Jonathan looked up from searching Tigris’s fur for ticks as the light in the bedroom dimmed. Tranquillus was standing in the bright doorway.
On the other bed Lupus sat bolt upright and rubbed his eyes. He had fallen asleep, drugged by the ferocious heat of late afternoon.
‘What is it, Tranquillus?’ said Jonathan. ‘Have you discovered something?’
‘Yes! There are naked women on a rock out there!’
‘What?’
‘Women! Naked! Nude! No clothes!’ Tranquillus’s high voice cracked with excitement. ‘Come on!’
Lupus was off his bed, instantly awake.
‘Where?’
‘The library. I was reading . . . um . . . a scroll, and I could see them all out on a rock. You can only see them from the library window,’ he added over his shoulder. ‘Unless . . .’ He stopped dead.
In his eagerness to follow, Lupus bumped into Tranquillus’s back. ‘Unless’ – Tranquillus turned around – ‘we get a boat and go out there. I think there’s a little rowing boat down in that cave by the yacht.’
‘We can’t do that,’ said Jonathan. ‘We can’t spy on naked women.’
‘Of course we can! We’re supposed to be keeping an eye out for suspicious behaviour.’
‘Lying naked on a rock isn’t suspicious,’ said Jonathan, folding his arms. ‘It’s sunbathing.’
‘I think it’s suspicious. Don’t you Lupus?’
Lupus nodded enthusiastically.
‘You just want to see naked women,’ said Jonathan.
‘Well, yes,’ said Tranquillus. ‘Especially Voluptua. Don’t you?’
Lupus nodded so vigorously that Jonathan couldn’t help grinning. ‘OK,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Let’s go investigate the naked women.’
Nubia and Flavia were playing Slave Song on double aulos and tambourine, and Pulchra was attempting to accompany them on the lyre when Annia Serena suddenly uttered a piercing scream.
‘Boys!’ she cried. ‘I can smell boys!’
Flavia hastily pulled one of the yellow towels around her body and scanned the dazzling water.
‘I can’t see any boys,’ she said after a moment.
‘I didn’t say I saw them,’ said Annia Serena. ‘I said I smelled them.’
Flavia and Pulchra exchanged a look and then giggled.
‘Behold!’ said Nubia, who had not bothered to cover herself but was still sitting straight-backed and cross-legged with her double aulos in her hands. ‘There they are. They have run aground on that boulder.’
Pulchra squealed and flipped up the parasol as a shield for her modesty. Then she laughed. ‘Silly boys!’ she called out over the rim of her parasol. ‘Why do you think we swam out here instead of taking a boat?’ She turned to the others, ‘Actually, you can get a boat out here but you have to go carefully or you run aground.’
‘How do we get back?’ Flavia heard Jonathan call.
‘You’ll have to swim!’ she bellowed.
And Pulchra added with a giggle. ‘Just make sure you swim away from us and not toward us!’
The next morning before dawn, Flavia took the four dogs for a long walk up the mountainside. She didn’t want to be there when her friends set sail for Baiae with Felix.
It was already warm and the pale lemon sky in the east promised another scorching day. By the time she reached the small shrine of Dionysus up among the vineyards, the sun had risen above the Milky Mountains. Flavia turned and looked back down over the bay. It was the perfect day for sailing and there were so many boats on the water that it took her some time to find Felix’s yacht, crawling like a many-legged insect across the wrinkled blue silk of the sea.
Flavia allowed a noble tear of disappointment to slip down her cheek, then she looked at the dogs. Scuto was urgently sniffing the base of a yew tree, Tigris and Nipur were wrestling, and Ajax sat panting at her feet, gazing up at her imploringly.
‘Come on, boys,’ said Flavia, scooping up Ajax. ‘Let’s go back to the villa for breakfast. After that you’ll have to wait quietly in Jonathan and Lupus’s room. I have some serious investigating to do. And I know just where to start.’ She kissed Ajax’s nose. ‘Felix’s bedroom.’
Back in her own bedroom, Flavia took care to change into her long dark blue tunic and pin up her hair. If a slave found her nosing around, her best defence would be confidence, and unless she looked neat she would not be confident. She used her new make-up box to grind a little ochre and add some colour to her lips and cheeks. She put in the pearl-and-sapphire earrings her father had given her for her birthday, but she left the gold bangles on the table. They jingled slightly when she moved and she wanted to be absolutely silent. For this reason she wore neither her new cork-heeled sandals or her flat-soled ones, but went barefoot instead. In this heat, nobody would question that.
She padded silently along the breeze-cooled colonnade and climbed the stairs to the upper level of the villa, then doubled back along the bigger colonnade that led to Polla’s suite. She passed Polla’s yellow triclinium and found the wicker chairs in their usual place outside Polla’s dressing room. The lounge-chair was empty but the gold and sapphire cup sat on the little wicker table beside it. Flavia stopped and touched the wine cup: cool and beaded with droplets. She sniffed: well-watered wine, probably Surrentinum. She looked: half full. Someone had been here only moments before. Could it be Polla? Flavia thought she was still confined to her bed since her collapse two nights before.
Flavia moved quickly past Polla’s suite of rooms and through the atrium to the corridor where she had first bumped into Felix. Maybe he had been coming from his room that day. Sure enough, the corridor led to only one room, a medium-sized bedroom.
The room was simple but luxurious, with frescoes of cockerels fighting on the walls. She knew at once that it was his. There were two small arched windows here – both with views of the villa’s main entrance and the secret cove – and a light well, open to the sky. The skylight could probably be covered over in stormy weather, but now it caught a deliciously cool breeze and funnelled it down into the room.
Despite the breeze, Flavia could smell Felix’s distinctive musky citron scent. Against one wall was a wide low bed with a lemon-yellow cover. At its foot was the usual cedarwood chest. In the wall on the opposite side of the room was a long low niche with his togas and cloaks hanging from pegs. The cloaks ranged in colour from dove grey to blue to black. Near the bed, beneath the skylight, was a writing table and an elegant chair of wood and ivory. Beside the table stood a bronze lamp-stand with at least a dozen oil-lamps. A tortoiseshell lyre had been set on the mosaic floor, leaning against the writing-table, and she recognised it as his.
Flavia moved closer and examined the objects on the surface of the table.
There were several bronze quills here, a little inkpot of pale blue glass and some sheets of papyrus with lines of Greek written in black ink. She noticed that several words had been scratched out and new ones written above. It was a poem. Felix was writing a poem in Greek. She leaned forward and her eye caught the phrase ‘sirens on their rocks’.
Suddenly she heard the soft slap of sandals in the corridor outside, and her heart jumped. Someone was coming!
Flavia looked around. Nowhere to hide. Unless . . .
She ran to the hanging clothes in the niche. She could stand behind the long hooded cloak but her feet would be visible at the bottom. Thinking quickly, she moved a pair of his grey, fur-lined boots beneath the cloak and stepped into them. The niche was only a little taller than she was, so nobody would suspect an adult could be hiding here. If anyone looked this way she hoped they would only see a cloak with boots underneath.
She heard the footsteps move into the room. A strong scent of saffron and cinnamon suddenly filled her head. It was maddeningly familiar, but she couldn’t remember who wore it.
If she could just see who it was. There! An arm-slit in the cloak. She moved her head carefully until she could see through the slit. It was a w
oman wearing a filmy blue headscarf which obscured her face. Who was it? That scent was so familiar . . . The woman went to the box at the end of the bed and knelt and opened it. She pulled out one of Felix’s tunics and held it up. It was a cream tunic with the two narrow red stripes that showed he was of the equestrian class. For a moment the woman examined the tunic.
Then she began to sniff it.
Flavia’s eyes grew wide, then wider still as the woman’s headscarf slipped back to reveal her face. Of course! The woman was Annia Serena, the woolly-haired blonde whose family had been killed by poisonous mushrooms. And her scent was the fabulously expensive blend called susinum.
Why are you here? Flavia wondered. You’re supposed to be in Baiae with the others.
Flavia’s jaw dropped as Annia Serena gathered the cream-coloured fabric of the Patron’s tunic to her face and slowly inhaled, drinking in Felix’s smell as if it were some heady wine or elixir. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy as she sank slowly back onto the bed, still embracing his tunic.
Abruptly she pushed the garment away, as someone might put down a beaker of wine they had drained. Now she was sniffing Felix’s bed, nose down, rump in the air. She looked so much like Scuto on the trail of some exciting scent that Flavia had to bite her lip hard to keep from giggling.
But her desire to laugh died as Annia Serena suddenly lifted her head and sniffed the air.
‘Who’s here?’ the woman whispered. She tested the air with her nose again, then rose from the bed and started towards the niche where Flavia was hiding.
Flavia held her breath and closed her eyes as Annia Serena moved cautiously towards her hiding-place. What would she say? How could she explain her presence? It would be unbearably humiliating. Help me, Castor and Pollux! Flavia prayed silently.
‘What are you doing in here?’ A man’s voice.
Annia Serena squealed and then pressed her hand to her heart.
‘Oh, it’s you, domina!’ There was surprise in the man’s Greek-accented voice. ‘This is the Patron’s bedroom. He doesn’t permit visitors. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.’
‘I’m sorry,’ stammered Annia Serena. ‘I didn’t feel well and I went looking for one of the slave-girls to ask her to bring me a tonic. I must have taken the wrong turn. I think I’m still a little delirious.’
‘Yes. I imagine so.’
Flavia suddenly matched the accented voice to the bearded face of Justus, Felix’s secretary and scribe.
‘I’ll go now,’ said Annia Serena.
‘Let me escort you back to your room,’ Justus said drily, ‘lest you become delirious again.’
Flavia waited until the sound of their footsteps died away. Then she carefully stepped out of Felix’s fur-lined boots and pushed aside his cloak. She tiptoed out of the room and back along the corridor to the atrium.
As she passed through the atrium into the breezy colonnade, she saw Polla stretched out on her wicker lounge-chair, her head turned to watch the retreating backs of Justus and Annia Serena. Flavia thought quickly. If she turned and ran, Polla might see her and it would look suspicious. Better to pretend she had been coming this way.
Flavia took a deep breath and began to stroll along the colonnade towards Polla. ‘Salve, domina!’ she said brightly, ‘Are you feeling better? I thought you would still be resting in your room.’
Polla’s head turned and her blue eyes widened. ‘Flavia!’ she murmured. ‘I’m a little better this morning. I thought it would do me good to take some air. And the villa is so quiet today. Are you unwell, too?’
‘A little,’ lied Flavia. ‘I felt sick in the night. But I feel better now. I only feel a little nauseous.’
‘Oh dear. I hope it wasn’t something you ate. Annia Serena didn’t go because she gets terribly seasick, and apparently she’s also unwell. Or perhaps it’s just the heat. Come. Sit beside me and keep me company. I’ll ask my girl to bring you some posca. That always makes me feel better when I’ve been ill. Parthenope!’ She snapped her fingers.
The pretty, curly-haired slave-girl appeared a moment later and Flavia swallowed. The Villa Limona was not deserted after all. She was lucky she had not been discovered in Felix’s room.
‘I begged my husband not to go to Baiae,’ Polla murmured, after the slave-girl had gone, ‘but Pulchra was determined and he gave in to her wishes, as usual.’
‘Why didn’t you want them to go?’ asked Flavia, sitting on a yellow-cushioned wicker chair. ‘Is it because Baiae is a glirarium of licentiousness?’
Polla arched one of her exquisite eyebrows. ‘That’s one way of describing it.’ She took a tiny sip from her gemmed cup.
‘What’s a glirarium?’ said Flavia, after a short pause.
Polla almost smiled. ‘A glirarium is a kind of container for fattening dormice, until they can be eaten.’
‘Oh,’ said Flavia. She sipped her posca. ‘And licentiousness?’
Polla sighed. ‘The poet Propertius begged his girlfriend to depart from corrupt Baiae, whose shores are so dangerous to virtuous girls and whose waters are tainted with crimes of love. There is something about the air, so pure and sparkling, something about the tall, swaying palm trees, the sunshine, the natural hot springs, the golden beach and the blue waters of the sea and the lake. Such intoxicating beauty makes people forget all sense of right and wrong. They indulge their basest desires in the baths and on the beaches. That is what licentiousness means. Lust. A hunger for what is not yours by law or right.’
Flavia was still not exactly sure what Polla meant, so she remained silent.
‘Let me illustrate it this way,’ said Polla. Her voice was so faint that Flavia had to lean forward to hear her. ‘Two nights ago at dinner, Vopiscus told us an anecdote doing the rounds at the moment. A beautiful and respectable Roman matron recently went to Baiae to take the waters. They say she arrived Penelope and departed Helen.’
‘Penelope was the faithful wife of Odysseus,’ said Flavia. Then her grey eyes widened. ‘But Helen was unfaithful and left her husband to run away with a handsome young Trojan called Paris.’
‘Precisely,’ said Polla. ‘The respectable Roman matron left her husband for a far younger man. I could tell you many other terrible things about Baiae: tales of drunkenness, seduction, even murder.’
‘Murder?’ said Flavia, pulling her wicker chair closer.
‘Oh, yes,’ breathed Polla. ‘Baiae has had a tradition for murder ever since one of the most notorious crimes in Rome’s history took place there. I can still remember the day I heard the news.’
‘The news about what?’ said Flavia.
‘It was near Baiae,’ said Polla, ‘that the Emperor Nero murdered his own mother.’
Lupus sat beside Nubia in the shade of the small temple-like deckhouse of Felix’s yacht. Straight ahead, he could see the palm trees and gilded domes fringing the small blue bay of Baiae.
On his right loomed Vesuvius. Even as close as this, he could see no trace of Herculaneum, the city buried at its foot. Lupus thought of his friends Clio and Vulcan, who had since moved to Rome with their family.
Over on his left was Misenum, where Rome’s navy lay at anchor. He recognised the shape of the promontory and the three poplar trees that had marked the home of Admiral Pliny. Less than a year ago he had swum there to bring the admiral a vital message. But old Pliny had died in the eruption, along with thousands of others who had not been able to escape the tidal wave of white-hot ash.
On that terrible day in August the wind had been from the north-west. Today it was behind them, filling the yellow and white striped sail. Even so, the oarsmen were working hard. Lupus could hear the chant of the leader, and he watched the oars rise and fall in unison, pushing the ship forward in rhythmic surges. The harbour looked close, but Lupus guessed it would take them another half-hour to reach it. He hooked his arm around one of the wooden pillars that held the pitched canopy and leaned over the polished oak rail. Cobalt blue water hissed along the side of the ship, l
eaving a creamy trail behind them. It occurred to him that he had swum from very near this spot to the harbour at Misenum.
As if he had read Lupus’s mind, Felix remarked, ‘Nero’s mother Agrippina swam to the shore from here the night he tried to kill her.’ Lupus looked over his shoulder at Felix. The Patron was sitting on a cushioned bench in the shade with his guests around him. He had been holding court all morning.
‘Nero tried to kill his own mother?’ asked Jonathan, who was sitting on Felix’s left.
‘I know this story!’ cried Tranquillus. ‘Nero tried to have Agrippina murdered in a collapsing boat!’
‘Oh, tell us about it, pater!’ said Pulchra, who had squeezed herself between Jonathan and Flaccus.
‘Yes, do tell,’ purred Voluptua. She and her black panther had plenty of room to themselves at the end of one of the benches.
Felix looked around at them with his dark eyes. ‘Nero and his mother had been to a dinner party in Baiae. He told his mother something was wrong with her own boat and urged her to take his new yacht to sail back to her villa near the Lucrine Lake, just there.’ He pointed towards a distant ring of fluttering banners to the right of the blue bay they were entering. ‘What she didn’t know was that once they were well out to sea, the roof of his yacht was designed to collapse. It was his plan to kill her and make it look like an accident.’
‘Why?’ asked Jonathan. ‘Why did Nero want to kill his own mother?’
‘First,’ said Felix, ‘because she objected to his love affair with Acte, a beautiful but unsuitable freedwoman. Second, because she was becoming too influential and Nero didn’t want to share his power with her.’
‘Weren’t there rumours that she even wanted to be his Empress?’ said sleepy-eyed Vopiscus, who was lounging near Claudia. ‘In more ways than one?’
It took a moment for Lupus to realise what Vopiscus meant.
‘But she was his own mother!’ cried Jonathan, and added, ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘It is nefas,’ said Flaccus.
‘Quite,’ said Felix.
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 153