‘Julia, my dear.’ Sollers’s voice was gentle. ‘You have done all that it is proper to do. The body has been properly anointed and set upon its bier, the vault has been prepared, the candles and herbs are lit in the chamber and there has been unceasing music and lamentation while the household fasts. Quintus’s spirit cannot feel unmourned. There have been dignitaries from the civitas coming all day long, and you have arranged that they were met and greeted and that their offerings were accepted, too. You could do no more.’
‘It has become a kind of circus spectacle,’ Julia burst out. ‘The house is full of guests – two of them men my husband hated – and half Corinium has besieged the gates. I have spent my day worrying: deciding on grave goods, arranging for the funeral and feast, and all the time knowing that a murderer is among us. First Quintus, and then Rollo. I pray the gods it does prove to be Lupus. I am half afraid that there will be a dagger in my own back next.’
I was feeling uncomfortable at having occasioned this outburst. ‘Lady,’ I said, ‘do not distress yourself. I will take my own slave, I can hire torches, and no doubt Marcus can arrange a proper escort for me. The guard is coming shortly to take Lupus away. They would take the time to accompany me, if he directed it, and in any case my mission should not take long. This woman knows the whole truth about Maximilian, and about Flavius. Her testimony is vital. Marcus must hear it. I hope to bring her back for questioning, and still be present at the funeral myself.’
Julia looked up, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping. She had controlled herself again. ‘I am sorry, citizen. Of course I will help in any way I can. I am sorry for that outburst. I am upset.’
‘Julia, my dear,’ Sollers said firmly. ‘I think you should lie down for a little while and rest. I will arrange some more hydromel for you. In the meantime, leave the citizen to me.’
She nodded speechlessly and left the room, accompanied by her handmaidens. I was alone with the medicus. There was a moment’s silence, broken as Junio appeared at the door with my cloak.
It was Sollers who spoke. ‘I apologise for that, citizen. Julia is overwrought. I am sure the household can accommodate your needs. Let us not trouble Marcus and the guard. I will find a pair of slaves and some torches and accompany you myself. Do you know where to find the woman?’
‘I hear she lives beyond the bridge outside the Verulamium Gate. She has made a home in an abandoned kiln, so I am told.’
Sollers made a doubtful face. ‘That is a large and marshy area. How do you think to find the place?’
‘I hoped that Flavius might lead me to it.’
‘Flavius? But Marcus has him guarded.’
‘Why not, since he would still be under escort? No doubt he knows where this woman can be found if he consulted her often. Or better still, Maximilian could take us, if his absence from the house will not distress Julia. He had private dealings with the soothsayer, too, and he did not make those arrangements in the public forum! He can tell us where this hovel is. I don’t suppose he will wish to, but in the circumstances I think Marcus will force him to assist us. But if we are to go, we must go quickly. It will get dark and we are already losing time. Besides, I will have to persuade my patron of all this. He is convinced that Lupus alone is his man.’
Sollers nodded. ‘I will arrange for torches to be prepared, then fetch my cape and see you at the rear gate. Do you have a weapon, citizen? I will take one. There may be animals, or thieves, in lonely places outside of the town gates.’
‘I will see that the escort is armed,’ I said, and taking my cloak from Junio, I went out to Marcus.
I found him in the atrium, chafing with impatience. He was not accustomed to spending his days in idleness, especially in someone else’s household, without entertainment, business or company. The imported wine and figs with which he had been provided, although he had clearly availed himself handsomely of both, were no substitute for the deferential attention with which he was usually surrounded. Marcus was very obviously bored.
He was also slightly drunk, a state of affairs which often made him belligerent. It was not, taken all in all, a good moment to be asking favours. The baton was tapping impatiently as soon as I appeared.
‘Greetings, Excellence,’ I beamed, with the heartiest good humour I could muster. ‘I bring good news. We are making progress in this matter at last.’
He regarded me sourly. ‘When you say “we”, in that peculiar manner, I assume you are referring to yourself? Personally, I have made excellent progress already. I regard the whole event as closed. The guard will be here shortly to take Lupus away. No doubt there will be appeals to the Imperial Court, and Pertinax will end up sending him to Rome. But I have done my part.’ That was not like Marcus. Usually he was confident of his own ability to sway the governor. He sighed. ‘I can’t think why the guard is taking so long.’ He eyed my cloak gloomily. ‘I see that you are dressed for the night air. Is this funeral about to start? I would be glad to see it over, so that I could decently return home – though even then I suppose there will be days of purification ritual to endure, since we were here when the death happened. Why did I ever bring us here?’
He gestured to his slave, who stepped forward to refill the goblet.
‘Excellence, I wanted to speak to you about the guard. Could you, most graciously, consent to grant a boon?’ When Marcus was in this churlish mood, my only hope was in grovelling supplication. ‘I am in need of an escort.’ I outlined briefly what I hoped to do.
Marcus took up his cup. ‘I do not see that it is necessary,’ he said. ‘We have our culprit. Lupus went into the room, he knew the dagger was there, he came out with blood on his sleeve and Quintus was dead. We know that he could even have poisoned Rollo. What more information do you need?’
‘And the wax tablet?’
Marcus drained his wine at a draught. ‘That came from Flavius, as we know.’
‘Indeed, and I can even tell you why.’ I told him the story of the twin tokens. ‘But who scratched “Remember Pertinax” upon the wax, and left it in the colonnade to be found? I am a pattern-maker, Excellence. I do not like a piece that does not fit.’
The mention of Pertinax swayed him, as I hoped. ‘Swayed him’ was an appropriate phrase. Marcus was unsteady on his feet and pronouncing his words carefully. ‘And supposing I agree? What has this to do with Lupus?’
‘I am not certain, Excellence.’ I was choosing my words with equal care, though for quite different reasons. ‘If I am right, then Lupus did Quintus Ulpius a dreadful wrong, even if he did not wield the knife that killed him.’
Marcus regarded me blearily. ‘What “dreadful wrong” is this?’
‘I think I could persuade him to confess it, Excellence, if you would condescend to have him sent for. But we must make haste; it is important that I find this sorceress quickly. We know she had a part in the stabbing, and she had a part in those wax tablets too. But we must be quick. Someone may have been to see her already, and we shall be too late. She will be gone, like the bath attendant.’
Marcus looked at me doubtfully, but then he said, with all the bravado of the drunken, ‘In that case, my old friend, we shall not waste time by having Lupus brought here. We shall be like Hannibal and go to him.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his arm to summon the slaves, and led the way through all the rooms of the house, past a startled Flavius in the triclinium, towards the passageway which held the attic stairs.
I followed him, although I was not quite clear as to how we were emulating Hannibal. By climbing up, perhaps, as the Carthaginian had scaled the Alps. Marcus’s ascent of the stairs was certainly, if not like Hannibal, at least like one of his elephants. The stairs were not much better than a ladder, steep and uneven and lacking a hand-rope. They had been designed for slaves and storage, not for patrician feet, and Marcus lurched and swayed up them with difficulty.
We found ourselves in a long dark corridor, from which a series of rooms gave off to either side. Most of the rooms were open,
sizeable spaces with small, high window spaces in their walls and ranks of straw mattress piles laid in serried rows. Sleeping quarters for the house slaves, clearly, with Mutuus’s partition at the end. Others were obviously storage rooms, where extra lamps and platters spoke mutely of their owner’s wealth. Nuts and apples lurked in wicker baskets.
The slaves, however, led us to the last room in the row. This had a heavy door, secured with a bolt, and there was a whipping post outside it. Evidently the household place for disobedient slaves. Marcus gave a sign and one of the attendants withdrew the bolt with difficulty and pushed open the door.
Lupus was sitting on the mattress pile. They had given him blankets, in deference to his rank: there was good bread and cheese on a wooden platter nearby and a jug of what looked like watered wine. To many people in Corinium, this would have been luxury, but Lupus evidently did not find it so.
He looked up when he saw us, his face a picture of anger and misery. ‘So, you have decided to listen to me at last. Well, I shan’t tell you anything, now. I’ve decided. You may take me to the governor, and I’ll tell my story to him. I’ll tell him how you refused to listen. I shall appeal to the Emperor. I did not murder Quintus. And don’t think you can simply lock me in the town gaol to silence me. I am a Roman citizen, and I am well known in the town. You will not have me to the torturers without a struggle – as if I had not been tortured enough, set to sleep locked in a draughty attic at my age, with no lamp, no brazier, no panes in the windows and nothing but bread and cheese to eat.’
‘Lupus,’ I said. It was not my place to speak, but if I did not intervene there might very soon be trouble. Marcus with this much alcohol in his veins was likely to lose patience, and have the man whipped on principle. ‘Lupus, listen to me. You may still save your foolish balding head, but only if you tell us everything. At once. When you went into Quintus’s reception room – and I know you went, you were seen to go – was he dead, or merely dying?’
Lupus looked at me and then his face crumpled and he burst embarrassingly into tears. I was covered in confusion – I have never seen a grown man cry, except under torture – but I was secretly rather glad of this. It distracted Marcus’s attention from my question, which might otherwise have led to protracted discussions. As it was, he merely looked disdainful – as if to register that such unmanly exhibitions of emotion are despised in Roman circles.
Lupus mastered himself with difficulty. ‘You knew all along?’ he gulped.
‘I guessed,’ I said. ‘Answer the question, citizen.’
Lupus shook his head hopelessly. ‘He was dead. At least I thought he was. At first I could not see him at all. He had slumped to the floor beside the couch. I thought he had merely collapsed: his eyes were shut, his tunic was pulled sideways and his head was half supported by the stool. I went to him, without thinking, as I might go to any ill man, but when I put my arm behind him to raise him up he fell forward across me and I saw the knife. There was blood on my sleeve. And then . . .’ he shuddered, ‘and then . . . he moaned. I looked around for some way to summon servants, but I couldn’t find one – and next thing, I heard a noise at the courtyard door. If anyone came in, I thought, and found me with him dead, I would be arrested for sure, and blamed for the stabbing. I couldn’t prove I didn’t do it. I hurried out again and hid in the garden.’
Marcus was looking disbelieving. ‘What nonsense is this?’
‘It is the truth, Excellence,’ I said. ‘I think I can prove it to you. Lupus is a fool, and a coward, but I want to hear his story.’
‘Coward?’ Lupus wailed. ‘Why a coward?’
‘Only a coward would leave a man there so badly wounded, and think about saving his own skin.’
‘I heard someone at the door. I knew they would be with him instantly. I did not wish to be arrested for a killing I had not done.’
‘So who did you think had killed him?’
‘I thought that it was Flavius. He was in the garden with me, but I hadn’t been watching him, and he could have crept in, as I did. And it was his dagger – I have seen him with it. Then, of course, I was afraid that he knew that I knew – I didn’t want to be the next one with a dagger in my back. And I tried to let him know that I wouldn’t betray him.’
‘And that you would help him bury the corpse,’ I said, ‘in your cesspit. I heard you, when you were talking in the arbour. I thought at the time that you sounded like a man who thought someone else was guilty of murder.’
Marcus put in impatiently: ‘If that is what you think, Libertus, where is this “dreadful wrong” which Lupus did? If this story is the truth – which I am inclined to doubt – Lupus didn’t wrong Ulpius, except perhaps by leaving him bleeding on the floor. But that is not a crime.’
‘Lupus knows what dreadful wrong he did,’ I answered. ‘And Quintus suspected it, though he could not prove it absolutely. That is why, for years, he punished Lupus, in every way he knew. How long ago, Lupus, did you guess that Maximilian was your son?’
Lupus said nothing, but he opened and shut his mouth like a fish.
Marcus stared at Lupus, and I could see in his eyes a dawning recognition of the likeness that I had so recently perceived myself. Lupus was stooped and sunken, and time had shorn him of his curls, but once one had seen it, there was no mistaking the similarity of that slack jaw, those distinctive close-set eyes.
‘Your son!’ Marcus reached forward suddenly and, seizing Lupus by one scrawny arm, pulled him roughly upright. ‘What woman, married to wealthy Quintus, could have been drawn to this desiccated skeleton?’
‘It was many years ago,’ I said. ‘Lupus was younger then. And the woman had no dowry. If she produced no child, she must have feared divorce. So she turned to Lupus. I think Quintus suspected, even then. As soon as the child was four or five years old he quarrelled with his wife and put her away. I assume that was when the likeness became evident. I wondered why, in his testament, he called Lupus a bundle of “lascivious” bones. It seemed an odd adjective to use.’
Lupus was looking embarrassed. ‘I wanted her to leave Quintus and marry me, but she wouldn’t. He was richer, she said. I hoped she might come to me, when she was divorced, but then she caught the pox. I could not take her then; I should have had the whole town gossiping. But Quintus never forgave me. Nothing was ever said, of course, but he made it clear he hated me. And when I adopted a son of my own, he stole him from me by a legal trick. Deliberately, I believe.’
‘Does Maximilian know?’ Marcus asked.
Lupus shook his head. ‘I am certain he doesn’t. And Quintus is legally his father. He took him up from the floor, at birth, to acknowledge fatherhood. He wasn’t forced to do that. He could have had the child exposed, or sold into slavery, or even apprenticed to a temple. But once he accepted the boy, he always treated him as his heir. Even when he divorced the mother he kept Maximilian at his side. In fact, he spoiled him – with everything but affection. In any case, with fatherhood, who can possibly be sure? It is only that I have my suspicions, and it seems that Quintus had his.’
‘But it might have been true?’ Marcus released his arm.
‘Oh, indeed, it might have been true. The lady was very beautiful and she wanted a child. I saw her often, when she was supposed to be visiting her sister. Of course, Quintus would have been mocked in the curia if the town had suspected – a decurion who cannot control his wife would be a laughing stock.’
Strangely, now that the truth was out, Lupus seemed to have acquired a kind of dignity – just as Maximilian had grown in stature when the moment demanded. Poor Maximilian, trying so hard to please his supposed father. Quintus always resented me, he had said. I could almost feel sympathy for the young man.
‘Speaking of Maximilian,’ I said, ‘have you had cause to consult a soothsayer about all this? Or a sorceress, I should say?’
Lupus looked surprised. ‘That old hag in the forum? Never, though I have heard people talk of her. I have offered a curse tablet once or tw
ice, but only in the temple. These market people are devious. And expensive, too. Quintus ensured that I never had money to spare for that.’
Marcus sighed. ‘I suppose in that case we must . . .’ He broke off. ‘But what is this?’
‘This’ was the chief slave, who had come panting up the ladder to find us. ‘Excellence,’ he exclaimed, between gulps for breath, ‘you are wanted in the courtyard. The guard has come to take Lupus away. Shall I send them up?’
I looked at Marcus, and he frowned. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said to me at last, ‘you shall have your escort.’ He turned to the slaves. ‘It seems that Lupus may not be guilty after all. But I will not release him yet. Take him to my room and lock him in. Let him have braziers if he wants them, and a bowl to wash in. As for me, I have a fancy to command a litter and see this sorceress woman for myself.’
I groaned inwardly. The meeting which I had in mind would not be bettered by the presence of the governor’s representative, especially a semi-inebriated one. And from the way Marcus was stumbling down the ladder I did not think his company would speed the errand, either.
‘With your permission, Excellence,’ I said, as soon as we had reached the ground again, ‘I should like to go on ahead. Sollers will be already waiting at the gate.’
‘Very well,’ Marcus said. He was still rather unsteady on his feet. ‘I will follow you.’ He did not ask for directions, and I did not offer them. Instead he said, ‘That business in the attic, old friend. What made you first begin to think of that?’
A Pattern of Blood Page 21