Deadly Election

26

I had breakfast at the Stargazer and was not surprised when Manlius Faustus hove into view. He always followed up on messages from me. That was how he had come to notice I was missing, the time he found me ill.

‘Tiberius! Don’t you need to be with Sextus?’

‘He can manage. I was told you needed to speak to me.’

The waiter, my deaf cousin Junillus, brought more bread and cold sausage to the rustic table where we sat. This wasn’t so much that Junillus had learned our favourites: it was the only choice. Some fashionable eating houses have a limited menu because they only serve that day’s freshest produce at market. The Stargazer gave you whatever had been available two days ago at the cut-price bakery and run-down stalls my aunt frequented, searching for giveaway items with not too much mildew.

Aunt Junia did not believe in spoiling her customers with variety. Her attitude was that if they never came back it meant fewer people to annoy her by expecting service. She rarely served at the Stargazer herself. She said people were rude to her. Even if we told her why, she failed to hear the message.

The aedile and I gnawed our rolls. Choosing words with care, I explained my discoveries about the missing Julia, and about her mother and relatives. Her family links to Volusius Firmus and Ennius Verecundus caught Faustus by surprise. Watching him, I felt satisfied that he had known nothing either about Sextus being abandoned.

‘Now I am cursing myself. Oh, Albia, I should have seen there was something wrong – I have been visiting the house for weeks. He said nothing. Nor did his mother.’

‘But she obviously knows.’

It would not be the first time a mother-in-law actually connived at shedding her son’s wife, though I refrained from saying so. Faustus was too fond of Marcella Vibia.

‘I can’t understand it.’

‘The upstairs apartment is neat, the children seem happy,’ I told him. ‘It looks as if, whatever happened, they have all settled into a new routine. There is no sign of Sextus feeling agitated, or worrying about how to be reconciled.’ I dropped my voice and asked, ‘Will you take it up with him?’

‘I have to. If this comes out, we need to have our reply prepared … Are you absolutely sure?’

‘She has taken all her things. The children came home from school and never asked after her. They appear to be eating and sleeping downstairs with the grandparents, Sextus as well, to some extent.’

I confessed what had happened when I met Laia Gratiana. Faustus groaned.

‘Now don’t blame me too much. I know she’ll tell her brother but, Tiberius, isn’t it better to come clean, rather than have Laia and Gratus find out from other sources?’

Faustus decided he must go and speak to Sextus now, before Gratus and Laia turned up fuming. He wanted to waylay Sextus on the way to the Forum, before he made his speech.

‘Should we cancel the speech?’ I suggested.

‘Problematic. We have stirred up an audience. It’s too late.’

I said he could borrow the donkey. Patchy must like him: Faustus rode off like a prime jockey on a fine-bred Spanish mare. The donkey boy could hardly keep up, running along after him. Dromo did not bother to try.

I chewed my way through the aedile’s unfinished sausage. Junillus threw in a free gherkin, but it failed to cheer me.

Only then, too late to mention it, did I remember Nothokleptes saying of Vibius Marinus, ‘Isn’t he the wife-beater?’