Lupus gave them his bug-eyed look and Aristo repeated: ‘Beware those closest to you.’
‘And who was closer to Titus than Domitian!’ breathed Flavia.
‘Was this prophecy common knowledge?’ asked Aristo.
Tranquillus grinned. ‘I’ve heard it,’ he said, ‘so it must be common knowledge.’
‘I’ve never heard that,’ said Hilario with a scowl. ‘How do you know something I don’t?’
‘My old tutor told me,’ said Tranquillus dismissively. ‘But listen: there’s more. Titus then asked Apollonius if the gods had told him how he was going to die. And he replied: Like Odysseus, from the sea.’
They all looked at each other and Nubia said, ‘I do not understand what this means.’
Aristo turned his head and smiled down at her. ‘Don’t worry, Nubia,’ he said. ‘Nobody understands what it means. It’s cryptic.’ His gaze held hers; their arms were touching and once again she felt dizzy. Any moment she was going to lose control and wet herself.
‘Did Odysseus die at sea?’ mused Flavia. ‘How did he die? I can’t remember.’ She looked at the two tutors at the end of their respective benches. Hilario wore an expression of almost comical concentration, but Aristo was looking at Nubia with concern. ‘Are you all right, Nubia?’ he asked.
Nubia nodded and looked down. ‘I am having to use the latrine,’ she stammered.
‘Me, too!’ said Flavia. ‘Is there a place to stop soon?’
Tranquillus reached into the leather satchel beneath the bench and pulled out a sponge-stick. He stood up, moved unsteadily forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder and showed him the spongia.
Talpa grinned, nodded and pointed ahead.
‘Apparently there’s a place up ahead where we can use the latrine,’ said Tranquillus with a smile. He handed Nubia the sponge-stick.
‘Good,’ said Flavia.
It was a warm autumn day with a blue sky and fluffy clouds. At this point, the Via Salaria was flanked by plane trees, and she could see the road curving up into blue mountains. Some of the leaves on the trees were already beginning to turn yellow. They passed a tannery and an olive press and at last the cart was pulling into a semi-circular gravel drive before a buttermilk-coloured building with a columned porch. Above the columns, a sign announced in neat red letters that this was the INN OF ROMULUS. There was a hitching post in front of the inn with two mules and a horse. Another carruca stood further up the drive, near a water trough.
Talpa helped them down, then grinned and pointed to the left hand side of the building and gave them a thumbs-up. Flavia mouthed a thank you and then ran after Nubia towards the inn.
She found Nubia hesitating outside a wooden door with the word FORICA painted on it. There was also a more graphic illustration, presumably for those who couldn’t read.
‘I hope there are no men in here,’ whimpered Nubia, hopping up and down. She held the spongia in her hand.
‘If there are, we’ll just have to pretend we think it’s normal,’ said Flavia, and made her voice gruff. ‘Remember, we’re boys.’ She tugged her hat lower and pushed open the door. ‘Oh, praise Juno,’ she said a moment later. ‘There’s nobody else here. Nobody but some mosquitoes.’
‘Ugh!’ said Nubia. ‘It smells.’
Despite a skylight, the wooden seven-seater latrine stank of urine. ‘Better here than in the bushes,’ said Flavia, hiking up her tunic and sitting on the wooden seat. She heard Tranquillus’s voice and thought she saw the door starting to open. ‘Stop!’ she cried. ‘We’re in here! Wait until we’ve finished.’
‘All right,’ came Tranquillus’s laughing voice from just outside, ‘but remember, you’re boys. Real boys don’t squeal like that.’
Flavia had never been in a men’s latrine before. She was amazed by the amount of graffiti on the walls. Most of the messages made her blush, but one intrigued her. CAVE REMUM it read. Beware of Remus. Something about it seemed familiar, but she couldn’t think what.
Nubia rinsed off the sponge-stick and handed it to Flavia. Then she stepped down from the toilet bench to pick up something lying between two floor bricks.
‘Nubia!’ cried Flavia. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Behold!’ Nubia held out a bronze stylus.
‘Oh,’ said Flavia. ‘Someone must have dropped it. May I see it? Ouch!’ She dropped it and sucked a drop of blood from her finger. ‘Stupid thing. It’s sharp as a needle.’ She kicked it away, and it rolled into a dark corner of the latrine. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m famished. Let’s see if this inn serves lunch.’
Nubia did not like the Inn of Romulus on the Via Salaria. The table was sticky, the porridge was gritty and the pretty serving-girl was paying far too much attention to Aristo.
‘Can I get you boys anything else?’ asked the girl, looking only at Aristo. She was chewing mastic resin; Nubia could smell it on her breath.
‘No, thank you.’ Aristo smiled and slid two sesterces across the wooden tabletop. ‘Just tell me where the latrines are?’
The girl leaned closer than was necessary and smiled back at Aristo. She was plump and dusky with a mass of dark curls pulled back with a tortoiseshell clasp. Hilario was staring at her, his red mouth a wet ‘O’ of admiration.
‘Just through the arch on the left,’ breathed the girl. ‘Be careful of spiders. A big one bit the Emperor a few days ago.’
Lupus choked on his posca and Flavia cried, ‘The Emperor Titus stopped here last week?’
The girl glanced at Flavia and tossed her dark curls. ‘Three or four days ago,’ she said, chomping her gum. ‘He and his bodyguards stopped to use the latrines and a mosquito bit him on his calf. He was shorter than I would have thought,’ she added.
‘Mosquito?’ said Nubia. ‘Were you not just saying spider?’
‘Mosquito, spider . . . I don’t know. He just said something bit him.’ The girl turned back to Aristo and fluttered her long lashes at him. ‘Do you want me to go with you? To make sure it’s safe?’
Hilario looked from the girl to Aristo and back.
Aristo laughed as he stood up. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for biting things.’
Nubia saw the girl eye Aristo appreciatively as he walked towards the arch. Then she started as Flavia gripped her arm.
‘Maybe a rabid rat bit Titus!’ cried Flavia. ‘And that’s what killed him.’
Lupus shook his head and wrote on his wax tablet: BITE FROM RABID ANIMAL TAKES WEEKS TO DRIVE YOU MAD.
‘Of course,’ said Flavia. ‘I should know that.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said the serving girl as she put the two coins into her belt pouch. ‘It was just a tiny red dot. I brought his physician some vinegar and watched him apply it. Besides, everybody knows Titus died of a fever.’
‘A mosquito bite can give you fever,’ said Tranquillus. ‘Right, Hilario?’
Hilario was still staring at the serving girl open-mouthed. ‘Oh. Yes. Right,’ he stuttered. ‘A mosquito can give you fever.’
Flavia looked up at the serving-girl. ‘How did the emperor seem to you? Healthy? Or sick?’
The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He was eager to use the latrines, that’s all. He came in with his bodyguard and a Jew. They didn’t even stop to eat.’ For a moment the girl stopped stacking bowls and chomped thoughtfully as she gazed up at the rafters. ‘He did seem a little sad. I remember thinking that. His eyes were red, as if he’d been weeping.’
‘And there was a Jew with him?’ asked Flavia.
‘Yes.’
‘How could you tell?’
The girl shrugged. ‘By his tassels and his beard. I know because the owner of this inn is also a Jew.’ She winked at Hilario. ‘And so am I.’
An hour later Lupus and his three friends and the two tutors reached Eretum, the first stopping place on the Via Salaria, the spot where Titus had taken ill. Lupus was first off the carriage as it stopped before a peach-coloured hospitium with its own stables
, bakery and vegetable garden.
‘Titus had a bad headache and fever,’ said the owner of Hector’s Hospitium, as he served them lukewarm posca. ‘His aides asked me for ice. I showed them the big block of ice in my storeroom. They chopped it all up, wrapped the ice chips in linen and packed it around the emperor in his litter.’
‘The emperor was travelling in a litter?’ said Flavia, and she frowned. ‘Isn’t that a very slow way to travel?’
‘It’s slow but smooth,’ said Tranquillus. ‘Much smoother than a carruca.’
Lupus nodded to himself. He had been carried in a litter once or twice. It was the smoothest ride in the world.
‘There were also horses and carriages in the entourage,’ said Hector, a middle-aged man with wide-spaced eyes and rabbit teeth. ‘And about a dozen foot soldiers.’
‘What time of day did they get here?’ asked Flavia.
‘Shortly before noon,’ said Hector, ‘the day before the Ides.’
‘Assuming they set out at dawn,’ said Aristo, ‘that’s not bad.’
Hilario nodded his agreement.
‘They didn’t give me half of what it cost,’ grumbled Hector. ‘For the ice, that is. But what could I say? He’s the emperor. He was the emperor.’
Lupus frowned. He knew that Jonathan’s father, Doctor Mordecai, always treated fever patients by keeping them warm, not cooling them off.
The same thought must have occurred to Nubia: ‘Why were they putting ice around him?’ she asked.
‘That’s right,’ said Flavia. ‘Aren’t you supposed to burn a fever out?’
‘I asked his helpers the same thing,’ said the innkeeper. ‘But the Jew told me it was the latest theory. Cool down a fever to save the patient.’
Lupus held up his wax tablet. IT DIDN’T WORK.
‘No,’ said the innkeeper. ‘It didn’t. All that expensive ice. And it might have killed Titus, not saved him.’ He made the sign against evil.
‘They didn’t spend the night here at your inn?’ asked Aristo.
‘No. Said they wanted to make Reate by nightfall if they could. That’s where the Emperor has his family estate. I heard the Jew saying they could bathe him in the cold springs there.’
‘Who was the Jew?’ asked Flavia.
‘I don’t know,’ said Hector. ‘A doctor.’
Lupus looked wide-eyed at Flavia. He could tell she was thinking the same thing. He made a quick sketch of Jonathan’s father, Mordecai ben Ezra, and held it up for the innkeeper to see.
‘No,’ said Hector. ‘This doctor was young, early twenties: pale complexion, long nose, small mouth, short beard. There was an Egyptian soothsayer there, too. Asclepius, I think they called him. Thin-faced man in a long grass-green tunic. Kept repeating everything and rubbing his hands like a fly.’
Lupus looked up sharply, then wrote on his wax tablet: ASCLETARIO?
‘Of course!’ cried Flavia. ‘Was his name Ascletario?’
‘That’s it,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Ascletario.’
‘You know Ascletario, the emperor’s astrologer?’ Tranquillus asked Flavia as they came out of the hospitium and into the sunshine. Some chickens were pecking about their feet.
‘We met him a few years ago in Rome,’ said Flavia. ‘We were looking for Jonathan then, too. Poor Jonathan. I hope nothing bad has happened to him.’
Tranquillus raised an eyebrow. ‘You seem very fond of him,’ he said.
‘We’re just friends,’ said Flavia. ‘But we’ve been through so much together.’ She felt quite shaky and was surprised by the strength of her physical reaction.
‘You’re trembling,’ said Tranquillus as they walked back to the carruca. ‘Are you sure you and Jonathan are just friends?’
‘Of course,’ said Flavia. Her head was beginning to throb. ‘We’re just friends.’
Nubia smiled and whispered in her ear. ‘Friends like you and Floppy are friends?’
The mention of Gaius Valerius Flaccus made Flavia’s stomach twist and for a moment she thought she might be physically sick. She remembered how he had proposed to her nine months before, and his words: Your arrow has pierced my heart. She thought of his glossy dark hair and his beautiful eyes and his smiling mouth. She had rejected him, and thrown away her chance at happiness. By now he must be married to Prudentilla, the beautiful daughter of a senator. It seemed unbearably sad and Flavia began to cry.
‘Oh, Flavia!’ Nubia put her arms around Flavia. ‘I did not mean to make you cry.’
Flavia was about to tell Nubia it wasn’t her fault when her knees gave way. A moment later strong arms were holding her up.
‘Flavia!’ Aristo’s voice seemed very remote.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ came Tranquillus’s voice, also from a distance.
Flavia felt Nubia’s cool hand on her forehead. ‘Alas!’ came her friend’s voice, the furthest away of all. ‘She is hot as a brazier.’
‘Whatever you do,’ murmured Flavia. ‘Don’t pack me in ice.’ And then everything went dark.
‘Flavia?’ It was Nubia’s soft voice. ‘How are you feeling?’
Flavia groaned and opened her eyes.
Nubia sat beside her. They were in a small, lamplit room with mustard-coloured panels on the red plaster walls. Flavia felt the cool cloth on her forehead and a too-firm bolster under her head. She was wrapped in three wool blankets. The inner one was damp with sweat.
‘What time is it?’
‘Evening,’ said Nubia.
‘Where am I?’ murmured Flavia. She tried to lift her head, but it throbbed so she lowered it again.
‘I forgot the name,’ said Nubia apologetically.
‘We’re in Eretum,’ said Tranquillus, ‘at Hector’s Hospitium.’
Flavia turned her head to see him standing in the doorway, holding back the striped cloth that served as a door. ‘Are we still here?’ she murmured. ‘What about the investigation?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Tranquillus. ‘We’ve been gathering more information.’
‘Is she awake?’ Aristo came into the room with Lupus and Hilario. ‘Hello, Flavia. How do you feel?’
‘As if a camel trod on my head.’
‘Is she contagious?’ asked Hilario.
Flavia ignored him. ‘What happened?’ she murmured.
‘The same thing that happened to Titus. You took ill at the first stopping place outside Rome on the Via Salaria. But unlike him, you seem to be recovering.’
They all made the sign against evil and Lupus gave Flavia a thumbs-up.
‘I’m so thirsty,’ she groaned. ‘May I have some water?’
‘Here,’ said Nubia. ‘Drink this posca.’ She lifted Flavia’s head with one hand and brought a copper beaker to her lips with the other.
Flavia drank the vinegar-tinted water, then lowered her head slowly back onto the bolster, exhausted.
‘Oh,’ she murmured. ‘I feel as if I just climbed a mountain.’
‘You need to sleep,’ said Nubia gently.
‘No,’ murmured Flavia. ‘I want to hear the new information. More clues . . .’
‘Well,’ said Tranquillus, ‘the stable-boy told us that Titus’s party never intended to stop here. But as they were passing, the emperor suddenly parted the curtains of his litter, looked up towards heaven and cried out: “Alas my life is being taken from me and I do not deserve to die!” That was when they realised he had a fever and packed him in ice.’
Flavia nodded, but her eyelids were very heavy, so she closed them, just for a moment.
‘Everybody go,’ came Nubia’s voice. ‘Flavia is tired and needing to sleep.’
‘Where will you sleep, Nubia?’ came Aristo’s voice.
Flavia wanted to ask the same question but she was exhausted and already she was drifting back into sleep.
‘I will stay here with her,’ came Nubia’s voice, gentle and firm. And it was the last thing Flavia heard for many hours.
Flavia awoke to the sound of the dawn chorus a
nd a rooster crowing and the aroma of fresh bread. She opened her eyes and frowned up at the pale light of dawn coming through a small high window. Then she remembered where she was and what had happened. She had caught a fever on the road to the Sabine Hills.
But now she felt rested and well. And ravenously hungry.
She turned her head and saw Nubia, curled up in an orange and brown striped blanket on a wicker chair, fast asleep. It was just light enough for her to see the mustard-coloured panels on the plaster walls. She was still in Hector’s Hospitium, in Eretum.
Flavia could smell the bread. It must be baking nearby. Not wanting to wake Nubia, she carefully pushed back the covers and sat up. The walls of the room slowly tipped and began to spin and she sank back onto her bolster.
‘Flavia,’ murmured Nubia. ‘Good morning! How do you feel?’
‘A little lightheaded,’ said Flavia. ‘But hungry. I can smell bread.’
Nubia yawned and stretched. ‘Yes, I am smelling it, too.’ She slipped on her sandals and wrapped her blanket around her shoulders. ‘I will go fetch some. You wait here.’
Soon Nubia was back with a loaf of brown bread, fresh from the oven, and a small ceramic bowl.
‘There is a bakery by the stables,’ she said. ‘They make their own bread here. The baker gave me olive oil to dip the bread.’
She put the bowl on the little table beside the bed. Flavia saw that it was full of thick green-gold olive oil.
Nubia tore open the loaf of bread and handed Flavia a chunk. It was still hot, and Flavia had to juggle it from one hand to the other until it was cool. Then she dipped it in the oil and ate it. The bread had different grains in it and was sweetened slightly with molasses. And the olive oil was the best Flavia had ever tasted. Nubia perched on the edge of Flavia’s bed, and the two girls devoured the entire loaf between them, dipping the bread in the oil and washing it all down with lukewarmposca from the pitcher on the table.
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 259