A Pattern of Blood

Chapter Thirteen

We were still staring after Maximilian’s departing figure when the two servants returned with a pitcher of water and a rough board covered with a cloth, and we turned our attention to the decent removal of the page. As the slave pair lifted the lifeless body onto its makeshift bier, the rest of the group began to disperse uneasily.

Julia had been standing with her hands clasped to her breast, looking more shaken than ever. Suddenly she seemed to take a decision. She spoke, and her voice trembled with shock and anger.

‘Flavius is not left-handed, citizens, but I suspect his work in this. Though I cannot imagine how he did it. I posted a pair of slaves outside his door all night, in case he tried to approach me while I slept, and they did not see him leave his room. But somehow this must be his handiwork. He has used Rollo as his messenger to me in the past, but recently I have refused to accept his letters. No doubt he blamed Rollo. Poor little page. He meant no harm. And I have lost a good slave, too.’

She shook her head, and, accepting Mutuus’s arm, glided gracefully back in the direction of the atrium with her maids. Sollers, I noticed, was watching them grimly.

The two bearers of the makeshift litter adjusted their burden, and carried the page out to the rear enclosure to be arranged for burial. Junio and I found ourselves alone with Sollers.

‘A remarkable woman, medicus,’ I said. ‘Determined, too, posting guards at the door. But what do you make of that? Do you suspect Flavius?’

He dragged his attention away from the door through which Julia and Mutuus had disappeared, and turned courteously back to us. He shook his head. ‘Julia is distraught. Flavius frightens her with his insistence, and she sees his hand in everything. Besides. .’ He did not finish the sentence, but looked at me meaningfully.

Flavius was right-handed, he meant. Neither Julia nor Mutuus, I realised, had noticed the trick with the purse, and Sollers did not mention it now. The little demonstration had been intended for me alone, and I felt oddly flattered at having been singled out as an intellect worthy of the distinction.

‘So, citizen,’ he said, ‘what do you intend to do now?’

‘I should like to look at the kitchens, if I could do so without arousing suspicion. I would like to see exactly how the food is prepared.’

He raised his eyebrows at me; his striking face was wry. ‘You still think Rollo was poisoned? You may be right. It is impossible to tell after death, and we have no samples of food to test. But why, in that case, were there bruises on his body, and why should Rollo alone have been affected? One would have expected all the slaves to die.’

Perhaps I should have paid attention, then, to the significance of those marks. But I was following my own train of thought. I looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Because,’ I said, ‘I know something that you may not. Rollo had something which was not shared with the other slaves. He ate the contents of my supper tray.’ I didn’t mention the fish sauce to Sollers. He had served it to me himself the night before.

‘Then you think there was something rotten in your supper? One of those quails’ eggs or a piece of fungus?’

I chose my words carefully. ‘I did not say that, exactly.’ Behind me I felt Junio stiffen with alarm.

Sollers, too, was suddenly all sympathetic alertness. ‘Great Jupiter! You think the tray was deliberately poisoned?’

‘His Excellence was served from the same dishes. It seems suggestive, don’t you think, that he suffered no ill effects?’

Sollers whistled. ‘No wonder that you want to visit the kitchens. I will take you there, of course; I have to go there myself to see how preparations are progressing. The grave meats must be offered on the household altars before they are interred with Quintus, and Maximilian will not have thought of it.’ He led the way towards the kitchen door where a servant, with a basket of wood for the ovens, stood back to let us pass. ‘I hope they have prepared the foods as I instructed. Even in death, Quintus would want to keep his regimen.’

The kitchens were abustle with industry and steam. Pots bubbled on charcoal stoves, breads cooked on a rack, while a great pig was roasting over the open fire under the eye of the little lad turning the spit. A dozen servants ceased their stirring, basting, chopping and grinding and stared at us in surprise.

Sollers took a knife from a slave who was chopping herbs, and strode to the spit. ‘Seeing a pig like this always reminds me of Galen. I was privileged to see him do a dissection once.’

‘Galen?’ I was impressed. The great physician had tended Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself.

‘Oh, yes, it was fascinating. He cut the nerves of a live pig here,’ he pointed to the throat, ‘and proved to everyone that the voice is controlled by the brain, not the heart. I was lucky to have witnessed it. My father did not approve of live dissections, and Galen has given up public demonstrations since.’ He plunged the blade into the roasting beast and tasted the juices. ‘No problem here,’ he said, returning the knife to the startled slave, who continued chopping as though his life depended on it.

The gesture was not lost on me. Sollers was surreptitiously testing the food as we passed it. It was a brave gesture, if there was a poisoner abroad. He saw that I had seen, and caught my eye, signalling me not to comment. I pushed aside a dog at my feet who was scavenging scraps from the kitchen floor. ‘Your father was a doctor, too?’ I said.

Sollers made a disdainful face. ‘He called himself a doctor. He even treated patients, but he had no training at all.’ He sampled the liquid from a sauce that was bubbling on the coals and motioned to the slave who was stirring it to offer some to me.

I stepped back, distrusting it.

Sollers noted my action with amusement. ‘You still fear we have a poisoner in our midst?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I still ask myself about those bruises on the body. But in any case I have no fear of these dishes. Even if you are right, our poisoner is not indiscriminate. Only your tray was tampered with. Last night your patron ate the same food, without ill effect. These dishes are for the funeral feast. Poison in them would dispose of half Corinium.’

He was right, of course, and I felt duly chastened. I accepted a sip of the sauce — which was delicious — and said, to cover my chagrin, ‘Your father taught himself, you say?’

Sollers smiled. ‘What little he knew. He believed in carriage rides to rock the system and cabbage water for everything. He had strict ideas about which amulets and incantations it was proper to use at different phases of the moon, but he refused to accept more modern methods.’

I tried to look intelligent. ‘I know little about doctors. My experience of them is limited to having my slave brand removed from my back with hot irons. The operation did not incline me to further my acquaintance.’

‘Ah, cautery! That is painful.’ Sollers moved over to the table, where a female slave was skinning a half-cooked joint of beef. He picked up a piece of the bleeding meat and ate it. ‘But at least it does not draw blood. Do you know that blood flows in the arteries, as well as in the veins? Galen proved it, but my father wouldn’t accept that either.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I said, looking at the piece of meat with unease. This conversation was beginning to make me queasy, and I refused to taste anything further, but Sollers strode on, sampling a stew here and a sweet cake there, talking all the while.

‘Rats were different, my father said. Galen’s experiments might prove that they had blood in their arteries, but men have divine air in theirs. You cannot argue with a man like that. I left him and apprenticed myself to a Roman with more scientific views, and when he joined the army, I did too. A great surgeon. He taught me all he knew. How mandrake root will dull the pain, and pitch and turpentine will seal a wound.’ He used the spoon to taste one of the snails in tamarind sauce which a slave was simmering. ‘A little more pepper,’ he said to the cook, and then to me, ‘He had great skill with arrow wounds. I have seen him push back a man’s intestines after a sword thrust; he lubricated the loops in olive oil and sewed the stomach up again. The soldier lived for days. An impressive demonstration.’

I glanced at the amphorae of oil stacked under the cooking bench and blanched, but Sollers was oblivious. He poked at a pan of cranes, stewing with their necks out of the water so that the heads could later be pulled off whole. ‘I came to Britain to serve at the army hospital. When I had served out my commission I decided to stay here rather than go back to seek a civic appointment in Rome. I could turn my hand to most things by then, and I hoped to. . well, to make a living here in a wealthy household. I hoped that in working for Ulpius, my reputation would spread. But now I shall have to start again.’ His eye lighted on a platter spread with a small selection of meats and breads. ‘Ah! Here are the grave meats I was looking for. I will go and offer them at once. And I must see to the provision of hobnails — Quintus will be buried in his finest shoes, but his spirit will need stout boots for the journey.’ He led the way back into the courtyard, where Junio was waiting for me.

‘Master!’ the boy cried, as soon as I appeared. ‘You did not. .?’

‘Taste the food? Your concern is touching. But the medicus is right. If there was poison last night, it was on my plate alone.’

‘You think that someone tried to murder you?’ Sollers sounded horrified. Then he looked at me doubtfully. ‘With deference, citizen — I know your skills — but you are a pavement-maker. You did not even know Quintus. Why should someone want to murder you?’

‘I asked myself the same question, believe me. Urgently too, until an answer occurred to me.’

Junio looked at me anxiously, and Sollers stood stock-still to ask, hoarsely, ‘And that was?’

‘According to what Rollo himself told me last night, that tray was not intended for me at all. Until Maximilian countermanded the order, Rollo was taking supper to Marcus.’

It was as well that Marcus was not listening. I distinctly heard Junio mutter, ‘Thank Jupiter for that!’