Enemies at Home

5

As afternoon subtly became twilight, the youth Dromo reappeared. He had been taken away by Faustus, but came whistling back with a high-piled handcart. The aedile must feel guilty about my bare room, so his slave produced various items to improve my comfort: writing materials; a set of bowls, beakers, spoons and scoops, all on a tray; two cushions and a bolster, with embroidered covers; a couple of floor-mats; a small side-table with curved legs; three lamps, oil to put in them and a lighting flint (a thoughtful man); even a comfortable lightweight wicker chair. And a cudgel.

‘What?’

‘That’s for me to use,’ protested Dromo, grabbing it as I tried its weight.

‘For protecting me?’

He sniggered. ‘No! For protecting all this stuff of my master’s. I bet I know what they are like here. He’s asking to have everything pinched. Don’t you go looking at that handcart; I’ve got to take it back.’

I smiled at his presumption that I would snaffle a handcart for personal use. Mind you … ‘You can take it tomorrow when I send you over to Faustus with a report.’

‘You think I’ll forget it!’

I knew he would. Dromo regarded himself as the archetypal clever slave, but really he was much less clever.

He slouched off into the colonnade outside my room, where he started making himself a nest, laying out the best of the mats, then arranging his choice of crockery around it with the cudgel as a phallic centrepiece. I pottered indoors, doing what I knew he would consider suitable women’s work like positioning cushions. I soon grew tired of that.

I marched out and was about to begin investigating the apartment’s floor-plan when someone arrived with my supper. Dromo snatched it from the take-out waiter (who would be annoyed because he lost his tip). I was ushered back to my room. Dromo disapproved of where I had put the side-table, so he moved it, plonked the tray down, relocated my chair too, rattled me up a bowl and spoon, then produced a napkin grudgingly.

I lifted covers and found two kinds of cold bar food, one beaten-up bread roll, a wilting side salad and some spotty fruit.

‘I expect I have to make do with your leftovers,’ said Dromo, fixing me with a glare.

‘What if there aren’t any?’ I asked mildly.

‘Better be, or I’ll starve.’

Gods, this was hard work. I remembered why I did not own slaves myself.

I soon gave up on my unpalatable dinner, so took what I didn’t want to Dromo then set off to explore.

The apartment was unsymmetrical due to the street-plan outside. The front row of street shops meant there was a very long entrance corridor through them, after which came a decorative space that would have been an atrium, except that upper storey apartments overhead prevented it having an open roof. Where a collecting pool for rainwater might have been stood only a marble table: rectangular, heavy supports at each end, nothing on it. Unexciting. I would have kicked it out and got a rude statue.

Beyond the roofed hallway and overlooked from above was an open courtyard; looking across it should have given a fine view to impress important visitors. Not impressive, in this case. Too small and bare, with no flowers, and scruffy colonnades where the cheap pillars had chipped. Again, statues would have helped. If they existed, they had been taken away to Campania (low plinths remained, so this was likely).

The room allocated to me and other good guest bedrooms lay to right and left of the entrance suite, facing onto the courtyard. There were three or four, all handsome.

On the left were summer and winter dining rooms. Since they both faced the same way, the distinction was pointless. They had folding door-leaves that could be opened for air and a garden vista, had there been one — I made a mental note to ask ‘Diomedes, 47, gardener’ how exactly he spent his time, since he cannot have been tending topiary.

Over on the far side of the courtyard lay a service area, fairly well disguised. More prominently, the best feature of this apartment was a large, double height saloon. There I discovered the kind of domestic basilica that is supposed to give people of status somewhere to hold banquets or semi-public meetings — judicial hearings by minor magistrates or local government gatherings, when they are convened in a big man’s private house. Inside, it had two rows of columns dividing the space into a nave and side-aisles, although as this was a modest property not the elite home it wanted to be, the ceiling height, even in the domed centre, was too low. The only light came through high square windows, so the interior was as gloomy as tenements back in Fountain Court, where I lived. And I can tell you that Manlius Faustus and his uncle were important in their community, but I had been in their house, which was bigger than this, yet they did not bother to have a Corinthian oecus, as I knew such saloons are called.

I was acquiring a feel for the Aviola residence and its owners. Comfortably off − or in well-hidden debt. Outwardly ambitious, but trying harder than funds allowed. An absolutely typical Roman family, in fact.

I wondered what the man had done in life. Then I wondered how much dowry the new wife had brought in. I would have to ask.

Either side of the oecus stood the best bedrooms. One was completely empty. In homes where the husband and wife wanted their own rooms, they would snaffle one each of these, separated by their prized Corinthian saloon. With the newly-weds, decisions may not yet have been taken. Following their wedding, while desire was warm, the couple had shared the second bedroom, the one closest to the courtyard corner. The freedman Polycarpus had identified it when talking to Faustus and me. He had also mentioned that the scene had been tidied up, but since I knew what had taken place there, I braced myself before I went in.

It was a pleasant room. A good size. Frescos with flower garlands and mythological plaques, on a white ground. Black and white mosaic on the floor, with slightly lopsided panels depicting the four seasons. A bed with high ends and back, against the right hand wall. Someone had remade the bed, plumping its pillows, smoothing and tightly tucking in the corners of its undersheet and carefully arranging the colourful coverlet so it hung down evenly.

There were cupboards and clothes chests. A long footstool, probably repositioned neatly after the fracas, stood by the open side of the bed.

The bed was a noble size, not some scrimped single cot, but plenty of room for two people to sleep, or do whatever else they chose. They cannot have envisaged violently dying in it together.

I propped myself against the opposite wall, moving to one side to avoid squashing Perseus making a manly approach to a monster. It might be a painting, but the gritty Greek hero had a very big spear and he wasn’t going to get ideas about my resting posterior.

Although no sign remained of the crime that took place here, I tried to imagine it, to hear the sudden onslaught of noise and confusion, to feel panic giving way to outright terror, to envisage the dead couple as they had been discovered afterwards, lying on that bed.

Were they cowering together? Out-flung? Curled up foetally? I wondered if they had been awake, or if they woke when their room was invaded, or were they killed before they understood what was happening? With two to be despatched, it was likely that one did realise what happened first to the other. Was it dark? Were there lamps? Did the criminals bring lights of their own? From what I knew so far, neither Aviola nor his wife had time to make any escape attempt. Neither managed to scramble off the bed. Their killer or killers would have dealt with the nearest victim, then leaned across the warm corpse to kill the other. I guessed that Mucia Lucilia, the weaker victim, was second. She may have shrunk against the backboard in terror while she heard Valerius Aviola being choked. Then came her turn. She, poor woman, would have known what was coming.

When I married years ago, I deliberately chose a marriage bed that was not designed with one solid side like the back of a couch. Otherwise, one of you is always having to climb out over the other person. It is so much more convenient to give both partners free exit on their own side of the bed, much more convenient during marital tiffs. Besides, it saves a feisty woman having to spell out for her beloved that she is not allowing him the access side. Which will come as a big shock to him, and inevitably leads to one of those tiffs I mentioned.

Then, too, when someone thinks they have heard a noise at night, the wife who stays in bed does not want to be crushed by enormous feet while her ridiculous husband insists on going to investigate. Or again when he comes crashing back, after he has found nothing.

But what about when the suspicious noise turns out to be a real emergency?

What if you don’t hear intruders until they burst in, rush at you and tighten a rope around your throat?

Did the robbers bring rope? That would show premeditation. Spur of the moment strangulations tend to be carried out with belts or other items of clothing, anything to hand that can be snatched up in fury.

Another question for tomorrow.

While I was musing at the murder scene, it had grown really dark. No lights had been set out anywhere. I found my way back to my room, stepped over Dromo who was snoring on his mat, and fetched one of my lamps. Thank the gods I am a woman who can strike a spark with a flint for herself.

The entire apartment seemed deserted. Although the slave Myla was supposed to be here, I had not seen her and never once heard a baby crying. Perhaps that was common in a home like this. Slaves would be instructed to keep their infants out of sight and silent. Indeed in some houses, the slaves themselves would be expected to remain invisible.

I was working my way into back corridors in the service suite where I might come across the new mother. But it struck me that as I moved around with my single lamp, anyone up to no good in the unlit spaces would be able to track my progress. There was no indication I was being watched, but I felt uncomfortable. I gave up and went to bed.

Needless to say, the guest bed had high ends and a boarded side. Since I was sleeping alone, I could live with that. If anyone tried to break in, I would hear them coming. To make sure, I had fastened my belt around the handles of the double doors, and stood the side-table right against them.