by Ruth Downie
What if she had accepted?
What if she had arrived safely, unchaperoned, and been welcomed into the presence of the hideous old lecher?
All these things were clearly going through his stepmother’s mind too. Along with the worry that even if the hatless Flora survived the trip intact, she would look like a lobster and would have a face as brown as a field slave for the rest of the summer. Arria had just voiced this added cause for alarm when she spotted a vehicle passing along the road from the direction of the senator’s estate. To Ruso’s relief she hurried away to find a slave who could run fast enough to intercept it and interrogate the driver.
“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” Marcia observed. “One of the neighbours is bound to bring her back. I bet they won’t let her in over there. It’s not as if her boyfriend’s anybody important. He’s only a wheelwright.”
Ruso said, “What’s she gone to rescue him from?”
“Although I suppose…” Marcia paused to wind one of her curls around a forefinger. “He might be the one who’s been killed.”
“What?”
“He’s Sabinus’s son too,” she said, as if that explained everything. “At least, that’s what he told Flora. But only by a slave woman, so he doesn’t really count.”
Ruso took a deep breath. “Marcia, what exactly is Flora involved with?”
“We don’t know.”
“You must have some idea. Someone’s been killed?”
The curls bounced in agreement. “Cook went into town this morning to buy some—oh, I can’t remember. Something we haven’t got.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really,” Marcia conceded. “Anyway, the big news at market is that there was trouble at a party last night, and Sabinus’s son is dead, and Flora’s boyfriend’s got something to do with it.”
Ruso’s hope that a neighbour might deliver his youngest sister home at any moment began to fade. “Flora’s boyfriend was in a fight with Sabinus’s son?”
“Possibly. You know what gossip is like.”
Ruso sighed. “I suppose I’d better get over there.”
“Can you take Ma with you? She’s driving us all mad.”
“No,” he told her. “Absolutely not.”
Despite Ruso’s decision to carry on smelling like a farm hand, he did not set out immediately. There was a worrying pause between him ordering the mules to move on and their deciding that they liked him enough to obey. In the meantime his wife, sitting beside him on the driver’s bench, squeezed his arm and murmured, “Thank you for taking me.”
He grunted a response, waiting for some sign of equine co-operation.
“Your family are very…” Tilla’s voice tailed off as she sought a suitable word.
“I know,” he said, not admitting that he had brought her not only to rescue her but because he was afraid this was serious, and because he knew too that his stepmother would be less keen to come if Tilla was there.
“At last!” he said, and the cart jolted forward.
4
Flora was nowhere on the paved main road, nor on the dusty drive that led through Sabinus’s extensive vineyards and olive groves. Ahead, set up on a slope to catch the breeze, one of the most expensive villas in the district basked in the afternoon sun—but before she could reach it, Flora would have had to get past the heavy wooden gates in the boundary wall.
Ruso jumped down from the cart and saw movement behind the iron grille set in the right-hand gate. “Gaius Petreius Ruso,” he told it. He had barely begun to explain his visit when there was a squeal of hinges and the gate swung back to reveal an arched passageway with a door set into one side and another set of gates at the far end.
“You’ll be come for the young lady, sir.” The hulking gatekeeper sounded as relieved to get rid of Flora as Ruso was to find her. “She’s right here.”
“Gaius?” called a female voice from behind the door. “Is that you?”
“Flora?”
“They won’t let me in!”
“It’s all right, Flora. I’ve come to get you.”
“Tell them I’m not leaving until they let him go.”
“But I’ve—”
“It wasn’t his fault!”
The big man shuffled awkwardly. “I couldn’t let the young lady go no further, sir,” he said. “To be honest, if anybody catches her where she is I’m in trouble.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” Ruso agreed. “Especially today. I hear you’ve had a bereavement.”
The man nodded. “Young Master Titus, sir. A terrible loss to us all.”
So Marcia had been right first time: the heir was dead.
“I shouldn’t have let her in there at all, sir, only she was a bit hot and bothered, and with her being a neighbour…”
“I’ll take her home,” Ruso promised, wondering if he could persuade Flora to apologize. From the other side of the gatehouse door he heard, “I’m not moving from this bench until they do something!” and dismissed the idea as hopeless.
He felt his wife’s hand on his arm. “I will go,” she murmured. “You will only argue with her.”
Moments later both men were shut out and Ruso heard, “Flora! What is all this about poor Verax?”
Verax? Was that the name of the boyfriend? How did women know these things?
“She’ll be out in a moment,” he promised.
“Yes, sir.” The gatekeeper stepped to one side.
Ruso folded his arms and leaned back against the cool of the shaded wall. “She won’t be long.”
“No, sir.”
Out in the sunshine, the cicadas trilled and the bees buzzed and the metal fastenings on the harness jingled as one of the mules tossed its head and stamped. He said, “If anyone comes, I’ll explain that you were helping a neighbour.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Ruso wondered if he should move the animals out of the sun. “I don’t want to intrude,” he said, “but I’ve only just arrived back in the province. What happened to your young master?”
“He suffered a blow to the head, sir. While visiting a friend in town.”
“And this Verax was there too?”
“He was, sir.”
“Is it true there was a fight?”
The gatekeeper shifted his stance. “Perhaps you’d better wait outside, sir.”
The big gate screeched back into place, leaving the gatekeeper now harbouring not one but two uninvited females on his master’s property.
Ruso persuaded the mules forward, taking the cart around in as tight a circle as it could perform. Watching the outer wheel roll perilously close to the ditch at the edge of the track, he wondered why Titus had taken his father’s wheelwright with him on last night’s fatal trip to town. It was hard to imagine, even if there really had been a fight, that it had taken place between the two of them. More likely Verax was now being punished for failing to protect Titus from somebody else. Doubtless when things settled down he would be released. In the meantime Flora’s antics could only make things worse for him.
He stationed the mules in the shade of the trees, where they stood swishing their tails against the flies. He drank some of the water he had brought for his sister. He wondered what Tilla was saying to her, and why Flora could not see how inappropriate it was to foist herself on a newly-bereaved household. Then he stashed the water skin back under the logs that nobody had had time to unload.
Gazing out over the tall ears of the mules it struck him that despite the coating of road dust, these animals were far more polished than farm transport required. That would be the work of the stable boy, who probably still hadn’t forgiven the family for selling the horses. The family debt was such that the stable boy was lucky they hadn’t sold him too, but Ruso supposed he was unlikely to see it that way.
A couple of messengers from town came and went, churning up more dust.
Ruso decided Flora didn’t deserve the water and finished it himself.
; He had just resolved to go in and haul his sister out when he heard the screech of hinges and his wife reappeared. “You will never believe what has happened!” Tilla exclaimed. “I told Flora, she must tell you all about it.”
“Hello, Flora,” Ruso said, seizing the hand of the tousled young woman who had once been his little sister and hauling her up onto the bench beside him. “What’s happened?”
“Gaius. Hello.” Flora paused to tug her skirts straight before settling on the bench. “You heard what’s happened to Titus?”
“Yes.”
“Well obviously it’s terrible, but I promise you it’s not Verax’s fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not. If you knew him like I do you wouldn’t even ask.”
“I see.”
“He’s not what you think, Gaius!”
“You don’t know what I think.”
From her position behind them in the cart, his wife reached up and jabbed a finger into his side, which struck him as deeply disloyal.
“I can tell from your face that you disapprove,” Flora insisted. “And you haven’t even met him.”
“I don’t disapprove,” he told her, gathering up the reins. “I don’t know him. This is my reserving judgement face.”
She shifted beside him. “This is serious, Gaius! He could be—oh, I can’t bear to think about it!”
“Flora, we’ve travelled over a thousand miles and I’m tired. I can’t help my face. Get on with it.”
“Did you bring any water?”
The cart jolted forwards. “No.”
“Verax would never do anything to hurt Titus. He told me. So whoever’s killed him, it isn’t Verax. They’re brothers, for goodness’ sake! Everybody knows about Verax being Sabinus’s son too. And now that mean old man on the gate says they’ve got him chained up in the slave quarters and he won’t even go and tell him I’m here. I don’t know why they’re being so horrible to him. He works really hard and he’s always doing people favours and everyone likes him.”
There were certainly some people who didn’t like him now, but Ruso was saved from replying by a shout of, “Sir!” He twisted round on the bench to see the gatekeeper hurrying towards them down the drive.
“Sir, the master wants a word—just you, sir,” the man added as Flora made to climb down.
“Tell him you want to see Verax,” Flora urged him. “Tell Verax I was here and not to worry, it will all be all right.”
Ruso jumped to the ground. “I’ll walk home.”
Tilla, grasping the need to get Flora away before she changed her mind about leaving, scrambled forward to where he had been sitting. As she gathered up the reins he heard Flora say, “You are going to drive us?”
Tilla said, “Why not?”
Flora paused. Then she said, “Yes! Why not?”
The wheels rumbled away down the drive. Ruso made an effort to straighten the tunic he’d been travelling in since early morning, and ran his hands through his hair. To judge from the expression on the face of the old man in the gateway who was watching his approach, his efforts to improve his appearance hadn’t had much effect.
5
The figure with thin hair and sagging features who was easing his way forward with the help of a walking stick was indeed Sabinus, but the heavy brows had faded to grey. The jaw that had once looked strong now looked gaunt above the dark toga of a man in mourning.
“You’re the other Petreius boy.”
The voice was hoarser than he remembered. “Ruso, sir.”
Had Sabinus been a hideous old lecher? Ruso hadn’t been aware of it. But then neither had he been aware that Sabinus and several other friends were lending his father ridiculous sums of money that he wouldn’t be able to pay back. Now, Ruso’s father was long dead—although the debts weren’t—and Sabinus was only an echo of the man Ruso could still picture roaring with laughter at some joke in his father’s study.
Ruso said, “I was very sorry to hear about Titus, sir.”
The man’s nod was brief, as if he was tired of sympathy. “That sister of yours. You need to get her under control.”
“My wife’s taking her home now, sir. I’m sorry if she caused a disturbance.”
There was no reply.
“With your permission, sir, I’d like to pay my respects to your son. I’ll go home first and change out of travelling clothes.”
The old man glanced at Ruso’s creased and sweat-stained tunic. Its original colour had been lost in the wash long ago, and even when clean it would not have been suitable for mourning. Despite this, Sabinus gave a jerk of the head that indicated Ruso was to follow. “If the girl comes back,” he told the gatekeeper, “get one of our people to take her straight home.”
Another slave in a dark tunic was waiting inside the gates. He appeared to be a secretary, who fell into step behind Sabinus so that the three of them formed a slow procession through the working yard of the estate. The sounds of hammering and sawing faded into silence at their approach. Slaves in ordinary clothes stopped to bow to their frail master as he passed through all the accumulated wealth he must surely have been planning to hand on to his son: workshops and wood stores and vegetable plots, pottering chickens and loaded donkeys, a high-windowed building that might have been a bunkhouse, and a stable block where horses gazed out at them over wooden half-doors. At the end of the block was a large covered area where a farm cart had been dismantled and abandoned in mid-repair. Ruso guessed this was—or had been—Verax’s workshop. Beyond it a slave stepped down from the open doorway of a smart four-wheeled carriage. He tucked a cleaning rag behind his back while he bowed.
Sabinus stared at the carriage. “I want that got rid of.”
“I’ll see to it, sir,” the secretary promised. “Would you like a replacement vehicle?”
Sabinus grunted. “What’s the point?”
Another wall lay ahead of them. The fresh limewash was a dazzling white in the sunshine but the roses clambering over the gateway had been half-obscured by gloomy branches of cypress. Ruso followed Sabinus through to a garden filled with the scent of lavender. A tree-lined path offered a shady route to the house he had glimpsed from the road.
More cypress hung over the colonnaded walkway that ran the length of the building. As they passed beneath it Ruso’s vision took a few moments to adjust from the bright sun, but the heavy smell of incense and roses and something else less desirable would have told him this was Titus’s resting-place, even if there had not been torches burning at the head and foot of the bier.
The sound of weeping mingled with the slow notes of a pipe drifting across from the far corner. Ruso became aware of servants standing against the walls, keeping watch over their master.
“They said I should hire mourners,” said Sabinus. “I told them, I won’t have my boy surrounded by wailing strangers. He’s suffered enough already.”
Ruso bowed his head, gave a nod to the shrine of the household gods, and approached the bier. The figure that lay on it was swathed in a pure white toga. Below the crowning garland of flowers, the delicate features of the dead youth bore little resemblance to Sabinus either now or in his prime.
One of the staff stepped forward and indicated a smoking burner and a bowl of incense. Ruso was dropping a few more golden grains onto the burner when soft footsteps approached from the house and a slave whispered to the secretary, who in turn informed Sabinus that “Germanicus Publius is here, sir.”
“Eh?”
“The young man from the house, sir. Last night’s host.”
Ruso already knew who Germanicus Publius was. He was the son of another “friend” who had lent his father money. Surprised that Publius Senior had not come to support his son on this awkward visit, he made a mental note to go and pay his respects to the old man first thing in the morning. Meanwhile Sabinus raised a hand to scratch his head, releasing a shower of the ash he must have flung there as a token of grief. “I suppose we have to let him in.”
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Moments later a youth entered and bowed, first to the bier and then to Sabinus. Ruso stepped back, recognising the former boy in the tall, well-built youth whose early promise of good looks had been fulfilled. Publius Junior, visibly sweating inside a toga that might once have been black, took no notice of him, perhaps mistaking him for a farm slave. It was an understandable mistake. Even Publius’s slave, a small man cursed with a squint so dreadful that Ruso recognized him instantly, was better dressed than Ruso.
Publius said, “Please accept the condolences of all my household, sir.”
Sabinus thanked him without looking at him.
From his position in the background Ruso could see that while the young man’s left hand was occupied with holding his toga together in the appropriate manner, the right fist was tightly clenched behind his back.
“I’m distraught that such a dreadful thing should have happened in my house.”
If Publius had been hoping for reassurance that he was in no way to blame, Sabinus’s silence must have been disappointing.
“And so soon after the loss of my own father.”
So that was why Publius Senior wasn’t here. Ruso felt sadder than he would have expected at the news that another of the old guard had gone. And faintly ashamed at the thought that if he went to offer his condolences to Publius Senior’s family tomorrow, he would be able to examine the scene of the fatal party.
One of Sabinus’s staff glided forward and indicated the incense burner, just as he had to Ruso. Publius dropped in a couple more grains and the smoke seemed to catch in his throat. He took a hasty step backwards. For a few moments the music of the pipes was drowned by the sound of coughing.