants to make him lose? What for?”
“For money,” I answered. “Suppose, despite all that boasting in the bar, Durus has his doubts about whether Ferox really can beat the Lion? He can’t admit them, of course, but he’s afraid his fighter might lose. He’s desperate for cash, and he can only make money by betting on a winner—a certain winner. So he’s decided to make certain the Lion will win.”
We all stood silent and shocked for a few heartbeats. Eventually Albia exclaimed, “What a dreadful thing to do! How could he?”
“Quite easily, I’d say, if he’s ruthless enough. And if he’s sure the Wild Man will fight however ill he is, rather than pull out and risk being called a coward.”
“He won’t pull out,” Albia said. “And if he fights, he’ll be killed. It’s horrible.”
“Unless the spectators feel generous and allow him to live, even if the Lion wins,” Pluma suggested. “It can happen.”
“It’s unlikely in Eburacum, though. The place will be packed with the Lion’s supporters. No, Durus is sending Ferox to his death.”
The door from the guest wing opened behind us, and we turned to find Durus and Ferox standing there. They were both blank-faced, but somehow I had the feeling they hadn’t just arrived on the threshold. We hadn’t heard them. Had they heard us?
Ferox still looked ill. His skin was greyish, his eyes were sunken, and he leaned on a stick. But at least he was standing up.
“I’m glad to see you on your feet again, Ferox,” I said.
“I’m sure you are!” the trainer sneered. “Not to mention relieved that you haven’t killed him. It’s a tribute to the boy’s courage that he’s ready to travel today. Whether he’ll be in a fit state to fight
tomorrow, we’ll just have to see.”
“I’ve told you I’ll fight,” Ferox snapped. “So let’s get started.”
“All right, we’re going. And, Aurelia Marcella, I hope you’re not expecting us to pay any bills.”
“No, there’ll be no bills.”
“Good. Because you’re responsible for what’s happened to Ferox. I hope he can fight tomorrow, but if he doesn’t perform at his best, we’ll know who to blame. And we’ll make sure everyone else knows too. You’ll have no reputation at all left by the time I’ve finished.”
Finally I lost my temper. “Listen, Durus, I know what happened last night….”
To my surprise Ferox interrupted me. “So do I. I had my suspicions, now I’m sure. Don’t worry, Aurelia. I know you’re not to blame.”
Without another word he strode out, Durus trailing along behind him. They mounted their carriage, and we watched from the bar-room doorway as they trundled up the short track onto the Eburacum road.
They never got to Eburacum.
Durus’ body was found that afternoon on the roadside about seven miles west of the Oak Tree. He’d been strangled and robbed. The carriage and the servant had disappeared, and so had Ferox.
The death was reported by other travellers, and the authorities investigated in their usual desultory fashion. They questioned Albia and me, and we confirmed that Ferox and his party had stayed with us for one night (we could hardly deny it!) but we saw no need to volunteer anything else about the visit. Eventually they concluded the travellers had been ambushed by outlaws, the trainer killed and the others abducted and probably sold. It happens.
But Albia and I were pretty sure we knew the true story. We’d heard Ferox threaten, “If someone’s tried to poison me, I’ll kill the swine with my bare hands,” and then his farewell remark, “Don’t worry, Aurelia. I know you’re not to blame.” Murder is horrible, but cold-blooded betrayal is equally vile. If Ferox had taken his revenge, whatever the law might say, we felt justice had been done.
So we kept our suspicions to ourselves. Until now.
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