The Chariots of Calyx (30 page)

‘Because it was my necklace,’ Annia Augusta said. ‘Just as the sleeping draught was Lydia’s. Fulvia had one just like it of her own, but she could produce that with a flourish, and look innocent.’

‘Exactly, madam citizen,’ I said. ‘That was the way throughout – everything would point to Fulvia, but then another explanation raised its head. A kind of double-bluff. Your Glaucus would approve of that, Fortunatus. Like the chariots of Calyx, you should not bet on what you think you see.’

‘More clever than I took her for,’ Fortunatus said, and there was admiration in his voice.

‘Not as clever as all that,’ I said. ‘That necklace had been with the silversmith for mending. If anybody asked Annia about it, as I did, she would reply that it was not in the house. That would raise all kinds of suspicions, naturally. But that was Fulvia’s mistake – the necklace was returned that evening at the feast, and only she and Monnius were there. No one else could even know it was back.’

‘Someone could have found it, I suppose,’ Fortunatus said. He seemed disposed to argue for his erstwhile lover suddenly. ‘No doubt Monnius took it to his room. Just as they must have found the knife.’

‘Do not be absurd, young man. You think they found the necklace first, and then went into the corridor and throttled the pageboy with it before returning to Monnius?’ Annia Augusta’s mind was sharp. I was beginning to have a certain respect for it.

Fortunatus shook his head. ‘I suppose you’re right. And throttling the pageboy first suggested that the killer came from the corridor.’ He frowned. ‘But she
didn’t
come from the corridor. How did she come to kill the pageboy first?’

I smiled. ‘But she did come from the corridor. She had been here, in the
librarium
, hiding the money from the chest – another ploy to allay suspicion, suggesting that there had been a theft. It was her nurse, Prisca, who alerted me to that possibility – her mistress often paced the corridors, she said. Fulvia tried to shut her up at the time. I did not see the importance of her words. But I have thought about it since. And there was something else. There was something peculiar in the wine, Prisca said. She tried to warn the boy, but said he was asleep before his head had touched the floor. That suggests that she was
not
asleep. And when the servants rushed downstairs to help, there was Prisca, tending Fulvia. Clearly she didn’t drink the stuff herself.’

‘So you think that she was awake all the time? She witnessed what Fulvia was doing?’

‘I believe so. Fulvia didn’t realise that, of course – until the old nurse began to babble on to me. I think she often feigned sleep when Fulvia thought her drugged. Of course, Prisca would have faced the lions for Fulvia – she was finding excuses for her even then. Monnius was a monster, a brute – she was telling her mistress that she understood. But she was a danger all the same. She let slip to me that Fortunatus was Fulvia’s lover – not intentionally, perhaps, but that was worse. She could not be relied on to be discreet. She sealed her own death warrant with that mistake.’

‘Fulvia killed her too?’ Lydia’s question was a yelp. ‘But she loved Prisca.’

‘Fulvia loved no one but herself,’ Annia Augusta snapped. ‘I always said so, even to Monnius.’

‘But see how she had the body anointed and prepared,’ Lydia insisted.

‘She was playing the part of the distraught mistress. Ruthless,’ I put in. ‘I knew she had a heartless streak – I once saw her force her page to taste a potion. Of course, she knew that it was only water – she put it there herself – but the poor little lad did not know that. Yet he drank it for her. She seems to have inspired that kind of loyalty. And by making Prisca taste her food thereafter, of course she made it easier to poison her – and claim Prisca’s death as proof that she was in danger herself.’

‘Poor Prisca,’ Lydia lamented. ‘All that poison-tasting too. I’ll sacrifice a pigeon for her tomorrow.’

‘And there’s another thing. Why should a woman who has been attacked with a knife seek to defend herself by installing a poison-taster, rather than, say, a bodyguard? But Fulvia contrived to make it seem quite logical. Like that arm of hers – scratched just enough to make a lot of blood. We never saw the wound. And it was her left arm – most people raise their right hand to defend themselves. She was right-handed; I saw her tie her belt. I should have noticed at the time, but somehow she charmed me too.’

Annia’s maidservant chose that moment to return with her handful of salt and her little bowl of coals. She stopped at the doorway, while the undertaker’s assistant hovered behind her with a bowl of water and a bunch of herbs. Annia Augusta looked at me. I nodded.

‘Go to the lady Fulvia’s
cubiculum
,’ she said. ‘Purify the room and prepare her for burial at once – she will accompany her husband to the pyre.’

‘But surely . . .’ Lydia began, ‘now we know . . .’

‘My dear Lydia, what is to be gained? Monnius’ murderer is dead. What could be more fitting than to burn her on his pyre? She was attacked when Monnius was killed, and since has died of her wounds. That is all that anyone need know – except the governor, of course. There will be no trial, there is nobody to charge. Let us resolve the matter, once and for all. You think that might be permitted, citizen?’

I nodded. ‘It would put a stop to rumour and unrest. I think His Excellence would approve. Some things remain to be resolved, but this is the funeral of an official, so soldiers will accompany the cortège – I do not foresee any difficulty there. Let the slave-boy close his mistress’s eyes and mourn her. There is no one else to do it. Unless . . .’ I looked at Fortunatus.

He looked away, and shook his head. The maidservant bowed her way out of the study, followed by the undertaker’s man. A moment later, from Fulvia’s room, there was the scent of burning herbs and the pageboy’s faltering voice began a heartfelt, sobbing lament.

‘Now, if you will pardon me,’ I said, ‘I will return to the governor. He will be awaiting my report, and there are matters on which he may wish to act.’ I looked from Annia Augusta to the floor, and saw her look of consternation. My surmises were correct, I thought. ‘Send my slave after me when he arrives.’

‘But,’ Lydia protested, after a moment’s pause, ‘I don’t understand. If there was no intruder at the feast, who was it who stabbed Fulvia again?’

‘You have just answered that question for yourself,’ I said. ‘I suspected it before, and now I’m sure. Annia Augusta knows the answer too – that’s why she’s raised no question of her own. You did it, Lydia. How else would you have known that she’d been stabbed? We told you Fulvia was dead, but no one mentioned knives.’

She pitched forward in a graceless faint. Fortunatus caught her before she hit the floor.

‘Well, pavement-maker, welcome. Prepare him a place there, slave.’ Helvius Pertinax, resplendent in a coloured dining robe, gestured graciously to a
triclinium
couch. He helped himself from a tray of pork and leeks, which a small servant-boy was offering to him, and gestured capaciously to me to do the same. ‘A simple meal – I hope it meets your taste.’

I rose from my kneeling position and sank down on the proffered couch, glad of an opportunity to recline. I was exhausted, but damnably hungry, and Pertinax’s ‘simple meal’ smelled like ambrosia to me. In my old toga, bathed and shaved, I felt like a human being once again.

A long time later, the governor turned to me. ‘Glaucus has been captured, did you hear? Unfortunately, dead. The soldiers who arrested him had lost too much money on the chariots, I fear. They may have been a little over-exuberant.’ He held out a goblet to his serving-boy, who filled it to the brim with watered wine. ‘I hear you have done well today. And it was a domestic murder after all, not a political one. That news is doubly welcome.’

I had waited for this moment. Like any civilised Roman, Pertinax preferred philosophy to business as a topic of dinner conversation. Until the spiced fruits were cleared away, he had been discoursing learnedly on Homeric verse. Now, though, he had signalled he was ready. I outlined to him the events of the day.

He heard me out, gravely and courteously, nodding from time to time. When I had finished he said, ‘So Lydia betrayed herself, in the end.’

The servant filled my goblet in its turn. ‘I had my suspicions before then, but that slip about the stabbing confirmed them. I was sure that it was someone in the villa. The statue had not been
pushed
behind Monnius’ door, it had been propped up on the wooden bowl and
pulled
over by that cord. It was very top-heavy, so it was not hard to do, although it must have created quite a crash. She has described it to me since. She went into the passageway, shut the door as far she could, then pulled the cord behind her. She hoped it would come free as the statue fell, but it didn’t, so she stuffed the end back through the crack, and latched the door. The statue prevented anyone from entering the room, which was what she intended. She hoped to rescue the cord again before it was discovered, but if not it was Fulvia’s anyway, the girdle cord she always took off when she went to rest.’

Pertinax sipped his wine, and picked up a pickled nut. ‘So it was someone in the villa. But why were you so sure that it was Lydia?’

‘She went to Fulvia’s room, she told us that, with the potion she had prepared. A sleeping draught, of course, although she denied it later. Probably in the goblet rather than the flask, since she was so ready to drink from that herself before Annia Augusta stopped her – but in any case it would have done her little harm.’

Pertinax nodded. ‘She might even have smashed that drinking glass herself, to deflect suspicion. But it did not deflect you, my friend.’

I smiled under his praise, but honesty prompted me to add, ‘But who else could it have been, Excellence? All the slaves adored Fulvia, as we know. Fortunatus was not in the house. Annia Augusta was here with me when her daughter-in-law was killed, and Filius was sulking in his room. There was no one else. Lydia, of course, believed the story of the intruder and did not see the risk.’

‘So that is why she chose to use the knife? I wondered why she did not opt for poison. It seems an easier way, for a woman with her skills.’

‘She thought that poison would be traced to her, and she might have been blamed for Prisca’s death as well – although, as it turned out, she was wrong in that. If Fulvia had been poisoned like her maid, I might have believed she really had been at risk all along and that I was completely wrong in my suspicions. Then the truth might never have been discovered. But Lydia thought the story of the visitor was real.’

‘So she tried to draw your attention to that window?’

‘That was a mistake. Monnius’ shutters
were
slightly open, but she could not have known that, unless she opened them herself. By custom they should have been closed – and yet she mentioned the window-space specifically. And another thing. I knew that whoever stabbed Fulvia must have been covered with her blood. That pointed to Lydia as well. It was that, and not the sacrifice she offered, which spattered her clothes and made her cleanse herself. Of course, the breaking of the
imago
gave her an excellent excuse.’

He nodded. ‘There would have been a lot of blood.’

‘There was.’ Remembering that dreadful scene, I was glad of the glass of wine in my hand, although it is not my favourite drink. ‘Will she be tried for murder, Excellence?’

He shook his head. ‘Not unless one of the family brings a charge, and in any case Lydia could claim the law of
talio
, rightful retribution. Monnius was her protector and the father of her son. Fulvia murdered him, so she did have cause. It would be hard for any court to sentence her.’

‘Except, of course, she did not know that at the time.’

He gave one of his rare smiles. ‘So why did she do it? Jealousy?’

‘She was afraid that Fulvia would bring a
querela
against the changing of the will. Lydia kept talking about the courts. It did not occur to me at first, but the law requires seven witnesses. We know that Fortunatus was one of them – but he is not a citizen. He bought his freedom, true, but he has no voting rights. There would be cause for question in the courts, and you know what that can do to an estate.’

‘I see. Filius would inherit at least half, of course, since he is the eldest son, but if Fulvia got the town house, as she clearly thought she would, Lydia would find herself without a home. I don’t imagine Fulvia would welcome her.’

‘I think she did it for Filius, not herself. She claims it was for him, and I believe her. Half his inheritance was at stake – and his dignity. Fulvia took his rightful place in the procession, too. I think it was that, above all, which sealed her fate. I noticed that Lydia was holding herself oddly when she came out of Monnius’ room. Obviously, she was hiding the dagger under her cloak then – it was in Monnius’ room, but it was to be offered as part of the grave-goods so no one would have noticed it was missing. I suspected nothing at the time, and Lydia is so ungainly that her awkwardness was not remarkable.’

Pertinax popped another pickled nut into his mouth. ‘So she will claim
talio
. She will be banished from the town, at worst. But the family would be chased out anyway. People do not take kindly to a
frumentarius
who cheated them – and Annia Augusta was implicated too, you say?’

‘I’m sure of it, Excellence. I knew it as soon as I saw her with Eppaticus, though I was exceptionally slow in working it out. She was the one who started the alarm, you will remember, both for the money and the missing document. We know that Fulvia hid the money, and why, but that did not explain the document, nor why the money disappeared again.’

‘Annia Augusta found it, I assume?’

‘I led her to it, without meaning to. She found me on my knees, and when I had gone she discovered the hiding place herself. Then, when Eppaticus came back, she paid him what was owed. She admitted that. So why did she not simply tell me so? Why not restore the money to the estate? And why was there “no paper for the warehouse” as Eppaticus said? She must be hiding something – perhaps for Monnius, but he was dead. More likely for herself.’