Enemies at Home (33 page)

‘That’s what I can’t understand!’ declared Fauna, waving an arm so her cheap bangles jingled, a tintinnabulation of glass-eyed Cleopatra snakes and faux silver charms. ‘It’s natural to go and help. Surely anybody would?’

‘I suspect there was simply no time to react.’ Even awash with honeyed and fiery Caecuban, I could still try to be fair. ‘I learned just now that from the moment the shouting began to when the couple were discovered dead was a very short period.’

‘Fair enough then!’ Fauna liked rapid judgements.

‘I disagree. Even if they couldn’t stop it happening, they ought to have rallied to capture the killer afterwards.’ Galla could be thoughtful. Perhaps that explained why people had previously accused her of murderous schemes: they believed she had worked out a thoughtful plan to remove the couple …

I jumped and shifted restlessly. ‘So afterwards, what did happen to the killer? Wouldn’t they try to make a getaway? But how? Nicostratus was by the front doors, and there is no other way in and out. I know Nicostratus was there, because he let Libycus back in. Nobody was seen leaving. Polycarpus came down, which was just after the deaths, and
he
was spotted. There was a fixed number, smaller than usual, in the apartment. This says to me that all along the killer was one of those slaves.’

‘Well, that’s depressing!’ Galla was acerbic – and a pragmatist. ‘If my darling ex-husband had taken a grip instead of shilly-shallying, if he had sent them all to be sold at the right time, none of them would have been present to do him and Mucia in!’

‘I thought you didn’t like her,’ Fauna murmured.

‘Known her for years. She was a nice woman.’

I suggested, ‘Plenty of people have told me your late ex was a nice man.’

‘He had his good points.’

‘Many do.’

‘If you can overlook them farting in bed all night.’ Fauna spoke with such deep feeling we could tell it was from experience.

As Galla and I tried to keep straight faces, I said I had no need to ascertain whether Valerius Aviola suffered from night-time wind. The fact was, or seemed to be, that by staying in an apartment staffed by disaffected slaves, he had put himself in the classic position of ‘wrong place, wrong time’. That did not excuse what one of them did to him. Even though his policy of shying away from telling his slaves their fates outright may have caused the tragedy, neither he nor his bride deserved such violent, frightening deaths.

What were the slaves so worked up about anyway?

In Rome, standing naked on a plinth in the slave market could be a gruesome experience, but there were degrees of indignity. Amaranta, who was attractive, and Olympe, who would undoubtedly be advertised as an exotic virgin, must feel trepidation, but the rest were house-trained, well-kept, healthy specimens, and Chrysodorus was educated. A decent trader would emphasise their qualities. He would treat them well, make them look smart and obedient, so they appealed to discerning buyers who wanted useful assets. For most of those slaves, the chance of ending up in a worse home was balanced equally by that of ending up somewhere better.

‘No more uncertain and dangerous than getting yourself married!’ as Galla put it. We were all rather silly by that point.

Not too silly for me to wonder, ‘Did the killer of Aviola and Mucia then kill Nicostratus? The story goes he was attacked first, by the robbers as they burst in. That depends on robbers being here, and on them committing the murders. Suppose this: suppose everything was, as the vigilis Titianus always said, an inside job. The stranglings came first.
Then
came the plank attack on the porter. Perhaps the killer tried to leave and Nicostratus got in the way – on purpose even, since no one has ever suggested he was incompetent. The rope had been left behind around Mucia Lucilia’s neck, so another weapon was needed.’ I thought of a quibble. ‘Mind you, in any apartment that had been used for a wedding yesterday and was decorated up for a dinner party tonight, why would a plank of wood be lying around?’

‘Oh, some homes are
very
untidy!’ sniffed Galla Simplicia, eagerly disparaging this one that had ceased to be hers.

‘Not with my husband in charge!’ Graecina corrected her. She spoke with the tight, demure manner of a woman who had been resolutely drinking even more than the rest of us. I blamed the pain from her scalds for that.

We all sat silent for a time, in deference to the late Polycarpus. We were drunk, but nonetheless capable of good manners.

W
e passed through a period of silence. No one was drinking now. We had speculated ourselves to a standstill, at least temporarily.

We were women completely at ease with each other. We could have been going to the same baths at the same hour for the past twenty years. We could all have been mothers, or more likely grandmothers, watching small children perform in a rustic masque – criticising the costumes other women had made and making lewd cracks about the musicians.
That hand drum player is fit. Hair too long, but a wicked look. He can patter me up and down any day he likes
…

We might even be members of that awful cult that the devotee matrons ran at the Temple of Ceres, where they fussed around with ritual vessels and showed off to the public in fake ‘Greek rites’ at festivals … Laia bloody Gratiana. She would
not
fit in with us.

It was significant that we were women not girls; we had all lived. Graecina and I were the youngest, yet married and widowed, both familiar with work. Galla and Fauna might like to pretend, but they were both around ten years older. Fauna, for one, had had a hard life.

From what I had heard, I thought Mucia Lucilia would have made an easy fifth in our gathering.

I thought about the dead woman, as we sat in this bare courtyard that she can hardly have started to call ‘hers’. Her fresco improvements to the summer dining room implied she would have made this space better too. Out with the deadbeat gardener first (goodbye, Diomedes; anyone can see why you are doomed to sale!). Tie up and water the bedraggled climber. Better still, since it was only ivy, slash it down, dig up the roots and dump it. In with some big lily pots and oleanders, or at least lavender. Surround the yard with box hedges. Have roses. Position a fountain and water channels. Haul in proper, permanent benches so this garden area could be like all those other wonderful sitting places in Rome houses, where people met, rested, talked, ate and enjoyed a real social life.

The pockmarked pillars could have been mended, then if necessary rendered, maybe painted as mock-wood or mock-marble. If she could have winkled enough cash out of Aviola, or even used money of her own, the wall space between rooms could have had horticultural painting too: plants, birds and butterflies, with theatrical masks and musical windchimes dangling among them.

This was a woman embarking on a new life: new husband, new home – and if it made life easier, new staff. Old friends, though. She still valued those, and dined with a group of them before leaving town. That last dinner together had been important.

Mucia Lucilia was not rushing into change for change’s sake. Not ripping out everything all at once, but nurturing a project. A woman in her prime, still full of energy and lively ideas, she had brought something of value to her new husband. Aviola, who had been divorced for nearly twenty years, would have gained not only willing sex but conversation and companionship. Perhaps before they married, he had been lonely. I guessed she had.

Mucia chose marriage, as far as I could tell. Nobody shunted her into it for their own social or political gain. It may even have been her idea. It was too easy to assume Valerius Aviola proposed it. Friends could have made sly suggestions in order to ease the process, yet Mucia may not have needed even that. She knew her mind. I could imagine her broaching the subject with Aviola. Delicately no doubt but yet, even though they had never previously been lovers, making him feel a marriage would be useful and comfortable for them both.

I knew a little of what she looked like, from that plaque Sextus Simplicius had shown me when I first visited him. Of course the artwork was heavily stylised, but thinking about it again, I had some sense of Mucia as a warm and living creature. How she must have been before her thread was snapped off, not at its due date by the Fates but by some corrupted human in a few moments of rage.

As I mused, I had to remember that I was investigating the unlawful deaths of real people. They had rights and deserts. My commission had given me a duty to them.

The terrible acts that happened here that night deserved solving. The legal aspects might intrigue my uncles and the practical outcome at the temple bothered Faustus, but at its heart was genuine tragedy. It mattered that I should name whoever burst into Mucia Lucilia’s bedroom, killed her man and put that rope around her throat. It mattered, too, that if people should have helped her, I should identify them too.

G
alla was also thinking about the apartment. ‘This is where Aviola came when we were divorced. I never lived here. But when the children used to visit their father, it was a happy home.’

‘Will you sell up?’ asked Graecina.

‘Not for me to say. My cousin reckons that will be easiest for the probate. In any case, my son could never live here, not now. None of us can bear the place.’

We all understood that.

Fauna went indoors for a comfort visit. She took the jug but came back saying there was no fresh water left in the kitchen. ‘Have to drink that wine neat!’

‘Shocking!’ said Galla, apparently not shocked at all.

Sighing, Graecina apologised that no water had been brought in, which was a constant source of aggravation. Myla had never bothered, even though all she had had to do was mention to Polycarpus that the water carrier was needed again.

I asked what was wrong with the well. Polycarpus had told me when I first arrived that it was unusable.

‘It has bad water,’ said Fauna, letting Galla pour her a refill of wine (Galla’s excuse for having more herself). ‘The family who were here before all died of dysentery. About five of them. The landlord keeps saying it was good before that, so he refuses to fill it in, but he never bothers to clean it out either. So there it sits.’

We all stared over at it. Yes, there it sat. Boarded over at ground level, with an urn stood on the boards.

I myself popped indoors for the usual reasons. When I came out I went over to the well, walking with more sway than customary. I had a look, and came back to sit down. Sitting was a relief, frankly.

I could still talk. Any slurring of the tongue would be allowed to pass politely unnoticed among these wise, tolerant women.

I asked Fauna to go over again with me what she claimed to have heard on the night of the violence. ‘Fauna, around the time when Aviola and Mucia were killed, there was shouting by one person, probably male, then a silence. I am wondering how this fits in with you hearing more voices and seeing people running to and fro with lamps.’

‘I’m glad you asked me that, Albia darling!’

‘Why so?’

‘Since you came up to ours to talk to me, I have picked it over quite a few times with my handsome husband.’

‘Don’t forget, some of us have seen your husband!’ Graecina chuckled. ‘He wheels a veg cart at the Market of Livia,’ she informed Galla. ‘He looks more like a carrot than the carrots on his cart.’

‘Long, yellow and twisted!’
Fauna was the first to agree. ‘Don’t ask why I did it. Too many years ago to remember. There must have seemed to be a good reason at the time. Anyway … we worked it all out, Albia. The first voice, which sounded very disturbing, was what lured Lusius out of bed. By the time he got himself on the stool and looked out, the shouts had stopped and nothing else was happening. So the lummock comes grumbling back to bed, and since we are awake he wants to start some marital push-and-shove around the blankets. That must have taken some time, though not as long as old Lusius tells himself he can keep going …’

Galla, Graecina and I all looked at one another in a way that said we knew exactly what Fauna was saying but were too refined to let on. Mouths pulled down and raised brows.

‘So there were more noises later?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes. Toing and froing, whacking and thumping, cries, footsteps running, abuse, lights moving about, panic, who knows.’

‘This stopped eventually?’

‘Must’ve. We got bored edging each other off that stool to peer out. Lusius said if this was going to be their perman-ent way of life downstairs, he would demand Aviola buys us a second stool. Or better still a ladder.’

‘How long would you say the silence lasted, in between the noises, Fauna?’

‘Couldn’t tell you. In the quiet part we fell back to sleep.’

‘And the second burst of noise, how long did that last?’

‘Seemed ages, but may not have been. Not long enough for my twisted carrot to pull up his roots and go downstairs to complain.’

Fauna had no more to say. Perhaps because she had been talking about her husband, who gave them to her, she began to rearrange the armoury of tacky bangles that were lined up along her forearm. It was a ritual, twisting them and spacing them until the effect was to her liking.

Galla Simplicia was watching me. ‘What’s on your mind, Albia?’

I was thinking that I now understood a lot more about what must have happened. The first shouts, the loud agitated ones, ended in the murder. A silence followed, as the horrified slaves saw what had happened to their master and mistress and tried to decide what to do. I reckoned they all went into the oecus to talk, possibly because lamps were already lit there. They had told me the truth about having their supper. I accepted that most of them were there while Aviola and Mucia met their fates.

According to what Secundus and Myrinus said, by the time the slaves were discussing what to do, Polycarpus was in the apartment with them. As their supervisor, he may have taken the lead. I did not want to say this in front of Graecina, but her late husband must have been party to a hasty cover-up. Though the slaves were particularly vulnerable, what had happened could also reflect badly on him.