The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  ‘I call him Modestus,’ Vulcan said, stroking the donkey’s long nose, ‘because he is a humble creature. He will carry any burden you care to put on him. At the baker’s, he will patiently circle a millstone for his whole life, never complaining, just walking. And in the spring, when the donkey gets a new coat, there is a cross on his back. See? Just there where Nubia is brushing. The cross, too, is a symbol of sacrifice and submission.’

  Nubia stopped brushing for a moment. ‘What is submission?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s when you allow people to do things to you even though you are strong enough to resist. Like some slaves.’

  Vulcan turned to Flavia.

  ‘The donkey is also a symbol of peace. If a king rides on a horse, that means he comes to make war. But if he rides on a donkey, he comes in peace.’

  Flavia frowned and jumped down off her perch.

  ‘But how does the donkey lead to treasure?’

  Vulcan turned his dark eyes on her. ‘You seem to be a rich girl, Flavia Gemina. You are of good birth. You have your own slave. Why do you need riches?’

  The question stumped Flavia.

  ‘Tell me, Flavia Gemina,’ continued Vulcan, folding his muscular arms. ‘What would be your greatest treasure?’

  ‘A roomful of giant rubies and emeralds and pearls. And gold coins . . .’

  ‘That’s what most people say. But think again. What, for you, would be the best treasure, a real treasure, a treasure beyond imagining?’

  Behind Flavia the stable door squeaked open and Vulcan looked over her shoulder. His expression changed.

  Flavia turned to see Miriam standing in the stable doorway. She was wearing her prettiest violet stola with an apricot shawl. ‘Hello, Vulcan,’ she said softly, and then to the girls, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. It’s almost the ninth hour and time for us to go to Clio’s. If we don’t hurry, we’ll be late!’

  Flavia, Nubia and Miriam hurried through the hot vineyards and across the coastal road to find Clio waiting by the back gate of the Villa Pomponiana. An older girl stood beside her.

  ‘Oh good! You’re here,’ cried Clio. ‘I was beginning to worry . . . This is Thalia, my eldest sister. She’s fourteen. That’s about your age isn’t it, Miriam?’

  Miriam nodded.

  ‘Thalia’s engaged to be married!’ said Clio. ‘Show them your ring.’

  With her protruding eyes and wide mouth, Thalia reminded Flavia of a cheerful frog. She proudly held out her left hand and they all admired her engagement ring: two clasped hands engraved in a garnet. Then Thalia took Miriam’s arm and led the way through the shady garden to the bath complex.

  Entering the baths of the Villa Pomponiana was like stepping underwater. Painted fish swam across blue walls. On the floor, black and white mosaic tritons pursued laughing sea nymphs. The girls stripped off, and two female bath-slaves took their clothes to be hung, brushed and scented.

  Shyly at first, the naked girls made a circuit of the four rooms.

  In the first room, they soaked in a green marble pool full of warm, vanilla-scented water. Then they moved into the steam room, where they sat for as long as they could bear on hot cedarwood benches. After the cold plunge they hurried into the last room, where the two slave-girls were waiting with soft linen bath-sheets.

  The solarium, with its thick glass skylight, marble slabs and resting couches, was where bathers were scraped, massaged, manicured and coiffed. It led back into the warm room, and the circuit could be done all over again.

  Once relatively dry, the girls rubbed scented oil over their bodies.

  ‘Your heels are a bit rough,’ commented Thalia, eyeing Flavia’s feet. ‘Would you like Gerta to pumice them?’

  ‘What’s pumice?’

  ‘It’s a special stone imported from Sicily,’ said Thalia, beckoning one of the slaves with her finger.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Flavia, taking the small grey brick. ‘It’s so light! But it’s hard. It looks like an old sponge!’ She let Nubia hold it and then gave it back to Gerta.

  ‘It tickles!’ Flavia laughed as the slave-girl briskly rubbed the pumice-stone against her heel, but afterwards her heels felt silky smooth. She lay back on one of the couches, wrapped in a soft linen bath-sheet, and as she waited her turn for a massage she pondered Vulcan’s question.

  Presently the bath-slaves proved their skill as hairdressers. Quickly and confidently, one pinned up Miriam’s cloud of black curls in a simple but beautiful style and the other arranged Thalia’s rather frizzy brown hair to look almost as elegant as Miriam’s. Nubia watched them with interest.

  When their hair was done, Thalia looked at Miriam and sighed. ‘You’re disgustingly beautiful,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll bet you could win any man you wanted to.’

  ‘Miriam already has dozens of admirers!’ said Flavia. She tried to look at Thalia without moving her head because Gerta had begun to arrange her hair. ‘Someone gave Miriam a sparrow and a bracelet and all my uncle’s farm-slaves stare whenever she goes by.’

  ‘Are you in love, Miriam?’

  Miriam blushed.

  ‘Don’t try to hide it,’ said Thalia. ‘I can always tell.’

  Miriam gave a tiny nod.

  Flavia jerked her head round and she got an ivory hairpin in her scalp.

  ‘Ow! You’re in love? Who is he, Miriam?’

  But at that moment the table began to shake and tremble. Flavia stared as a bronze hand-mirror shimmied across its surface, slid over the edge and clattered onto the mosaic floor. Her chair was shaking, too. She was just about to ask the slave-girl to stop when Thalia screamed,

  ‘Earthquake! Run! Run for your lives!’

  Clean and perfumed, but naked apart from the bath-sheets clutched round them, the girls stood in the hot courtyard while the villa shuddered around them.

  ‘Father! Help!’ screamed Thalia. ‘FATHER!’

  Within moments, a man with fierce eyebrows and short grizzled hair rushed into the courtyard. The quake had obviously interrupted his preparations, too. He was wearing a tunic, but he was barefoot and his toga was slung over his shoulder like a blanket.

  ‘Don’t panic, girls!’ he commanded. ‘Remain in the open. Nothing to be frightened of. Just a tremor. Look! It’s over already.’

  Thalia had thrown herself sobbing into her father’s arms.

  ‘There, there. Told you not to worry about these tremors. Look! Clio’s not afraid . . .’ He held Thalia at arm’s length and examined her red and swollen face. ‘Better now, my beauty?’

  Thalia sniffed and nodded, and her father turned to Flavia and Miriam.

  ‘Hello, girls!’ His broad smile revealed a finely crafted set of wooden false teeth. ‘Titus Tascius Pomponianus, master of this household. Sorry your bath was interrupted by tremors. They’re common in this part of the world. Now. I suggest you put some clothes on. The other guests have arrived. Nearly time for dinner!’

  The vast, airy dining room of the Villa Pomponiana was open on three sides. Its roof was supported by tall white columns with painted black bases. Gauzy linen curtains could be drawn to dim the room if the light was too bright, but now the setting sun was screened by seaside pines, so the curtains were open.

  Flavia’s jaw dropped as she gazed out between the columns.

  The view was stunning. A sloping lawn glowed yellow-green in the late afternoon sunlight and drew her gaze down to the indigo blue bay with Mount Vesuvius beyond.

  As she turned away from the view, Flavia saw that everyone else was already there. Lupus and Jonathan, dressed in their best white tunics, were seated at a large marble table with seven dark-haired girls. Mordecai, Aristo and her uncle were reclining. And there was another familiar face.

  ‘Admiral Pliny!’

  The admiral was just as Flavia remembered him: plump and cheerful, with a white fringe of hair and intelligent black eyes. His faded purple tunic was the same one he’d worn at his Laurentum villa, and the same Greek scribe stood behind h
im with a portable ink pot.

  ‘Flavia Gemina!’ wheezed Pliny. ‘How delightful to see you again.’

  Flavia flushed with pleasure, delighted that the admiral had remembered her name.

  ‘Admiral Pliny, we’ve solved your riddle and found – hey!’ A steward was guiding her firmly towards the table and Pliny had turned away to speak with Tascius.

  ‘Flavia, Miriam and Nubia, I’d like you to meet my sisters,’ said Clio, ‘Melpomene, Calliope, Euterpe, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, and – Urania leave Lupus alone! Besides, that’s my seat, so move over!’

  ‘Your sisters are named after the nine muses?’ asked Flavia as she took her seat.

  Clio nodded and turned to Lupus. ‘I’m named after the muse of history.’

  Three female kitchen-slaves padded back and forth across the room, bringing in appetisers and wine. The prettiest one handed out fragrant garlands of dark ivy and miniature white roses. There were garlands on nineteen heads, and a twentieth garland lay between Pliny and Tascius on the central couch. It should have adorned the head of Tascius’s wife, but she was late returning from an outing.

  Frog-faced Thalia was the only daughter old enough to recline. She had found a place on the couch beside Aristo. Flavia noticed that although she was engaged, she kept fluttering her eyelashes at him.

  Behind each of the three couches stood a slave, ready to cut meat from the bone, retrieve a fallen napkin, refill the empty wine-cups or, in the admiral’s case, take notes.

  ‘You must forgive me,’ Pliny announced to the company in his light voice, ‘if I dictate the occasional line to my scribe. I am completing a study of Roman religion and have vowed to finish it before the Saturnalia four months hence.’

  Tascius showed his wooden teeth in a rather stiff smile. ‘We know you hate being separated from your stylus and tablets, admiral.’ He turned to the others. ‘The admiral’s written seven complete works. At least a hundred scrolls altogether. His first book was a biography of my father. That’s how we met.’

  Pliny waggled his forefinger. ‘Not quite accurate, my dear Titus. My first book was a manual on how to throw javelin from horseback.’

  ‘I know the one,’ said Flavia’s uncle from his couch. ‘It was required reading when I did my military service.’

  Pliny looked pleased. ‘I dare say the book I’m writing now will be my greatest yet. My Natural History was only thirty-seven volumes. This is now approaching fifty.’

  He paused as the slave-girls served the starters: honey-glazed quails’ eggs in fish sauce, squares of camels’-milk cheese and purple olives from Kalamata.

  As the others ate, Clio stood up to sing. She was accompanied by Erato on the lyre, and her younger sister Melpomene on the double flute. Clean and with her hair pinned up, Clio looked like a different person. Her voice was high and sweet, and as she confidently sang a popular song called ‘The Raven and the Dove’, the diners nodded their approval at one another.

  Tascius gazed at his adopted daughters affectionately and when Clio finished singing he clapped almost as enthusiastically as Lupus.

  ‘Tell us how you come to have such a large family,’ Flavia’s uncle Gaius said to Tascius, when the applause had died down. ‘And such a talented one!’

  The former soldier rubbed the palm of his hand over his short cropped hair.

  ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘All due to her soft heart. We had a baby, but he was stolen in infancy. Slave-traders, we presume. Never received a ransom note.’

  ‘Your baby was stolen?’ cried Flavia, sitting up straight. ‘How did it happen?’ She noticed her uncle Gaius shaking his head at her and frowning. But Tascius didn’t seem offended.

  ‘We were at our Herculaneum villa,’ he said. ‘Rectina – my wife – was sleeping in her bedroom with the baby. We think there were two of them. One must have passed the baby through the window to his accomplice. When Rectina woke from her nap, the baby was gone. We punished the household slaves, posted a reward, but he was never found.’

  ‘It was a boy?’ Flavia asked, ignoring her uncle’s warning scowl.

  ‘Yes’ said Tascius. ‘Just a few weeks old. Rectina was devastated.’

  ‘I apologise for my niece’s curiosity,’ said Gaius. ‘As your guests it’s not –’

  ‘No, no. Not offended. Reason my wife and I adopted all these beautiful children. At first we thought we could have others. But they never came. A few years after we lost our son, Rectina brought home a baby girl. An orphan. I called her Thalia.’ He smiled at his eldest daughter.

  ‘After that, people kept bringing us abandoned children. I’m a keen musician. Named my girls after the Muses and taught them how to play.’

  ‘Don’t you have any sons?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘Baby boys aren’t often abandoned,’ said Tascius. ‘Besides, we always hoped to find our own son.’

  He was interrupted by murmurs of approval as the three serving-girls struggled into the dining-room with the main course: an enormous turbot on a silver platter.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Pliny said, licking creamy dill sauce from his thumb. ‘This delicious turbot has just reminded me of something.’

  He snapped his fingers and said over his shoulder. ‘Phrixus. New heading: the Vulcanalia. Vulcan, the god of fire and the forge, is important in the months of late summer, when the ground is driest and a careless spark can set a granary on fire and destroy its contents in minutes. During his festival – the Vulcanalia – living fish are thrown on a fire as a substitute for the life of each person. The festival is particularly prominent in the town of Ostia, whose many granaries are the basis of its wealth.’

  ‘We celebrate the Vulcanalia, too,’ said Tascius. ‘It’s the day after tomorrow. Why don’t you join us, admiral? Why don’t you all come along?’

  He looked around at them. ‘We hold the fish sacrifice down on the beach. I’m the priest of Vulcan for this region. Because the god requires only the lives of the fish and not their flesh, we provide plenty of wine and make quite a feast of it. Everyone comes, rich and poor.’

  ‘Why, yes!’ The admiral clapped his hands in delight. ‘I’d love to come.’

  ‘And we will bring Vulcan,’ announced Flavia.

  They all stared at her.

  ‘Do you mean a statue of the god?’ Tascius frowned.

  ‘I do believe she means the blacksmith they call Vulcan,’ said Admiral Pliny in his breathy voice, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. ‘Have you located him?’

  Flavia nodded. ‘We solved the riddle you gave us and we found the blacksmith named Vulcan.’

  ‘Remarkable!’ said the admiral. ‘And the treasure?’

  ‘Well,’ said Flavia. ‘We’re not exactly sure what the treasure is yet . . . But Vulcan’s at our farm right now.’

  ‘I look forward to seeing him again,’ said the admiral. ‘Now, Flavia Gemina, tell us how you and your friends solved the riddle.’

  The sun had long set and the white columns surrounding the dining-room glowed gold in the light of a dozen oil-lamps. Through the columns and beyond the pine torches which illuminated the lawn, the bay gleamed like wet black marble, reflecting a thousand spangles of light. It was difficult to see where the lights of luxury villas stopped and the stars began.

  Tascius had just ordered torch-bearing slaves to escort Gaius’s party home and everyone was rising from couch and chair, when a tall woman in a peacock blue stola and black shawl swept into the room.

  ‘So sorry I’m late, everyone,’ she said in a gracious, well-modulated voice. ‘I’ve been settling affairs at my villa.’ She was a dark, attractive woman in her early forties, with a straight nose, long eyelashes and dark hair piled high in a complicated arrangement of curls.

  ‘My dear Pliny.’ She kissed the admiral’s cheek, then turned to smile at Gaius and Mordecai.

  ‘Rectina,’ said Tascius. ‘Don’t believe you’ve met our neighbours. Gaius Flavius Geminus. Owns the estate which backs onto our villa. His niece Flavia. H
is guest Doctor Mordecai ben Ezra . . .’

  Flavia stared at Rectina. There was something terribly familiar about her. She was certain she had seen her before. But where?

  In the middle of the night, Jonathan woke Flavia. He nudged her shoulder, careful not to spill any of the hot oil from his clay lamp.

  ‘What? What is it, Jonathan?’ she mumbled. ‘Have you had another nightmare?’

  Jonathan shook his head and put his finger to his lips. ‘Lupus has something to show you.’

  At the foot of Flavia’s low bed, Scuto blinked and yawned. Then he rested his head on his paws and sighed. Nubia yawned, too. She pushed back her covers, rose stretching and sat beside Flavia.

  ‘Go on Lupus, show them,’ whispered Jonathan. Lupus emerged from the shadows by the door and squatted beside Flavia’s bed. He flipped open his wax tablet and began to draw.

  ‘You’ve drawn Vulcan!’ Flavia yawned. ‘It’s good!’

  ‘He’s not finished,’ said Jonathan. ‘Watch.’

  Lupus glanced round at them, eyes glittering sea-green in the flickering lamplight. With a few strokes of the stylus he made Vulcan’s mouth fuller and more feminine and thinned out the eyebrows. Finally he added elaborately curled hair and a head scarf.

  ‘Great Neptune’s beard!’ said Flavia. ‘With that mouth and hair, Vulcan looks just like Clio’s mother . . . her adoptive mother, I mean.’

  ‘Rectina,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘But that can only mean –’

  Jonathan nodded. ‘Rectina must be Vulcan’s mother and –’

  ‘Tascius must be his father!’ cried Flavia. ‘We’ve found Vulcan’s long-lost parents!’

  Long after Nubia’s breathing had become slow and regular again, Flavia lay awake thinking about the plan she had devised.

  She was far too excited to sleep.

  Besides, she needed to use the latrine.

  She got up and padded soundlessly through the atrium and into the kitchen. Ashes still glowed deep red on the hearth but they didn’t provide much light. Flavia felt her way through to the latrine, with its polished wooden seat and hole.