The Germanicus Mosaic (10 page)

A noise. I whirled around, but too late. All I saw was the flutter of a tunic at the doorway, and the room was still again. But there was no doubt of it. I was being watched.

Well, if they came again I would be ready. I went over deliberately and opened the cupboard. It was not fastened. There was nothing of interest there, simply the tools of his trade.

I glanced behind me. The room was still empty. I knelt down quickly, intending to rummage in the bed straw, as I had done earlier further down the room.

Then something hit me hard on the back of the head. I had a confused sensation of pitching forwards, and that was that.

The next hours are a blur to me. I do dimly remember shouts and voices, being carried uncomfortably over a strong shoulder to the accompaniment of a strong smell of onions while my head ached and throbbed, and then being lowered gratefully onto a soft, welcoming bed. I seemed to spend a long time then halfway between waking and sleeping, but I preferred sleep. It hurt less. When I did awake at last, and opened an experimental eye, I found Junio bending over me with a goblet of something aromatic and steaming.

For a moment, I fancied that I was at home. I blinked myself awake, cautiously. Window-glass, a raised bed, fine coverings, spiced mead, Junio at my side and half a cohort of anxious slaves (including a pair of pretty girls) waiting at my feet – I had either been kidnapped by Bacchus or I was still in Crassus’ villa.

I struggled to sit up, but a blinding pain in my head made me grimace. Not heaven, then.

‘What are you doing here—?’ I began, but my voice wouldn’t answer my command. Junio pressed the goblet to my lips.

‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Marcus had me sent for as soon as he saw you.’

‘Marcus?’ I said stupidly, trying to assemble my scattered wits. ‘Is he here too?’

Junio waited for me to sip the reviving mixture again, before he answered. ‘Andretha sent for him, immediately Aulus found you. And Marcus sent for me. He will be exceedingly glad to find you recovered.’

He meant Marcus, I realised after a fleeting confusion. For a moment I thought he was still talking about the chief slave. Poor Andretha, I thought indistinctly. Another culpable lack of security. First his master’s body found and now an official guest attacked. The man must be flapping like a bat. I managed a faint grin, but the pain in my head immediately reminded me that this was no smiling matter.

Junio, however, had noticed my expression and grinned too – with obvious relief. ‘I confess that I have been worried myself, though I should have known you were tougher than a badger. You have had the whole villa in an uproar. Marcus was almost ready to read a second funeral oration tonight.’

Even my scrambled brains detected that something was amiss with that. ‘Tonight?’

Junio took the goblet from me and somehow contrived to press my hand as he did so. ‘My dear friend and master, the sun has been to bed and risen again since you were carried here yesterday.’ He sounded genuinely upset. ‘Andretha has had slaves burning herbs by your bedside and bathing your face with water ever since. Marcus was ready to send for the army physician, but Faustina here is skilled with herbs. She has bathed your wounds and I . . .’ he released my hand and grinned again, ‘I said that spiced mead would revive you, if anything could. And it did. Between us, as you see, we have robbed Charon of one passenger tonight, at least.’

This time I did manage to struggle upwards and support myself on an elbow. I had forgotten Crassus. ‘And the other passenger,’ I said. ‘What of him?’

Junio’s grin broadened. ‘Germanicus, master? Much as he was,’ he said, with a cheeky twinkle. ‘I fear he is beyond the help even of spiced mead.’

I would have smiled at his impudence, but my head deterred me. His words, though, had given me cause to think. ‘Spiced mead,’ I said slowly. ‘Or Faustina’s herbs either.’

I turned to the slavegirls. One was slight, fair and blue-eyed, with delicate arms and a slim, shapely body. The other was rounder, older, with heavy breasts and darker features, her long, dyed red-brown hair tied back in a golden braid. ‘Which of you is Faustina?’

I shouldn’t have needed to ask, except that my mind was still functioning slowly.

‘I am, excellence,’ the darker girl said. Of course! That lock of hair in Rufus’ pouch.

I summoned a smile. ‘Thank you for your care.’ A slavegirl, my sluggish brain was thinking, with a knowledge of herbs and a motive to detest her master. Enough to poison him, perhaps? And then put him in the furnace, to disguise the signs? ‘I should like,’ I said, ‘to speak to you, alone.’

They misinterpreted. Even Junio threw me an astonished glance. The other slaves withdrew instantly, of course – Andretha had obviously left instructions that my every whim was to be obeyed – but I saw the looks they exchanged. They must have extraordinary illusions, I thought, about my powers of recovery.

‘I am at your service, excellence.’ She stepped forward, wary but resigned, in the manner of young slavegirls everywhere. ‘What is your desire?’

‘I wish to talk to you,’ I said, ‘about your master’s death.’

Her relief was visible. It was hardly complimentary, perhaps, but I was secretly amused. Her whole being relaxed. ‘Is that all? We can talk, of course, but there is nothing more I can tell you.’

I sat up, warily. My head swam and the blood rushed in my ears, but I felt I lacked authority, lounging awkwardly on a bed while the girl stood before me. Besides, despite that blow on my head, the last few moments had set my thoughts in unexpected directions. I needed to look directly at her face; from where I had been reclining the image of those dancing hazelnuts was too disturbingly vivid.

I dragged my gaze reluctantly to her eyes. They were dark and defensive. ‘I am sure you answered all our questions, then,’ I said, ‘but I have discovered some new ones, since we spoke. For instance, at the feast of Mars, when Rufus left the others at the procession, did he go to meet you?’

She hesitated. ‘So you know of that? I am surprised he told you.’

I forced myself to think clearly. ‘He didn’t. Not in so many words. To do so would have implicated you. But Rufus is a poor liar.’

‘He is no liar. He is scrupulously truthful.’

‘He did not tell us that he had left the parade.’

She looked at me frankly with those dark, brown eyes. ‘Did you ask him that? Directly?’

‘No,’ I conceded. It was true. All Marcus had asked was whether Rufus had attended the procession, and come and gone with the others. All of which, presumably, he had done. When I had asked him direct questions, he had answered frankly, or skilfully evaded answering at all. ‘No, I suppose not,’ I said again. I was beginning to have a new respect for Rufus.

She smiled. ‘There you are, then.’

I was beginning to wonder what other information I might have obtained if I had asked the right questions. ‘So that, if he tells me that he did not touch his master. . .?’

‘He did not touch him. I would swear to that.’

Even then I needed to spell it out for myself. ‘“Did not touch” – those were his words. Could he, do you believe, have killed by other means?’

She coloured and looked away. ‘I do not understand.’

‘You lie, Faustina,’ I said gently. ‘Even if
he
does not. You understand perfectly. There are ways of killing a man without touching him. Poison for instance.’

‘Poison!’ She was shocked and shaken. Whatever she had been thinking, it was not that. ‘No, Rufus did not poison him. I’m sure.’ She believed that passionately, if I am any judge of humankind.

‘So,’ I said, ‘what did he do?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. No. Not really. He did not murder Crassus. You have my life on it.’

‘But he wished him dead?’

There was a pause. Then, reluctantly, ‘Yes. He did. But which of us did not?’

I said gently, ‘And you, Faustina. Did you wish him dead?’

She paused, then said, in a voice unsteady with anger, ‘I have prayed for his death a thousand times. Rufus was not alone.’

‘You had the means, Faustina,’ I said. ‘You are skilled with herbs, so Junio says. You learned that skill from someone. Someone in the house?’

‘It is nothing, the merest rudiments. She had no time to teach me more.’

‘She?’ There were few females in the villa. Faustina’s mother perhaps, or one of the older slaves? Surely not the other dancing girl? But ‘had no time’ – in the past tense? My fuddled brain made a leap of understanding. ‘It was Regina,’ I said, with sudden certainty. ‘Regina taught you what you know? She was an expert with potions.’

I did not know that, but it seemed a likely guess. In the circumstances, I was proud of my deduction.

I had hit the mark. Faustina raised her eyes to mine. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what of it? Many a countrywoman is an expert in the properties of plants. Regina is famed for it. Ointments and potions, balms and salves – she can make them all. She has a whole chestful of dried herbs, and little jars and phials. Everyone came to her. She even gave Paulus a salve for his bruises. That was how she met Germanicus, she told me. He came to her to buy an infusion of herbs against the toothache. Her cures are good. She gave me berry leaves to ease the pangs of childbirth – better than all the midwife’s charms and tokens. Without that brew I think I might have bent the bar they gave me to strain upon.’

It took me a moment to digest this news. ‘You have a child?’

The dark face darkened. ‘
Had
a child.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Almost three moons ago. It is dead, of course. Eliminated at birth.’

I felt a pang of sympathy. Had Gwellia, I wondered, ever borne a child to some wealthy master, only to have it killed or exposed at birth? It is one aspect of the Roman law I have no stomach for, this denial that a newborn baby is human. I murmured something sympathetic.

‘What would you expect?’ she said bitterly. ‘Germanicus would hardly take it up.’

‘Take it up’ literally, she meant. Even a man’s own wife must present her newborn child, and the father must accept it as his by lifting it up from the ground when it is shown him. If he does not, he rejects it, denies it legal existence, and it is left to die. A slave baby is often not even accorded the dignity of a quiet death. It is the master’s property already, since he owns the mother, so if it is not required as a ‘pet’, it is likely to be disposed of by drowning, like an unwanted puppy, or fed to the hounds.

But there was nothing unusual in this – indeed I was slightly surprised that Faustina should mourn the death of Crassus’ child. Unless . . .

‘Germanicus was the father?’

She turned away. ‘How can I know? I hope not – or rather, I hope so, since the child is dead.’

‘But it might have been Rufus’?’

She looked at me and her eyes were trembling with tears. ‘Yes. Perhaps. Germanicus may have guessed. But he did not seem to care. He liked me . . . swollen. His only concern was that I should stop bleeding and be purified, so I could get back to his bed again. He had Regina make a potion for me.’

‘Was it successful?’

She grimaced. ‘I did not take it. I was in no haste. But I would have had to come to him soon. I could not delay much longer. No doubt it would have worked. Regina is skilled with herbs. Germanicus thought so. He was afraid of her, you know. She made a love potion for him years ago, he claimed – she is plain-featured, and thin, not how he likes his women – and he would not eat or drink while she was in the villa without Daedalus tasting first.’

Despite my throbbing head, I smiled. The idea of ugly Germanicus employing a food taster to protect him from a plain woman was laughable. ‘And did she make a love potion this time?’

Faustina laughed. ‘Perhaps. She was certainly confident of being married soon, she told me so. But if she made a potion, Crassus must have known a cure. He persuaded her to take money, I think. She left here without him and we have not seen her since.’

‘Married?’ I said. ‘But to whom? To Crassus, or to Daedalus?’

She laughed again. ‘You think perhaps the taster took the potion? That may be true. Daedalus liked her. Rufus would believe it, he had faith in these things. Myself, I trust her remedies for wounds and illness, not for charms. She is a healer, not a sorceress. I know, she taught me something of her art. Simple cures: ivy for burns and bruises, aconite for pains in the joints and teeth, Hercules-wort for a wound, hellebore for ulcers, and belladonna for the eyes. All the herbs of Saturn. They have great power.’

‘And most of them are poisons, are they not?’

‘For those with knowledge, no, or you would long be dead. I put bruised henbane and hemlock on your head, and you have sniffed the fume of them for hours – it is to soothe the swelling and reduce the ache. But the dose is vital. A man absorbs the essence through his skin. Too much of it can kill.’

I put a tentative hand to my throbbing skull. There was a tender lump on the back of my head, and when I took my hand away there was indeed a small curled leaf adhering to my finger. I picked it off and looked at it in dismay.

‘Henbane?’ I said. ‘Hemlock?’ I would have to soak my fingers in the stream.

‘Parsley,’ Faustina said. ‘To stop the bruise from blackening. I have removed the others, though the leaves of all three are not unalike. Aconite too.’

And any of those poisons, I thought, might have dispatched Germanicus. Perhaps they had done. No wonder Crassus feared his would-be wife.

‘Tell me something of Regina,’ I said. ‘Did you like her?’

‘Very much. Too good for Crassus – yet she wanted him. She was no longer young, of course, and her family have lost their lands. The army took them, she says, and her father died leaving her with nothing. She has no dowry, otherwise Crassus might have taken her, plain or not. But, equally, without a husband she was afraid of starving. I suppose that was why she wanted to marry Crassus. It cannot have been for the charm of his company.’ She spoke with fervour.

‘Yes.’ I understood that. When the army settled in a place, they took over the surrounding farms as a
terratorium
to feed the legions. Often the local landowners were reduced to working as labourers on the fields they once owned. But it was harder for a woman, especially an older one. Even Crassus, presumably, was better than beggary.