Death at Pompeia's Wedding (16 page)

It was quite empty. I turned it upside down but not a drop came out, and when I gave it an experimental sniff I could not really detect anything at all. I was about to dip my finger in the neck and see if I could recognize the taste, but Minimus – who had been almost bouncing with excitement during this – put out a hand and stopped me doing so.

‘Don’t do that, master. It may do you harm.’ He sounded gleeful, rather than alarmed.

‘What was in it?’

‘Wolfsbane, master. The slave was using it. He mixes it into the ink, he says, to stop the rats and mice from nibbling the writing on the bark. His master always keeps a stock of it in his office for that use.’

I took my finger out of the phial as quickly as I could. ‘And how did you get hold of this?’

‘I beat the slave at knuckle bones and claimed this as my prize. He had lost the stopper so it wasn’t any use, and I pretended that I was going to put some ink in it and try his little tip. He was quite relieved. He only had a single
as
in cash and he was afraid I was going to ask for that.’ He grinned. ‘So, I suppose you could say I paid an
as
for it. But I thought you would be interested to know about the rats.’

I beamed at him. ‘You did well, Minimus. Here, give that to me. Redux might not be very pleased to know that you have taken it.’ I put it inside my toga as I spoke, securing it in the large pouch-purse attached to the belt of my tunic. ‘And wrap that tray securely in my cloak. I’m going to give the package to that soldier over there and have him take it to the gatehouse when he is relieved, and hand it to the commander of the guard. That way we won’t get robbed. I’ll go and do it now, in fact, while Redux is busy with his bargaining.’ I left my servant waiting and went over to the guard.

The soldier was reluctant to take responsibility at first, argued that it was hours until his relief was due and it would be impossible to look after my package till then, but when I mentioned Marcus his demeanour changed. ‘Oh very well, citizen. I’ll see what I can do. There is a party from the barracks coming down here very soon – the army are taking a little of this salt. They’ll bring my relief and I’ll go back with them. I presume there will be a small reward?’

‘When the salver is safely at the villa,’ I replied. ‘In the meantime . . .’ I looked around. I was prepared to forgo the formal witnesses – I didn’t want Redux noticing the phial – but I had forgotten the necessity of getting a receipt. I had nothing to write on, and in the end I had to call on Minimus and smooth out the note that Antoninus had written to summon me to him. I didn’t have a stylus either, but I found a piece of stick and manage to scratch a statement using that.

The soldier glanced at it and scratched his initials where I’d left a space. I wasn’t convinced he’d read it properly – or even that he could – but it would have to do. I was confident that he would see the parcel safely to the guardhouse at the gates, if only to lay his hands on that reward. I thanked him and put the tablet in my pouch as well – to Minimus’s visible dismay. ‘I’d better keep this now,’ I said to him. ‘In case I have to produce it at the gatehouse later on.’

I looked around for Redux, and saw that he was busily engaged, waving his arms about and arguing. So when a pie seller sauntered past us, his tray upon his head, I fiddled in my purse to see what coins I had. The smell of hot pastry made my stomach groan and reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since shortly after dawn. I found enough to buy a couple of his remaining wares. They were tough and greasy, but I wolfed mine down, and Minimus was happy to tuck in as well, though he told me that he had eaten bread and curd-cheese at Honorius’s house – it was the custom to offer something to the slaves of visitors, while their masters enjoyed more lavish hospitality downstairs. Only, of course, the feast had not occurred.

I was further tempted by the sight of a dairy woman coming down the dock, offering not only slabs of cheese but dippers of milk from the little metal cup chained to the handle of her pail. But I had spent all my money so I could not buy a drink. We contented ourselves with plunging our mouths and faces under the spout of the public fountain on a street corner nearby.

We got back just in time. The bargainers had reached agreement finally – based on a price of hides and cloaks it seemed, because the foreman and the slave were fetching piles of each from the warehouse even as I watched. Redux came over, with an expansive smile.

‘Barter, citizen?’

My puzzlement amused him. ‘Always rather more flexible than gold – it clears my warehouse, and besides, it is much harder for the taxman to assess.’ He beamed. ‘And we are all satisfied with the bargain we have reached, I think. Now, shall we call litters to Antoninus’s house? It is a little way to walk and it is getting late. You wanted to be there by the ninth hour, so my foreman said, and it must already be rather more than that.’

I made a face at him. ‘I don’t have money for a litter, citizen. I came out ready for a wedding feast, with just a little money – and I used most of that to tip the doorkeeper.’ I did not confess to the purchase of the pie. He was already looking rather pitying as if an empty purse was never part of his experience.

I thought for a moment he might volunteer to bear the charge for me, but he simply nodded. ‘Very well. There isn’t a litter anywhere in sight, in any case. I’ll send my slave back to my rooms to fetch some other shoes – these are expensive but they’re rather soft to walk in on the streets. He can catch us up. In the meantime, let us make a start. If we keep to the main roads it should be fairly clean. This way, citizen.’

He led the way across the dock, in the opposite direction from the way we’d come, where a wide street led directly into town, though the stones of the roadway were deeply grooved with carts. The pavements on each side were particularly high, to save pedestrians from walking in the dirty water, I suppose, on occasions when the river overflows its banks and – in dryer times like these – from the animal droppings and squashed vegetables which are the inevitable refuse of the town. Even on the pavement Redux was picking his way with care, obviously anxious about his fancy shoes.

He was still pleased with his bargain, and he chatted about that – how the Romans were building concrete drying pans to improve the quality of salt, and how the price was still remaining high – as we hurried past shops and drinking places not so different in kind from what we’d passed before. Except that the soup kitchens and tavernas here were prosperous and clean, and if (as was likely) some offered girls upstairs, the advertisements for their services were much more discreet. But then we moved into the area where the copper workers were, and conversation became impossible. Not only was the street crammed with their merchandise, so that we had to walk past it in single file, but from the interiors incessant hammering went on. I wondered how the other little businesses survived the noise, squeezed into tiny premises between the coppersmiths, but they seemed oblivious. There was a busy fruit stall, a flower seller with a cart, a shoemaker in a narrow doorway stitching boots, and a baker pulling fresh loaves from an oven as we passed.

I stopped to wait for Redux, who had fallen a little way behind. He was looking more uncomfortable at every step, and clearly it was not entirely the shoes. The plump face was red and glistening with sweat, and it occurred to me that he rarely walked at such a pace – certainly not for any distance, anyway.

He lumbered up to us, flustered and out of breath. ‘I’m sorry, citizen. I can’t keep up with you. In these shoes anyway!’ He stepped into the gutter as he spoke, to avoid a carpet stall which was spread out across the pavement, and narrowly avoided a rotting cabbage in the road. ‘I don’t know where my slave has got to with those stouter ones.’ He looked helplessly up and down the street as if the boy might suddenly appear by sorcery.

He looked so unhappy that I took pity on his plight. ‘Look, there is a litter in that alleyway. Bringing someone for the shoemaker, by the look of it. I’ll send Minimus to catch it, if you like, and you can get them to take you to where Antoninus lives. It isn’t very far now, so you can wait for us. As you can see, we won’t be far behind. And if your slave turns up with your other footwear in that time, we’ll bring him with us. You can change shoes when you’re there.’

He seemed to hesitate. ‘Well, if you’re quite sure, citizen? It would be a relief. I’m afraid I’ve stained the leather of this one past repair. Will you be able to find the place all right? I’ll stand outside it on the pavement till you come.’

I sent Minimus at once to catch the litter before the slaves went dashing back to town looking for other customers. He came back a moment later. ‘They’ve contracted to take the lady home again, when she has finished with the shoemaker, so they must hurry back, but they will take you quickly if you are ready now?’

Redux was still puffing but he looked relieved. ‘In that case, citizen, I will see you there. It isn’t above a half a mile or so from here, at most. If it weren’t for these shoes I could have walked it easily . . .’ He broke off as the litter-bearers trotted up to us, and put the litter down for him to sit in it. They got him seated, fixed a price, and then they bore him off.

I grinned at Minimus. ‘I wonder they did not ask him double price. He must be twice the weight of some other customers. Of course those slaves are trained to move at quite a pace, but if we hurry we can nearly walk as fast. We don’t have Redux to carry, after all. It may even be possible to keep them in sight, and then we shall know exactly where we’re going.’

Of course it wasn’t quite as easy as all that. There were donkey carts and street sellers and stalls to dodge around, and even a fortune-teller trying to accost us as we passed but we hurried on and, only a little later, found ourselves in the centre of the town, close to the forum and the temple of Jupiter which was next door to it.

‘Second block along,’ I said, recalling my directions from the doorkeeper. ‘On the first floor, above a cobbler’s shop.’

Minimus looked doubtful. ‘Two blocks in which direction?’ he enquired. He looked around. ‘I can’t see Redux waiting anywhere.’

He spoke too soon, for even as he framed the words the man himself appeared at the doorway of a building a short way further on. He seemed to be in some measure of distress, staring first up and down the street and then behind him in a frenzied way as if the furies were pursuing him. Then he began examining his clothes, dabbing at his toga and his handsome cuffs. I remembered what the doorkeeper had said about the slops and could not suppress a smile, although Redux looked almost on the verge of running off.

Then he caught sight of us and gave a frantic wave. We hurried up to him.

‘What happened, citizen? I thought that you were going to wait for us out here,’ I began – and stopped.

If he had been red-faced before he was bright scarlet now, and I was almost fearful that he was going to burst. He was breathing so hard that he could barely speak. He reached out and put a hand upon my arm, as if he needed the support.

‘I just went up to tell his slave that you were on your way, but the door to his apartment was open, citizen. Of course, that’s not uncommon. When he has private business of the kind that we discussed, he always made a point of sending all his slaves away. I put my head around the door and called – but there was no reply. So I went in . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It isn’t any use.’

‘Antoninus refused to see us? Or he wasn’t there at all?’ I asked, feeling rather foolish to have brought the poor man all this way, and caused him such exertion for nothing after all.

Redux surprised me. ‘Oh, he was there all right. But . . .’ He shook his head again. ‘On second thoughts, citizen, I think you’d better come and see him for yourself.’

Fifteen

Once inside the building I could see at once what Honorius’s doorkeeper had meant about the stairs. The flight which led up from the street was adequately broad as far as the first floor but above us the steps were narrow, steep and treacherously dark, and the whole stairwell smelt atrociously. As I followed a breathless Redux up to Antoninus’s door, I was uncomfortably aware of people overhead coming to peer suspiciously at us from the gloom, though nobody actually threw any slops on us.

There were other inhabitants of the upper floors jostling against us as we climbed the stairs. A stout woman struggled past, carrying a heap of turnips in her skirt, while her thin children dragged up a branch of firewood – though there were clearly neither hearths nor chimneys in the rooms above, and cooking fires in tenements like these were officially against the law. As we reached the turning our way was almost blocked by a bunch of skinny, toothless, old men squatting in the corner, bickering at dice; they scarcely looked up or moved to let us past.

The door to Antoninus’s apartment, when we came to it, looked particularly imposing by comparison. It was large and thick with a hefty lock and, although Redux had warned me of the fact, I was half-surprised to find it currently ajar. Even so, it was not the kind of entrance that one walked through unannounced, and I was about to knock discreetly when our companion, who was scarlet and panting from climbing up the steps, leaned past me, pushed the door wide open and said breathlessly, ‘There is no point in doing that, citizen. There are no slaves to answer if you knock, in any case. Just go inside. Antoninus is in the other room.’

I did as he suggested: went in and looked around. The apartment was impressive, a spacious entrance hall which opened into a sort of central room, with what was clearly a bedroom and study beyond that. There was a handsome central table with a bowl of fruit on it, and a massive wooden chest against the further wall. On the right-hand side, so small that it seemed merely a recess in the wall, was a little dining alcove, complete with a wooden trestle and a couch. Antoninus had obviously been lunching recently – there was a platter with a hunk of bread and crumbs of cheese on it, a pot of what was clearly garum on a tray, an empty drinking cup and an equally empty wine jug standing on the floor.