Enemies at Home

47

Galla Simplicia, to whom rumours flew like messenger pigeons, was waiting for us on the apartment doorstep. A carrying chair stood nearby, with two carefully matched bearers; a couple of maids were flittering about in attendance. She had the full parade. Galla seemed to grow in importance daily, as she reclaimed her position as the matron who mattered.

She said she had come to see Graecina, after being told she was scalded. From what Graecina had told me about Galla, this closeness was new, though useful to the freedman’s widow. I saw it as one way Galla was reasserting herself in the family from which she had once been divorced.

Just as we arrived, Graecina returned from having treatment for her blisters. Full of concern, Galla took her into the ground floor apartment, along with Myla’s baby, whom she took from me as her property. Fauna tagged along indoors too. The inquisitive neighbour did not intend to miss a moment.

I stopped behind for a moment to talk to Myrinus and Secundus. I had a point I wanted to take up with them.

‘Right, my boys! You need to explain yourselves …’

They plumped down on stools in their shop, heavy-hearted. Men are so easily deflated by a bad experience. I stayed on my feet, arms folded, anxious to knock their knowledge out of them while they were emotionally low. As I had said to Dromo, it helps to stay occupied. I was not drained in the same way as them; after what happened to Myla, I felt bitterly businesslike.

‘Don’t think I missed this. Earlier today, Myrinus, you let slip something significant. When Graecina and Myla had their fight indoors this morning, you said you heard it from the back of your premises. So you can hear anything noisy that goes on in the Aviola apartment?’

They looked shamefaced. On an earlier occasion they had said it was impossible. I told them if they answered honestly now there were unlikely to be consequences. They must have heard that kind of lie before, but they could see there was no escape. ‘It’s me or the vigiles — and the vigiles will not ask you nicely!’

They came clean. Their mezzanine sleeping ledge was in a half-way, half-height nook at the back, which they went into via a short ladder; through a poorly-built wall Secundus and Myrinus could hear quarrels, fights, dogs barking and music — any loud or sharp noises. They were not bothered by events in daily life. Normal sounds went on like all the background hum of Rome: the cries, creaks, bells, barks, crowing, mooing, whistling, laughter, singing, hammering, barracks trumpets, mystical incantation and sexual moans that we all lived with on a daily and nightly basis. But they would take note of any real excitement from inside the apartment.

‘I have been told there was quite a lot of that!’ I commented. I felt sour. I liked this pair and was sorry they misled me earlier.

On the night of Aviola and Mucia’s dinner party, after the guests left, Secundus and Myrinus had sat in their shop with their friend Libycus. He was saying goodbye. He knew he was either going to Campania the next day with his master — or else he was listed to be sold at the slave market.

‘He thought that was a possibility?’ The two leatherworkers nodded. ‘Really? I thought Libycus had been with his master for years, worked intimately with him, and was so much trusted he is due to be freed under Aviola’s will?’

Secundus and Myrinus said that was true, yet it could never be relied on. Neither of the personal attendants felt safe. Mucia Lucilia had been afraid Amaranta was so pert and attractive it was dangerous to keep her, in case Aviola was tempted. He in turn, the two friends confided with sweetly coy expressions, was none too keen on having a handsome black man in the house. I assumed this was because of North Africans’ reputation for sexual prowess, which was not mentioned to me by these polite men, though naturally I had heard of it. Who hasn’t?

Mucia and Aviola were thought by Libycus to have struck a bargain: ‘I’ll sell mine, if you sell yours.’ He suspected they would both ruthlessly get rid of their body slaves, and buy new, unthreatening ones. Slaves are supposed to be loyal to their masters; masters have no moral requirement to be loyal back.

With this unjust threat of sale hanging over him, his friends said Libycus had been glum that night. As they all had a drink, he sank into deep thought. In the absence of conversation, even from the shop it had been perfectly possible to hear terrible shouting start up in the apartment. Whoever it was sounded crazily angry.

‘Out of control?’

‘Screaming mad at somebody.’

‘Just one person?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Was it a woman?’

They were not sure.

‘You heard Myla sounding off today — make the comparison, please: was it her that night?’

Secundus and Myrinus thought not. They were more inclined to think the voice was male.

‘Aviola?’

No. He had a much stronger, deeper voice. It was not him.

Whatever was taking place, it spelled trouble. Libycus shot off back home at once. He was afraid he was about to be found out and punished. Secundus and Myrinus did what they usually did when there was a row in the apartment. Thinking it no worse than normal and supposing the commotion would soon die down, they went over to the bar for a quiet drink.

Later that night, they came home to silence. Libycus could not return to their shop then, but the next morning he burst in, very upset. He told them about the killings, said the vigiles had been asking questions and that Titianus was obviously intending to accuse the slaves. They all knew that meant execution. He told his two friends that he and the others had decided they had to flee to the temple for sanctuary. It was their only hope of appealing for justice and making anybody listen.

‘And they were all innocent?’

‘That’s what he said.’

I mused for a moment. ‘Did Libycus say whether Aviola and Mucia were already dead when he got back to the apartment?’

‘Yes.’

‘His exact words?’

‘He said he ran indoors and they were dead.’

So this gave a new picture: there was a sudden burst of disturbing shouts, from one person, who seemed to be male, then the couple died in the next few moments. The speed of it explained why they could not escape, even perhaps explained why nobody reacted and came to their aid.

‘If you were in the street going to the bar, did you see Libycus go indoors?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who let him in?’

‘Nicostratus.’

‘You saw him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone come out?’

‘No,’ said Secundus.

‘That boy,’ said Myrinus before he could stop himself. It turned out he meant Cosmus, being sent to fetch the vigiles, afterwards. They reckoned by then they had been on their third drink in the bar.

‘While we were having our first, we saw Polycarpus come down and let himself in.’

‘On his own?’

‘Yes.’

That confirmed Polycarpus was not there when the deaths took place. Not that he needed an alibi, now he was dead himself. But it placed him.

‘Did you at any point see three burglars? Going in either direction?’

‘No, never.’

‘How many drinks at the bar did you have?’

‘Five or six, then the barkeeper stopped serving us and threw us out,’ admitted Secundus. ‘We had had a drop at our house earlier and might have been a bit merry. He called us a menace.’

‘Again!’ chortled Myrinus.

‘I hope you were not so very drunk that I cannot rely on you as witnesses …’ They smiled sweetly and played innocent. I kept it light. ‘How fast do you drink?’

Fast, they said. With sheepish grins.

Not very sheepish. They were men. They were proud of it.

I left it there. Back in the Aviola apartment I found the usual two seats left out in the courtyard had been paired up with two more. Galla, Graecina and Fauna were ensconced in a group, clearly waiting for me; they urged me to join them. They had all made friends and looked set in for the day.

I had seen Galla’s carrying chair go off down the street while I was talking to the leatherworkers. I learned it contained the baby and Graecina’s children, who were to be looked after today at Galla’s cousin’s apartment. She would hand over the baby to a wet-nurse she had lined up for her daughter’s child — ‘Bit of advance practice for her!’

When Valeria gave birth and claimed the nurse for her own child, the slave baby would be found a place, probably deposited on a country estate, where she could vanish into obscurity. Sitting here in the city, we all assumed the countryside was laden with resplendent big-breasted farm women, who could generously provide milk for the motherless while hardly noticing an extra mouth attached. If they were not busy, they probably suckled orphaned kid goats.

I assumed ‘going to the country’ was the way Myla’s previous offspring were removed. Some fathers do not mind their slave-born by-blows skipping around the house; others prefer to shed them. Aviola must have taken that view — or else he had it taken for him by his insensitive, unwelcoming, ‘legitimate’ family.

Country farms must be stuffed from oil-press to pigpen with inconvenient characters who have been dumped out of the way in infancy. No wonder they grow up believing they have been robbed of glittering inheritances by devious townies, so they start angrily cutting off each other’s legs with scythes and running over rivals with muddy onion carts (look up any legal textbook and you will find copious agricultural casework).

My late husband grew up on a farm, and assured me this is a true picture. My father has a whole cohort of peculiar country relatives whose lives are one unbelievable feud after another.

Graecina’s little boy and girl had gone with Galla’s maids temporarily, while their mother recovered from her fright. Graecina herself seemed not as badly hurt as had been at first thought, though she was shaken. Her resilience was at a low ebb because she was already grieving.

The attack could have been much worse. The water hurled at her had not been dangerously hot. Myla was a reluctant domestic and she was always letting the fire die down or pots go off the boil. So most of Graecina’s skin damage appeared to be on the surface, swelling and redness rather than deep blisters. The apothecary had applied a soothing lotion; he told her to keep the affected area in the air if possible and to rest for three days. No mother of infants can do that, which was why Galla Simplicia had insisted Graecina was relieved of the children at least for the rest of today.

Graecina was agitated because the apothecary removed her wedding ring in case it stuck. She was fretting in case she lost it. Clucking kindly, Fauna untied a hair ribbon, looping it through the precious object and hanging it around Graecina’s neck. The invalid’s anxiety subsided enough for her to sit with us quietly. Much of the time she hardly spoke. I wondered if she had been given a drug to dull the pain. But even when she seemed ready to nod off, she listened. I thought she was anxious about something.

We all slumped, relaxing: four women from very different backgrounds, drawn together by a series of tragedies. None of us wanted to sit in an atrium weaving. None of us felt like tidying our jewellery boxes or writing overdue letters to our aunts. Instead, Galla Simplicia made a declaration that would give traditional Roman men a fit, though it was very pleasing to us, brazen women all:

‘Well, girls, I don’t know how the rest of you are feeling − but I need a drink!’