The Germanicus Mosaic (26 page)

‘And will you pardon the other slaves, now Paulus is arrested? Even Rufus? As a Christian, I suppose you will? Marcus would be glad of your seal on these matters. I have brought a wax-book for the purpose.’ I detached the small hinged tablet-book which hung at my girdle, opened it flat, and scratched a few words there with the stylus. Then I handed it to him and watched while he read what I had written and imprinted the wax carefully with his signet ring. The ring was so loose that he had to take it off to make the mark.

‘There.’ He folded the tablet in half again and gave it back to me. ‘Marcus will be pleased, now that you have caught Paulus.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘You reason well, citizen. I would never have connected him with the murders. He is too timorous.’ He raised his goblet.

I did the same. Carefully. It was important, very important, that I should not allow myself to drink too much. Roman wine did not agree with me, and if I was right about my companion I needed my wits about me. On the other hand, if I showed signs of inebriation, I would seem unthreatening. I took a gulp of wine, and appeared to savour it for a long moment. Then I put down the beaker again and took a deep breath before speaking again.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You are quite right. The evidence looked overwhelming, but Paulus did not kill anybody. As you know.’

Silence. The hermit did not move. He seemed scarcely to be breathing.

‘He did not have the subtlety for it,’ I said. ‘These killings were the product of a shrewd and clever mind.’

He was sitting very still. ‘Then who?’

I crumbled a piece of my bread. ‘I think you know the answer, my friend. And the reasons, too. Let us start at the beginning. A soldier, who wants to gain advancement and who is too impatient to wait for legal means. He has a toothache, and when he goes to a woman who makes herbal cures, she offers him a tiny dose of aconite. Faustina told me it was a common cure. He knows little about herbs himself, but he knows that one.’

The hermit nodded. ‘Everyone does. A single draught is such a swift and effective poison that Trajan had to forbid the citizens of Rome to grow it on their property.’ He was still sipping his wine.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Our soldier sees a chance. The woman is plain and thin, and has no dowry – her family was dispossessed. She will be lucky to find a husband. He courts her, promises to marry her as soon as he is legally able. But in return he begs a favour – a strong infusion of aconite.’ I looked at my companion.

‘Go on,’ he said. He was eating his bread and herbs, now, but he paid the meal scant attention. He was watching me intently.

I produced a slightly tipsy smile. ‘But our soldier has a brother, not unlike himself, a man who enjoys a drink and a wager. They have been in many scrapes together. With his help the poison is administered, at a gambling party perhaps – on an occasion when there are a dozen witnesses to swear that our man was a score of miles away.’

The hermit said softly, ‘I admit nothing. But supposing the brother does not even know about the poison? It is explained to him as a practical joke. A laxative in the wine, perhaps, and when the man is taken ill, the brother goes home chuckling. Something like that? That does not make him culpable.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘I do not think the brother knew of the aconite. He lacked his brother’s ruthless streak. But the military court might not be so forgiving. The army does not forgive treachery in the ranks, even years after the crime.’ I was slurring my words, and I looked at my goblet doubtfully. ‘This is strong vintage, Lucius. It has gone to my head already.’

He poured a little more into each of our drinking cups. ‘It is Crassus’ wine. You may thank him for the quality. But go on. Your theory interests me.’

I took another sip. ‘The soldier gained his promotion, but when the company was posted elsewhere, he left the woman behind. She must have suspected.’ I took care that it sounded like ‘shuspected’, and that the hand that held my plate was trembling. ‘But she could prove nothing, and if she spoke, would only imp – imp – licate herself.’ I looked at my wine again, rather foolishly. ‘This is very strong.’

‘I should have given you more water with it.’ He fetched me some from the ewer. He was beginning to move a little drunkenly himself. ‘So, he gains a centurion’s salary. A clever rogue.’

I laughed, a drunken little giggle, and tapped the side of my nose. I felt rather an idiot, but it seemed to be having the desired effect. ‘A very clever rogue. Gets to be . . . shenturion . . . and make slots of money.’ I shook my head. ‘A lucky, lucky man.’ I put down the cup and clutched at the table. ‘ ’S hot in here.’

The hermit was watching me carefully, crumbling bread in his turn. He said nothing.

‘Then, suddenly, a dreadful thing occurs.’ I was acting the story now. ‘The brother converts to Christianity, and the sin of all those years ago rises to haunt him. He has killed a man. He wants to make amends.’ I made a face which began as anguished contrition, and ended as a sort of vacuous smile. ‘He gives the woman directions to the villa. Oh yes—’ I raised my hand, like an orator on the forum steps, ‘He knew where she was living – in Eboracum. You told me so yourself. She must have learned recently where the villa was – her appearance is too great a coincidence otherwise.’

The wine was beginning to affect me now. I must not drink much more of it. I stretched out a hand as if to lift the goblet, but contrived to knock the heavy vessel to the floor.

My companion retrieved it, while I picked up the plate of bread and herbs and began to eat.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You interest me . . . a great deal.’ His own voice was unsteady now.

‘She comes,’ I said, waving my hand like a drunken poet reciting at a banquet, ‘poor stupid woman, older and plainer than ever, desperate because her father has died and she is faced with beggary. She threatens to tell her story if Crassus does not marry her. He agrees to have her in the villa. But she gets too friendly with the slaves. She might tell somebody his secret.’ I rolled my eyes dramatically. ‘She must be disposed of. He kills her custos, has her dismiss her maid, and promises to marry her. He sends her away, with money, supposedly to purify herself and prepare for the wedding. Then, on the appointed night, she comes. There is no dowry, so she needs no witnesses. She is dressed as a bride and thinking to fulfil her vows – and instead . . .’ I drew an imaginary novacula around my throat. ‘In the roundhouse, I think. There is a bloodstain there.’

The hermit shook his head mournfully.

‘In the meantime he has prepared a grave. His brother is coming, so he buys half a dozen manuscripts – he did not even care what they were – and arranges for some poor fool of a pavement maker to lay a mosaic over the floor.’

He was nodding, stupidly. ‘And no one knew?’ It sounded like ‘noanoooo’. He was not feigning, I thought with satisfaction.

‘Aulus saw him in the lane with the body in his arms, but our man was cunning. He pretended to be kissing her, and then smuggled the corpse into the villa while Aulus went to open the gate to come out and spy. Aulus, of course, thought it was Daedalus again. Crassus had sent the slave out with presents for her before, and Aulus had seen him.’

‘Foolish Aulus,’ the hermit said, staggering to the wine jug to refill my goblet. ‘So, the killer was safe.’

‘Safe enough,’ I said. ‘Until his brother comes. He is a changed man. Doubtless he asks about Regina, and will not be fobbed off with excuses. He is cleverer than I am; he guesses the secret of the pavement. He knows what Crassus is capable of.’ I wagged a finger at him. ‘Germanicus is a clever and devious man – we know he chose his punishments with care. Whatever hurt the victim most. A man who does that has intelligence.’ I looked at him. I was slurring my words, but my brain was clear. ‘Cruel, but intelligent. You knew that.’

He laughed uproariously. ‘Crassus was not the fool that people thought him.’ He stopped, suddenly sober, and eyed me thoughtfully.

‘And doubtless his brother shared his cleverness. He tried to persuade Crassus to confess. Worse – he warned him that he proposed to confess himself. He wanted to found a church. Crassus tried to buy him off, with gifts and the promise of inheritance, but to no avail.’

‘So?’

I cast a swift glance in the direction of the valley. The sun should be safely above the tree branch by now. ‘So.’ I drained my wine dramatically, and rose to my feet. I was genuinely swaying slightly, but I managed to speak coherently. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You agreed to meet your brother during the procession, while Daedalus impersonated his master in the march. Perhaps Crassus even promised to convert. He had poisoned the wine he offered. You are no fool. It is an elementary precaution to exchange goblets, when you drink with a known poisoner.’ I lifted my empty goblet. ‘As I exchanged my goblet with yours a little while ago.’

He said nothing, but a little smile played around his lips.

‘When he died you arranged his body in the hypocaust and came back here, as quickly as you could. You had the mule, of course. It is a pity you tried to implicate Paulus, putting the novacula under his bedding and that bloodstained statue in the lararium. He panicked, of course, and hid the head, so it took a little longer than you expected for suspicion to fall.’ I was wavering dangerously, and I clutched at the table for support.

He stood up himself, almost as giddy as I was. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘that was foolish. But I swear I did not knowingly kill Crassus.’

This was my big moment. It was a pity that my heart was thumping so painfully and my head swam.

‘Of course you didn’t,’ I said, with the careful deliberation of the drunken. ‘Crassus is still alive. But you killed your brother. You killed Lucius.’

I just had time to utter the words before I pitched forward and tumbled onto the floor.

Just in time.

The pretended hermit lunged at me savagely. He had given up all pretence, and he did not even raise his hand as his hood fell back, exposing that unmistakable bull neck and the tell-tale scars on his cheekbones – visible even under the new beard – where Paulus had trembled in his shaving.

I had little time, however, to think of anything so mundane. He had turned around, seized the stool on which I had been sitting, and was now whirling it around his head with the evident intention of bringing it down on mine, and bashing my brains out.

This had not been part of my plan. I had intended to feign the early symptoms of aconite poisoning which I had learned of from Faustina: thirst, headache, giddiness, stomach pain. He would give me time to die, I reasoned, before running off, pretending to seek for help. A poisoning he could explain; doubtless he would pretend to be ill himself and blame Paulus for bringing poisoned wine. He would hardly finish me off violently, and leave tell-tale wounds, with Marcus and his soldiers waiting in the valley.

I had misjudged my man.

He brought the stool down with a crash that reverberated through the cave, and which would undoubtedly have seen me laying mosaics for Pluto if I had not managed to roll under the table. The stool, mercifully, snapped into several pieces.

It hardly slowed him, however. A moment later he was attempting to perform a similar trick with the table. If he managed to lift that there would be no escape.

I had to do something, fast. I clutched at the table leg. I considered crawling up it, moaning and twitching as if in the final throes, but I doubted that would be very convincing. I had taken an enormous risk, as it was. I am no thespian at the best of times, and I was in the company of a man who had learned his acting from Daedalus – one of the greatest mimics in the empire.

It is not easy, either, to imitate the symptoms of poison convincingly to a man who has watched at least one victim actually die of it. And I had done the easy part; according to Faustina the next step was vomiting and haemorrhage, and that was going to be much more difficult to manage.

I saw Germanicus pick up the knife. Soon I might not even have to pretend, I thought. If Marcus did not arrive soon, I was going to expire in good earnest.

I twisted round the table leg and tried to leap past him and run away – not very honourable, but I could see no alternative. A trained centurion with a knife is more than a match for me, especially with several goblets of wine inside me. It may have been the wine, indeed, that did it. I misjudged the distance, and leapt up, rapping my head sharply on the table edge. I let out a roar and fell back, holding my head.

I lay there trembling, waiting for the knife.

It did not fall. I suppose a man sees what he expects to see, and my abrupt collapse looked like the effects of poison. I was aware of him standing over me for one breath-stopping moment, and a finger lifted my eyelid.

I let my eyes roll back into my head – I was so faint with fear I do not think I could have prevented them!

‘Not long now,’ Crassus grunted. The disguising whisper was gone, and it was his own voice now. ‘You thought you were so clever, pavement maker, changing the goblets. A pity you did not change the platters too!’ Then, sharply, ‘What’s that?’

I knew what it was. Footsteps at the door. Marcus at last, and not a moment too soon. I heard the knife clatter to the floor.

‘Must keep them away. Too much wine,’ Crassus muttered, indistinctly, and I heard him as he went outside, calling, ‘Help! Help up here! A terrible misfortune has befallen Libertus. We need a litter, quickly.’

‘What is it?’ Marcus’ voice at the entrance, sharp with concern.

‘Someone has sent me poisoned wine.’ The ecclesiastical whisper was back. ‘Do not go in there, excellence. There may be vapours in the air. I have made him as comfortable as I dare. But fetch a litter, quick. I will come with you.’

He was playing for time, of course, waiting for the poison to take effect. I opened one eye gingerly. I could see him, hurrying down to the valley with Marcus, pulling his hood back over his head, and already the very personification of a hermit. ‘He did a merciless and deadly accurate imitation of Lucius,’ someone had said. It was true. At least, I thought, this little piece of acting vindicated mine. I would have looked particularly stupid if I had been wrong, and the meal he had prepared for me had been innocent. There is nothing likely to make a man feel more foolish than pretending to be poisoned by an innocuous plateful of bread and herbs.