The Vestal Vanishes

by Rosemary Rowe

  Trullius stepped forward. ‘We haven’t moved a thing. We wanted to have proof of how we found the room – something to show the family and the authorities. But if you want the garments that were left inside the bed, that’s easily arranged. I’ll have them brought to you.’

  She shook her head again, more violently. ‘It’s most important that they are not touched!’ She looked at me. ‘I’m sorry, citizen, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before – only at that stage there was no talk of Druids. It simply looked as if she’d run away. But now . . .’ Her voice was cracked with tears, and it was a moment before she gained control. ‘We had a secret, Lavinia and I. A private way of doing things her father didn’t know. He was very prone to punish – and severely, too – if he thought that she’d done the slightest thing amiss, though sometimes I could talk him out of blaming her. So we had a little game. If there was any chance of trouble she would leave certain things arranged . . .’ She trailed off again.

  ‘You mean she may have left a message? In the way she piled the clothes?’ I was incredulous.

  ‘It sounds ridiculous, I know. But she’s too young to read and write, and it isn’t always possible to talk when there are slaves about – at least without it reaching the master in the end. I always told her . . .’ She turned to me again. ‘Citizen, there may be nothing there to find. Certainly there won’t be anything to tell us where she’s gone. But if she thought she was in danger, she would try to let me know. I don’t suppose . . . ?’

  Trullius’s woman made that snorting sound again. ‘Surely she’s not proposing that I should let her go and look?’

  I looked at Trullius. He shrugged. ‘Why not? Her hands and feet are bound. We could loosen them a bit and take her upstairs to the room. She couldn’t get away. In fact, I think we could leave her there to sleep. If she’s tied up, she can’t climb out of the window-space – especially in the dark.’

  ‘And you were offering a slave on guard, I think.’ I said. I saw him hesitate. ‘If there is an extra charge for this,’ I added, ‘I’m sure Publius will pay.’

  I wasn’t sure of this at all, in fact, but the suggestion did the trick. ‘I’ll go and wake a stable-slave, then,’ he muttered in my ear, and we heard him scuffling to the stable in the dark, and – a minute later – rapping loudly on the door.

  His wife was clearly furious with me. ‘You will be asking me to feed this wretched slave, next, I suppose?’ Then, when she saw my nod, she added, ‘Are you sure that you don’t want me to give up my bed for her?’

  The nursemaid turned her head to look at me. ‘I beg you, citizen. Take me to the room. Starve me if you like. But let me spend this night there, where my darling was. Bind my feet by all means, or chain me to the bed. Though I have to warn you, I may need my hands, if I am to find what I am looking for. It may not be obvious to the casual glance . . .’

  ‘Tell us what it is, and we will search for it.’ The voice was sharp, but Priscilla had seized the woman by her two bound arms and was jerking her forward and out into the night.

  ‘You wouldn’t know what you were looking for. I hardly know myself. But I’ll know it when I see it.’ The nurse was on her feet now, and stood there tottering. ‘I may have to wait for daylight to find it, anyway. Though, even then – you understand – I make no promises. If she was abducted, it is a different thing. If anyone but Lavinia made the model in the bed or knotted the cloths to make the rope, then obviously there will be nothing there to find.’ She managed half a shrug. ‘Our best hope, in that case, is that she managed to throw some garment down, in a way that did not alert her kidnappers.’

  She was surprisingly tiny now she was upright, no higher than my chest-clasp as she looked up at me, but there was nothing little about the anguish in her eyes. ‘Believe me, citizen. I am as anxious for her safety as you are yourselves. I swear by all the gods – on my own life and Lavinia’s if you wish – that I won’t try to run away.’

  ‘You will not have the chance. You’ll be guarded anyway.’ There was a muffled commotion in the stable, as I spoke. The door creaked open and a shadowy form appeared, a blacker shape against the darkness of the night. Trullius said something and the figure disappeared again, to return a moment later with a sleeping-mat and what proved to be an unlit taper in its hand.

  When Trullius brought the stable-slave over to the light, I got a look at him. He was a young man, tousled and more than half-asleep, but from the look of the brawny muscles in his arms – as he straightened the outer tunic which he’d hurriedly pulled on – he was more than a match for the tiny aging nurse. Even a Druid might think twice before attacking him, I thought, as he pulled out a knife and cut the ropes around the nurse’s legs.

  I surrendered the oil-lamp to the lady of the house. She allowed her husband to light the taper from the flame, and she set off towards the kitchen-block, while we filed back through the painted passage and the dining-space into the entrance-way where I’d first been received. This time, however, I was ushered up the stairs.

  ‘This was Lavinia’s bedroom,’ Trullius said, stopping at the first door on the landing, and hustling the nursemaid roughly into the room beyond. I followed them and had a look around.

  There were two beds in there. I should not have been surprised – I’d heard that Audelia and her cousin had shared the room – but I somehow had supposed that they had shared a bed, as people in a guest house generally do. But these were individual, proper sleeping frames, with goatskin mattresses and woven blankets too – though on the bed beside the window-space these had been thrown back to reveal a pile of clothing carefully arranged to look at first glance like a sleeping form. A travelling box, in which the clothes had evidently been packed, was standing empty by the window-space.

  The nursemaid saw my glance. ‘That was Lavinia’s, of course. It held her dowry too – though it seems that it has disappeared as well. Through there, do you suppose?’

  She nodded to the window-space. The covers from the other bed had been deftly knotted into a sort of rope, secured firmly around the bed-frame at one end, the rest of it still snaking downward towards the inner court.

  I walked across to get a better look. The knotted rope extended almost to the ground, but it was not strong enough to take a lot of weight. A supple climber, or a child, might manage to descend. I shook my head and glanced around the room. I wondered anyone would want to run away from here.

  There was a handmade carpet on the floor and a wooden chair nearby, with a large pot under it, complete with lid and fresh water in a jug, Whatever the dining arrangements downstairs, this was luxury. No wonder that Cyra and Lavinius had thought it suitable.

  Trullius had joined me at the window-space and seemed about to pull the rope inside, but the nursemaid stopped him. ‘Tie my feet again – do anything you like – but let me pull the rope in, so I can see the knots.’

  He looked at me. I nodded and we two stepped aside. The slave-boy set the taper down and drew the knife again, cutting the rope-bonds which still bound her wrists. She flexed her hands a moment, and then came across and pulled in the twisted cloth, lingering over every knot as it appeared. As she undid the last of them she shook her head at me. ‘Nothing of interest in that, citizen. I’ll have to look elsewhere. But I’ll see better when the daylight comes.’ She turned to Trullius. ‘If I may use the far bed, you can tie my legs again and seal the shutters if you wish. Not that I could climb out of the window in the dark.’

  ‘I’ll tie you up all right!’ It was Trullius’s wife appearing in the doorway with the lighted lamp, a hunk of dry bread and a heavy length of chain. ‘You think I’m going to leave you virtually free, after what has happened in this house?’ She thumped the bread down on the chair-seat as she spoke. She turned towards the slave and motioned to the chain. ‘The nursemaid wears a slave-collar with her name on it. Attach this to the back of it and chain her to the bed. Make sure that the screw-link at the end is out of reach. Give her enough slack to reach the
pot, of course – I don’t want staining on my mattresses – and she can eat and drink this if she can find it in the dark. If that arrangement meets with your approval, citizen?’ she added in my direction with a sneer.

  It was hardly what I would have chosen, but I did not object. Far better to be chained up in a comfortable dry room, with food and drink – however minimal – than to spend a freezing night starving in a draughty ruined kiln. ‘I’ll come back in the morning, then,’ I murmured to the nurse. ‘And hope that you have something to report.’

  The slave-woman, who was submitting to the chain, gave me a rueful smile. ‘If I have nothing to tell you in the morning, citizen, do as you wish with me. I will have nothing left to live for, anyway, if my darling’s lost. But I swear by all the gods that I’ll do all I can.’

  I nodded. ‘Goodnight then.’ I followed Trullius. He led me into the other attic-room, as the stable-slave spread out his sleeping-mat outside the nursemaid’s door.

  I looked around my attic. So this was where Secunda and her husband slept. Priscilla had said that this was her room as a rule, and certainly the accommodation was much less lavish than next door. There was no chair or table, no covering on the floor, and only a crude bolt to latch the door. The bed provided was far more primitive, simple wooden slats and a stuffed straw palliasse, but it was still much more luxurious than my pile of reeds at home. Besides, I was so tired I would have slept on cobblestones. I paused just long enough to unwind my travel-stained toga and pull my sandals off, then – without even waiting to crawl beneath the woven covers on the bed – I lay down on the pillows and was instantly asleep.

  EIGHTEEN

  I woke from a confused dream in which a man in Druid robes was cooking headless corpses in a kiln, while a giant in yellow wedding slippers kicked the chimney down.

  I forced my eyes open, uncertain for a moment as to where I was, and peered around until I recognized the room. Dawn light was streaming through the shuttered window-space, my shoes and toga were where I’d put them down and I was still lying on the covers. It was obvious that I had hardly stirred all night. But the noisy kicking of my nightmare seemed still to be going on.

  I struggled to sit up but the banging didn’t stop. Sleepily I realized that it was not a dream at all, but somebody knocking loudly on the door. And the landlord’s voice was hollering my name. ‘Citizen Libertus, I can’t unlatch the door. Are you all right in there?’

  I swung my feet down, shambled to the door and pulled back the bolt. I had scarcely time to do so before Trullius burst in. He was still in his under-tunic, without even a blanket to hide his ruined arm, but he made no excuse. ‘Oh, citizen! Thank Mars you are all right. I had begun to worry when you didn’t answer me. I suppose you were asleep. I’m sorry to wake you but you’d better come at once.’

  I grovelled for my sandals, but he shook his head.

  ‘There isn’t time to dress. I don’t know what to do. My wife went in there when she first got up and . . .’ He shook his head. ‘You’d better come and see.’ He was already hustling out of the door again.

  I followed stupidly, still more than half-asleep. What was the panic? Surely Lavinia had not unexpectedly returned? I shook my head. That was unlikely. If that had happened Trullius would have told me so at once. More probable that the nursemaid had found her promised secret sign. I was encouraged in this hope when I saw where Trullius was leading me.

  He kicked aside the sleeping-mat which still lay outside the nursemaid’s door, though there was no sign of the servant who’d been left on guard, and motioned me to go inside the room. ‘There!’ he said, and gestured.

  The slave-woman was slumped half-lying on the floor, held to the bed-frame only by the chain – in a way which would have choked her if she had not already been so evidently dead. She had arched against her collar in some final spasm: there were cruel marks visible on her neck and chin even from this distance, and her bloodless face was tinged with purpish-blue as though she had found it difficult to breath. Death had not been painless. I prayed it had been quick.

  ‘That’s how we found her,’ Trullius went on. He would have wrung his hands if he’d been able to. ‘It must have been those dreadful Druids at their work again. Though how they got in unobserved I cannot think. My wife is right, it must be sorcery. Oh, dear Mercury, what will Lavinius say?’ He shook his head, from side to side, like a wet dog in despair.

  I could think of nothing intelligent to say, so I simply moved past him to look more closely at the corpse. She had not been dead for long. The body had not begun to stiffen very much. There was no wound or sign of other damage to the corpse, except the bruising round her neck and that – though quite extensive – seemed more the result of violent movement than the cause of death: there was none of the protruding tongue that is produced by strangling. This looked more like a poisoning to me.

  But what had done it? There was no cup or phial in evidence. I glanced around the room. The dried morsel of loaf had not been touched at all, but some of the water in the jug had disappeared. Could that have been the source? I dipped a little finger into the liquid in the jug and – daringly but idiotically – placed it on my tongue. To my relief there was none of the burning or numbness which I half-feared to feel, only the faint stale taste of water from a city well. (My wife Gwellia was furious with me later, when she learned of this, and I admit that she was right. It was a particularly foolish thing to do – perhaps the product of not being properly awake – but I reasoned that my tiny sample was too small to cause me harm.)

  So, if it was not the water, what had killed the nurse? Was it possible that, despite the guard, someone had come in during the night and forced some potion down her throat? I am not generally a believer in sorcery, but even I was beginning to wonder if there was something supernatural and sinister afoot.

  Trullius had more practical concerns and was wittering in distress. ‘We shall be ruined, citizen. Who else will come here now? Even supposing that Lavinius does not have us dragged before the courts and sent into exile with nothing to our names.’ He stopped and looked at me. ‘My wife has taken the stable-slave and locked him in the kiln. He swears that he heard nothing except a muffled thud. But something must have happened. You think he was the one who was working with the Druids? Perhaps he heard us talking yesterday and – once he heard that Lavinia might have left a sign – he feared the nurse was going to discover that he was involved.’

  ‘And so he killed her, having fortuitously brought some poison with him when you roused him from his sleep?’ I shook my head. ‘I doubt it very much. But just in case Lavinia did contrive to leave a sign, I’ll have a look myself – although I’ve no idea what I am looking for.’

  There was nothing at all of interest in the luggage-box, except a wisp or two of long red curly hair, which – from the description that I had received – were presumably Lavinia’s own, so I moved to examine the pile of clothes, still on the other bed. They were no longer piled into a human shape, but scattered as though the nurse – as she promised – had made a search of them. But if there was a signal, I could not fathom it. There seemed to be nothing of much consequence, at a casual glance – mostly girlish stoles and tunics such as you would expect Lavinia to have.

  Except . . . ? If a girl was on her way to join the Vestal house, why would she take with her all the clothes that she possessed? She was never going to wear them any more. Even the youngest novices at the shrine are given special robes as soon as they arrive – just as a boy puts off his toga praetexta when he becomes a man, or a bride abandons her childish garments when she weds. Besides, not all of these garments were Lavinia’s, when I looked more closely at the pile.

  There was an adult’s cloak, for instance, made of woven plaid: and when I rummaged further, I found a woman’s pale-brown tunic which had been much repaired and a well-worn drawstring purse of the same coarse material. Who did these belong to? Not the nursemaid, most assuredly – one glance at the body was enough to te
ll you that. These peasant clothes were much too big for her, and clearly far too large to fit a six-year-old. Besides, they were of inferior quality, thick cloth and roughly sewn – not the sort of thing Lavinius would have permitted in his house. So where had they come from? Was this somehow the sign the nursemaid had been looking for?

  I picked up the empty purse. It was a useless thing (only the poorest do not have a leather money-pouch) and this one was stained yellowish and had a hole in it, so that any small coin would have instantly gone through. It smelt of carrots, too. I put it down again. Who would want to hoard a purse like that, which was no use at all except to hold a . . .

  ‘Wait just a heartbeat!’ I exclaimed aloud. Yellowish stains and carrots? I knelt down and began to scrabble on the floor beneath the bed, but there was nothing there except dust and a few cobwebs where the broom-bunch had not reached.

  Trullius came over and stood staring down at me. ‘Shouldn’t we go down now and question the slave-boy, citizen? What are you searching for?’

  ‘Something that isn’t here!’ I looked up to answer and saw him silhouetted against the open window-space. I clambered to my feet. ‘The window-space, of course! Let me get my shoes on and I’ll come downstairs with you. We’ll decide what to do with this body afterwards.’

  He looked completely mystified as I rushed into my own room and pulled my sandals on, but he didn’t question me and when I clattered down the dimly lit staircase he followed close behind. His wife was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, still dressed in an under-tunic as though she’d just got out of bed – with her legs exposed and only a cloak around her top for dignity.