A Pattern of Blood

Chapter Eleven

Julia was there, overseeing the selection of dark green herbs and foliage which a maidservant was arranging in a large bronze vase. Another slave girl stood by with a pile of other branches to choose from.

Julia looked up when she saw us, but her greeting was addressed to me alone. ‘Good morning, citizen.’ She was arrayed this morning with stunning simplicity in a long-sleeved white tunic, unadorned except for a simple girdle under her breasts and a funeral wreath upon her brow. She looked shaken and pale, but she had defied popular convention, and there had been no ritual clawing of her face or tearing at her hair. Instead she was the picture of dignified grief.

I looked at her with approval. ‘Greetings, lady.’

She turned to me and gave me one of those smiles of hers. I could see why Marcus preened in her presence: that smile would make any man feel like Hercules. She looked me confidently in the eyes. ‘Does this look well enough, do you think? I am no expert on such things, but you have an artist’s eye.’

It was blatant flattery. A Roman woman, especially a beautiful one, does not usually initiate idle conversation with a comparative stranger, even in her own house, unless she is setting out to charm. And she could not really want my opinion. I am hardly an expert on floral art.

It was hard to know how to reply. Roman funerary green is too sombre for my taste, especially when displayed in a heavy vase in a huge bronze bowl on a black shale table. And I was anxious to look for Rollo. But Julia was irresistible.

‘It has a pleasing symmetry,’ I said, and was rewarded with a look of as much admiration as if I had personally carved the finest statue in Corinium.

The slave girls began to clear away the excess leaves and rub down the table top with juniper oil to give it a sheen and prevent the shale from splitting.

‘Now, citizen,’ Julia said, looking me fully in the face again with those disturbing eyes, ‘you are my guest in these doleful hours. What can I do to serve you?’

‘Lady, forgive me for disturbing you, but there is a problem with which I should like your help. You know the page, Rollo?’

She furrowed her lovely brow. ‘Rollo? My husband’s pet page? The little fellow in the embroidered tunic? I know him, of course.’

She had made a pretence of thinking hard, but the readiness of her answer surprised me. In many a household of this size a woman would not be acquainted with all her slaves by name, especially not the handsome little page. Rollo had told me that normally he served Quintus exclusively, probably in ways of which Julia was modestly unaware. Yet Julia identified him with confidence. ‘Have you seen him this morning, lady?’

She looked surprised, and I could see her examining the question. She favoured me with another of her glowing smiles. ‘I could not say for certain. I have not noticed him.’

I was oddly disappointed in that reply, although it is hard to see how I could have expected anything different. To Julia, of course, the presence of a slave was no more remarkable than the presence of any other piece of household equipment — a footstool, say, or a cushion. In fact, I thought with an inward smile, I was guilty of something of the sort myself. I was classifying this present meeting as a ‘private conversation’, though I had Junio with me and she was attended by a pair of her maids.

I looked at the girls, waiting dispiritedly in the corner with the vase. Junio was right; they were remarkably plain. Once again, I had that feeling of disquiet. In a household of this kind, where money could buy the prettiest girls in the whole province, there was something very deliberate in this choice, like placing a fine statue against an ugly arch. Julia, I thought, had no need of such a frame — she would have looked handsome between the prettiest slaves in the Empire.

She was giving me one of those smiles again. ‘You wish to find Rollo?’ She signalled to one of the girls. ‘Fetch me the chief slave. He will know where the boy is. Unless, citizen, one of my handmaidens can serve you. .?’

Perhaps she did guess at Rollo’s functions. I shook my head, and the handmaiden vanished.

‘I am sorry, pavement-maker, that you have had such a welcome to our house. Quintus, I know, was so anxious for that mosaic floor in the hot room.’ She fluttered her lovely eyes at me. Her lids were touched with saffron and her brows and eyelashes tinted black with some dark powder. ‘I hope that you will still consent to design it for us, if Quintus leaves money for the caldarium in his will.’

‘I should be highly honoured,’ I said, keeping my voice controlled. Inwardly I was dancing votive flings. What fool would refuse such a prestigious commission, offered by such a beautiful woman? Especially when it gives him an opportunity to look for his wife. ‘Honoured,’ I said again.

‘We shall know if there is money when the will is read this afternoon,’ Julia said. ‘I imagine he will have endowed the baths. And some memorial games. Quintus was very fond of chariot racing and watching the gladiators. He would like to leave something spectacular for the town to remember him by.’

I nodded. The greatest heroes of a civitas, at least to its citizens, are those who have provided the biggest shows and the most lavish public banquets to be celebrated on their account. Better men, who bequeathed less roasted horsemeat and fewer fights, were often swiftly forgotten.

‘You do not think that Ulpius had altered his will in any way?’ I found myself asking. When Julia smiled at you like that, you felt that you could ask her anything. ‘I heard he had recently threatened to disinherit his son.’

She laughed in surprise, tipping back her lovely head. ‘Did he? He was always threatening to reduce Maximilian’s allowance, but I hadn’t heard that he meant to disinherit him altogether. He can’t have done it. It would mean changing the will, and I would have heard of it, I’m sure.’ She stopped and looked at me with sudden seriousness. ‘When did you learn of this? My husband did not say this before witnesses, surely?’

She was right to be concerned. If he had spoken in front of seven citizens (slaves and other non-citizens did not count, naturally) the will could be questioned and revoked. If that happened, it would go to the courts, and most of the estate was likely to end up in the imperial coffers, whoever won the case.

‘Maximilian told me so himself,’ I said. ‘His father was threatening him with it yesterday. But Sollers seemed to know too. I thought it was general knowledge in the household.’

She smiled again. ‘It was probably just a threat. My husband would have consulted me. Though he might have discussed it with Sollers. He consulted him on everything. And with reason, too. You know that Sollers saved my husband’s sight?’

‘He did?’ No wonder Quintus admired Sollers. Eye disease is a constant problem throughout the whole of Britannica, and its effects can be dreadful. When the poor go blind, there is nothing for them but begging, and even for the rich it usually means the loss of high office. It is too easy to defraud a man who cannot see. I murmured something sympathetic.

Julia was warming to her story. ‘Poor Quintus. He was terrified. It was beginning to be difficult. He could not see to read official scrolls clearly.’

I nodded. One reason, obviously, why Quintus set such a store on his secretary.

‘He tried to keep it secret at first, but in the end he consulted every oculist in Corinium. They tried everything. Charms and salves and amulets and ointments — everything from zinc and copper to frankincense, gentian and myrrh, but it did no good. And of course, very quickly the whole town knew.’

I nodded. Corinium was famous for its oculists. I had seen several of them when I came before, working from their little booths in the market place, sitting on their consulting stools behind sacking curtains, each with his little blocks of desiccated medicine, collyria, all proudly marked with his distinctive stamp, waiting to be cut up when a patient came and dissolved in water or egg white to make the appropriate salve. Some of these men were highly thought of, but even they could hardly resist boasting of their eminent customer. No wonder gossip spread.

‘And then?’

She sighed. ‘And then he met Sollers. He had been an army surgeon, of course, but he had served in the field, and could turn his hand to anything — oculist, physician, dental surgeon too. He examined Quintus, and said there was a film growing on both his eyes. He could operate, he said. It would be dangerous, but it had to be done quickly. Quintus agreed. Sollers came to the house and took the film off the next day. Tied Quintus to the chair and scraped the film off with a bronze needle, just like that. One eye with each hand.’

I swallowed. I had heard of operations like this — the patient’s hands were strapped together and his body tied to the chair while one slave held his head steady, and another stood by with oil lamps to give a good light. Good surgeons could operate with either hand to ensure the angle was correct. The thought of undergoing such an experience, with my eyes open, made my own flesh crawl.

She nodded. ‘A dreadful operation. My husband was no coward, but I heard him moaning with fright. Sollers simply bandaged one eye while he dealt with the other, and operated more quickly than it takes to tell. It was wonderful. Sollers bathed the eyes in egg albumen and bound them with wool for a day or two, but the sight was restored. Quintus invited him to join our household permanently.’

‘And he accepted?’

‘He did, although of course after that everyone wanted him. He could have commanded any sum he wished. But he chose to stay with us, to advise us on our health and to pursue his studies. He is so loyal he has even made a will, naming myself and Quintus as his legatees. Quintus gave him his own apartments, and arranged for him to have books and writing materials. He brought several medical scrolls of his own with him, and Quintus had a whole new manuscript copied out for him — a huge treatise on herbs and treatments.’

‘Who copied it?’ I asked, although I had guessed the answer.

‘Why, Mutuus, the noxal clerk. It took him ninety days.’

Behind me I heard Junio suppress a snigger. I chose my words carefully. ‘Did you know the secretary well?’

She coloured. A faint flush of pink swept up her face and suffused her cheeks, under the careful perfection of her skin. She lowered her eyes a moment, and then raised them again to meet mine, great limpid pools of brown which would have melted a stone gorgon. I have never cared for the Roman fashion of white-lead-and-lupin face powder and lamp-blacked eyes, but on Julia it looked ravishing.

‘I will be frank, pavement-maker,’ she said softly. ‘I know Mutuus perhaps a little better than I should. The truth is, citizen, I think the boy has become fond of me. I did not notice at first, only that I met him so often in the courtyard when his duties were finished, and that he always found the means to speak to me, to ask if I wished to have a letter written or a message sent. I thought him attentive, though of course, I had no need of his services. My father was far-sighted. He had me taught to read and write myself, although I was a girl.’

‘And what did your husband think?’

‘Of Mutuus? It was he who pointed out that the boy was enamoured of me. I think he was amused, as long as he perceived no threat. Quintus was savagely jealous in some ways, but he was always glad to think that other men admired me — he liked the world to envy what he had.’

That fitted, certainly, with what I had seen of the man. The pairs of slaves, the elaborate gardens, the glittering reception room — even the insistence on removing Mutuus from Lupus and installing him as a bondsman. Quintus enjoyed flaunting what was his. It might well have afforded him satisfaction to send the secretary on errands to Julia, knowing the helpless passion he was arousing.

‘And you?’ I said. ‘What did you think of this?’

The colour in her cheeks deepened. ‘At first I did not notice, as I say. And then — I suppose I was flattered. It is always flattering to enjoy a man’s attentions. And Mutuus is a good-looking boy.’

I frowned. This was not altogether what I had hoped to hear. Mutuus was a pleasant enough lad — tall, broad-shouldered, handsome in a supercilious way — but he was angular, moving with the graceless awkwardness of youth. I should have expected Julia to prefer someone more mature.

‘And later?’ I asked, more sharply than I intended.

‘I did, I suppose, begin to enjoy his attentions. I started to send him on errands, asked him to copy verses for me and read them to me while I sat in the colonnade. I gave him wax notebooks for the purpose. Quintus did not object — I did not thrust it under his attention — and Mutuus liked to do it. When Quintus had finished with him, naturally. And recently, while my husband has been ill, it has been a comfort to me.’

I’ll wager it has, I thought. Perhaps it was the mention of the wax tablets which reminded me of Rollo and the mission I was engaged upon, but suddenly I had a strong desire to terminate the conversation. But first I had to ask her the question that had disturbed me all the previous day.

‘And was it Mutuus you went to see yesterday, lady, when you went to crave an audience with your husband for Marcus and I?’

She gave a little gasp and clapped a hand to her lovely face.

I was inexorable. ‘For certainly you didn’t go to Ulpius. Maximilian was with his father at the time, and he came to us looking for you. So, unless you killed your husband, lady, you did not go to his room.’

She paled and bit her lower lip till the colour came. I wondered if she knew the effect of that action on a susceptible male. Then she smiled uncertainly.

‘You are perceptive, pavement-maker. Yes, I did leave you to go to my husband. I thought Sollers was still with him, but when I approached the door I heard voices raised. He was arguing with Maximilian. I did not dare disturb him — my husband could be furious when roused. I went into the courtyard to wait.’

‘I am sorry to press you, lady, in your grief,’ I said. ‘But you were not there later. The slaves went to look for you, and could not find you.’

Again she coloured faintly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you are right again. I went to my quarters, briefly, to repair my looks. He likes — he liked — to see me with a touch of Belgian rouge on my lips. My maids could confirm it, if you doubt me. And then I came into the courtyard and saw Sollers. Maximilian was still with his father, and. . well, the fact is, citizen, we went to my husband’s rooms.’

For a moment I was aghast. It must have been evident from my face, because Julia laughed. ‘There was nothing improper, citizen. Sollers has been treating me for. . for a female condition. But I did not wish my husband to know that, and it is hard to find a private time and place for treatment. One of the slaves almost saw us last time, as it was.’

Had seen them, in fact, I thought. Junio had known that she was consulting Sollers secretly. ‘And this seemed to be an opportunity?’

‘It seemed that Quintus would be busy for some time. I took the herbs and lay down upon the couch in my husband’s apartment. The inner doors were shut and the slaves, of course, would not look for me there — indeed, that was the reason I went there. I was afraid my husband would hear of it, and it is hard to keep a secret among slaves. Though that scarcely matters now. But that is where I was. Ask Sollers — he was with me all the time.’

And what kind of secret treatment, I wondered, had the handsome doctor contrived for the beautiful wife? And what was the ‘female condition’? Barrenness was the most likely cause, despite the household gossip. Infertility in a woman is sufficient grounds for divorce. But that was not something I could decently ask outright. Julia spoke of these things with the frankness of all Romans everywhere, but I came from a different tradition.

‘With your permission, lady. .’ I began, awkwardly, but I was interrupted by the plain maidservant who came scurrying in with the chief slave at her heels.

‘Oh, madam,’ she cried, and her eyes were full of tears. ‘Come quickly. And the pavement-maker too. We have found Rollo.’