Enemies at Home (7 page)

‘I know who she
was
.’

She was Faustus’ ex-wife. Laia Gratiana left him because he had an affair (I had not been surreptitiously delving; Faustus told me himself). It happened ten years ago, but the embittered divorcee still harboured a grudge. I supposed it was subconscious, but she looked highly annoyed to find me assisting Faustus. It would suit her best to see him fail in his task.

Well, that made up my mind. If I had anything to do with this, Manlius Faustus would not fail.

T
he aediles’ office was close to the temple. I had been there before. It held unhappy memories, about a man I should never have tangled with. (Let’s face it, all my bad memories concern men in that category.) Luckily, the offender no longer worked there. I could revisit the scene with indifference.

I learned Manlius Faustus was out but expected back, once he finished working the streets to monitor the public. Pity the public; he was a stickler.

The slaves were loafing in the courtyard, looking relaxed; that was typical of slaves. There was nothing they could do about their predicament; other people owned their lives and would decide their fate. The threat of death had stopped worrying them, at least for the time being.

Although the aediles were given no personal guards, their building contained strongboxes full of fines from the many who broke regulations (well, those who were spotted) so the place had protection. Its guards were temporarily keeping an eye on the Aviola slaves.

‘We lost one this morning.’

‘Careless! Someone run away?’

‘Died on us. The porter who was beaten up. He’s still on the premises if you want to have a look at him.’

‘I may as well.’

Nicostratus lay dead on a pallet, covered with a cloth, which did little to allay the stink of his rotted wounds. I could learn little about him from his corpse, except that he had been short, dark and hairy – and cruelly treated. The battery was pointless; why would thieves stop and beat up a porter so badly, when a couple of well-aimed blows is usually enough to have such a man whimpering in a corner? Or couldn’t they just have slipped him a few coins to lose himself for half an hour?

Were these robbers in love with violence? And had the porter’s beating fired them up, so they went on to attack Aviola and his bride too? But that would mean the murders were unplanned.

‘Someone knocked all hell out of this one! Did anyone try to look after him when he arrived here?’ The guard pulled a face. Fairly neat bandaging had been carried out on the dead man and one of his legs had a splint. ‘Manlius Faustus let him be seen by a doctor?’

‘But of course! Faustus insists we treat them all tenderly. We want them in good condition for the arena beasts, don’t we? There’s no fun if convicts are submissive and limp.’

I did not suppose having the man fit for the lions was Faustus’ motive.

‘Will someone ask the doctor to come and have a word with me? Dromo can take a message, if you give him directions. The patient may have said something, while he was being treated.’

Dromo did go, only to return bitterly complaining that the doctor was a bad-tempered Greek who had been horrible to him. That did not surprise me. I sympathised with the doc.

The man sent me a verbal message that he had better things to do than attend the dead. However, to satisfy Manlius Faustus, there was also a written report. The doctor described Nicostratus’ injuries, including a broken leg, a hole in his skull, and various traumatic wounds that appeared to have been inflicted by a blunt flat-faced weapon, such as a plank. Splinters of wood were in the wounds.

In the doctor’s expert opinion (his phrase), the savagery used on Nicostratus differed significantly from the controlled force required to strangle the other two victims.

In answer to my query, the patient gave up the struggle after a week of drifting in and out of consciousness, during which he never said anything about the attack.

Thank you, Hippocrates.

By the time Dromo brought me this, I was interviewing the slaves one by one, in the room Faustus used as his office. Afterwards, those I had seen were kept separate from those I had yet to see, so they could not confer.

Some owners acquire slaves who are all of a type. Not these. The nine survivors were a mixed bunch, all heights, colouring and weights. I reckoned they varied too in their levels of intelligence, skill and willingness. The young men had hair to their shoulders, normal practice, and all wore simple patched tunics in neutral colours. They looked fit and tidy, products of a decent home. In conversation none of them really told me much about Aviola or Mucia, though they spoke well of both.

Before we started, I reminded the group that the law said slaves had to give evidence under torture. I would not be doing that. ‘– Not at this stage.’ They knew what I meant.

I saw Phaedrus first, the other door porter. He was a sturdy, fair-haired young man with north European origins, a Gaul or German. He had an open face and honest manner – which generally signals a lying witness. According to him, although I had been told Nicostratus was the night porter, it was the other way around. Phaedrus was to have been on late duty but had stayed in the kitchen, having his supper first; it was when he went to relieve his colleague that he found Nicostratus and raised the alarm.

‘So were you in the kitchen throughout the robbery and murders?’

‘Yes, but I heard nothing.’

‘Phaedrus, I have been in that kitchen. I know the layout. Are you sure you never heard the intruders breaking in and attacking Nicostratus?’

‘No. They must have put him out cold with the first blow.’

‘Then they continued knocking him about? Unlikely! You heard no one come across the courtyard?’

‘They must have tiptoed through the columns on the opposite side.’

I agreed that fitted with them going over to the dining room to take the silver. ‘Would you have run to help if you heard a commotion?’

‘Of course I would have! Sorting trouble is my job.’

‘You don’t shy from a rumpus?’

‘I would have been straight in.’

‘So what made you deaf? Was anybody else with you?’ The blond belligerent looked shifty but said no. ‘Oh, come on, Phaedrus. You can do better than this. What was taking up so much of your attention that you missed all the racket? Were you playing around with somebody?’

Phaedrus had no answer, or none he would give me.

I asked about working with Nicostratus. Apparently they hardly knew each other, but got on well. It was routine for a house to have two porters, since one could not stay alert both day and night.
(‘Alert’
? In my family, we reckon door porters are dopey at all times.
)
Phaedrus let slip that he himself was an incomer from Mucia’s household.

‘Really? It’s common on marriage for staffs to merge,’ I mused. ‘Sometimes they don’t gel, and that causes upsets.’

‘Oh, not us!’ maintained Phaedrus, looking innocent. Maybe the young men bonded. They were both in their twenties, Nicostratus slightly older. They could have palled up, talked about gladiators, discussed women (shared one?). A woman could well explain why Phaedrus was oblivious to noise that night.

‘So were you very upset when you discovered Nicostratus so terribly hurt? How do you feel about him dying today?’

His face changed then, showing true distress.

I let him go.

Who next? I chose the gardener.

Diomedes was short, lumpy in the body, big-eared and almost bald. He readily agreed that he was not over-taxed in his duties, though he claimed to hanker for the wider acreage of the country villa in Campania. At the Rome apartment he was a general handyman. He supplemented the water carrier, fetching extra buckets from the local fountain. He nailed things and cleared gullies. He went up ladders to wash shutters − which presumably meant he looked in through windows and saw room contents. He would have known the silver existed.

I told him Polycarpus had said Diomedes was asleep in the garden. ‘The robbers went through to the dining room, then the bedroom. So you are the person most likely to have seen them. What do you say?’

Diomedes said shamelessly that there had been wine at the feast, to which he and Amethystus helped themselves. So yes, they were slumped in a corner of the peristyle, but he bragged that both were completely ‘crocked’. They would not have woken if the robbers had trampled all over them and left boot-prints on their heads.

I bought the story. He was clearly a sloppy workman, yet I found him free of guile.

How trusting, Albia! You ought to know how that works: the ‘honest’ suspect makes a small confession − to hide a bigger one.

Amethystus obviously came next. Taller and leaner, he carried his years better than Diomedes. It could have been because he had lighter work indoors, although I noticed he had more scars from punishment beatings. As he told it, his life was hard. He not only mopped marble and swept up detritus, he was constantly moving furniture, fetching and carrying, and being sent on errands outside the home, usually for heavy goods that, poor thing, he had to transport unaided.

He confirmed Diomedes’ story. These two were old cronies who often got at amphorae while they were standing unattended outside dining rooms; this pair had even been known to raid the stores, if they thought they could get away with it. On the night in question, in the free and easy atmosphere that followed the wedding, these unreformed wine-stealers had cheerfully managed to make themselves paralytic. Amethystus heard nothing. His only memory was of waking woozily to find everyone else running around in panic, with the master dead. Had they been sober, according to him, he and Diomedes would have given the intruders a good thumping.

I would have to ask my uncles about this: what penalty pinching fine wines carried for these slaves – and would their blind intoxication exonerate the drunks from their obligation to protect their master’s life?

Next I sent for Daphnus, to see whether as server at the feast he knew about amphorae being raided. Unsurprisingly, he did. I wondered if he had a tipple himself.

This tall young man was snappy and smart, the only one who had somehow obtained an ornament (a cheap amulet, hung on a thong) and better shoes than the general issue (probably his master’s cast-offs; they looked too big for him). He had oiled hair and he oozed ambition.

He was the first to check my role. ‘Are you the one who is going to get us off?’

‘That depends on your story, Daphnus, and whether I believe it. Even if I do, I shall need to pin the deaths of your master and mistress on somebody else before you can be reprieved.’

He looked crestfallen.

His work consisted of delivering refreshments to the family and visitors, and serving formally at table; when the chef was absent (the chef was among the staff sent to Campania), Daphnus even carved the meats, a task in which he considered himself an expert. He must have been indoors doing that when the two others siphoned off half an amphora, he maintained.

‘Would you have reported them, if you saw them do it?’

‘Oh yes,’ he assured me, unconvincingly.

He told me he wanted to make something of himself, gain his freedom, start a small business. If Polycarpus could manage that, Daphnus reckoned anybody could.

‘What do you think of Polycarpus?’

‘Complete crook. He came from nowhere, has no aptitude or skills. It’s all a big bluff. He gets other people to run around and do the business, then takes all the credit.’

‘Isn’t that what his job requires?’

‘Fair enough.’ Daphnus shrugged, as if there was no real animosity between him and the steward, only envy.

‘But he got on well with your master.’

I thought I detected a slight delay, before Daphnus agreed Polycarpus was held in good regard by Aviola.

Daphnus had ‘worked his rocks off’ at the feast, he said, so he claimed he knew nothing about the burglary because he had passed out from exhaustion in one of the slaves’ cells, with the door closed. The scribe, Melander, was with him. They only woke when Phaedrus hammered on the door and yelled that someone had killed the master.

‘Is Melander your special friend?’

‘He’s an idiot. But he’s my brother.’ Daphnus executed a big theatrical start, jumping back with his hands in the air. ‘Oh! Flavia Albia, I do hope you didn’t think me and my beloved bro was in there
bum-fiddling
?’

‘That’s a new word for it … No,’ I replied, smiling. ‘I’d put you down as a ladies’ man.’

‘Yes, but fat chance! We are not supposed to mingle with the women – and anyway who was available? Olympe’s a child; I like them when their busts have grown. Myla was the size of a granary, and I ask you! I wasn’t that desperate.’

‘Then I take it you are not the father?’ Daphnus acted out a look of indignation and disgust, so I suggested, ‘I wondered if Myla was the household donkey – ridden by everyone?’ Many homes have one of those, but Daphnus would not comment on who slept with Myla.

I pointed out that of the potential conquests for the lad-about-the-colonnades, he had not mentioned Amaranta, Mucia Lucilia’s maid. ‘Nice!’ he agreed. ‘Old enough, a looker, tantalising hints of past experience – and, sadly, taken.’

I laid down my stylus on my waxed note tablet. ‘By? …’

‘Onesimus.’

Not a name on my list. ‘And he is?’

‘Came from the other household. Lucilia’s pet steward. Sent off to Campania. But he reckons he is in with the ornamental ornamenter.’

‘To which she says?’

‘Nothing! Very discreet woman.’

‘And you like her?’

‘Lots of people like Amaranta. If you want to know who
she
likes, you will have to ask her.’ Daphnus, an unashamed chancer, admitted, ‘I was biding my time. I like to play the game, but I reckon there were other people in the queue ahead of me.’

‘Care to say which people?’

He shook his head − then the cheeky chap gave
me
a speculative, flirty once-over, to which I returned my standard get-lost glare. This young man would try it on with anyone, though he gave up easily. As young men go, he was typical.