The Chariots of Calyx (8 page)

She had been waiting for that question, one could see it in her eyes. Proud of her skill at storytelling, perhaps, because she gestured me to a stool beside her, waved away the slave with the bowl, and, leaning up on her undamaged arm, arranged herself more carefully on the bed. It was a kind of art form, I could see that – every fold of drapery contrived to emphasise the muscular perfection of her form.

I dragged my thoughts back to what she was saying. ‘. . . I woke to hear a noise, in the next room. At least, I did not exactly waken, I was half awake already. I opened my eyes and there was a shadow beside the bed.’ She was acting out the story as she spoke, and said the words with such feeling that I felt my own heart skip a beat.

‘Go on.’

‘There was a movement – I knew it was a knife, and I flung up my arm, like this, to shield my face.’ She lifted her unbandaged limb to demonstrate. ‘Next moment the knife was slicing my skin. Strange, I was aware of little pain – just something warm and sticky running down my arm.’ She looked down at her fingers now, breathing hard.

‘And then?’ I prompted. She had closed her eyes and lapsed into silence, as if she were reliving the moment.

‘I was terrified. I found myself screaming . . . screaming.’ She paused. ‘That must have frightened him, because he seemed to hesitate. I thought he was going to stab me again, but then there was a noise upstairs – thanks be to Mercury – and he rushed out of the room. I heard the knife clatter down – I think I’d closed my eyes again – and when I opened them . . . he was gone.’ She opened them now and gave me that fluttering, uneven smile again. ‘I am sorry, citizen, but that is all I know.’

‘It
was
a man, however?’

‘I am sure of that, citizen. A big, heavy man too, by the look of him – although of course I did not see his face.’

‘But agile,’ I said, ‘since he seems to have escaped through the window-space in no time and scaled that ladder over the wall.’

She seemed to sense a challenge in that. She flushed. ‘I may be mistaken, citizen. After all, it was very dark.’

I glanced at her. ‘Of course. No doubt our murderer relied on that. And no one else in the household saw or heard anything?’

She shrugged. ‘Annia Augusta and Lydia and her son have rooms in the other wing. As to the slaves who should have been on watch, I believe they were drugged. Given a sleeping potion to ensure that they
did
hear nothing. My old nurse thinks so, don’t you, Prisca?’

The elderly slave-woman who had been folding garments ceased her task and nodded agreement. ‘The mistress is right, citizen. There was something peculiar in the servants’ wine last night, I knew it as soon as ever I tasted it. I said so to that pageboy at the master’s door, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was half asleep before his head even touched the floor.’

Fulvia added helpfully, ‘It would not be difficult to do it, citizen. Warmed water and strong herbs are added to the dregs of wine each evening, and the mixture is left in a large bowl at the kitchen door for the night-slaves, to warm them and help them keep awake. The whole household must know about it. If someone added a sleeping draught to that . . .’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But would outsiders know about the wine? Or did the “shadow”, whoever he might be, have someone in the household helping him? Someone who knew about that wine, for instance, and that there were thousands of sesterces in Monnius’ study that night.’

Fulvia was staring at me aghast. ‘But who . . .?’

‘Oh,’ I said, with careful carelessness, ‘someone with a friend or lover in the household. Someone like . . .’ I paused, watching her intently, ‘Lividius Fortunatus, for example?’

I had hoped for some reaction from Fulvia, but it was Prisca, the ageing slave-woman, who gave herself away. She turned the colour of a terracotta vase and dropped the folded garments in a fluster.

‘Don’t answer him, mistress!’ she cried, before Fulvia’s warning look could stop her. ‘He can’t know anything about Fortunatus. None of us would ever have said a word.’

That was as good as a confession. I looked at Fulvia. ‘So I take it that Annia Augusta was correct? The name of Fortunatus does mean something to you?’

She looked from me to the maidservant and back again, then gave a helpless shrug. ‘I see that it is useless to deny it now. Very well, citizen, I admit the truth. The name does mean something to me, and the owner of the name still more.’

‘Good mistress . . .’ The slave-woman stepped forward, twisting her hands in her tunic girdle and looking anguished. ‘Don’t tell him. Have a care . . .’

‘Be silent, Prisca!’ Fulvia motioned away her would-be counsellor. ‘You have said too much already. However, since the truth is out, thanks to your runaway tongue, there is no longer any point in dissembling. Do not look so stricken. Perhaps it is as well the facts are known, and I should prefer the citizen to learn the story from my own lips, rather than hear a distorted version from someone else. Besides, Monnius is dead, and finding the man who killed him is of more importance now than my reputation.’

That was prudent, I thought, especially since much more than her reputation was at stake here. I wondered if she realised how much circumstances contrived to make her seem a likely accomplice to murder.

It seemed not. She turned to look at me directly, white-faced but dignified. ‘So I must throw myself on your discretion, citizen. I am a young woman, and my husband was old, ugly and . . . importunate. Violent sometimes. But he was rich and powerful, and, in his way, he loved me. He never would have let me go, alive.’

‘He was a brute, citizen,’ the maidservant burst out. ‘I have known this poor lady pace the corridors for hours, weeping, when he’d done with her. She thinks I didn’t know it but I did. Poor lady – no wonder she wanted a bit of tenderness now and then.’

‘Be silent, Prisca,’ Fulvia said. She looked at me, not dropping her eyes as modest Roman matrons do, but squarely and frankly as if inviting understanding. ‘But she is right, citizen. I did, I confess it, once or twice seek consolation elsewhere.’

‘So,’ I said, still pursuing my own thoughts, ‘Fortunatus did come to this house?’

She held my gaze. ‘Many times, citizen. At my husband’s invitation first – Monnius was a devotee of chariot racing – and then, increasingly, at mine.’

‘Without your husband’s knowledge?’

She did lower her eyes then. ‘Sometimes, citizen.’

Again it was Prisca who rushed headlong into speech. ‘Well, citizen, what if she did – who in the world could blame her? You do not know what a monster Monnius was. Always out gambling or drinking or making his hole-in-the-corner deals somewhere, coming home at all hours stinking of wine, women and garlic – reeling round the floor, sometimes, violent with drink – and then demanding his wife. I’ve stood by this bed with a lamp in one hand and a vomit bowl in the other – he always insisted on light when he came in here – and he would treat her so roughly. He’d summon her into his bed, sometimes, in the middle of the night, and do it all again. I have seen her covered in bruises from his so-called attentions. It brought tears to my eyes to watch it—’

‘Prisca! Enough!’

But the slave-woman was determined to defend her mistress, and she would not be silenced. ‘Forgive me, lady, but the citizen should know.’ She turned to me. ‘I’ve served my mistress since she was a tiny girl, and no one ever cared for her like I do – but it was shameful, what Monnius did to her. And then the next day, in he’d come, with one of his gifts of silks and necklaces, trying to wheedle round her and promising the earth. And pawing her all over with his great hairy hands, ready to start again. What wonder if my poor mistress sought a bit of comfort with a young, good-looking man? Why, I could tell you . . .’

‘Prisca!’ Fulvia said again. ‘Leave us. Now. At once. Wait in the corridor, and hold your tongue. How dare you speak of your master in this way? And in front of the pages too?’

For a moment I really thought the old maidservant was going to defy her mistress once again. But in the end she merely sighed, sniffed, and took herself off as instructed, still muttering beneath her breath, ‘Well, the serving boys would only tell you the same thing.’

I saw the lads exchange glances. ‘Would you tell me the same thing?’ I asked them.

Again that uncomfortable exchange of looks. Then the older of the two said, unwillingly, ‘There were rumours, citizen, in the servants’ hall. That is all. If Lividius Fortunatus did come here when Caius Monnius was out, we never witnessed it ourselves.’

I understood the message perfectly. I have been a slave myself. Like all good servants, these two had seen nothing and heard nothing, and would have remained conveniently blind and deaf if the charioteer had burst in every night stark naked with a band of pipers. As to relations between Monnius and his wife, the boy had simply evaded the question. I wondered how much the pages really knew. If my patron, Marcus Septimus, had been here, no doubt he would have arranged to have the boys flogged to sharpen their memories. However, I let it pass. I have found the technique unreliable – Marcus has sometimes been misled when witnesses, in order to stop the torturer’s lash, have suddenly remembered things that never happened at all.

The boys had told me something by their very silence, however. They were sympathetic to Fulvia, even when I was trying to find their master’s murderer. That told me a good deal about Caius Monnius. I pressed my advantage.

‘There are other rumours in the household, lady,’ I said. ‘Your mother-in-law blames Fortunatus for this murder, as I expect you know – and she seems at first sight to have reason on her side.’

Fulvia looked at me incredulously. Reason and Annia Augusta were obviously not often bracketed together in her mind.

I shrugged. ‘Consider. Fortunatus wanted you – but you had a husband, so he could not have you. That is a common enough motive for murder. It would have been easy for you to let him in: over the wall, perhaps. I imagine a man of his physical prowess could scale it easily. You could have drugged the wine in advance – you told me that you have an understanding of potions – and he strangles Monnius while the servants are asleep.’

‘And tries to stab me, citizen? You think he would do that?’

‘Perhaps he did it on purpose to divert suspicion. No one would suspect Fortunatus of attacking
you
.’

‘I see!’ She smiled wryly. ‘You must think me very brave, citizen, to have permitted that. Suppose that he had lost his nerve, or stabbed me in the wrong place in the dark? None the less, I salute you. An ingenious explanation. But not true. Fortunatus did not kill my husband, citizen. Not even without my assistance – and certainly I did not help him or anyone else. Whoever killed Monnius, it cannot have been him.’

I raised my brows at her. ‘You are very certain of that.’

‘I am more than certain. It was a Roman feast-day yesterday, and there is a great five-day chariot-racing spectacular at Verulamium, in honour of the occasion. That is why Fortunatus did not attend my husband’s banquet, as he often does. He was in Verulamium, driving for his colour.’

‘In Verulamium?’ I said, stupidly.

‘All the Londinium
factiones
have gone there – one of the town authorities struck a bargain with the managers for the Londinium teams to come and race for their colours. He was promising huge sums in prize money besides. Do not look at me so doubtfully, citizen. There must have been a thousand witnesses – the last time Fortunatus appeared in Verulamium there was not a free seat in the stadium and people in the street outside were still fighting to get in.’

I sighed. The neat little mosaic of a theory I had carefully constructed had just shattered into a hundred pieces. If Fortunatus was racing in Verulamium, he could not have killed the
frumentarius
.

I know a little bit about chariot racing – it is thought of as a Roman institution, of course, but we were racing warcarts on this island before Julius Caesar ever set foot here, and, like every other Celt, I attend whenever my business makes it possible. Of course the races in Glevum are not professional affairs as they are in Londinium – the drivers there are simply members of the college of youth, and the track is a makeshift affair with wooden stakes hammered in to mark the turning points – but the racing itself is no less exciting for that.

Of course it would be a little different in Verulamium. It is a large town – it was once the capital of the local tribes – but I doubted that it had a purpose-built stadium either. No doubt sponsoring a real spectacle, with professionals coming all the way from Londinium, was someone’s way of impressing the populace and winning support for public office. Wealthy patrons of the
factiones
in every town do the same thing – queuing up for the honour of offering financial support to the colour of their choice, and even sometimes bringing teams from overseas. Presumably it works – entrance to these things is traditionally free, and there are always passionate crowds at even the smallest races.

In Verulamium probably half the town would have turned out, as Fulvia said. I could imagine it: scuffles for seats and fist-fights for the best vantage points in the standing spaces, while the visiting charioteers – with their whole retinue of stable boys, managers, guards and medical attendants – became the idols of the entire community, followed and cheered at wherever they went.

So how could Fortunatus simply have disappeared for the night? It was impossible. He would have been guarded to the hilt for one thing – people stake whole fortunes on the outcome of a chariot race, and there have been too many attempts in recent years to interfere with drivers and horses. Even in Glevum last year we had someone trying to dope the favourite, and stick a dagger between the driver’s ribs. Fortunatus, the most famous charioteer of all, could no more have slipped off for an evening unobserved than the Emperor could have done so himself.

Besides, Verulamium is several hours away even on a good horse in broad daylight. Not even Fortunatus could possibly have raced all day – and it would have been all day, the organisers like to get value for their money – galloped to Londinium in the dark to strangle Monnius and then popped back to Verulamium again in time to start all over first thing in the morning.