I introduced her. She seemed not to know any parents of Vincentius’ friends. They had never met her. Her attitude to them was defiant.
I asked Veronica to confirm that a male slave brought Clodia’s vial to her house, addressed to Vincentius. I pointed out Dorotheus, whom she identified. Veronica agreed she took in the item, but she had kept it, not allowing her son to hear that someone wanted to influence him in that way. Much was revealed by the way she spoke. He was called Pandora’s boy, but two women watched over Vincentius; his welfare was closely guarded by his mother.
Veronica then produced a coup. With a dramatic gesture, she drew something from the folds of her dark stole; she placed a small unguentarium on the altar. “I have it here. I never threw it away!” Getting over my surprise, I guessed why. In the criminal world, such a thing might be usable some day as leverage.
It was a small, iridescent glass perfume container, shaped like a bird, perhaps a snipe looking upward along its pointed nose, which balanced a similarly pointed tail. They are common enough, stylized, delightful objects. They look fragile, though are fairly tough.
“Both ends are still sealed.” Veronica pointed to demonstrate. She was not shy of public speaking, though presumably she had done it rarely. Right was on her side here, making her confident. She was defending her son, the brilliant child she had brought up single-handedly (the casual charmer who had not yet bothered to turn up today). “This is how it was sold. To get at the contents, you have to snap the glass. That has never been done. So, Flavia Albia, if this really is a love-potion, nobody ever drank any of it.”
LVII
“Can I go?” demanded Veronica. “Now that his grandmother is away and not hogging all his attention, I may get a chance to give my boy his lunch myself.”
I said, tartly, that since Vincentius had not graced us with his presence, he might be obtaining his own lunch in some low-down bar. I made her stay. She dumped down on one of my witness seats, not a graceful mover. She was annoyed, yet not averse to watching what would happen next.
Interestingly, the one person who made a welcoming overture was the mother of Numerius Cestinus. Keeping her plait-laden head down, she scuttled over furtively, to sit beside Veronica while she whispered her connection to one of Vincentius’ friends. Halfway along the row of those friends, her own son Numerius sank low, cringing. He knew if it was up to his mama, the two women would be clinking cups of nettle beer together soon—though I thought Veronica would excuse herself.
I took command again.
“Things are starting to come together.”
I waited while the Stoic mother scurried back to her husband. He looked irritated, though that was usual. I was surprised he had even consented to be brought here.
“As I considered what might have happened, it became clear the clue to Clodia’s death lies in the last evening of her life. Before that she was healthy. She had no visible signs of illness. Did someone deliberately harm her, then? To use the standard question, did she have any enemies? In truth, the worst I ever found was that some people thought Clodia a bit of a madam—she could easily fly into a tantrum if thwarted. She did have a previous romance that had been terminated, but all seems amicable. Numerius Cestinus, as the other party in that romance, do you confirm that you and Clodia parted by mutual agreement, and that you had both found other interests?”
Numerius seemed startled to be singled out. Nevertheless, he sat up straighter; opposite, his mother nodded encouragement.
I smiled. “To be honest, I find it hard to remember which young woman has your favor now—and it may well be a new one since I last spoke to you.” He looked shifty. A few seats away, Anicia pulled a stole over her head while Cluvius and Granius snorted. I hardened my tone. “But this brings me to the vexed subject of Clodia’s friends. Here you all are—or those who could make it today. Some have been struck down and, let’s be frank, it is hardly surprising. I find the whole group of you vacuous and undeserving. I myself have young sisters around Clodia’s age and if ever they wanted friends like you, separation measures would be taken. Redempta’s father feels the same, and that is why she is not here.”
I heard hostile mutters among the young people, and saw their parents shift awkwardly as they anticipated my next remarks. Against those parents I had accusations: “Who can entirely blame the younger generation when they are set such a dismal example? I learned of at least one mother among you who does not know who fathered her daughter. Another knows, but can never say. One young girl has unwittingly slept with her half-brother, with desperate consequences. Your sons run riot with ludicrous pranks and arrogant behavior, a byword all over the Quirinal.”
Tiberius stood up. He was dressed in a plain white tunic he had somehow laid hands on today, but he was using his authority. “I am Manlius Faustus, plebeian aedile. I have spoken to my colleague who controls this district.” I knew he had not. Still, in theory he could do. “Our decision is not to prosecute the bad behavior we have seen, not even the desecration of Min, the Nile god. We offer you, their parents, an opportunity to remedy the faults of your children privately, a traditional Roman solution of redress through the family. I say you need to pack them all up and send them to your far estates. Have them taught to plow like their ancestors, make them tread grapes until their backs break and they are too weary even to think of jumping the pigman’s daughter … Learning to plow a furrow would do no harm for the girls too!” added Tiberius, who had grown up in the country.
I welcomed his intervention, which gave me a breather. As his last comment broke the tension, I smiled at him. “I hope that doesn’t apply to me!”
“I can teach you.”
Not if I had any say! “I feel a bad migraine coming on and may have to lie in a dark room that day…”
I turned again to the young friends. Walking closer, I raised a hand to interrupt their sniggers, while scanning them closely.
“There is a serious point here. You were not Clodia’s friends—you were friends with her elder brother.”
They knew. They knew what I was going to say next.
“Volumnius Auctus had gone away to the army. You dealt with Clodia in his absence. You say you were kind to her because she was his young sister. But now here’s a surprise. Auctus, for reasons we shall have to ask him, left Tripolitania early. He is here. I am sorry not to have warned you,” I said, turning quickly to his father. Volumnius Firmus was too shocked to speak. “Auctus will now be my next witness.”
*
Scorpus had collected the runaway from his grandmother’s apartment that morning, springing it on them. The mother and grandmother had been ordered to say nothing. I had glimpsed Auctus from a distance when he was brought here; he was definitely the young man on whom I had briefly eavesdropped when he was talking to Cluvius at that bar, but this was our first formal meeting.
As he came down the temple steps, he was treading awkwardly, like someone who had worn his shoes to a distinct shape, but today had put them on the wrong way round. He was informally dressed, of course, not in uniform. His hair stood on end, as if Scorpus had dragged him straight out of bed. He was a short, chunky figure, once described to me as athletic, which I could see was possible. He had the squat build of his father but features from his mother Sentia Lucretia, or in fact closer to her mother, Marcia Sentilla. His eyes were the very dark brown I had once speculated Clodia might have inherited; a younger woman than me might have found him attractive.
I put out an arm to stop him approaching his family. “Save it, please. This is not the time for excited cries of ‘Father!’ and ‘Son!’ We are not at the theater. Stand there, Volumnius Auctus, and answer me. You are supposed to be serving in a legion, so should I accuse you of desertion, with all that that entails?”
“No!” Well, that surprised me. His denial came from the heart too. “I am officially discharged.” He had a light voice, rather like his mother’s high one, though just about masculine enough.
“Oh?”
I asked lightly. “What was the problem? Not drinking? All soldiers do that. Too many affairs with local girls, or did you get the wrong one pregnant?”
His head came up. Oddly, he looked to his left, toward the parents of his great friend Numerius Cestinus. “I want to thank you for giving me shelter. I am going to follow your advice and own up to the truth.”
Truth? This was unprecedented in a witness! The Stoic philosophy of plait-lady and the grumpy one seemed more influential than anyone would imagine.
His gaze jumped back across to Ummidia. “I am sorry.”
Then the young Auctus turned to me to answer my question. He stated in a bald tone: “I had an affair with the wife of the senior tribune; it was her I got pregnant.”
*
In the pause while everyone exclaimed and readjusted, it struck me more than ever that my role here was like steering people to believe in supernatural powers. You throw out vague statements, aiming as widely as you can, you home in on a common human relationship. A subject will try quite hard to help you reach the right answers. Quicker than you dare expect, they cooperate. When emotions run high, it seems easy.
“Settle down everyone!”
“I was punished,” Auctus told me, before I could ask. He pointed down to his feet. “When the tribune found out, he had me bastinadoed. They whip you with canes on your bare insteps, where it is unbearably sensitive. He did it himself. My wounds are still weeping. He did not spare me.”
This was the only one of the young people who had ever given any sign of moral feelings, and he remained consistent. He told his story with dignity. I praised him quietly. “You are brave to say this in public.”
“I deserve it. I was stupid. I have caused much hurt to many people.”
“What happened to the tribune’s wife?”
“I don’t know. She stayed with him. If the child lives, he said it will never know of me and I will never see it.”
That could go wrong in so many ways. Twenty years down the line there would be work for an informer—mother brooding, tribune jealous, child who never felt it belonged starting to ask awkward questions, Auctus himself spurred by parent-loss or some other crisis of life into wanting to seek out his descendant … People so often have no idea what chain of distress they are starting.
“So, Auctus, here you are in Rome. Now I have serious questions to ask you, concerning your sister Clodia. When somebody dies unexpectedly, the first thing we look at is: who will benefit? Unfortunately, the answer is you. Your family are well-to-do. When your parents pass away, you and Clodia would once have been their joint heirs—now, with her gone, there will be no need for a dowry for her, while you alone will inherit. That means you, Volumnius Auctus, had a clear motive for causing Clodia to die.”
His mother cried out. His father leaped to his feet, though he made no sound, simply stood by his seat, speechless with indignation.
Young Auctus looked truly horrified. But he did manage to avoid hysteria. Since his disgrace in Africa, he must have made a significant personality adjustment. He faced this out. He was the son of an arbiter; perhaps there had been table-talk at home; he could have absorbed ways of discussing both sides in a dispute.
“You are right, Flavia Albia, the question should be asked. However, my answer is no. I could never have harmed her. She could be a little menace but she was also a darling. She was growing up, so it was increasingly easy to be good friends together. No, I did not want her dead and no, I never killed her.”
From the way he spoke I believed, and so did everyone present, that Volumnius Auctus was telling the truth.
LVIII
“Thank you,” I said. I had more to ask Auctus, so I pulled a chair forward, telling him to sit and rest his wounded feet.
Once he was seated, I leaned on the back of the chair, so he heard my voice from behind him and was unable to see me. This is a vigiles interrogation technique, aimed at disorienting your suspect. It’s very basic. The problem is, you cannot see the suspect either. “I am sure everyone here believes you. You loved Clodia, so—am I right?—when you returned to Rome with bleeding feet and a sorry heart, you went into hiding but you let your sister know that you were here?”
Cautiously, the brother nodded. “Actually, I heard she was distraught about being parted from Numerius—he told me—so I thought if she knew about me, and the situation being problematical, that might give her something better to think about.”
“I am glad, because it helps explain something that has been puzzling me. You and your friends had dinner together at the thermopolium called Fabulo’s.”
“That is correct.”
“Cluvius, who organized the evening, held a lottery to fill nine places. You were allocated one, so I suppose all your friends knew that you were in Rome again, not only your best friend Numerius?”
“At that time, I was staying with Numerius, with his parents’ permission. They were being very kind to me; his mother gave me herbal salves for my feet, specially made with her own hands…” I managed not to groan. “Numerius told the others, our friends. Really, if the dinner had a particular purpose it was so we could all meet up again. I hadn’t seen the rest since I left Rome.”
“I need your help here, Publius Volumnius. This was the evening before your sister Clodia died. She was not invited to that dinner, yet she sneaked out from home and came anyway.”
The brother tried twisting round, in the hope of seeing me properly. He sounded downcast. “Yes, she did. It was my fault, I suppose. She was very excited about me being home, so when she found out about the dinner, she came to see me.”
“You had not actually met up with her before?”
“No. My slave was just taking messages between us.”
“That’s Dorotheus? Now, Publius, for a long time I thought Clodia must have turned up to see some young man she was hankering for. Not Numerius, because that episode had ended, in fact. But perhaps she imagined she could make eyes at Vincentius?”
“Vincentius was not at the dinner.”
“I know that. Did she? He is a central member of your group, yet he missed out in the lottery—I am not going to ask whether this was deliberate. Whether, perhaps, as a group you were trying to distance yourselves from someone whose family background is unwelcome?” Behind me, I sensed Veronica’s hackles rising. When I placed the idea in the open, I saw covert glances pass between Anicia and Ummidia, who were sitting close together, Cluvius and Numerius, Cluvius again and Granius.
“We would never do that,” maintained Auctus, who must have been the sweetest-natured among them. For me, his friends had just confirmed they would.
“Well, never mind, then. Please talk about what happened when your sister arrived. Was she expecting to see Vincentius?”
“I think she was, in fact.”
“So she was disappointed—yet delighted to see you, the brother she also idolized?”
“She was pleased, yes. I wasn’t there all the time, and not when she first joined our party.”
“Really? Where were you?”
“Somewhere nearby. Talking in private with someone.”
“Who was that?”
“Well…”
I stared at the group of his friends. “Who was that? Who remembers talking to their good friend Publius?”
“It was me,” confessed Ummidia, quietly.
“And where were you having this conversation?”
She said nothing, but she blushed.
I walked round the seat so I was standing directly in front of Auctus. “I have been to Fabulo’s. I take it you two had gone to the alcove they make available for canoodling?”
He writhed unhappily. He could not see the audience. I had positioned myself deliberately as a barrier between him and his parents, him and Ummidia, him and her parents. “Yes,” he admitted very quietly, as if privately to me. “But, honestly, we were only talking.” Though he had sounded believable before, now he was much less convincing.
“Of cou
rse!” I snapped sarcastically. I stood back. “I expect you had it in your mind that at some point you would have to tell Ummidia what you did with the tribune’s wife! When you emerged, what was happening? With your sister, for instance?”
I could see him brace himself. “Clodia was thrilled to see me.”
“And?”
“There had been quite a lot of drinking.”
“Clodia had had too much?”
He nodded. “She was too young to know how to handle it. She wasn’t eating very much—”
“No, she had already had to eat supper at home with your parents, who had forbidden her to go out. Now your friends, who should have known better, were encouraging her to overdo the wine?” Another reluctant nod. “Did you tell them to stop?”
“I did—and so they did.”
“Did she drink any more?”
“Some. Only because she was being silly by then, so we could not stop her. In the end, she fell asleep.”
“She passed out.”
“Yes, but we propped her up on pillows.”
“So here is the picture: Clodia is unconscious, lolling on cushions, while the rest of you continue dining?”
“Yes.”
“Was that sensible?”
“Perhaps not, but we had all had too much wine by then.”
“I heard some of you were tipsy even when you first arrived … You were all used to it?”
“Yes.”
“None of you thought to send Clodia home?”
“We were not thinking quite clearly. Besides, the meal was splendid so we wanted to stay until it ended.” I gazed at him. He breathed slowly. “Well, Flavia Albia. There was a problem. We had nobody to take her. Clodia had come to Fabulo’s somehow by herself. She had no escort and, because of my situation, that night I had no slave with me.”
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