The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection

by Lawrence, Caroline

  ‘Did I seem angry that evening?’ said Aristo a short time later, taking a handful of currants from a green glass bowl. ‘I only remember feeling vexed.’

  ‘Then I sincerely hope I never vex you,’ laughed Flavia’s father, accepting the bowl from Aristo and sprinkling some currants onto his honey-drizzled yogurt. Both men were barefoot and wearing short-sleeved white tunics. Although her father was ten years older than Aristo, it occurred to Flavia that they might almost be brothers.

  ‘You know, I’ve always wondered,’ said her father, ‘why you risked your life to help a stranger. For all you know, I might have been a thief and those four men concerned citizens.’

  Aristo shrugged. ‘I’d just had an argument with my brother,’ he said. ‘I stormed down to the port with the idea of boarding the first ship out of Corinth. I was so angry that when I came into the inn and saw those bullies kicking a man on the ground . . . the next thing I knew I was holding a chair leg and the men were running away.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Flavia. ‘That sounds like Hercules after the goddess Juno gave him a potion to drive him mad. When he came to his senses he saw the dead bodies of his wife and children lying on the ground and he realised . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she saw the look of reproach in Nubia’s golden-brown eyes. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s nothing like Hercules . . .’ She tried to think of a way to change the subject. ‘Music!’ she cried. ‘We haven’t seen you in weeks, Aristo. Let’s play some music together. Look! I’ve brought a tambourine! Lupus can drum on a bowl and Nubia’s wearing her flute around her neck as usual.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have my lyre with me.’

  ‘Then ask one of the slaves to fetch it from your room. You’re in the Orpheus room, aren’t you? Nubia and I asked Helen to put you there, in the room next to pater’s. Nubia thought you’d like the room with the fresco of Orpheus on the wall.’

  ‘The landlady showed me the Orpheus room,’ said Aristo quietly, ‘and the fresco is very fine. But I don’t have my lyre with me tonight.’

  ‘But Aristo,’ said Flavia, ‘didn’t you pack it with the rest of your things?’

  ‘My belongings are all at my parents’ house in Corinth.’

  ‘But Aristo,’ said Captain Geminus, pushing himself higher on his elbow, ‘one of Helen’s slaves is going to take us directly to Lechaeum tomorrow at dawn. It will delay us if we have to go into Corinth to get your things.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcus,’ said Aristo, ‘but I’m not going with you tomorrow. I know we had an agreement that I work for you until Flavia reached a marriageable age, but my parents are getting old and infirm – my father’s blind, you know – and so I’ve decided to stay here.’

  Flavia exchanged a horrified glance with Nubia. ‘You’re not sailing home with us?’ she cried.

  ‘No,’ said Aristo. ‘I’m staying here in Corinth.’

  Flavia’s father swung his bare feet onto the platform of their dining couch.

  ‘I don’t understand, Aristo. What are you saying?’

  ‘Is there any way . . . Will you release me from my contract?’

  Captain Geminus stared down at the liquid reflection of the torches in the rectangular pool at his feet. ‘I don’t know. This is so sudden.’ He looked up. ‘It’s not just that Flavia and her friends will be losing a tutor, but you’ve been my secretary and accountant for three years and I don’t know where I’ll find . . . Aristo, is it more money you want? Because we’ve done very well financially on this trip and soon I’ll be in a position to—’ He stopped and looked around at them. The evening breeze was making the torches flutter; in their flickering light it was hard to read the expression on his face.

  ‘Let’s discuss this privately, up in my room.’

  Aristo nodded. The two men bent to lace their sandals, then rose from the couch.

  ‘Aristo!’ cried Flavia. ‘You won’t leave without saying goodbye, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He smiled at them. ‘I’ll spend the night here and go across to the ship with you tomorrow.’

  He turned and followed Captain Geminus through the ivy arch and out of the flickering circle of torchlight into the darkness of the garden.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Flavia, after they’d gone. ‘What will we do without Aristo? Why won’t he come back to Ostia with us?’

  ‘He said something about staying here because of his parents,’ said Jonathan. ‘Parents can be a big responsibility.’

  Suddenly Lupus hissed and put his finger to his lips. At the same moment Tigris lifted his head from his bone and growled.

  They all stopped to listen, but apart from the sound of the breeze in the treetops and the tinkle of wind-chimes in the courtyard, there was no sound.

  ‘What is it, Tigris?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘What is it, Lupus?’ asked Jonathan.

  Lupus pointed behind Flavia. She and Nubia both twisted on their couch, but all they could see behind them was a circle of leaves glowing bright green in the light of the flickering torch.

  Tigris growled again.

  ‘What?’ Flavia turned back to Lupus to find him scribbling on his wax tablet. When he held it up a moment later, she gasped.

  SOMETHING IN THE BUSHES BEHIND YOU, Lupus had written. SOMETHING BIG!

  Thinking quickly, Lupus grasped a handful of currants from the green glass bowl and hurled them at the shrubs behind Flavia.

  Instantly, something exploded from the leaves with a staccato warning cry. Lupus yelled, Tigris barked and Flavia leapt off her dining couch.

  A blackbird flew up into the dark blue sky.

  Lupus watched the bird disappear and then looked down at Flavia, who stood up to her knees in the ornamental pool. She slowly raised her head and glared at Lupus.

  ‘It was only a blackbird,’ she growled.

  Lupus felt a grin spread across his face and he gave her an exaggerated shrug of apology.

  But Tigris was on all four feet now, barking steadily at the bushes.

  ‘What is it, boy?’ Jonathan slipped off the couch and circled around to the rhododendron bushes behind the girls’ couch. Tigris followed, wagging his tail. ‘Do you smell something else hiding in there?’ Jonathan parted the leaves of the bushes. ‘Something apart from that terrifying bird?’ He disappeared among the shrubs.

  ‘Be careful, Jonathan!’ Flavia stepped out of the pool and bent to wring the water from the sodden hem of her best blue tunic.

  For a moment there was no sound but the wind. Then:

  ‘Dear gods, it’s horrible . . .’ came Jonathan’s muffled voice from the bushes and they all looked up.

  ‘It’s Medusa!’ he yelled and pushed his contorted face out from between two branches. He had stuck out his tongue and ruffled his curly hair and flipped his eyelids back to give himself a terrible staring grin. ‘Blahhhh!’ he cried.

  Flavia and Nubia both screamed and Lupus burst out laughing; this time both girls stood knee deep in the ornamental pool.

  ‘Flavia, are you awake?’

  Flavia sighed and rolled over in her bed to face Nubia in hers. Both their beds were as high as dining couches, and as narrow, but they were comfortable. A tiny oil-lamp filled the room with a soft apricot glow. Outside, the evening breeze had become a blustery wind which was rattling shutters, slamming doors and exciting the wind chimes.

  ‘Who can sleep with all that noise?’ said Flavia with a sigh.

  ‘I will miss Aristo. Will you?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll miss him terribly. I can’t imagine who’ll teach us now.’

  ‘Aristo is a not a freedman, is he?’

  ‘No. He was never a slave.’ Flavia yawned. ‘He’s a free man rather than a freedman.’

  ‘Flavia, what is contract?’

  ‘It’s a written agreement between two people. Are you thinking of Aristo’s contract with pater?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think Aristo agreed to be my tutor for five years and pater promised to pay him a certai
n amount and also to allow him to visit his parents for a few weeks each year. He’s served us for three years so according to the contract he should stay at least two more.’

  ‘What if persons disagree the contract?’

  ‘If either of the two people breaks the contract, then one of them has to give the other some money. I think it’s called compensation.’

  ‘What if Aristo does not have money to pay your father?’ asked Nubia.

  ‘I don’t know,’ murmured Flavia, rolling onto her back. ‘But Aristo is very clever. He’ll think of something . . .’

  Nubia was silent after that, and Flavia must have drifted off, for she had no idea how much time had passed when a loud bang woke her. The noise came again. One of the bronze shutters outside their window had come free of its latch and was striking the wall. Flavia slid down from her bed and went to the window. She opened the lattice-work screen and leaned out. The warm wind whipped her hair and brought the smell of the sea. As she began to fasten the shutter to its outside wall, she thought she heard a man’s cry from somewhere within the hospitium.

  She pulled her head back into the room and listened. Next door Tigris had begun to bark. She heard the cry come again.

  ‘Pater?’ whispered Flavia.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Nubia, pushing back her covers.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Flavia took the bronze night-lamp from its table and moved to the door. ‘That sounded like pater . . .’

  Her heart was thumping as she pulled back the heavy curtain of their doorway and went out into the dark corridor with Nubia close behind her. The wall torches had been burning when they had gone to bed, but a slave must have put them out. It was black as pitch out there with only a small globe of light from her oil-lamp.

  As Flavia was raising the lamp to light one of the torches, a running figure jostled her against Nubia.

  ‘Oof!’ cried Flavia. The bronze oil-lamp clattered to the floor and darkness swallowed them.

  Flavia groped for her lamp on the oily wooden floor. She could hear Tigris barking, the shutter still banging and more footsteps running. A dim light flared, illuminating the dark corridor to their left. Flavia saw Jonathan holding his oil-lamp to a torch in its angled wall-bracket. As the flames took hold, the golden light in the corridor grew brighter. Tigris ran towards the girls. He wagged his tail at them and began lapping the pooled olive oil from Flavia’s lamp.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Jonathan, coming up with his lamp. Lupus was behind him. He had taken the flaming torch from its bracket.

  A man’s cry made all four of them turn. Tigris skittered down the corridor in the direction of the cry and Lupus hurried after him, his torch crackling. Flavia and her two friends followed.

  Rounding a corner, Flavia found Lupus and Tigris standing in the doorway of her father’s two-roomed suite. Lupus had pulled aside the heavy curtain, and the flickering light from his torch illuminated a little reception room with cream and red frescoed walls. Against the right-hand wall was a small table with a tiny night-lamp burning. In the left-hand wall was a dark doorway leading to her father’s inner bedroom. In the centre of this reception room was a dining couch made up as a bed. Aristo stood behind this couch, bent over the figure stretched out on it.

  ‘What?’ cried Flavia, pushing past Lupus. ‘What is it, Aristo –?’

  Then she saw the figure on the bed and the words died on her lips.

  It was a sight Flavia would never forget, one which would haunt her dreams for many years to come.

  Her father lay on his back, asleep. He was pale as ivory and perfectly still. Then Aristo raised his head and she saw a look of horrified disbelief twist his handsome features as he looked at her, and then down at the bloody knife in his hand.

  Flavia suddenly knew with a terrible certainty that her father was not asleep.

  ‘Pater!’ Flavia screamed and took a step towards the figure on the bed. Then she stopped. Once, in Ostia, she had seen a row of ivory statues waiting to be tinted. With his eyes closed and the covers down around his waist, her father was as still and pale as one of those statues. In the flickering light of torch and lamp, she could see no mark on his face, but his fair hair was matted with something dark. The wind moaned in the eaves outside the room and a draft made the torches flicker.

  Now Aristo was staring in horror at the front of his unbelted white tunic. It was stained as red as the cloak draped over his shoulders.

  Tigris moved forward to sniff at a pool of some dark liquid beneath the bed near a pair of sandals, then he started to lap at it.

  When Flavia saw what Tigris was lapping, a choking nausea rose up and filled her throat so that the only release was for her to open her mouth and scream. A moment later she felt the room darken and tilt and swallow her up.

  Nubia caught Flavia as she fainted and a moment later she heard another scream.

  As Jonathan pulled Tigris away from under the bed, Helen the landlady pushed into the room. Two of her house-slaves followed behind, carrying torches.

  ‘What have you done to Marcus?’ Helen screamed, bending over Flavia’s father. She looked down at him and then up at Aristo, who remained silent.

  ‘You’ve killed him! You’ve stabbed a defenceless man in his sleep. Fortunatus! Syriacus! Seize him!’

  As the two big house-slaves put their torches in wall brackets and moved cautiously towards Aristo, he dropped the knife and took a step back, shaking his head.

  ‘Get him!’ shrieked Helen to her slaves. ‘Don’t let him escape!’

  The Syrian slave seized Aristo while the other wrenched his hands behind his back. ‘Throw me that curtain tie, boy!’ he said to Jonathan. ‘Quickly!’

  Jonathan pulled a green cord from its brass hook behind the door curtain and tossed it to the slave. Aristo did not seem to notice the slave tying his wrists behind him and then knotting his cloak in front, so that he was doubly bound. He was staring towards the doorway of the room, as if he saw something terrible standing there.

  Nubia followed his gaze, but the doorway was empty.

  Flavia groaned and stirred in Nubia’s arms.

  ‘Get him out of here!’ cried Helen. ‘Take him to the vigiles at Cenchrea. By the gods he’ll pay for this! Oh, Marcus! Marcus!’ She reached a hand towards Flavia’s father but could not bring herself to touch the body. She began to sob hysterically.

  The slaves pushed Aristo roughly around the couch to the door and one of them took Lupus’s torch. As they passed, Aristo turned his head to look at the girls. Flavia was moaning, her eyes still closed, so she did not see his expression. But Nubia did.

  She saw a mixture of horror and disbelief in his eyes, and something else that she could not identify. He opened his mouth – perhaps to say something to her – but already Helen’s slaves had shoved him through the doorway and he was gone.

  Lupus took a step towards the body on the couch.

  Around him it was chaos. Guests and their slaves were crowding the doorway, wanting to see the body. Jonathan had taken Tigris back to their room and Lupus could hear his muffled barks of protest. Flavia was conscious but she was still slumped on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably in Nubia’s arms. The landlady Helen had begun to wail and tear her hair, too, and the red-haired slave-girl had taken up the shrill ululation. Even the wind seemed to bemoan the brutal murder.

  Lupus ignored the commotion and stared at the figure on the bed. He was surprised at how calm he felt. Three years before, when he was only six, he had seen his own father lying dead in a pool of blood. But Flavia’s father did not look dead. He looked as if he was sleeping. In the flickering torchlight it was hard to tell that his tunic was stained red with blood, not dye.

  On an impulse, Lupus took another step closer and pressed his hand to the dead man’s throat, as he had sometimes seen Jonathan’s father do. To his surprise he found the body was still quite warm. Lupus’s heart gave a kick.

  He turned and grunted urgently towards Flavia. She was sti
ll sitting on the floor, lost in her grief, but Jonathan had just pushed his way back into the crowded room. When he saw Lupus beckoning, he came at once.

  Lupus watched Jonathan rest his head on the captain’s chest. Abruptly, he straightened up and looked wide-eyed at Lupus, who nodded vigorously.

  ‘Flavia!’ cried Jonathan, shouting to make himself heard above the wails of the women and the excited babble of the men. ‘He’s alive!’

  Apart from the moaning of the wind, the room was suddenly silent.

  ‘He’s not dead! He’s alive,’ repeated Jonathan angrily. ‘But he won’t be for long if we don’t get help. I can barely hear his heartbeat.’

  Flavia lifted her tear-streaked face in disbelief. Then she was on her feet.

  ‘Pater!’ she cried, going to the couch, ‘Oh pater! Help him! Get a doctor!’

  Helen the landlady bent over the bed, too. Her dark hair had come partly unpinned and there were smears of dark kohl beneath her slanting eyes, but now she turned to the red-haired slave-girl. ‘Persis, I think one of the guests is a doctor,’ she cried. ‘The old man downstairs in the Ariadne suite.’

  ‘I’ll bring him, domina,’ said the girl, and pushed through the excited throng of guests jostling to see the victim.

  ‘Hurry!’ cried Flavia after her. ‘Oh please hurry!’

  The landlady Helen and the red-haired slave-girl had cleared the small room of guests. They had brought in a twelve-wick bronze standing lamp and two more wall-torches to light the bedroom. As the doctor began to examine Flavia’s father, Jonathan stepped closer to watch. The doctor – an old man with grey hair and a wispy beard – had cut the captain’s tunic and peeled back the bloody cloth to examine his chest and arms.

  ‘Three of these wounds are fairly superficial,’ the doctor murmured in Latin, ‘but this one above the heart by the collar-bone is bad. Also, he’s lost a lot of blood; the mattress is fairly soaked with it. I don’t know if . . .’ He lifted his head and looked at Helen. ‘I don’t think it would be wise to bleed him.’