He was, from the snow-white toga he had worn when he arrived, a candidate for public office, and would not normally have given me a second glance, but in a bathhouse every man is equal, except perhaps the Jews. (Of course there are those, more Roman than the Romans, who affect special little tunics to bathe in, but even they would probably desist if they heard the comments which follow when they leave. Common opinion is that such men have something – or nothing much – to hide.)
He gave me an affable nod.
I decided to endure cooking for a little longer. ‘Very quiet in here today.’
He smiled. I noticed that his armpits were red and angry where he had just had them plucked in the inner room. He must have been a braver man than I am – I could never willingly have endured that torment, and I had not heard him so much as scream. ‘You should have been here yesterday.’
I gave him my full attention. ‘You were here then? Did you see Ulpius Maximilian here? The son of the decurion?’
The look of boiled affability faded. ‘You are a friend of his?’
‘Not really. I had business connections with his family,’ I said. It was stretching a point, since I had not yet officially acquired the contract for the pavement, but it raised my status in my companion’s eyes.
‘I see,’ he murmured sympathetically. ‘And now you will be seeking payment from the heir? The death of Quintus Ulpius is a bad business, in more respects than one. That young son of his is a wastrel. He owes money in all the wineshops of Corinium. He was in here yesterday, looking like a bedraggled traveller instead of a future councillor, whispering with that unpleasant creature who guards the clothes and slipping him money.’
It was the news I had been waiting for, and I got gratefully to my feet. ‘Then I must go and have a few words with the attendant myself,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon. Enjoy your bathe.’ I smiled at him and left hurriedly.
It felt cool in the tepidarium after the heat of the dry room. A few more minutes in there, I thought, and I could have saved the cooks the necessity of roasting the pig for the funeral feast. They could have stuffed baked plums and herbs into my mouth and served me up instead. To my delight, too, Junio was waiting for me, so I perched on a bench and let him strigil off the sweat, dirt and oil as I told him what I had discovered, and he then stood by with a towel while I plunged gratefully into the tepid pool.
I ignored the attractions of the entertainments – watching the wrestlers or losing my shirt on the fall of a dice – and finished my ablutions with a brief but bracing swim in the large cold pool outside, and went back shivering to claim my clothes. They were untouched, to my relief. I allowed Junio to dress me, and then, taking the attendant into a corner, took back my purse and drew out a few more quadrans for a tip. The attendant scowled at the size of the offering, but reached for it all the same.
I dropped the money into his palm. ‘By the way,’ I said conversationally, ‘what was it that Ulpius Maximilian was talking to you about yesterday?’
I had been prepared, secretly, to pay for the information; in fact, the poorness of the tip was caused, in part, by the need to keep some coins for the purpose. I need not have bothered, as it happened. The attendant looked at me in horror, as though I had offered to feed him to the wolves.
‘Well?’ I insisted. ‘And do not deny it – I have spies who saw you in conversation.’ I wondered, inwardly, what my companion of the hot room would think of being elevated to the role of spy, but this was not a time for niceties.
The attendant looked about him wildly as if seeking inspiration. ‘It was nothing. An argument about his clothes. He thought I had failed to guard them properly when he came to dress again. Nothing else, citizen, nothing at all.’
It was a more intelligent lie than I had expected. Nine times out of ten he would have been believed, and even a doubter would find it difficult to disprove the story. Now, however, he was unlucky. This was the proverbial tenth time out of ten.
‘No,’ I said, in the same conversational tone, ‘I dare say that you have a dozen such confrontations every day, but it was not what you were discussing with Maximilian. He sent his clothes from here directly to the fuller’s, and had his slaves bring fresh ones when he left, because he needed to leave here wearing mourning. He did not have garments in your changing room. Besides, he was seen to give you money. He would hardly do that if he was dissatisfied. No, he was paying you for something. And I don’t imagine he was trading in second-hand tunics.’
A look of panic crossed the attendant’s face. ‘Hush, citizen, I beg you, not so loud. It was a private matter. A favour that I did for him. He was paying me for my services.’
This fellow had a strange definition of ‘favours’, I thought, but the explanation was plausible enough. It was well known that attendants at the baths in any town – if they were not slaves, and sometimes if they were – turned a dishonest as or two by acting as pimps for local dancing girls. Sometimes, if they could afford it, they lent money at exorbitant interest to bathers who had lost all their cash at the poolside gambling games. It fitted the picture I had of Quintus’s son.
The attendant smiled at me hopefully. It was an unctuous, unwholesome, lopsided smile, and it was unmistakable. As soon as I saw it I realised where I had seen the youth before. This was the same fellow who had accosted us at the gates this morning, asking for Maximilian.
I taxed him with it at once. ‘So that was why you came to the house this morning? To ask for more payment? It must have been a significant favour.’ It was, I thought, a singularly inopportune moment to choose, when Quintus had just died. ‘Were you aware of what had happened to his father? You knew about the stabbing?’
The effect was extraordinary. The attendant turned first white, then pink, as if he had been plunged into his own cold pool, and sweat began to stand out on his forehead. His voice almost failed him as he croaked, ‘If you knew about it too, citizen, why didn’t you say so to begin with?’ He looked suspiciously to right and left as if the statues in their niches might be listening. ‘What is it you want, part of the money? There’s no need to come to me, citizen. Now that his father is dead, there should be enough for us both.’
Chapter Seventeen
To say that I was thunderstruck by this reply would be an insult to Jove’s thunderbolts. Not only was it the last response I was expecting, but I had no idea what it meant. I shot a look at Junio, who was standing behind the attendant, but he simply shrugged his shoulders at me and opened his eyes wide. He was obviously as baffled as I was.
‘Money?’ I said to the bath boy, ‘I did not come here looking for money. I am interested in Maximilian.’
This answer seemed to cause the attendant more anguish than ever. ‘Great Mercury! You are not about to arrest him? Don’t do that, citizen. It will solve nothing now. Ulpius is dead, and we shall all be the losers. Leave Maximilian to me, citizen. No one else need know our little secret, and I’ll make it worth your while.’
A glimmer of possible understanding filtered into my brain. ‘Maximilian is paying you for your silence?’
No answer. If my surmise was accurate, I thought, Maximilian was getting value for his money at this moment at least. I remembered my earlier thoughts about Maximilian, and ventured another wild guess.
‘Because you have evidence against him? Evidence about who stabbed his father? Maximilian did it?’
The youth looked at me with contempt. ‘No, of course he didn’t. At least not personally. It would have been far too dangerous to do it himself.’
My carefully constructed conclusions crumbled at his words like a wattle wall at a battering ram. However, the fellow was only talking because he thought I knew something. I said with a show of great conviction, ‘But you know who did.’ I did not make it a question.
The attendant blanched. ‘I see, citizen. You have come from them.’ He shook his head in agitation. ‘No, citizen, I swear to you. On all the gods I swear, I did not recognise the men. I did not even see them pr
operly. All I know is that after the stabbing they went to meet Maximilian. They were standing there, in the shadows, when I came out of the baths. I recognised Maximilian, but I couldn’t see the men’s faces. I promise you that, citizen.’
I was nonplussed. How could anyone arriving at the baths with Maximilian yesterday be hidden in shadow? ‘In the shadows, you say?’
He gave me a shifty look. ‘It was dark. There was a moon, but I was carrying no torch or candle, and neither were they. The light was poor, and Maximilian was so busy with the men he didn’t notice me.’
Suddenly, I began to understand. A dark night, a clouded moon. This was the night of the chariot races. I remembered it only too clearly.
‘It was late,’ I said. ‘The baths were closed. What were you doing here at that hour?’
‘I’d come back to collect . . . something I’d left behind.’ Whatever the ‘something’ was, I thought, ten denarii to an as he had stolen it from a bather. As he had also, presumably, stolen a key to the door of the building. ‘I came out and saw them together. Maximilian was furious, because the plan had gone awry. He kept saying over and over that they were simply supposed to threaten Ulpius and take his purse, not stab him in the stomach, but of course the men didn’t care a quadrans for that.’
So that was it! I could imagine the scene: the attendant skulking in the shadows, taking good care not to be noticed; Maximilian talking to the ruffians. The boy had not observed the men’s faces, I thought, but even in the feeble light he had seen one thing clearly enough – the opportunity for profit. Doubtless he hoped that Maximilian would pay a high price for silence.
‘Maximilian did not want to pay them, but of course he had to do it in the end. He had bribed the soothsayer, an old woman who hangs around the forum so that she would waylay the medicus on his way back from the chariot races, and leave the way open for the attack. And the men knew it.’
The story was making sense. If Maximilian refused to pay the men, she would presumably go to the authorities, for a price, and testify against him – though of course the attackers themselves would take care to be in another part of the country by then. If he was proved to have bribed the soothsayer, there would be a convincing case for attempted parricide. No court would believe that he merely intended robbery.
‘So,’ I said, ‘you waited until the men had gone and then confronted him? Told him that he could have your silence for a price?’
The youth gave that unattractive smile again. ‘Maximilian offered first,’ he said, primly. ‘I stepped out of the shadows and he offered me half the purse if I held my tongue. There was not much money in it. There should have been more. Quintus had won a good sum on the races. I think the men had stolen half of it, and then Maximilian had to pay them as well.’ He laughed unkindly. ‘The poor fool gave me all he had, in the end. He didn’t even have the money to hire a slave to see him home.’
‘And, of course, you’ve asked him for more money since then?’
‘Well, he deserved it. Forever coming in here drunken and gambling. And he arranged to have his father robbed at knifepoint. Why should he get away with it? He would have fared worse at the hands of the aediles if I had informed on him. Anyway, I needed the money more than he did. I saw a chance to get out of here – to move from that hovel of a top flat over the wineshop and start a little business of my own somewhere. Some town where I have not been a beggar since I could walk.’
‘A trade in second-hand clothes, no doubt?’ I enquired. He ignored the barb, and I went on. ‘But you are still here, I see?’
He scowled. ‘One cannot pick olives from a dead tree. Maximilian has no money to give – he has been trying to fob me off with gifts of jewels and plate. What use are they to me? I can hardly sell them, at least not in Corinium. I should get myself crucified as a highway thief if I tried. But it will be different, now that he has inherited his father’s estate. Do not arrest him, citizen. As I say, I will make it worth your while.’
‘It seems to me,’ I said, ‘that Maximilian is not the only one who should fear arrest. I came here to build a pavement for the baths, so you can see I have the ear of the town council. I think they will be interested to hear of this. Not only do you conceal your knowledge of a crime, but you come to the baths at night to collect items you have hidden here – stolen, no doubt, from the customers. You also have, by your own admission, jewels and plate in your possession belonging to Ulpius Quintus, since that is of course where Maximilian got them from – I believe he was hunting in his rooms yesterday trying to find something else to pay you with. No doubt the aediles would find them in that hovel over the wineshop that you spoke of.’
He looked at me, horrified. ‘But you can’t . . .’ You could almost see him weighing up the bribe. At last he burst out with it. ‘How much is it you want?’
‘Provided, of course,’ I went on, ignoring him, ‘that you survive long enough to be arrested. Maximilian, after all, knows people who are handy with a dagger. If they will attack a decurion like Ulpius, I do not imagine that a bath boy will cause them much concern. I am surprised that Maximilian has not thought of it before.’
It was too much for the youth. He cast a terrified look in my direction and, stopping to pick up a small urn from one of the niches, bolted for the door and disappeared. Junio was ready to run after him, but I called him back.
‘Let him go. We have other matters to attend to, and the baths will be a better place without him.’
Junio nodded reluctantly. ‘If you say so, master. After all, he wasn’t a slave.’
That was no idle distinction. Permitting a slave to escape is a serious offence – although it is even more serious for the deserter. Runaway slaves are hunted by everyone, from the authorities downwards, and are likely to be severely whipped or fed to the beasts when recaptured. Or both. Those that fail to escape must often wish that they had perished less painfully in the attempt.
However, we need not fear the justices. Our man was one of the freeborn poor. That was why I had let him go. I should have handed him over to the authorities – he was a blackmailer and a thief – but I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy for him, abandoned at an early age into a poky hovel and scratching a living where he could. After all, I told myself, he had done no great harm. He had stolen a few trinkets and forced Maximilian to pay a high price for his foolishness, but there could be no court case against him for that, because Maximilian had not complained about it at once as the law demanded. No doubt most of the things could be recovered – the little weasel was too terrified to return to his flat.
There would be no ‘little business’ for him now, either. Instead, I guessed, he would join the bands of ragged beggars and tricksters who frequent the highways, supported by whatever he had hidden in that urn. All in all, I did not feel that Corinium would suffer his loss.
In the meantime, the baths were short of an attendant and the place was filling up quickly.
‘Marcus will be waiting,’ I said to Junio, ‘and in any case, I think it is time we left. Prospective bathers are already shouting for somebody to watch their clothes. Besides, I want to go to the forum and hear the reading of the will. It will be starting soon.’
The boy shot me a delighted grin and we went out, back into the hubbub of the town. It was well past noon now, and a crowd was beginning to gather and make its way, jostling, under the carved portico and into the forum. We joined them and soon reached the steps of the basilica, where the ceremony would take place.
The basilica was a fine building, despite the works that were being carried out to it – a huge marble-faced edifice with an apse at one end and a flight of imposing stone steps leading up to the entrance. It was fronted by a number of fine statues, and in particular by Jupiter’s column, which had a decided cant. I remembered what Lupus had said about the collection of taxes for its repair.
I had plenty of time to admire it, because there was an appreciable wait. I was beginning to consider giving up and going
back to find Marcus before we exhausted his patience, when there was a little stir at the entrance and people stood back to let two litters pass, accompanied by a small retinue on foot. Julia and Sollers had arrived, with Mutuus and a pair of slaves in attendance. I was surprised. It is not usual for a woman to attend, but Julia had defied convention, and although she wore a loose veil over her head, she had not covered her face as most widows do. She walked to the steps of the basilica with a firm tread and her head held high. What a woman she was. I looked for Maximilian, but there was no sign of him. A pity. I had things to say to him.
A group of toga-ed officials appeared from within the building, some with their staffs of office carried before them by lictors, while a chair was fetched and the presiding magistrate seated himself importantly upon it. As a decurion, Quintus could expect to have proper ceremony attending the opening of his will. The precious scroll was produced – an impressive legal document on fine parchment, sealed with heavy wax – the seals were broken (ceremonially, with the crowd crying ‘ahh!’ at each seal) and the reading commenced.
The will was concise, as far as Roman wills ever are. Quintus had eschewed the common practice of using his will as an opportunity to malign his enemies, and apart from a slighting reference to Lupus, ‘that vain and grotesque parcel of lascivious bones’, there was little in the preamble to delight the crowd. The endowments, too, were simple enough. His debts were first to be paid (cheers from the bystanders, including the fuller and his son whom I had spotted among the audience). Then, a great feast was to be held in the market square (louder cheers), followed by a gladiatorial contest and chariot racing in the arena. (Prolonged cheering, after which many of the audience began to drift away.) A series of substitute legatees was named, in case the prime and secondary heirs refused to inherit, as they sometimes did, and a number of small bequests were made to clientes ‘in remembrance of duty owed’. Manumission for the chief slave and a formal ending of Mutuus’s bond were also granted, although the remaining crowd was visibly less interested in these provisions.
A Pattern of Blood Page 16