The Ides of April

XL

"I don't understand your question!" Venusia was bluffing brazenly. "It is a shrine to Ceres, our goddess. My mistress is a member of the cult of Ceres; she will be the chief priestess one day, mark my words."

I retorted, "She will have to remarry first!.. This is a distraction, Venusia. I repeat, why are you here?"

"I was very upset over what happened to poor little Ino, so my mistress very kindly sent me here for a while to recuperate."

"Where nobody could get at you?"

"I don't understand."

"Oh, that again! All right." I had no patience with her stubborn resistance. "Tell me facts instead. What happened exactly when Ino was attacked?"

Now the woman showed she felt pressurised; sweat gleamed as she began to mop her forehead. Even so, she coolly described the walk in the Vicus Altus, Ino being jostled hard, and then stumbling-all according to accounts I had heard already. When I checked, she confirmed that, for no particular reason, she had been walking behind Marcia Balbilla, with Ino behind Laia Gratiana.

"Laia thought she glimpsed someone assaulting Ino."

"I don't know about that. My mistress is not obliged to tell me everything." I thought privately, but I bet you consider that she should! The tussle for control in Laia's house must be wearying. Only Laia's own forceful personality can have kept her independent.

"Did you see this man?"

"No."

"Did you notice anybody melting back in slyly among the other passers-by?"

"I told you, no."

"Did you recognise anybody in the street at the time?"

"No."

"Did Ino say anything about him?"

"No."

"How did she come to lose her stole?"

"What?"

"Her stole. She dropped it, Laia told me."

"I don't know. It must have been slippery material. She was wearing it pulled over her head like a good girl." Automatically, Venusia mimed the way a respectable woman grips her stole with one graceful hand at the throat, to keep it anchored on her hair as she is walking. "She must have lost her hold when she fell over."

"How tall was she? About your height? Taller? Smaller?"

"About my height."

"What kind of build?"

"Similar to me."

Venusia was, like many slaves, a couple of inches less than the Roman average, perhaps because her distant origins lay in a province where the norm was shorter. Though not skinny, she was slim-built, with thin arms and her clavicles showing bonily above her tunic neckline. The plebeian rich led healthy lives, though they treated their slaves frugally. Laia Gratiana carried even less weight, which I had always seen as representing her lack of enjoyment in life, because there were no dietary restrictions on the mistress of a household. She was taller than Venusia, as was her friend Marcia Balbilla. That was normal.

"How old was Ino?"

"She would have been thirty next year. I know because she was always fretting on about it. She wanted to buy her freedom then, and take up with her fellow."

"What fellow was that?"

"One of the slaves in the house. Their house."

"Yes, I heard about him. Marcia Balbilla did not know, but it was a pretty open secret otherwise. Any other follower she was interested in? Someone from outside?"

"I don't reckon so. She would not have met anyone."

"It would be difficult," I suggested, "for anyone with mistresses like yours and Ino's, to take up with a man who was not in your own household?"

"Oh, impossible." That was nonsense. Plenty of slaves and freed-women make outside connections. Some come and go every few minutes like bees from a hive. Venusia looked me straight in the eye, and made it almost pitying. Her own eyes were so dark brown they were almost black; they were fathomless, reminding me of gutter-water outside an industrial workshop. "Anyway, we are not all free-living creatures like prostitutes. Some of us behave morally."

She was aiming this at me. It was a cheap, nasty dig.

I felt my jaw set. "There's nothing wrong in seeking congenial company. And do you have a lover, Venusia?" She just shook her head disgustedly. "Have you ever had one?"

"I have not," she said in a bald tone, as if I had asked her if she ever dabbled in sorcery.

That was a crucial moment. Looking back, I could so easily have got this wrong. I might have assumed the brusque way she spoke meant Venusia shunned men because she was inexperienced and no men ever looked at her. Yet a sudden instinct told me it sounded more like the over-emphasis of someone blotting out a bad experience.

I cannot explain where that kind of impression comes from for an informer. Somehow a niggle starts. It is easy to overlook. Often it turns out to be right.

"Would you have liked to buy your freedom and set up independently?"

"No money."

"You must have had rewards. Don't you believe in savings?"

"Why bother? You only get swindled out of it."

"Who swindled you?"

"Nobody. I am not that stupid."

Why mention it then? I wondered.

I gave up shortly afterwards, exhausted by my long journey that day and the impossibility of breaking through the maid's stonewall resistance. You wouldn't think I was trying to identify a man who might be a threat to her. On principle, she had a dry-mouthed, derisive manner, like one who was deliberately being awkward and privately enjoying it. She despised me. It was not the first time I had been regarded as lightweight by a witness; still, it left me feeling unsatisfactory, my purpose unfulfilled.

I led Postumus away, via the deserted shrine. There we stood gazing up for a moment at the statue of Ceres, seated and representing the Loving Mother. This was not an untrustworthy figure who might abandon a baby girl in a rebellion or exploit a reluctant young boy as a high-wire acrobat. The Ceres of Aricia had the upward and outward gaze of a woman contented with her position and her busy role, nurturing her children whilst attending to many other tasks in the world. Her abundant hair was loosely swept back, caught at the neck in ringlets, tendrilled, fastened down with her light crown of wheat stems. She was handsome, wide-eyed, adorned with a twisted necklet and resetted earrings. She smiled, she was calm and capable. She reminded my brother and me of the woman who had adopted us, our own Loving Mother. That made us smile. Yes, even Postumus.

It was too late to return to Rome that night. We had to stay at the inn. As the boy and I walked back there, I muttered wearily, "Well, that was a long way to come to hear nothing useful!"

Postumus turned and looked up at me. He assessed my statement. He might be eleven, but he was creepily observant. "She was telling you lies."

Well, I knew that. I just had to decide what the lies were about.