A Pattern of Blood

Chapter Fifteen

We went out through the back gate to avoid the press of visitors at the front. Even so, as soon as we were outside the walls of the enclosure, we were swept up in the activity and bustle of the town. A press of urchins surrounded us at once, offering to sell me everything from knick-knacks and copper pans to love potions and amulets, or simply volunteering to lead us to the best wineshops and dancing girls in town. One disreputable-looking fellow even approached us with a leer to ask if Maximilian had sent us to him. If this was the sort of company he kept, I thought, it was no wonder Quintus disapproved of his son.

We brushed them all aside and made our way down the side streets towards the centre of the town.

Corinium, it seemed, was in a constant state of rebuilding. Everywhere the old thatched timber shops and apartments were being pulled down, and finer ones were going up in their place, mostly built of limestone and roofed with tiles. The narrow streets were made still narrower by creaking carts laden with laths and plaster, or by the presence of lashed wooden ladders, where builders scuttled up and down with baskets of roof tiles or buckets of lime and mortar, while we picked our way along in constant apprehension of their rickety wooden pulleys swinging stone blocks overhead.

Amid this confusion, other stalls were doing a brisk trade, and all the way to the central square we were constantly hailed by shopkeepers hoping to entice us to buy their wares. Bone dealers vaunted their combs and pins, drapers held out lengths of woollen cloth and a draggled woman begged us to examine her ‘best spindles, made from antler horn — cheapest in the Empire’. A shoemaker, straddling his bench, paused in his hammering of hobnails to wave a hopeful hand at shelves of ready-made boots and sandals, and when I declined to purchase, offered to measure me for a new pair on the spot.

I might indeed have been tempted by a new hammer from the blacksmith’s, but what I had said to the medicus was true. I was not carrying a lot of money. Not, truth to tell, that I had a great deal of money to carry, at least until I had been paid for one or two commissions in Glevum. So it was no use gazing at buckled belts on the leather stall, or the fine bowls and beakers of the glass and pottery vendors. I limited myself to the necessary purchases with a sigh.

We did not go into the forum proper: not being market day, it would be given over to politicians, peddlers and moneylenders, so we confined our attentions to the arcaded shops on the outside of the square. I sent Junio with a jug to buy a measure of sour wine, while I stopped at a baker’s shop and bought a cheap loaf of day-old barley bread. Poor Rollo would hardly need a fresh one, served hot on the long-handled iron bread slice straight from the great domed oven. I turned my face against the temptations of the other food stalls, although Junio, who had by then returned, was looking longingly at the honey cakes, and even the wares of the hot pie sellers smelled appetising now.

‘What now, master?’ Junio asked, tearing himself away from the sugared cakes reluctantly.

‘I want to know exactly what Maximilian did yesterday. It occurs to me that he arrived back at the house with clean garments after he had attended the baths.’

Junio shot me a look. ‘Direct from the fuller’s, you think?’

‘It seems unlikely, since he came dressed in mourning colours. More likely he sent a slave to fetch some from his apartment, or even to buy him new ones. But I would be interested, all the same, to see the toga Maximilian took off. I noticed it was stained when I saw him — though I had no reason, then, to ask what the stains might be.’

Junio whistled. ‘I see! Lupus may not be the only one with tell-tale marks on his sleeves. Then we should hurry, before the clothes are cleaned so much that it is impossible to tell.’

I nodded my approval and we hurried on, past the forum and the basilica (where the repairs which Lupus had resented so bitterly were still in progress), through the bleating, lowing, squealing chaos of the meat market and the accompanying fruit and vegetable carts, and so down to the fuller’s shop, next door to the baths.

I wanted to visit the baths, too, as part of my enquiries, but it was still too early: at this hour only women were admitted. That visit would have to wait until we had been to the laundry shop. I thrust back the entrance curtain and strode in.

The owner was out when we arrived, and the work floor was manned by three scrawny, underfed individuals in tattered tunics and bare feet, trampling garments in the cleaning tanks.

I went over to them and they stopped at my approach. Supporting one’s weight on a pair of stout handles while one treads wet clothes into fuller’s clay for hours is a backbreaking business, and they were obviously glad of a moment to rest their weary arms and legs. They looked at me curiously, their pale faces damp with sweat and their overdeveloped thighs glistening with moisture.

‘You had a customer, yesterday,’ I began. ‘From the house of Quintus Ulpius?’

They looked at each other nervously. I took out a purse and began fingering a five-as coin in an ostentatious manner.

One of the treaders gave me a grim, knowing smile. ‘Two customers,’ he began, but he was interrupted by the appearance of a languid youth in an elegant coloured robe. The owner’s son, clearly.

‘Can I assist you, citizen?’

Mentally I consigned him to Pluto. Any information was likely to cost me a great deal more than a few asses now. Unless I could somehow persuade him of my importance.

I put on my best formal manner. ‘I am a guest in the house of Quintus Ulpius the decurion,’ I said. ‘I believe there were some clothes left here for cleaning yesterday.’ He was looking at me suspiciously, so I invented an excuse for my visit. ‘I suppose they are not ready for collection yet?’

It seemed to work. The youth flushed with consternation. ‘I regret, citizen, they are far from ready. It takes days, you know, to get these things done properly. The young man’s toga is still bleaching on the frames, and the other garments have not yet been laundered at all.’

‘How far have they progressed?’ I said, imitating Marcus’s peremptory manner as best I could. ‘Where are they?’

‘Why, here, citizen, I will lead the way,’ he said, his manner all abject apology. He could not, however, quite disguise his alarm and impatience. He turned to the treaders. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? The return of Hadrian? Get on with your work.’

I felt a twinge of regret. My enquiry was unreasonable — no one could fuller garments in a day — but the poor fellows would feel the lash of his tongue when I had gone, if not a lashing of a more tangible kind. However, I followed him into the adjoining cell where the wicker bleaching frames stood. A number of garments were already set out to whiten in the lime fumes.

Maximilian’s toga was indeed among them — instantly recognisable among the spotless white of its neighbours. However, the treatment was already having its effect on the stained cloth. There were the traces of one or two dark marks visible upon it, but nothing more.

‘You have almost removed the stains?’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘What were they this time? Wine again, I imagine?’

The youth was already ahead of me. ‘I wish I could tell you, citizen, but when the slave brought it in we paid no particular attention. Maximilian is always sending wine-stained togas to be cleaned. We simply washed and bleached it as usual. We did not know then that the decurion was dead. I was shocked when I heard about the stabbing — the household has sent its linen here for years.’ He looked at me with ghoulish relish. ‘You think the stains might have been blood, citizen?’

‘It is possible,’ I said. ‘Maximilian went in to see his father’s body.’

‘Ah.’ Once the suggestion of scandal was removed, the youth’s interest was deader than Quintus. ‘If we had noticed that, we would have soaked it in salt to remove the stain. As we are doing with the lady’s gown.’

I could not have been more surprised if Jupiter himself had suddenly appeared in a clap of thunder.

‘The lady’s gown?’ That was a false move. If I was supposed to be here officially, I should have known what laundry had been sent.

The youth, however, misinterpreted. ‘Do not concern yourself, citizen. Everything is accounted for. There were two garments sent here, naturally: the amethyst-coloured stola and a lilac shift. What I meant to say was that only the stola had blood on it.’

My mind was still reeling from the implications of this — there had been no stains on that stola when Julia greeted us yesterday — and I could think of nothing to say. I must have looked so startled that I was in danger of making the youth suspicious of my authority, but Junio came to my rescue. ‘You are soaking it, you say? I thought you said that you had not yet begun to launder the lady’s garments?’

I sent up mental thanks to my private gods. Junio had avoided the danger of non-cooperation neatly by diverting the fellow’s attention to an inconsistency in his own account of things. I caught my servant’s eye and gave him an approving wink.

The fuller’s son was tripping over his tunic hems in his desire to propitiate. ‘Indeed, citizen,’ he said, addressing himself to me alone, ‘I did not make myself clear. We have only just begun to soak it, so it has not been put into the tubs. I am sorry, citizen, perhaps we should have made a start on it before, but we were busy and these were not the. .’ he hesitated, ‘the kind of stains we sometimes see on female dress, and which we always deal with at once. There were only small splashes of blood, on the front of the garment, and only on the stola, as I say. There was nothing on the under-tunic at all.’

It is a long time since I was a married man, and even then my Gwellia was discreet. It took me some moments to perceive what he meant. When I did understand, I felt myself colour with confusion. Junio, who must have received a biological education from somewhere, had turned the colour of carmine, but the youth himself looked comparatively unembarrassed. Presumably such considerations are commonplace if one works in a fuller’s shop.

‘Come and see for yourself, citizen.’ He led the way back into the main workshop. One of the workers, I noticed, was now taking garments from the rinsing tubs and hanging them on wooden slats to dry, while the other two struggled with the screws on the heavy flattening press, to drive out creases from the previously dried items from the rack. The exhortation to work faster had obviously been taken to heart.

The youth stopped before a pottery basin containing a thick salty solution. The top part of a garment was half submerged in it. ‘Here is the over-gown I spoke of,’ he said, lifting it out, dripping, with a pair of wooden tongs.

I recognised it, without surprise, as the stola which Julia had been wearing the day before. It had been rubbed with salt to remove the stains, but the tell-tale splash marks were still evident. One, indeed, on the underside of the wide sleeve had so far escaped the fuller’s attentions. There was no doubt about it: it was blood.

I caught Junio’s eye, and he gave me a significant look. I knew what he was thinking. Lupus had been detained in the attics for less. And there had been no stains on this stola when Julia met us yesterday.

The young man saw the stain that I was looking at and immediately began to apologise again. That mark would be dealt with presently, he protested; with such fine cloth it was better to soak a little at a time. I noticed the poisonous look which he aimed at his assistants, however. Free-men labourers or slaves, I wondered? The former, probably: they wore no brands or fetters, and no slave tags round their necks. Whatever they were, they must have hated me. I was heartily glad I was not one of them.

‘And the lilac shift?’ I demanded, with a return to my peremptory manner.

The youth nodded. ‘That, citizen, was hardly dirty; it cannot have been worn more than a dozen times. I wonder the lady thought to have it laundered at all, and did not merely have her maids sponge it with vinegar and milk and lay it on the grass. But I suppose she felt the need to clean it thoroughly, since I presume she was wearing it when she first saw her husband dead. I have known such things happen before, as if we could wash away memories.’ He favoured me with an understanding smile.

I nodded grimly. The youth, in fact, spoke more truly than he knew. If that was Quintus’s blood on her bodice, and I believed it was, Julia would have wanted the shift sent to the fuller’s at all costs. For when, exactly, had she managed to get herself spattered so?

I might have pressed him further, but our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a fat, florid man in a spotless tunic and a bad temper. It was the owner, clearly, and judging by the way he was scowling suspiciously at us, he was more likely to demand answers than offer them.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there is nothing to be gained by staying here, we have other business in the town. I will bid you good day.’

‘But citizen,’ the youth said plaintively. ‘The household account! Quintus Ulpius has not paid us since the Ides, and his son has had several garments cleaned since then.’ He gestured to a space on the wall where various accounts had been roughly scratched in chalk. Maximilian, I noted, had run up a sizeable sum in Quintus’s name.

And now I was expected to pay it, and I had no money in my purse. I thought quickly, and found a solution. ‘The testament will be read this afternoon in the forum. Present yourself among his debtors then.’

The young man nodded, and even the older man’s scowl lifted. ‘Ah yes, of course! And even if we get no payment then, no doubt Maximilian will be able to meet his own bills in future. Thank you for having the courtesy to call and tell us, citizen.’ The fuller looked at my toga thoughtfully. ‘And if you should ever require our services yourself, you will find our rates as cheap as anyone’s. We could bring that toga up nicely, with a little care.’

I went out of the shop feeling peculiarly humbled.