The Raven's Wing

by Frances Watts

  I ran straight to her room next door, and saw that she was still in bed, though she was usually an early riser. Aballa was tugging at her sleeve and Sabine was trying to push her away.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  ‘She won’t leave me alone,’ Sabine replied querulously.

  Aballa turned to me and rubbed her stomach then mimed drinking from a cup.

  ‘She thinks you’re sick,’ I realised. ‘She wants to make you some tea.’

  ‘I’m not sick, I just want her to leave me alone,’ Sabine repeated.

  ‘Not now,’ I said softly as I ushered Aballa to the door, patting her shoulder so that she knew she wasn’t in trouble.

  ‘She’s worried about you,’ I explained to Sabine when the girl had gone. ‘She wants to help.’

  ‘Why would she care? She’s only been in the house for a couple of months and as far as she’s concerned we’re the people who killed her family and separated her from her brother. I hardly think she’d want to help me.’ She turned her face to the wall.

  I didn’t bother to argue. Sabine was clearly still upset about what Jupiter had done to her garden and wasn’t in the mood to be comforted.

  When I returned to my room, Aballa was waiting, a look of dismay on her face. I slipped on the dress she held out for me, waited as she tied the woollen cord around my waist, then sat at the dressing table. As she pulled the comb through my hair, I thought about what Sabine had said, that Aballa had no reason to care for us. It was true; I’d thought so myself during our trip to the slave market. After what Romans had done to her, why should she think well of us? Had we done her any kindnesses? I had meant to find her brother, but in the aftermath of Aurelia’s death there hadn’t been time — and, if I was honest, Aballa’s grief had been overshadowed by our own. No, Aballa had little reason to love us. But then why was she so anxious to make a healing tea for Sabine?

  I sat up abruptly as Prisca’s words in Oplontis came back to me: All our slaves have been with us for years. I can’t believe any one of them would have helped to poison Aurelia.

  Aballa’s hands went still.

  Prisca had been wrong. Not all the slaves had been here for years. Aballa was new.

  The slave girl lifted the comb to my head once more but I held up my hand to stop her, feeling a strange kind of terror dawn as I followed the thought. Aballa was new to the household. She had no reason to love us — quite the opposite. But surely she wouldn’t have helped someone to kill Aurelia. What reason could she possibly have? I could think of none. Then it occurred to me that she didn’t need a reason; she could be doing someone else’s bidding. It meant she was running a terrible risk, though. If she was caught, she would surely be put to death. How would she have been persuaded? Almost immediately I knew the answer: Andalos. If someone promised to free her brother, she would do anything, I was sure.

  Standing up, I pushed Aballa from the room, finding her presence sinister now. I began to pace. How would she have done it? Surely a slave from the kitchen or one who served Aurelia at the table would have more opportunity. Aballa hadn’t had anything to do with Aurelia. Then all at once I knew the answer, reminded by the scene in Sabine’s bedroom. Why hadn’t I seen it immediately? It was always Aballa who had brought the tea to Aurelia. How easy it would have been to slip poison into it.

  I went to the door to see where the Gaulish girl had gone. She was huddled just outside, looking so small and dejected that for a moment I doubted my deduction. Surely she was no murderer! But for the sake of her brother …

  The answer lay with Andalos. I had to find him. If he was no longer at the lowly tavern in the Subura, then I would know someone had helped him — and that Aurelia had paid a terrible price.

  Sabine had said the Subura was dangerous, but she had very little experience of the world outside Rome’s finest villas and private baths, whereas I had often walked the streets of Arretium. But to be on the safe side, I had no intention of making the same mistake as last time, and going out on the streets advertising the fact that I was a vulnerable unmarried girl.

  I slipped my feet into a pair of sandals and threw a lightweight cloak around my shoulders. Then I went to Aurelia’s room.

  Standing on the threshold, I was disconcerted to see her bottles of scent and jewellery on the dressing table, as if she had just stepped away for a moment. The faint scent of jasmine still hung in the air.

  It seemed disrespectful to be rummaging through her clothes, but surely it was excusable if it helped me to find her murderer. My heart skipped a beat as my eyes lit on the crimson gown she had worn when I first saw her. I reached instead for a deep blue dress in fine cotton and a pale blue stola, and bundled them in my cloak.

  I had to tell someone I was going out and decided on Sabine, since she had no power to stop me.

  Sabine’s bedroom was empty, but I found her in her garden. She wasn’t digging or weeding, though. On Lucius’s orders, one of the slaves from the garden had carried the ruined plants away the night before and replanted those that might still be saved, but Sabine didn’t seem interested in caring for them. She was watching Jupiter, who had returned to the scene of the crime and was picking his way delicately through the garden bed he had destroyed, pausing occasionally to nibble at a piece of greenery.

  ‘Oh, Jupiter! After everything you’ve done.’ I clapped my hands at him to shoo him away but he just stared at me, unrepentant.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Sabine. ‘It’s not his fault. He’s just an animal.’

  I supposed she was right, though the cat’s expression had always seemed intelligent to me, as if he knew something that I didn’t.

  ‘I’m going to the baths,’ I said. I didn’t invite her to come with me, and she didn’t offer, just nodded.

  I went to the door and asked the porter to have a litter brought round.

  A quarter of an hour later I was at the baths. Ordering the litter to return for me in two hours, I went inside.

  To my relief, there was no one I recognised in the dressing room. Ignoring the curious glances, I pulled Aurelia’s blue dress over the top of my white one, slipped the stola over my head, then rewrapped myself in the cloak. At least now walking the street I’d look like a respectable married woman.

  I walked down the hill to Via Sacra, then followed the flow of people heading towards the Forum. As I walked, I tried to think through what must have happened. Aurelia, as far as I could discover, had had no enemies, so whoever had wanted to poison her must be trying to hurt someone else, someone who would suffer by her death. Lucius, her fiancé? But I couldn’t imagine Lucius having an enemy any more than Aurelia. Marcus, then …

  The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. He had fought and won cases against powerful people, Sabine had said. And now someone had retaliated by poisoning the person who was closest to him in the world: his twin. I remembered the fury with which he had said, I feel I have been torn in two. Yes, that was it. Marcus had made an enemy; this enemy had promised Aballa that in exchange for her help, he would remove Andalos from the tavern and give him a place in one of his fine villas or country estates, or maybe even free him and send him back to Gaul …

  I had reached the Forum by now. The sun was bright and fierce and I was sweating from the weight of all the clothes I was wearing. I found the street Sabine had pointed out to me and started along it. It was wide and busy, with apartment buildings and shops and stalls squeezed into every available space, and people thronging between them so that to walk along meant pushing your way through a crowd. I looked from left to right, reading the names daubed on the walls beside the taverns I passed. Between the shops the rough brick walls had graffiti scratched on them urging passers-by to vote for Gnaeus or warning that the bartender in the Golden Ox was a cheat. The smell of baking bread mixed with sausages grilling at one of the stalls, both scents overlaid by the stench of horse dung. Pulling the corner of my cloak over my nose and mouth I skirted a pile of timber at a build
ing site then paused at an intersection, wondering how I was going to find the Peacock. I was bumped from behind and turned to see a drunk man staggering from the impact. He was leering at me, his face so close I could smell his beery breath. He looked like a bear, all dressed in brown with shaggy hair and big, blunt features.

  I drew a breath and, ignoring his leer, said, ‘I’m looking for a tavern, the Peacock. Do you know where it is?’

  ‘Would missus like to have a drink with me?’ He belched in my ear.

  ‘No!’ I said, my voice coming out high and frightened.

  ‘I know of much nicer taverns. Like the … the … the Bloated Nightingale.’

  The Bloated …? Surely I’d misheard him. ‘Thank you, but I really need to find the Peacock.’

  He shrugged, and even this small movement set him swaying on his feet so that I thought he might topple over. I took a step away so he wouldn’t fall on me if he did.

  ‘The Peacock is …’ he hesitated, squinting from side to side ‘… that way,’ he pronounced finally.

  I wasn’t sure how reliable a guide he was, but I turned in the direction he indicated.

  The stench of the street I was now on was overpowering. A medley of bad smells made worse by their mingling. Urine and fish and cooked meat and the odour of the bodies that pressed close as they shoved past me.

  The street widened into a small square and I saw a woman wielding a broom at the small patch of pavement outside her shop.

  Approaching her, I said, ‘Excuse me, I’m trying to find the Peacock tavern.’

  The woman stopped her sweeping and gave me a frankly appraising look. ‘What do you want to be going there for?’

  Good question …

  ‘My husband,’ I improvised. ‘I hear he’s been frequenting the place. Spending all our money on beer and leaving me and the baby to starve.’

  ‘I reckon you could sell that cloak and live for a month.’ She reached forwards to rub the fabric between her fingers then whistled between her teeth. ‘Fancy.’

  ‘I had several cloaks like this back in the days before my husband stopped working and started drinking. All sold now.’

  I was quite pleased with my story and evidently the woman was too, because she leaned on her broom and said, ‘Ain’t it always the way? Mine would be exactly the same, if he ever woke up. Look at the fat oaf.’

  She gestured into the shop behind her and I saw a man overspilling his stool. He was propped against the wall, apparently in a deep slumber.

  ‘He’s no earthly use to me, but better here where I can keep an eye on him than spending our hard-earned on grog, I suppose.’

  I congratulated her on her good fortune in having a fat, lazy oaf for a husband rather than a drunkard like mine, and she directed me down a dirt lane leading off the square.

  ‘Left at the butcher, left again by the burned building, then right at the watering trough opposite the bakery.’

  Thanking her, I set off down the lane she had indicated, repeating the instructions under my breath. The narrow lanes weren’t crowded like Via Subura had been, and I passed only a dozen or so people before turning at the watering trough and seeing before me a wall on which was painted a peacock surrounded by greenery. I had found it.

  I stepped towards the open door and peered into the gloom. Never had such a proud and beautiful bird been so misrepresented.

  I could just make out a marble-topped counter with storage jars set into it and scattered with pottery cups. A man, obviously the owner, was leaning against the counter talking to his customers while a woman who might have been his wife pushed past him forcefully as she bustled around fetching drinks and food.

  The room beyond was furnished with tables and benches, and waitresses with trays were weaving their way among them as men roared vulgar compliments across the room.

  Between two tables I saw a slave boy in a loincloth, his fair hair long and matted, on his knees scrubbing the floor. A patron walking past with a tankard of beer in each hand aimed a hard kick at the boy’s ribs. The boy tried to dodge but was tied to a table by his ankle and the blow caught him hard and flung him onto his back. When he lifted his head I saw a scar running down his left cheek. Andalos!

  I could have wept at the sight of him, his ribs jutting out so sharply I could count every one, his face lean and hungry. His owners were clearly starving him. I abandoned my suspicions of Aballa. Whoever had poisoned Aurelia, and for whatever reason, it had clearly been of no advantage to the wretched boy in front of me.

  I couldn’t leave him like this, but I had no idea how to get him away. If only I could communicate with him, I could tell him that his sister hadn’t forgotten him. Was his Latin any better than hers?

  I was still standing there, agonising, when a man seated at a table by the door saw me peering in and called out, ‘See something you like, darling?’

  ‘Or someone?’ added his companion, sticking out his belly suggestively.

  I sprang back, only to feel hands on my shoulders. Then a voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up said, ‘Does the lady have business here?’

  ‘I —? No.’

  Turning, I saw a man with thin, oily black hair and something cunning about his expression.

  ‘Perhaps the lady is lost.’ He stepped forwards and I stepped away. ‘Perhaps I could be of assistance.’ He stepped forwards again, till he was standing too close, crowding me.

  ‘Thank you, but I have no need of assistance.’ I turned and began to walk away but the man followed.

  ‘Perhaps I can help her to find her way.’

  I headed towards the street I had come down, but the man moved around to block my path so I turned in the other direction, realising to my horror that now he was herding me up a dark, narrow alley.

  I quickened my pace but he easily matched it, and when my sandal caught in the rut left by a cart’s wheel he grasped my arm.

  I pulled free, almost running now, fear causing sobs to rise in my throat.

  Suddenly a man appeared in the distance and, sure that I recognised him, I called, ‘Lucius!’ Oh, please let him hear me! Let him turn around. ‘Lucius!’ I cried, louder this time.

  But he didn’t turn, simply quickened his pace and disappeared around the corner. I realised that of course it couldn’t be him; no one I knew would be in a place like this.

  Hoping to throw my pursuer off my tracks, I picked up my pace as I passed the entry to an alleyway, as if I was meaning to continue straight ahead, then at the last minute ducked around the corner. But my pursuer was too wily — and too late I saw that the alley was a dead end. I was trapped!

  I turned to face the oily man, who was advancing slowly, his face alight with the thrill of the chase and, now, his victory. I moved away until my back was hard up against the wall and I had nowhere else to go. Trembling with fright, I pulled my cloak tight around me.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

  ‘Leave you alone?’ the oily man repeated. ‘But if I left you alone, someone might hurt you … and we wouldn’t want that, would we?’

  He reached out a hand to touch my face and I closed my eyes, my arms wrapped around myself.

  ‘What do you want with my wife?’ a deep voice demanded.

  I opened my eyes to see that a large shadow filled the opening to the alleyway.

  Marcus!

  The relief I felt was so overwhelming that if the oily man hadn’t been between us I would have flung my arms around him.

  The oily man spun around. ‘Your … your wife?’

  ‘That’s right. What is your business with her?’

  ‘My business? You are mistaken, sir; I have no business. I thought she was lost, I was merely trying to assist her.’ He was falling over himself in his eagerness to prove his good intentions. ‘Isn’t that right, good lady?’ the man addressed himself to me. ‘Wasn’t I offering my help? Did I harm you in any way?’

  He hadn’t. And yet I knew h
e would have … I shivered, and Marcus looked at me in concern. ‘Claudia, are you all right?’

  The moment his gaze shifted the oily man was off, darting past him with all the slipperiness of an eel.

  I tried to take a step but found my legs were shaking too violently. If it wasn’t for the wall at my back, I would have fallen.

  Marcus waited patiently for my trembling to subside, but when he spoke his tone was angry. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was looking for a slave.’

  ‘You want to buy a slave?’ His face hardened. ‘Are there not enough slaves for you in your father’s house? You need one just to paint your eyelids, perhaps?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, anger returning my strength to me. ‘I was looking for the younger brother of Aballa, who dresses me.’ Quickly I explained Aballa’s distress and how I’d decided to find Andalos so I could reassure her. I left aside my recent suspicions of Aballa. Marcus wasn’t aware that I knew how Aurelia had died, after all, and it was obvious I had been entirely wrong.

  ‘I wanted to see that he was all right, to tell her that he was in good health, but … Oh, it’s horrible!’ I burst out. ‘He’s in this filthy tavern, tied up like a dog, and he’s kicked and abused. I can’t leave him like that, but I don’t know how to help him! And I can’t tell Aballa I’ve seen him — she’d be devastated.’

  ‘Where is this tavern?’

  ‘The Peacock. It’s …’ I pointed the way I had come.

  Marcus raised his eyebrows. ‘What possessed you to wander the streets of the Subura by yourself? It’s not safe.’ He took my arm and put it through his so that we looked like a married couple strolling — though why we would be strolling pleasantly around here was anyone’s guess. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  ‘No! I asked the litter to fetch me from the baths on Via Triumphalis. Please take me there.’

  He didn’t comment, but began to walk; he seemed to know where he was going. When we reached Via Subura he drew me closer as we were jostled on all sides by the pushing and shoving of the crowd. I sighed with relief as we reached the relative safety of the Forum.