Deadly Election

45

Our driver had chosen to remain at the Vibius estate last night. He had viewed the mansio stabling and guessed the rest. The stalls were not good enough for the wonderful mules of Tullius; the facilities for humans, where they existed, would disgust him. He came back for us early enough. If he thought us strangely silent, he made no comment.

He had delivered her husband’s letter for Julia Optata last night, though had not personally seen her. That remained for us. She was a contained, dark-haired woman, still youthful, although she must be closer in age to Sextus than wives tended to be. She was the oldest of Julia Verecunda’s children, the first daughter to have been subjected to the mother’s hateful régime. She was plainly dressed, perhaps because she was in the country, though since we were coming she had put on earrings and a single-strand silver necklace.

People had called her quiet, and also sweet. I saw nothing of that. I found her guarded, and generally a blank.

There was a physical likeness to the sister I had met, Julia Laurentina. For reasons I could not explain, I liked the wife of Firmus better, even though she had been so aggressive: Julia Laurentina had seemed more honest. This secretive sister greeted Tiberius with a cool nod, then viewed the pair of us suspiciously.

It may not be tactful to visit a woman with marital difficulties when you are dreamy with new-found sexual fulfilment. We could not help that.

The way Julia played it was that she had come to the country because of her anxious sister, who never appeared. I did believe she existed: she had had her baby; we could hear it crying. I worked out what was going on: ‘Your sister has problems with her husband? She has left her marital home and she does not want her man to find her?’

Julia Optata nervously confirmed this, begging us not to reveal to anyone that her sister was there.

Quarrels can happen during pregnancies. I don’t mean, as male doctors have it, that women are full of turbulent emotions as their poor hysterical wombs expand. My work had taught me that impending children make men think hard about their lives. Not always for good reasons.

If the new mother’s husband had reacted to fatherhood badly, it would explain all the mystery surrounding Julia Optata’s exodus. They did not want him to know where his wife was. It would explain why the pregnant sister had fled to the Vibius estate. If the husband had behaved really badly, Julia and Sextus were giving her a safe and secret refuge.

Questioned by Faustus, Julia Optata said her sister’s name was Julia Pomponia and the husband was Aspicius. Faustus did not know the man. Julia Optata lowered her voice and confided that, some years before, this sister had abandoned an approved first marriage, and shocked everyone by running away with somebody of a very much lower social status. What Laia Gratiana would snobbishly call ‘a bit of rough’, I supposed.

He turned out to be too rough. The couple never had enough money and Aspicius was a villain. Julia Pomponia’s relatives had tended to gloat, though one or two were helpful – but not her mother.

I asked, was this why Julia Verecunda had no idea she was to gain a grandchild? ‘Presumably she was not best pleased when one of her daughters went, let us say, down-market?’ Optata agreed. Pomponia was estranged from their mother. ‘What is her rough husband – a soldier? Don’t tell me she fell for that terrible cliché, a gladiator?’

Julia Optata looked shocked. ‘No, he works in decorative crafts!’ She came clean: ‘Actually I’m afraid Aspicius is a hod-carrier on building sites.’

I managed not to snort at her snobbery. ‘What’s wrong with an honest job?’ One thing that might be wrong was that the couple could not afford a child on a hod-carrier’s wages. It’s poorly paid, fitful work, depending on who gets hired for the day. ‘I guess your brick-toting brother-in-law is good-looking?’ Julia blushed and said yes, you could say that. But he toted not brick, but plaster, for frescos.

I wondered if Julia Optata had ogled her hunky, handsome brother-in-law too obviously and it had caused squabbling with Sextus. Not that Sextus seemed the jealous type.

That was just me. I had sex on my mind that morning.

Julia Optata addressed the subject of our visit. She had read the letter we had brought from her husband. Now her sister’s baby had been safely born, Optata agreed to come back to Rome with us, accepting that the journey should be made that day. She would bring a maid. However, her sister would not be coming.

‘She is preparing herself to go abroad, as soon as she is fit to travel.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Isn’t that rather extreme?’ Then I backed down. ‘Of course, it depends how anxious she is about her husband. I understand.’

‘Someone we know has offered her a secure place at an estate where she can live,’ Julia explained. ‘The baby can romp among the Baetican olive groves, and if Pomponia should fall for another handsome piece of manhood out there, it won’t matter.’

Inadvertently, perhaps, Julia Optata had revealed where her sister was going. Luckily, Faustus and I could keep a confidence. He glanced at me, but we made no comment.

The sister, Julia Pomponia, genuinely was no phantom. After Sextus’s wife left us, saying she must supervise preparing her luggage, I made an excuse to use the facilities. Wandering about ‘lost’ afterwards, I saw the two women together. They were in a side room that opened onto a small courtyard. From my position, I could not see either sister properly or they would have noticed me. But this was another dark-haired woman of the same build, similar also to the third sister, Julia Laurentina, at the Callistus house. I suppose the three of them had some resemblance to their mother, though they were all much more modern in style. Pomponia sounded younger than the other two.

Heads together, Optata and Pomponia were discussing in low voices whether Julia Optata really should return to Sextus. It sounded like a conversation they had been having last night when she received his letter, and possibly on previous occasions.

‘I cannot keep arguing about this. It will be easier if I go home now. I have already told that couple I will, so it’s settled. Nothing will happen.’

‘Promise?’ asked her sister, sounding unconvinced.

‘I promise.’

‘And if I stay here, no one will find out where I am?’ The sister sounded petrified.

‘If you must. My going home should draw off attention anyway. I still don’t see why you should be in hiding, when you have done nothing.’

‘I will never go back to him! After what he did … And I shall never see or speak to her again.’

‘She will work out why. You know I think that’s dangerous.’

‘I have the child to think about now.’

‘Yes,’ said Julia Optata, in a hollow-sounding voice. ‘You will find that changes many things – although other things never change at all. Well, I want to see my children too; you understand that.’

‘Go. Go to them,’ urged the fugitive, Julia Pomponia. Then she added, still in a frightened voice, ‘But please think about what I have said. Try not to see your eldest until everything calms down. Don’t insist. Darling, if you go to their house, there is too much chance that family will see you know something.’

‘Oh, not from me!’ For once Julia Optata spoke up with real spirit. ‘Have no fear, Pomponia. Nobody can keep things hidden quite as well as your big sister!’

They were parting from one another, standing up and embracing. I scampered back to sit on a long chair where Julia had left us, looking innocent, while I wondered when and how on the journey I would find an opportunity to report their cryptic interchange to Faustus.