Enemies at Home (32 page)

Later that night, they came home to silence. Libycus could not return to their shop then, but the next morning he burst in, very upset. He told them about the killings, said the vigiles had been asking questions and that Titianus was obviously intending to accuse the slaves. They all knew that meant execution. He told his two friends that he and the others had decided they had to flee to the temple for sanctuary. It was their only hope of appealing for justice and making anybody listen.

‘And they were all innocent?’

‘That’s what he said.’

I mused for a moment. ‘Did Libycus say whether Aviola and Mucia were already dead when he got back to the apartment?’

‘Yes.’

‘His exact words?’

‘He said he ran indoors and they were dead.’

So this gave a new picture: there was a sudden burst of disturbing shouts, from one person, who seemed to be male, then the couple died in the next few moments. The speed of it explained why they could not escape, even perhaps explained why nobody reacted and came to their aid.

‘If you were in the street going to the bar, did you see Libycus go indoors?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who let him in?’

‘Nicostratus.’

‘You saw him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone come out?’

‘No,’ said Secundus.

‘That boy,’ said Myrinus before he could stop himself. It turned out he meant Cosmus, being sent to fetch the vigiles, afterwards. They reckoned by then they had been on their third drink in the bar.

‘While we were having our first, we saw Polycarpus come down and let himself in.’

‘On his own?’

‘Yes.’

That confirmed Polycarpus was not there when the deaths took place. Not that he needed an alibi, now he was dead himself. But it placed him.

‘Did you at any point see three burglars? Going in either direction?’

‘No, never.’

‘How many drinks at the bar did you have?’

‘Five or six, then the barkeeper stopped serving us and threw us out,’ admitted Secundus. ‘We had had a drop at our house earlier and might have been a bit merry. He called us a menace.’

‘Again!’ chortled Myrinus.

‘I hope you were not so very drunk that I cannot rely on you as witnesses …’ They smiled sweetly and played innocent. I kept it light. ‘How fast do you drink?’

Fast, they said. With sheepish grins.

Not very sheepish. They were men. They were proud of it.

I left it there. Back in the Aviola apartment I found the usual two seats left out in the courtyard had been paired up with two more. Galla, Graecina and Fauna were ensconced in a group, clearly waiting for me; they urged me to join them. They had all made friends and looked set in for the day.

I had seen Galla’s carrying chair go off down the street while I was talking to the leatherworkers. I learned it contained the baby and Graecina’s children, who were to be looked after today at Galla’s cousin’s apartment. She would hand over the baby to a wet-nurse she had lined up for her daughter’s child – ‘Bit of advance practice for her!’

When Valeria gave birth and claimed the nurse for her own child, the slave baby would be found a place, probably deposited on a country estate, where she could vanish into obscurity. Sitting here in the city, we all assumed the countryside was laden with resplendent big-breasted farm women, who could generously provide milk for the motherless while hardly noticing an extra mouth attached. If they were not busy, they probably suckled orphaned kid goats.

I assumed ‘going to the country’ was the way Myla’s previous offspring were removed. Some fathers do not mind their slave-born by-blows skipping around the house; others prefer to shed them. Aviola must have taken that view – or else he had it taken for him by his insensitive, unwelcoming, ‘legitimate’ family.

Country farms must be stuffed from oil-press to pigpen with inconvenient characters who have been dumped out of the way in infancy. No wonder they grow up believing they have been robbed of glittering inheritances by devious townies, so they start angrily cutting off each other’s legs with scythes and running over rivals with muddy onion carts (look up any legal textbook and you will find copious agricultural casework).

My late husband grew up on a farm, and assured me this is a true picture. My father has a whole cohort of peculiar country relatives whose lives are one unbelievable feud after another.

Graecina’s little boy and girl had gone with Galla’s maids temporarily, while their mother recovered from her fright. Graecina herself seemed not as badly hurt as had been at first thought, though she was shaken. Her resilience was at a low ebb because she was already grieving.

The attack could have been much worse. The water hurled at her had not been dangerously hot. Myla was a reluctant domestic and she was always letting the fire die down or pots go off the boil. So most of Graecina’s skin damage appeared to be on the surface, swelling and redness rather than deep blisters. The apothecary had applied a soothing lotion; he told her to keep the affected area in the air if possible and to rest for three days. No mother of infants can do that, which was why Galla Simplicia had insisted Graecina was relieved of the children at least for the rest of today.

Graecina was agitated because the apothecary removed her wedding ring in case it stuck. She was fretting in case she lost it. Clucking kindly, Fauna untied a hair ribbon, looping it through the precious object and hanging it around Graecina’s neck. The invalid’s anxiety subsided enough for her to sit with us quietly. Much of the time she hardly spoke. I wondered if she had been given a drug to dull the pain. But even when she seemed ready to nod off, she listened. I thought she was anxious about something.

We all slumped, relaxing: four women from very different backgrounds, drawn together by a series of tragedies. None of us wanted to sit in an atrium weaving. None of us felt like tidying our jewellery boxes or writing overdue letters to our aunts. Instead, Galla Simplicia made a declaration that would give traditional Roman men a fit, though it was very pleasing to us, brazen women all:

‘Well, girls, I don’t know how the rest of you are feeling − but I need a drink!’

I
was starting to like her.

It was not even late morning, but each of us could see what the other poor dears needed, so selflessly volunteered to ease their troubles. A triumph of generous sisterhood.

Galla took upon herself the rights of the mistress of the house; she marched to seek out the necessaries. Without Myla, there would be no one to serve us, but we were unswayed by that sad irony. Fauna sat with Graecina, while I helped Galla. We speedily collected portable tables, beakers, a water jug, spices, honey and the best wine we could find. Galla knew where the cellar with the good stuff was and, more importantly, where Aviola hid its key. The store still contained amphorae.

Quite unexpectedly, somehow we four women gelled: sitting together unattended, while we talked over the recent crises, unburdened ourselves of dark feelings and drank – daintily yet deliberately.

Most of the time I work alone, but the concept of a feminine gathering is familiar to me. I can hold my own when the gossip is flying amidst the heady mix of giggles and bared fangs. I do have two sisters and a beloved mother, a matron who we say needs taking out of herself. That is not hard to achieve. Helena Justina can easily be persuaded to jolly up for us: she looks restrained but this is deceptive, just as it was with Grandmama. Mother knows how to measure out a bowl of extremely strong liquor, call it a libation, hand it round with a dish of almond fingers and see it happily poured down throats. Or in a crisis, not to bother with the almond fingers but to send out for a large cauldron of belly pork and peasemould for soakup purposes.

At one point that morning I remembered Horace’s witches: Medusa-haired Canidia and Sagana, ganging up to cruise graveyards as they dripped blood into trenches, searched for children to murder for their marrow bones, and rattled their own false teeth. To escape this ludicrous fancy, I grabbed the flagon and poured us all another round.

It was such good wine we did not spoil it with the honey and spices.

‘Did she do it? I have an aedile breathing down my neck—’ (That could be nice, I thought madly). ‘I need to work out the truth now.’

‘Did she buggery!’ That was Fauna who, when under the influence of carefully aged but ready-to-drink Caecuban wine, did not mince words. ‘This is tasty – is it supposed to be white or red?’

I knew. I had family who would rave on for hours about classic wines, though often while quaffing some liver-dissolving rotgut that even the most lacklustre caupona would refuse to serve. ‘It comes as white, but you have to keep it in store for many years, during which time it turns fiery-coloured. Most attractive, as you see. I’ve never had a chance to become an expert, but I would say this is just about right!’

Since we were not a literary circle, I kept to myself the delicious coincidence that Caecuban was Horace’s tipple of choice. Perhaps his scary witches came into being after he had swigged a chalice. Or several.

‘Absolutely ready to drink,’ Galla agreed, quaffing as if it were a religious duty. Apparently, when new, the wine had been a wedding present from her father-in-law. Maybe he read poetry. She admitted a quiet feeling of satisfaction that she was doing Valerius Aviola out of his cherished, laid-up treasure, when he had thought that by divorcing her he kept it from her. Fauna took that as a good reason to have more. Even Graecina smiled.

‘So did Myla do it?’ I wondered again.

‘No, Albia. She did not.’ Fauna seemed to have appointed herself the judge in our case. She was well able to hand out opinions while pouring at the same time. Hardly a wobble. Well, hardly any spilled. ‘That night the robbers came, she was three days from giving birth. I know there are plenty of people, men that is, who will say that pregnant women can get wild and out of control, but poor old Myla always swelled up as big as you can get so she was helpless. By the time she could have manoeuvred herself into position to strangle anybody—’

‘Two people at that,’ I reminded her.

‘Yes, and if there was a tussle, the row would have brought other people running and she would have been dragged off.’

‘You are right, my dear.’ I thought Fauna’s reasoning was good, though I wished she would calm down a little. Listening to her was a strain. I was preoccupied, trying to work out what I thought myself. (This was a reason why I did work alone; other people’s ideas were generally a pointless hindrance.) ‘I really doubt she attacked Aviola and Mucia – not even if she knew they were in bed making love, which had been her role. Nor can I see her picking up a plank of wood and battering the door porter.’

‘I’ve never seen the lazy slug pick up anything,’ scoffed Galla.

‘Quite. Polycarpus, poor man, is harder to rule out, because she had given birth by then, so she would have been more active physically. She may also have had a motive, if she blamed him for sending her to the slave market.’

Graecina roused herself. ‘He had no choice; the master ordered him.’

‘Was that the cause of your spat with Myla today?’ I asked, bringing her into the discussion now she seemed willing.

‘I knew she was difficult, so I wanted to avoid the subject. But she jumped out at me, demanding answers, because someone had at last convinced her she was now going to be sold.’

‘That was me last night,’ I admitted. ‘I started a conversation – one I never finished – to test whether she was involved. I thought I was giving her plenty of leeway to justify herself. I doubted she was a killer. But the house is to be closed and the slaves moved on, so it was time she faced up to her situation.’

‘I don’t suppose you were unkind. Myla never faced up to anything,’ Galla Simplicia reassured me. She nursed her beaker, as she began to reminisce. ‘My children used to come home to me after seeing their father and tell me all the latest. Every time one of her own youngsters was taken away, it was the same old story. Myla would refuse to believe it was going to happen, even though she was warned. Every time, right until the last minute she kept saying the master would intervene and stop it – which he never did, because every time he saw her Myla was too attached to them already.’

‘He wasn’t daft; he could see if a brat of hers stayed, she would make it a source of trouble in future.’ Fauna seemed to know.

‘Aviola could be a soft fool,’ his ex-wife agreed. ‘But he always had a keen instinct for self-preservation. He never intended to get stung, not for a slave’s brat. Still she created whenever one was sent away. Every time, a mighty scene.’

‘And no doubt each poor child had to endure screaming and a tug-of-war …’ I stretched my legs out in front of me, waggling my toes. An old informer’s trick; it helps you think − or so I am told by untrustworthy old informers. ‘When I talked to Myla last night, she had convinced herself the latest baby could have a free life. She was clearly desperate for manumission herself. She had blotted out any other possibility.’

Galla nodded. ‘Inflated ideas. But never going to happen. Aviola wasn’t one of those ludicrous childless men who fall for a girl’s smooth talk because the silly brute is desperate for an heir. He had his family, thanks to me. That didn’t stop Myla. My son Valerius came to me in tears once, when he was about ten years old, because Myla had been telling him one of her spawn was his little brother and would be sharing our life.’

‘You had a row over it, did you?’ Fauna demanded, eyes bright.

‘One of many.’ Galla’s slurred voice said she was becoming tipsy, though she remained in control as she repeated it in dreary reminiscence. ‘One of very many … Still, for all our disagreements, I would not have wished Aviola dead, and certainly not in that way. Juno, our life together was not all bad and he is my children’s father. They are devastated by the way he died.’

‘Myla was not guilty of murder.’ I won’t say wine makes me belligerent, though I had become decisive. ‘But I cannot exonerate the other slaves. The master and mistress of the house were killed while a bunch of them did nothing – nothing to intervene, nothing to try to save their owners.’