Deadly Election (34 page)

‘Yes, Fundanus is a kindly man!’ I agreed gravely. ‘No formality is too much trouble.’

A sacrifice had been made on a portable altar. It stood outside a small moss-covered private tomb, decorated with carved ships and oars. Valens’s sons and nephew placed the green glass urn inside in a columbarium compartment, with prayers and brief speeches. Demountable seats and couches rapidly appeared and everyone sat down for a decent tuck-in.

They were a sensible family. Even their smart wives were moving around the company today, making the right noises, letting serious old cronies of Valens bore them silly with reminiscences, comforting anyone who wept. I thought it a shame Volusius Firmus had been prevented from standing as aedile: from the way he was talking to people here, he would have worked hard. Who knows? He might even have been honest.

The young daughter of Callistus Primus, Julia Valentina, was carefully handing round dishes of funeral meats. After she served me, I said to her father, ‘You brought her up well, I can see.’

‘We’re proud of her.’ As usual he cut off further discussion, making an excuse to go and greet someone. Undeterred, I sat down for the meal alongside Julia Laurentina, so I could ask her about the girl.

Laurentina kept a hand on her pregnant belly, fingers spread, to tell the world she was entering the sacred role of motherhood. The fact it was supposed to be a secret made no difference. I politely asked after her health and condition; she recounted the history of three children she had lost, before or soon after birth, then claimed she was being wise this time, while tearing into a charred leg of some funeral roast and washing it down with herb-infused wine.

I picked at a wheat cake. It was flavoured with cinnamon, very delicate. ‘Young Julia Valentina served me this. She is so very shy and sweet, a credit to her upbringing. I can tell how fond of her you all are … Will you tell me about her? I know her parents are divorced.’

Mellowed by drinking toasts to her dead father-in-law, Laurentina shot me an astute glance, but started without much of a struggle. ‘The marriage failed pretty well instantly. My niece was born after the divorce. Her father claimed her, as you see, though her mother engaged in a bitter battle to recover the child.’

I was startled. ‘Good heavens. That sounds as if Primus snatched the baby.’

‘No, I did!’

‘What?’

Julia Laurentina looked amused by my shock. ‘I had volunteered to be with my sister during her pregnancy and at the birth. Is that what you came digging for?’

It took a moment for her choice of words to strike me. ‘Valentina’s mother is your sister?’ Which one was this?

‘Julia Optata. Surely you knew?’

‘Actually, no.’ I was even more surprised. All I knew was that Sextus Vibius was polite in public to Primus; Faustus had said they had some connection, which he, culpably, never specified. Thanks for nothing, Aedile. That Sextus had a stepdaughter at the Callistus house might have been useful to know.

It was still unclear why his wife rarely saw her eldest child, though bad feeling between Primus and her might be the explanation. It did add colour to the elusive conversation I overheard at Fidenae between Optata and her sister Pomponia. In that, Julia Optata was hankering for maternal contact with her daughter yet, for some reason, Pomponia had warned her not to press for it just now.

‘I gather there is coolness since the divorce, but do you see anything of Julia Optata?’

Laurentina, who lost no opportunity to be unpleasant, was enjoying my unease with the new information. ‘Sometimes she is allowed to visit our house. Primus gives her a regulated meeting with her daughter. The two have lunch together in the garden, or something on those lines. She claims Primus makes it difficult, though I think he has been extremely gracious. We don’t encourage such meetings but they are by no means forbidden. Valentina is always upset afterwards and takes days to settle.’

‘And what of her mother’s feelings?’

‘Oh, Julia Optata doesn’t speak to me! She still blames me for taking her baby.’

I chewed another wheat cake, catching crumbs in my cupped hand. ‘And why did that happen?’

‘After Valentina was born, Julia Optata was weak and in a sorry state, very low in spirits, lethargic and weepy. With the birth safely over, I was free to return to my husband. Most people thought I helped Primus to ensure a quiet life here. But no. I judged my sister incapable of looking after a child. While Julia Optata was sleeping, I simply picked up Valentina from her crib and carried her home with me. We organised a wet nurse and she has thrived ever since.’

‘A hard decision for you, though?’ I wondered whether the new mother’s convenient sleep had been assisted by potions.

‘No. I shall never apologise for it.’

I considered their wider family. ‘What does your mother say about all this?’

Laurentina laughed softly. Under white veiling, complicated gold earrings tinkled at some movement. ‘She gave me all Hades for interfering. Julia Optata was her eldest and in those days she could do no wrong. Well, not until our father married her again, into the Vibii, who were old friends of his. Mother was furious he did not consult her. Father died not long after. I suspect the sustained venom helped him into the underworld. Mama was equally wrathful that my sister went along with it, so they fell out too.’

‘Vibius Marinus comes in for loathing, merely for being male?’ I asked, remembering how nastily Julia Verecunda had treated him at that encounter in the Forum. ‘I have the impression your mother does little to further her children’s marriages – even where she arranged them.’

‘Understatement!’ Laurentina chortled frankly. ‘Everyone knows how much she interferes. At the moment she’s determined that both my sister Terentia and I will leave our husbands.’ Terentia, the rich one, was now the only one of the four sisters I had not met. ‘According to Mother we should marry them, make them dependent on us, then leave them in the lurch. We’re all constantly nagged about it. At least Mother will leave Pomponia alone now she has escaped from Aspicius.’

‘So tell me about that. I gather he’s handsome but given to fights. Did she leave him because he frightens her?’

‘Oh, he does! Mind you, he’s always been the same so we can’t see what’s different this time.’

‘The baby,’ I deduced. ‘Do people realise where she has gone into hiding?’

‘It’s pretty obvious – especially since that fool Vibius made his public pronouncement and told the whole world. His wife will beat him up over that, now she is home with him.’ Laurentina saw my expression. ‘Julia Optata will be furious he was so stupid.’

‘All a sorry story of friction!’ I commented. ‘But you and Volusius Firmus have found genuine happiness?’

Laurentina groaned with relief. ‘I can’t tell you how it felt to come to a house full of peace and good feeling! I will never give that up. Vibius suits me fine.’

‘And your sister Terentia feels the same about her husband?’

‘She can do as she wants, of course. She has money. Mother never forgave her for going off and finding herself a millionaire first time round.’

‘I did hear a snide rumour that her second husband sponges off her?’

‘He’s a joke. Still, what if he does cost money? She can afford it and he is what she wants. He drinks,’ snapped Laurentina, swigging wine herself. ‘Perhaps he guzzles to obliterate the fact that our terrible mother is endlessly trying to get his dear wife to leave him while, actually, he is attached to my sister and cannot bear to lose her. Everyone is so sure he cares only about Terentia’s money that they don’t see his loyalty. He truly loves my sister and she him. Is that so unbelievable? That was why she married him. In our family some of us treasure love. We have seen what happens without it. My mother,’ Julia Laurentina announced, as formally as a trial judge, ‘is an unforgiving, brooding, vindictive, manipulative bitch. She never forgets a slight and devotes herself to working against those who offend her, stand up to her, or boldly ignore her.’

I was thoughtful. So here we had a situation in which two of Verecunda’s daughters (Laurentina and Terentia) had defied her and were sticking with their marriages while a third (Pomponia) had just given up on a man who seemed a threat. What about the fourth? ‘Does your mother want Julia Optata to leave Vibius Marinus?’

Laurentina shrugged her shoulders. Her white stole descended and she replaced it gracefully, paying more attention to it than to me.

‘That could explain some tension in their house,’ I speculated. ‘I’ve heard Julia Verecunda called the mother-in-law from Hades, excuse me saying so. Julia Optata has not been forgiven for making a happy second marriage?’

Laurentina then bestirred herself. She flashed me another of those wry glances. ‘That assumes you think she and Vibius
are
happy!’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I know what she’s like.’ Much as I wished it, she did not elaborate.

I sat quiet, nursing a wine cup, which I did not drink from, while my companion slumped, lulled by funeral wine. Eventually I reminded her of her secret suspicions the first time I saw her. ‘Julia Laurentina, you feared from the start that the strongbox body might be your father-in-law, didn’t you?’

‘And wasn’t I right?’ she snarled, more her previous snappy self.

‘Were you aware Valens had an enemy?’

‘Everyone loved him.’

‘Yet somebody went after him. Someone lay in wait and hauled him back to Rome. Whether they intended to kill him is uncertain, but they did, after which they stuffed him into that chest to rot. So somebody really did
not
love him.’

Julia Laurentina gave me a wide-eyed unpleasant stare. ‘Oh, Flavia Albia, do you say somebody
hated
him?’

I almost felt she was taunting me for some error on my part, even if it was simply my ignorance. ‘Do you know who? Are you protecting them?’

‘No.’

‘No idea even who it might be?’

Her answer was to stand up and leave the table, becoming impossibly high and mighty. ‘This is my father-in-law’s funeral. I suggest you stop your vile theorising right here.’

She was not sober. There could be several reasons for that: she was simply a lush; she was covering some personal unhappiness; or she did not want to face up to what had happened to Callistus Valens. I thought the latter. But she did not intend to tell me, and I would not break her resolve. She was correct: this was not an occasion for me to persist.

However, she suddenly turned back to me. ‘One thing is certain,’ she announced dramatically. ‘If we ever know who caused the death of Valens, this family will deal with them!’

I acknowledged the bravado with a cool nod. In my business, you hear things like that at funerals all the time.

N
ot long afterwards, I left discreetly. I had shown my face. I had returned the rings. There seemed little chance of shedding more light on the death of Valens or the subsequent murder of Niger.

As I rode Patchy slowly back along the Via Appia, thoughts of Titus Niger gave me pause. Was it possible the surviving Callisti believed Niger had had some involvement in what happened to Valens? If they had such brooding suspicions, what happened to Niger himself could be the result. They would want to avenge their father. The three Callisti were hefty men who knew their minds and would not shirk a duty. I could entertain the idea that
they
might have killed the agent. It would be appropriate retaliation to incarcerate his body in the strongbox that had once contained their much-loved head of household.

Why would they distrust Niger? Perhaps because, like me, they noticed him talking to Puce Tunic at the auction. Racking my brains, I thought they had left the scene after that, not before. Niger was a relatively new employee for them, untried at best, and Primus had distrusted Niger’s report after viewing Valens’s body. If the Callisti suspected Puce Tunic of involvement in Valens’s death, they might view Niger’s speaking to him as proof of collusion. From what Galeria had told me, there had been no collusion, but the Callisti had not heard her story and, anyway, they were hot-headed.

Keen to solve this puzzle, I realised I was close to the villa of Claudius Laeta. It was evening, though not late. It seemed a perfect opportunity to call and see whether he had sent that persistent man to me at Fountain Court.

I was to be cruelly disappointed. The great double doors to the fine retirement villa were now swathed in dark garlands. Two sombre cypress trees stood at either side of the entrance. I knew before I knocked what the story would be. Claudius Laeta, the mighty imperial freedman, had gone to the gods of his own accord before Domitian could require it of him prematurely. He had lost his feud with the upstart Abascantus. He would be unable to assist Faustus and me. For Tiberius Claudius Laeta, there would be no more plotting.

M
y father’s old crony had remained meticulous in his final illness and, though unable to write, he had summarised everything he had discovered, leaving a long message for Faustus and me in the charge of his son. He, too, was an imperial freedman, working in a secretariat. The slaves at the villa, who obviously respected their late master more than his son, sneakily gave me detailed instructions for finding Junior in his workplace lair, even though he had tried to put me off.

I had to go to Domitian’s Palace. At least I knew the Emperor was not there, but still abroad. He rarely lived in Rome, preferring his fortress villa out at Alba Longa. That had not stopped him having another wondrous complex created for him here by the great architect Rabirius. I had to leave Patchy at a cryptoporticus gate and climb the steep Palatine on foot, through a long covered corridor. At least with the Emperor away, the Praetorian Guards were relaxed. My father had many a tale of having to bribe or bully his way past them, but today they were so relaxed I never saw any.

People came to the Imperial Palace to gawp at its inventive rooms with their exquisite décor. The crowds left behind dust and detritus to be swept up from the multicoloured marble. That meant I could borrow a broom and slide myself into the bureaucratic areas. The Palace slaves wore white, so my funeral outfit came in handy. All you have to do is keep your head lowered and look miserable while you continue very slowly sweeping. Everyone thinks you are a domestic slave. They don’t even lower their voices while discussing their best friend’s adultery. They pay over bribes right in front of you. If I had wanted to assassinate Domitian, I could have gone all the way into his bedroom and done him in with the borrowed broom.