In his corner, Lupus adopted the gesture and swung his arm easily back and forth.
‘It is also useful in the statement of facts, but if we are reproaching our adversary, the same movement may be employed with vehemence and energy.’
Lupus swung his arm more vigorously, over-balanced, stepped on the hem of his overlong toga and almost pitched face forward. He caught himself and adopted an air of insulted dignity.
Flavia couldn’t help grinning. ‘He looks like a small but pompous lawyer.’
‘To make the gesture of rejection,’ read Jonathan, ‘as if saying “Heaven forfend”, the rhetor should push his hands to the left and turn his gaze in the opposite direction.’
Here Lupus pushed his arms straight out to the left, palms forward, and twisted his head and torso as far as he could to the right, a look of extreme repulsion on his face.
Flavia giggled.
‘The gesture of amazement is shown by turning the palm slightly upward and closing the fingers one by one, the little finger first, and then opening them up in the reverse order.’
Lupus adopted an amazed look as he watched his own hand make the gesture.
Flavia laughed.
‘To express surprise or indignation, DO NOT toss the head and shake the hair about.’
Lupus shook his head wildly so that his hair flopped from one side to the other, then over his eyes.
Flavia was now laughing so hard that she had to sit on the bed beside Jonathan.
‘In the face,’ continued Jonathan, ‘the eyes are most expressive. The rhetor must not abuse their power. His eyes may be intent . . . proud . . . fierce . . . gentle . . . or harsh.’
Lupus imitated each of these expressions in turn, and Flavia laughed at each one.
‘But he must NEVER let his eyes be fixed’ – here Lupus stared at the wall without blinking – ‘or popping out’ – Lupus made his bug-eyed look – ‘or shifty’ – Lupus narrowed his eyes and without moving his head looked to his extreme left and then right – ‘or swimming . . . sleepy . . . stupefied . . . voluptuous . . . or sexy!’
Lupus demonstrated this last word by wiggling his eyebrows up and down. Flavia and Jonathan both doubled over laughing.
‘What are you doing in here?’ came a deep voice from the doorway.
‘Floppy!’ cried Flavia, then clapped her hand over her mouth and burst out laughing again.
Flaccus scowled at her and strode over to the bed. ‘That’s my Quintilian!’ he growled, and snatched up the scroll.
This sent Jonathan into fresh paroxysms of laughter. He tried to speak but was laughing too hard. Finally he managed to point at Flaccus and blurt out: ‘It’s his . . . Quintilian!’
They collapsed in helpless gales of laughter.
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ said Flaccus, the tips of his ears turning pink. ‘It’s very serious.’
Over in his corner, Lupus put his hands on his togaed hips and made the expression for ‘serious’ by pursing his lips, staring with his eyes and thrusting his head forward.
Tears of laughter were now running down Flavia’s cheeks and Jonathan was rolling on the bed.
Flaccus snorted, swivelled on his heel and stalked out of the room.
*
Flavia sent the boys home via the secret passage in her bedroom wall. When she went back to the guest room she found Lynceus quietly folding his master’s toga.
‘Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit,’ said the old slave without looking up. ‘He has left, absconded, escaped and disappeared. To quote Cicero.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Flavia, and went downstairs to look for Flaccus.
He was sitting at the cedarwood table in her father’s tablinum, but with his back to the garden. The sun had disappeared behind the city walls and although it was still a few hours until dusk, the air had already grown chilly. She went into the kitchen and returned a few moments later with a cup of hot spiced wine.
‘Gaius?’ She paused in the tablinum doorway. ‘Gaius, I’m sorry.’
Flaccus did not reply. She tipped her head to one side and studied his back. It was a very attractive back: broad and muscular, and at that moment very stiff.
She went to the desk and stood beside him. ‘I made you some spiced wine,’ she said, ‘to warm you up.’
He did not respond or look at her.
‘It’s well watered.’
Silence.
She sighed and put the cup on the desk beside him. Then she moved closer and looked over his shoulder. A papyrus scroll like the one Jonathan had been reading lay on the desk before him. Beside him was an open tablet. He turned his head to make a note on the red wax and then looked back at the scroll.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked. Standing this close to him she could feel the warmth radiating from his body and she could smell his distinctive scent: cinnamon and musk.
He put down the ivory stylus and sighed and stared straight ahead.
‘I promise I won’t laugh,’ she said.
‘Quintilian,’ he said at last. ‘I’m reading Quintilian.’
Flavia was glad she was standing behind him. He could not see her biting her lip to keep from giggling.
Presently she managed, ‘What’s a Quintilian?’
‘Not what. Who. Quintilian is the greatest rhetor who ever lived. After Cicero, of course. One day I hope to study with him up in Rome.’
Flavia pulled her father’s old leather and oak armchair round to where she could see Flaccus’s face. ‘Then he’s still alive? Quintilian, I mean.’
‘Of course he’s still alive. He’s not yet fifty.’
Flavia sat in the chair and frowned. ‘But Cicero’s not, is he? He’s not alive.’
Flaccus looked up from his scroll and raised an eyebrow.
‘Of course Cicero’s not alive,’ said Flavia quickly. ‘He . . . um . . . he lived in the time of the Republic. Julius Caesar. Marcus Antonius. All those people.’
‘Yes,’ said Flaccus, and returned to his scroll.
‘Oh!’ said Flavia suddenly. ‘Was Cicero the one who had his head and hands cut off and Marcus Antonius’s wife took his severed head in her lap and stabbed his lifeless tongue again and again with her hairpin?’
‘That’s the man,’ said Flaccus.
‘Nasty end,’ murmured Flavia.
‘No,’ said Flaccus, looking up at her earnestly. ‘It was a noble end. Even splendid. He was on his way to his seaside estate when his enemies caught up with him. He stuck his head out of the litter, exposed his bare neck and calmly demanded that they do it quickly and well.’
‘How brave,’ whispered Flavia.
Flaccus nodded. ‘Once, when I was studying rhetoric, our master set us a question to debate: Imagine you are Cicero. Should you beg Marcus Antonius to pardon you? And if Antonius were to agree, but only on the condition that you destroy all your writings, should you accept?’
‘What do you think?’
‘If there is any immortality to be had in this world,’ said Flaccus quietly, ‘it is through the things we write. Cicero made the right decision.’ He paused and looked up at her with his dark eyes. ‘You know, the anniversary of his death is the day after tomorrow.’
‘The day of the trial!’ breathed Flavia. ‘Do you think it’s an omen?’
‘I hope not,’ he said with a shrug, but she thought she saw him shiver.
‘Drink your wine while it’s hot,’ she said. ‘It will warm you.’
He dutifully took a sip from the steaming beaker.
A breeze from the garden brought a scent of winter jasmine and ruffled his glossy dark hair.
Flavia tucked her feet under her and studied him. She always forgot how handsome he was, with his long, thick eyelashes and straight nose and sensitive mouth. She remembered that once she had imagined kissing those lips.
He looked up at her and she felt her cheeks grow warm.
‘Flavia,’ he said. ‘May I tell you something?’
‘Of course,’ she
said brightly.
‘Something very personal?’
‘Yes.’ Her heart beat faster.
‘You won’t laugh?’
‘I promise.’
He looked down at the scroll. ‘I’m terrified.’
‘Terrified? Of what?’
‘Of the trial.’ His voice was very low.
‘But why?’
‘I’ve never pleaded a case before.’
‘But you studied rhetoric, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. At the academy in Athens.’
‘And didn’t you say you were going to practise law in Rome?’
‘I’ve been so busy searching for a master criminal that I haven’t had a chance.’
‘Oh. But didn’t you plead cases when you were studying in Athens?’
‘Only practice cases, like the one about Cicero. This is real. Someone’s freedom is at stake. Maybe their life.’ He suddenly seemed very young and vulnerable, and she remembered he was not yet twenty.
‘Oh, Gaius!’ The leather armchair creaked as she sat forward. ‘You’ll be marvellous. You have the most marvellous voice, and you look marvellous in a toga and you know lots of Greek and . . . you’ll be marvellous!’ She felt herself flushing and wondered if she had gone too far.
‘You repeated the word marvellous too many times,’ he said.
But then he smiled at her, and she knew she had said exactly the right thing.
*
‘Great Neptune’s beard, man!’ bellowed a voice from the doorway. ‘What are you doing up here in my daughter’s bedroom?’
‘Pater!’ Flavia leapt off the bed and ran to her father and hugged him. ‘You’re home from Sicily!’
‘And not a moment too soon, it seems!’
‘Oh, pater! It’s only Floppy. He was practising his exordium.’
Marcus Flavius Geminus narrowed his eyes at the young man standing red-faced in the corner of Flavia’s bedroom. ‘Gaius Valerius Flaccus? Is that you?’
‘Hello, sir,’ said Flaccus. ‘I realise that it’s inappropriate for me to be in your daughter’s room, but it does have the best mirror. The great Demosthenes used to practise in front of a full-length mirror,’ he added.
‘Gaius is practising the gestures,’ said Flavia. ‘Apparently, good rhetors have to know all the gestures.’
Flaccus nodded. ‘Gestures plus voice equal delivery, and delivery is the most important element of great oratory. As Demosthenes himself said: Delivery, delivery, and delivery.’
Flavia saw her father suppress a smile. ‘Gestures and oratory are all well and good, Valerius Flaccus, but not in my daughter’s bedroom. Come. Let’s go downstairs. Alma has just put a patina in the oven and I can already smell it. I’m famished.’
Flavia’s father stepped aside to let Flaccus pass, then turned to give her his sternest paterfamilias expression.
‘Pater!’ she cried, before he could rebuke her. ‘Nubia almost witnessed a murder! But she’s still officially your slave and so they could torture her. She’s had to flee to Uncle Gaius’s farm. You can’t have dinner until you’ve gone and set her free.’
*
By the time they finally sat down to dinner, it was after dusk and Caudex was already lighting the hanging oil-lamps. Their main course was soup, so the adults joined Flavia and Nubia at the table. Scuto and Nipur crowded happily underneath, jostling knees in the hope of morsels.
‘Oh, Nubia,’ said Flavia, giving her friend a hug. ‘It’s so good to have you home. I missed you.’
‘I missed you, too,’ said Nubia. ‘But Gaius and Miriam are very kind. They feed me and hide me in wine press.’ She slipped Nipur a secret piece of flat-bread.
Flavia’s father blew on a spoonful of pea and leek soup. ‘Yes, you were lucky not to be discovered. Another bit of good luck was meeting that decurion on his way back from young Pliny’s estate. He witnessed Nubia’s manumission right there on the Laurentum Road. Here it is.’ He tapped a wax tablet on the table beside him. ‘All signed and sealed. I’ll pay your slave-tax first thing tomorrow. But now that I’m back, I don’t think they’ll try such low tricks again. Who do you think was behind Nubia’s arrest, anyway?’
‘It had to be someone,’ said Aristo, ‘who knows us well enough to have realised that Nubia’s original manumission wasn’t strictly legal.’
‘Or someone who has access to someone who knows you that well,’ said Flaccus.
‘Or it could be someone who knows how Nubia was set free last year at the Villa of Pollius Felix,’ murmured Flavia. Suddenly she had a terrible thought and looked up to find Flaccus looking back at her. She knew he was thinking the same thing, because she could see the muscles of his jaw clenching. ‘You don’t think it could be Felix?’ she whispered.
Flavia’s father looked at her with interest. ‘Why would Pollius Felix want to hurt us?’
‘No reason,’ said Flavia hastily.
To her relief, Flaccus said, ‘I think we need to search closer to home.’ He turned to Aristo. ‘Flavia tells me you’ve been trying to find out more about Dives. Any luck? At the moment I have precious little to build a case on.’
‘I’ve learned that Dives was not always rich,’ said Aristo. ‘He was born a plebeian: Gaius Artorius Brutus was the name he used to go by. His father was a poor farmer from Paestum and his mother a Greek freedwoman. He joined the army, served with the Tenth Legion in Judaea. He was wounded ten years ago, during the siege of Jerusalem. He stayed in the army for a few more years, then was granted early discharge. He came back to Italia, bought the estate near Laurentum and lived there for almost five years, growing richer and richer, fatter and fatter. At some point he changed his cognomen from Brutus to Dives.’ Aristo dipped a hunk of rye bread into his soup.
Flavia’s father frowned. ‘How was it,’ he said, ‘that a retired legionary was able to buy a seaside estate at Laurentum, with olive groves, vineyards, mulberry orchards and a thousand head of cattle?’
‘Yes,’ said Flaccus. ‘How did Gaius Artorius Brutus become Gaius Artorius Dives?’
‘There are several theories,’ said Aristo, ‘the most likely being that he stumbled across some jewel or treasure when serving in Judaea and when he returned to Italia he sold this and made his fortune.’
‘It must have been a big jewel,’ said Flavia.
‘Indeed.’ Aristo mopped the bottom of his soup bowl with his bread. ‘They say his estate was worth two million sesterces when he bought it. Now it is worth ten times that.’
‘Could he have inherited the money?’ asked Flaccus.
‘Dives did inherit his father’s farm in Calabria,’ said Aristo. ‘But it was small and barren. He sold it for a pittance and ploughed the money into his Laurentum estate.’
‘What about the man himself?’ asked Flaccus. ‘What did people think of Dives?’
‘His slaves considered him to be a good master,’ said Aristo. ‘And by the way, most of them are Jews. But he wasn’t well-respected by the neighbouring landowners or by people of the upper class.’
‘Why not?’ said Flaccus, making notes on his red wax tablet. Flavia noticed he had barely touched his soup.
‘Dives welcomed the attention of legacy-hunters. That’s not considered proper behaviour among men of your class, is it?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Flaccus.
Aristo nodded. ‘Well, apparently he encouraged them to bring him pastries, and read him the latest poetry from Rome, and accompany him on foot when he was carried in his sedan chair. The usual things.’
‘Why?’ said Nubia. ‘Why do people bring him pastry and read poetry?’
‘Dives was fabulously wealthy,’ said Aristo with a smile. ‘But he had no obvious heirs. Some people hoped that if they were especially kind to him when he was alive, then he would leave them money after his death.’
‘And he encouraged these captators?’ asked Flaccus.
‘He did indeed. He loved the attention. Although everyone suspected he would make young Noniu
s his heir, they lived in hope of juicy legacies. Indeed, he often made a great show of bringing out his will in order to add a codicil or rub something out. He made a lot of enemies when he died.’
‘Why?’ asked Flavia’s father.
‘He only left his captators five sesterces each,’ said Aristo. ‘Some of the citizens I spoke to approved, but others thought his behaviour despicable.’
‘Could he have been murdered?’ asked Flaccus. ‘Nonius has accused my client of murdering Dives.’
Flavia put down her spoon. ‘Didn’t I tell you what Jonathan discovered?’ she asked.
‘No,’ they all said.
‘There’s a rumour that Dives was smothered. According to a Jewish freedwoman who lives on the estate.’
‘Why hasn’t she told the authorities about this?’ asked Marcus.
‘The rumour started with the slaves,’ said Flavia.
‘And as we now know,’ said Aristo, with a nod towards Nubia, ‘the testimony of a slave is not valid unless they have been tortured.’
‘So none of them will go running to the authorities,’ said Flaccus drily.
‘And the freedwoman won’t tell because she probably doesn’t want to see her friends hurt,’ added Flavia. ‘According to Jonathan she was a slave, too, until last week.’
‘Dives freed her in his will?’ said Flaccus.
‘I think so,’ said Flavia.
Flaccus took out his red wax tablet. ‘What’s this freedwoman’s name?’ he asked.
‘I can’t remember. Jonathan will know.’
Flaccus closed his tablet. ‘I’ll ask him tomorrow.’
Flavia’s father gave Flaccus a keen glance. ‘You’ve hardly touched your soup,’ he said. ‘Nervous?’
Flaccus glanced at Flavia and she gave him an encouraging smile.
‘Terrified,’ said Flaccus. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to defend Hephzibah the day after tomorrow?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m due to attend a ceremony at my patron’s house that day. And I’m busy all day tomorrow. I’m supervising the redecoration of Cordius’ bedroom before he and his bride return.’
‘Pater!’ cried Flavia. ‘Aren’t you even coming to the trial?’
Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Cordius is making a new will the day after tomorrow, and I’ve promised to be a witness. I think he wants to leave his estate to his new wife.’
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 190