A Pattern of Blood

Chapter Twenty

For a moment there was silence, as I digested this news, then Marcus turned to me with a triumphant grin. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘I knew I was right to arrest him. I tell you, I can smell the scent of fear.’ He was looking more cheerful than I had seen him since our arrival in Corinium, and I realised how much the last few days had worried him. For all his apparent confidence in arresting Lupus, he had obviously entertained lingering fears that this might still be a political murder. Now, however, the testimony of Mutuus seemed to have removed his doubts. I was glad I had not mentioned the possibility of deliberate poison on his supper tray. ‘I have sent for the town guard. They will be here shortly to take him away. Though this will be a matter for the governor’s court, of course. I may even hear the case myself.’

I was unwilling to puncture his bubble of confidence, but there were still matters unresolved in my mind. ‘And the wax tablet?’ I enquired. ‘You think now that the message was unrelated to the murder?’

Marcus frowned at me disapprovingly, but Mutuus looked up sharply. ‘Wax tablet?’ he said, rather as I had hoped. As a secretary, he might be expected to take an interest in the household’s writing materials.

Junio was back at his station by the door and I motioned him forward. ‘Show him, Junio,’ I said, and for the second time that day my servant produced Flavius’s carved ivory tablet holder from his pouch. Mutuus looked at it.

I was expecting a reaction, but Mutuus’s face showed nothing but a kind of blank bafflement.

‘Well?’ I demanded, after a moment. ‘Have you seen this writing block before?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course I have. It belongs to Julia Honoria.’

Whatever answer I had been expecting, it certainly was not that. For the second time in as many minutes, Mutuus’s words produced a startled pause.

It was Marcus who broke it. ‘To Julia? That is impossible. You must be mistaken. Libertus collected this personally from Flavius this morning.’ He took the writing frame from Junio and tapped it with his finger. ‘Julia has not spoken to her former husband alone since he came to the house — indeed she has avoided doing so. You wish us to believe that she has somehow entertained private messages from him?’

Mutuus had turned a sullen red, but he remained adamant. ‘As to that, Excellence, I cannot answer. I only tell you what I know. That writing tablet came from Flavius, certainly, but it was addressed to Julia. And it did not arrive today. It arrived many days ago. I remember it clearly, because it was the morning of the very day that Quintus Ulpius was set on in the street.’

‘Did Quintus know that his wife received gifts from Flavius?’ Marcus obviously felt that, if Julia had been his wife, such practices would not have been allowed to continue for long.

Mutuus shook his head. ‘Julia did not welcome it herself. I have known her many times repudiate his gifts. On this occasion, too, I think, if Julia had known what the packet contained she would not have accepted it. But there was no greeting on the packet, and none from the slave, who merely delivered the parcel and disappeared.’

‘Wait a moment,’ Marcus said, ‘what slave? What packet? And how, if there was no greeting, could you tell who the gift was from? Tell us the story from the beginning. Briefly, if you can.’

It was beyond Mutuus, of course, to tell any story briefly. But, laced about with circumlocutions and couched in the most pedantic terms, this was the gist of his account.

It was the morning before the chariot races. Quintus, in the prime of health, had dealt with the most pressing business, and was now lying in his room with a jug of wine, while Rollo massaged his feet for him. It was a fine day, and Mutuus, since he was not needed by his master, was sitting in one of the arbours in the front garden with Julia.

Marcus interrupted him sharply. ‘Doing what?’

The secretary turned scarlet to his ears. ‘I was reciting cadences to her. She likes to hear the old poets, and I have many verses by heart.’

‘Ovid, I suppose?’ Marcus asked, mockingly — then looked as if he wished he hadn’t asked. Reading amorous poems to one’s lady was a favourite pastime in some Roman circles. If this youth had been reciting erotic verses to Julia under the trees, Marcus might not wish to hear of it.

Mutuus was redder than Samian ware, but he did not deny the charge. ‘Only the Heroides,’ he answered.

Marcus looked furious. Even Ovid’s heroic love letters are not the kind of ditties one would expect a bondsman to be reciting to his master’s wife. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘so you were “reciting cadences”. What happened then?’

They were interrupted, it seemed, by a message from the gatekeeper. An anonymous package had arrived at the gate for Julia, wrapped in fine silk. Julia had no suspicions. In fact, she was delighted. Quintus sometimes sent her trinkets as a surprise, and she had been dropping hints about some new ivory combs for her hair. Mutuus was sent to fetch the parcel.

‘When she unwrapped it,’ the secretary said, ‘it was a writing block. A pretty thing. Julia still thought it was a present from Quintus. But when she opened it, there was a message inscribed inside the tablet, on the wax itself. “To Julia, a love token to bring you back to me.” I saw the writing myself.

‘Julia was furious. I have never seen her so upset. She scratched out the message with her nails, and flung the tablet on the floor. That put an end to the little recital in the arbour. She’d had enough of poetry, she said, and she made me accompany her inside while she craved an immediate audience with her husband.’

‘And did he grant it?’ I asked, remembering that he had retired to his quarters with Rollo and that the slave probably had more intimate duties than merely playing the cythera.

Mutuus looked surprised. ‘Of course. Quintus was devoted to his lady. She might have interrupted him at the bathhouse itself if she chose.’

‘And the writing tablet? You left it in the arbour. What happened to it then?’

He shrugged. ‘I cannot tell you that, citizen. Until you showed it to me just now, I had never seen it again.’

‘Oh, come!’ Marcus said sharply. ‘The tablet is a pretty thing, the frame is carved ivory and cunningly made. It would have a value anywhere. You don’t expect me to believe that you left it in the garden where it fell?’

Mutuus was doing his imitation of Samian ware again. ‘I did not say that, Excellence. It is true that I tried to recover it. When Julia went in to speak to Quintus, I was no longer required — Quintus always dismissed his slaves when Julia sought private audience with him — so I came back to the arbour, hoping to find the writing tablet. I spent a long time searching, but there was no sign of it. Doubtless one of the garden slaves had stolen it.’

He spoke with bitterness. The slaves had ‘stolen’ it, I noticed. If Mutuus had picked it up, he would not have described the action that way.

‘What did you hope to do with it?’ I said, hoping to shame him by the question. ‘Sell it? Or show it to Quintus?’ It occurred to me that the secretary might have been pleased to drive a little splitting wedge between husband and wife.

I had mistaken my man. Mutuus looked at me gravely. ‘I would not have sold it, citizen, far less have given it away. It had been Julia’s, you understand — for a brief moment, true, but it was hers.’

‘You would have taken it as a keepsake?’ Marcus was incredulous. He had enjoyed his share of women, but it would never occur to him to be sentimental.

He spoke at the same moment as I said, ‘However could you hide such a thing?’ in equally disbelieving tones. I knew how little privacy a servant could possess.

Oddly, Mutuus addressed his answer to me. ‘I was a secretary, citizen, and a bondsman. I was not obliged to sleep with the common slaves, like a sheep in a barn. I had a small private partition at one end of the room.’

I nodded. ‘So you had somewhere to keep your things? A storage chest, at least?’ I blamed myself for not deducing that earlier. He had, after all, produced a spotless robe from somewhere.

‘What can a secretary have that warrants a storage chest?’ Marcus wanted to know, with more than a touch of impatience. It had not escaped him that Mutuus had unthinkingly answered my question first.

Mutuus inclined his head. ‘I have, in my sleeping quarters, Excellence, every stylus that her hands have touched. Believe me, when you feel as I do. .’ He trailed off.

I nodded. I remembered a time when I, too, had treasured a lock of hair, a scrap of perfumed plaid. Marcus, who had never married, but who could command any girl in Glevum at the turn of a coin, was looking less convinced.

‘Well! So you could not find the writing tablet, you say? And despite your desire to own it, you did not think that it was worth enquiring for?’ Marcus was scathing now.

He wanted to, Mutuus explained, but circumstances prevented him. He went to Julia and told her that the writing tablet had disappeared, hoping that she would start a search for it. Instead, she merely laughed and said that it was of no account. Whoever had found it was welcome to it, for her part — and if a slave had taken it, so much the better. That was all Flavius deserved. What was worse, from Mutuus’s point of view, was that she said so in the presence of her handmaids.

‘If I had attempted to ask questions and get it back, the maidservants would have told Julia. I did not wish her to think badly of me,’ Mutuus finished, sadly. He sighed. ‘I never did discover who had it.’

He stopped for a moment, wistfully, and then seemed struck by a sudden thought. ‘I wonder how Flavius came to have it? Unless, perhaps,’ he glanced at us from under his lids, ‘Rollo, you know, was talking to Flavius last night, in the courtyard. He told me he had an appointment to wait upon him later. You don’t think. .’

‘I don’t think,’ I said, ‘that this is even the same tablet.’

Mutuus looked scornful. ‘I could hardly be mistaken. The wax is set in a distinctive frame.’

I looked at Marcus, and raised my eyebrows questioningly. He nodded, so I signalled to Junio, who opened the travelling chest again and produced the second writing frame with a flourish. I gave him an encouraging wink and took the object from him.

‘You are quite sure,’ I said to the astonished Mutuus, ‘that it could not have been this one that you saw?’ I handed it to him for inspection.

He frowned. ‘I. . that is. . citizen, it is impossible to be certain. The two are much alike. But no, look — the corner of this one is chipped. That must be where Julia flung it to the floor. I saw it hit the corner of the stone seat as it fell. Yes, you are quite right, citizen. This is Julia’s writing tablet, not the other. But how did you acquire this? It disappeared in the arbour.’

‘It was sent to me,’ Marcus said, with a certain emphasis. Mutuus had been addressing his answers to me again. Any moment now my patron would start tapping his baton. Mutuus looked to me for amplification, but I simply smiled encouragingly. One of the secrets of my success with Marcus is knowing when to keep silent.

‘To me,’ Marcus said again, as if Mutuus might have overlooked the implications. ‘It was found here in the colonnade, with a threatening message on it, shortly after Quintus Ulpius was stabbed in the street.’

‘A threatening message?’ Mutuus looked alarmed. ‘You do not suppose that I wrote it, Excellence? That I was responsible for that evening’s attack?’

I waited for Marcus to deny that, at least, but he did not.

‘Who is more likely than a secretary to inscribe on a wax tablet?’ Marcus demanded, taking the second tablet from him, ‘and who else knew where this one was to be found?’

Marcus is capable of surprising me sometimes. That was a shrewd deduction, in its way, although it ignored some obvious indications.

I debated for a moment whether to point them out to him, but I was spared the necessity. The screen door opened, so that the room was filled for a moment with the still unceasing wail of the lament, and then Julia herself came in, with her two plain maidservants in attendance.

‘Excellence, since you are now my sponsor, will you speak at the. .’ she began, approaching Marcus with a smile of greeting, but then she saw the two writing tablets in his hands.

The smile withered like a dinner snail in salt. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words emerged. Julia Honoria was a strong woman, but if Sollers had not appeared behind her to catch her as she swayed, I believe she would have fallen to the floor in a faint.