Danger in the Wind (29 page)

“Are you staying here at the fort?” Gambax asked.

“No, Titch and I are planning to stay at the Mallius house, to guard it tonight. Philippus has to be here at the fort, which only leaves Statius and a few male slaves there. We’ll be back here early tomorrow.”

Quintus and I went to tell Trebonius what we planned, and asked whether he could spare Gambax to help us. He agreed willingly enough to assign him to us tomorrow, but said he needed every available man on guard overnight.

“I’d like to see all of Mallius’ household moved from the village into the fort here,” Trebonius said, “but it’s too late to start tonight, too dangerous in the dark. Can you organise it for the morning?”

“Yes, we can,” I said. “But what about Jovina’s funeral? Won’t the family want to be in their own house?”

“We’re holding that here tomorrow,” he answered. “There’s a field where we put up pyres for our own people, and the priests know how things should be done. Philippus has agreed, and I’ve already had her brought here for tonight, I think it’s safer.”

“How is Mallius now?” Quintus asked.

“Still unconscious. I assume it’s the effect of the drink, but given the state he was in earlier, I’ve put him in the hospital block for the night. With a guard, of course. I can’t take any chances.”

“May I ask a quick question, Commander?” Quintus said. “We’re trying to get a picture of what happened down by the river this afternoon about the time Jovina must have been killed. Aurelia says she met you looking for Jovina at one point. Did you find her?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Any particular reason you were searching for her?”

“Only that I hadn’t seen her for a while, and one or two people had started to leave the party. I thought she’d want to say good-bye. Then the rain began in earnest, and I came back to the tents, and after that I escorted Fulvina home, and went on to the village…I’ve told you all this.”

“Yes, you have. Thank you. We won’t hold you up any more.”

As we left him and went to find our raeda, Quintus murmured, “Another one who’s a bit too smooth? Or is it my turn to be over-suspicious?”

“Ah, but you said it’s impossible to be
over
-suspicious, didn’t you?”

We set off before dark, Quintus and I in a
raeda
, Titch riding alongside leading Quintus’ horse, and two soldiers escorting us. As we clattered through the deserted streets the village seemed dead, like a place stricken by plague. We found ourselves talking in hushed tones, but in fact we didn’t say much at all, glad to be able to relax quietly for a spell.

Jovina’s house—that’s how I still thought of it—was quiet too, because nearly everyone had gone to bed. Selena was in charge, and though she was red-eyed from crying, she was as efficient as ever and very pleased to see us.

“We’ll be thankful to have some strong men here, sir,” she said to Quintus. “Master Statius offered to stand guard, but his soldiering days are long over, so I said we could manage with just the servants. It’s good we don’t have to.”

“We’ll take watches in turn,” Quintus said. “I’ll go and arrange it.”

“All the boys are together in the kitchen, sir. I’ll take you to them.”

She was soon back, and I asked, “How’s Chloe?”

“Dreadfully upset, and so is little Miss Vitellia. They’ve both been crying their eyes out most of the evening. Losing her mother’s bad enough for poor Chloe, but when she heard her father has confessed to killing my lady, she went to pieces altogether.”

“She doesn’t believe it, surely? We don’t.”

“She doesn’t want to believe it, no. But there’s been bad blood between her and the master for so long, she doesn’t know what to believe. It breaks my heart to see her in such a state.”

“When we’ve proved his innocence, and I’m sure we can, perhaps they’ll be drawn closer together.”

“I doubt it. You’ll have gathered what they quarrelled about, this marriage with Statius the master is arranging. Chloe kept on hoping my lady would help her to argue him out of it, or at least get it postponed awhile. Now she feels she’s on her own, and the master might force the wedding through any time. She’s threatening to run away, but that’s just wild talk.” She sighed. “I’ve given them some wine with poppy-seed to help them sleep. At least if they get some rest tonight, Chloe may be calmer in the morning. And they’re sharing one of the big guest bedrooms. Better if they’re not alone, I reckon.”

“You’ve done all you can. Shall I look in and see them before I go to bed?”

“My advice is leave it for now, Mistress. I think the medicine has started to do its work, and you can be sure Baca and I will be keeping watch over them through the night. She’s a good girl, is Baca. For all she’s young, she has a sensible head on her shoulders.”

“She’s not the only one. I’m grateful for everything you’re doing, Selena. And if you need me in the night you’ll come and wake me, won’t you?”

“Thank you. We must all do our best for my poor lady.” For a few heartbeats her brisk manner faltered, and I thought she was going to cry, but then she got control of herself again and said, “You’ve spoken to him, Mistress—the master, I mean. I’m so relieved you don’t think he killed her.”

“We can’t rule it out completely until Mallius has sobered up, but I find his confession incredible. Although I realise they were on bad terms, I saw that for myself yesterday. You know them both far better than I, Selena. Do you believe he would murder her?”

She shook her head emphatically. “I don’t. Mind you, the drink has made him very strange lately, unpredictable, easily angered. But no. He didn’t do it.”

“Then you have an idea who did?”

She hesitated. “I think so.”

There was a longer pause, and eventually I said, “You know I’ve vowed to avenge Jovina and see that her killer is brought to justice. Any information you can give me, anything at all, will help me.”

“I promised I’d never tell anyone ever, you see. But that was before…Gods, I hate this. Tittle-tattling about my lady now she’s gone. It feels so disloyal.”

“It’s not disloyal, quite the opposite. Tell me everything you think might help—then we can find out who killed her. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.”

“Then what’s this secret? Is it about the party?”

“It is. My lady planned to meet someone secretly by the river.”

“I found that out myself this afternoon. After the meal she told me she wanted a little time alone with someone, but she didn’t say who. I was uneasy about it, and when she slipped away I tried to follow her. But she vanished into the trees. That was the last time I saw her alive.”

We were both silent for a few heartbeats. Selena said, “She told me it was the commander. She said they arranged a meeting when she was up at the fort yesterday.”

“Trebonius? No, that can’t be right. At least they didn’t make any arrangements at the fort. I was with them the whole time. They didn’t discuss secret meetings, and I’m sure they didn’t exchange any notes. I thought you were going to tell me she planned to see Nikias. He gave her those beautiful glass goblets, he’s admitted as much.”

“Has he? They arrived without anything to say who they were from, and my lady was very coy about them. The same with those lovely pink roses. From Nikias too?”

“So he said.”

“Well, I don’t think it was the commander she was intending to meet in the woods.”

“Why not?”

“It seems a lot of trouble to go to, when he could see her at the fort quite easily. Though I suppose once the party was over, there’d be fewer chances for that…but no, I still think it was Nikias the Greek she went to meet. He couldn’t be at the party, but he could have come across the fields and along by the river without anyone seeing.”

“But why would she lie to you? I know she trusted you completely; she told me so. I’d have thought she would tell the truth to you, of all people.”

“I expect she knew I’d argue with her, try to put her off going. She knew I don’t like Nikias. I didn’t approve of how he tried to persuade her to leave the master, and then flounced off in a rage when she wouldn’t. Yet she still cared for him.”

“But you accepted her affair with Trebonius?”

“Only because it wasn’t a real affair. Nothing happened, if you know what I mean—it was all for show. She wanted it to look like he fancied her, to persuade Nikias she’d stopped thinking about him. Persuade herself, too, I reckon.” She shook her head wearily. “No, the commander’s much too canny to get tangled up with his deputy’s wife. It couldn’t stay hid long in a place like this, and it would cause no end of trouble.”

“Yes, I can imagine. I thought when I saw them together she was making most of the running. And yet he organised the party for her.”

“Oh, that was agreed long since, he couldn’t get out of it. The master forgot her last birthday altogether, and she was quite upset, so the commander promised her that next time he’d make sure she had a proper party. I suppose he hoped she wouldn’t remember, but she did, and he couldn’t go back on it. So he decided to make it a special celebration, and invite half of Isurium along to it. ‘Course she told everyone it was all because of her.”

I thought back over how Jovina had poured out her heart to me the day before the party. “She told me she was tempted to run away with Nikias, but she couldn’t make up her mind.”

“No more she could. But if he suggested a secret meeting, she couldn’t resist going to it, could she? And if they did meet, and nobody saw her after, he must be the man who killed her.”

It was possible. Up to now I’d considered that Nikias’ work in the hospital gave him an unshakeable alibi for the whole afternoon. Yet he could have been lying, and if his assistant was prepared to lie too, he could have been absent for a while.

“So you think that she went to meet Nikias and he asked her to go away with him, but she refused, so he lost his temper and murdered her?”

She looked doubtful. “Either that, or she accepted, but he was only playing a game with her. That’s my guess…A game of revenge.”

I realised where she was driving. “He found out she’d got rid of his baby, and that made him kill her?”

“That’s what I think.”

“There’s one problem. Nikias says he never left the hospital all afternoon.”

“He would say that, wouldn’t he?”

“Spoken like a true investigator, Selena.” I didn’t realise that Quintus had slipped quietly into the room, and was listening to our discussion. “You’re quite right. We can’t take Nikias’ word alone for where he was today, or Trebonius’ word, or anyone else’s for that matter. We need more evidence. And tomorrow, we’ll find it. But first we must get through tonight.”

He outlined the arrangements he’d made for guards around the house and garden. He’d done what he could with the small number of male servants available, and Selena and I assured him we could sleep easy knowing we were well protected.

Indeed I had a more restful night than I might have expected, I suppose because I was bone-tired after an eventful day. As I drifted into sleep, I reflected how it was unkind of the Fates to arrange that the first time in months Quintus and I had the chance to share a bed, he was occupied with guard duties all night long. But the hours of darkness were uneventful, thank the gods, and I got up with the dawn as usual.

Quintus, Titch and I ate breakfast early, very soon after dawn. Baca told us Selena had gone to snatch a couple of hours’ rest, and Chloe and Vitellia were still in their beds.

“We took turns to watch through the night,” she said. “They calmed down once they’d had some of Selena’s special wine. Do you want me to go and wake them up?”

“No, let them sleep if they can,” I said. “But we do want them, and all of you here, to move into the fort this morning and stay there for a day or two, till things around the village get back to normal.”

She nodded. “Selena said there’s trouble brewing. Some pesky prince, she said. Don’t worry, she knows all about moving to the fort. She’s got most of the arrangements made. We’ll be there well before noon.”

“Make sure you are, because if you stay here you may be in danger. So I rely on you, Baca, to help Selena get everyone out of here as soon as possible. And to make sure Miss Vitellia isn’t too upset by it all.”

“She’s sad for Miss Chloe,” Baca answered. “But she’s taking it all in her stride, really. Master Lucius would be proud of her.”

“That’s good. I’m sure you’re helping her through it all. We’ll see you later.”

“You will, Mistress. I’ve never lived in a fort before. It’ll be quite exciting.”

As we set off for the fort, I found myself hoping there wouldn’t be too much excitement there.

Chapter XXI

I was glad to be in the shelter of the carriage, because although last night’s rain had gone, it was windy, with clouds chasing across the sky, and very little sunshine.

The village was quiet. There were no Brigantians to be seen, only scores of soldiers in patrols, armed and alert for danger. Their display of force was impressive, and so far it seemed to be deterring whatever was planned for today.

“So where do we start, Quintus?” I asked. “By interviewing everyone we can find who was at the party and in a position to see what happened down by the river? That should keep us out of mischief for most of the day.”