Enemies at Home

31

The scream sounded more like surprise than anguish, but sometimes you recognise trouble. With a great struggle, I pressed myself through the narrow gap, following Graecina inside. Through the gloom, I saw why the shutter was so hard to open. Polycarpus was lying against it, in a partly bent position with his shoulders and upper body pressed against the inside of the wooden leaf, his weight jamming it.

I joined his wife as she knelt beside him. He was warm, though lifeless. Graecina was breathing fast, but she held herself together, a loyal wife and mother, refusing to give way to hysteria while there might be something necessary to do.

No chance. No pulse. No breath. No life left. I said nothing, but the wife knew too.

Together we lifted Polycarpus away from the shutter, so I could pull it open properly. We hauled him out and laid him on his back in the street. I checked again, but it was pointless. Light and air failed to revive him or alter my verdict.

I sent for a doctor anyway. A widow needs to be sure. Graecina provided an address and I told Dromo to go; I reckoned Cosmus would be unreliable.

Having brought back the cloak Graecina lent me the day before yesterday, I folded it and placed it beneath the steward’s head. It was too soon to cover over the body, not while his wife was still reluctant to accept he was dead.

Though the corpse was recognisably Polycarpus, with the same build and desert-dweller’s chin stubble, all the spry bonhomie had vanished. To me, it was no longer him.

Graecina and I sat side by side on the kerb; I held her hand. I had taken to her on first acquaintance and, unbeknown to her, we shared this hard experience. I too had once had my husband abruptly despatched, in the middle of what had seemed an ordinary, bright and sunny day. So, as the world went about its business unaware of her tragedy, I knew all too painfully what Graecina was going through.

She stayed silent. Some people immediately become stupefied. Others of us clench up and fall into deep thoughts, planning ahead, already readjusting because we need to be ready, we need to be strong.

She would be thinking about her children — how to tell them, how to console them, how then to provide for them, on her own, in whatever difficult future lay ahead. I had not had that worry, but on the other hand, when my husband died suddenly, he left me to a life alone. That’s hard, even if you call yourself tough. As far as I knew, her children were still young, and so Graecina would at least have someone to talk to, cry with, even snap at when everything became too difficult. The infants would grow up. They would grow up fairly well, I thought, from the little I had seen of her. She would have her family.

The hairy dog came over and licked Polycarpus gently. His manner was sad and respectful, as if he realised he was saying farewell. This is why I like dogs.

He sat down beside the body, a couple of feet from Graecina and me, sharing our vigil. Occasionally he had to scratch at a flea, but he did so unobtrusively. He seemed to understand our sadness, and wanted to be part of the scenario.

The dog’s behaviour contrasted with that of the slave Cosmus, who had mooched to a new spot outside a cutler’s shop. He was staring at the goods on show, as if he had not seen us bring his master’s body out. I worry about young boys who gawp at knives — though many of them do it, some never actually reaching the stage of owning one.

When Dromo brought the doctor, he said Polycarpus had died of heart failure. The man needed to see an oculist.

It must be true that the steward’s heart had failed at some point. He had told me he had been freed for five years, making him in his mid to late thirties, young for this to happen unexpectedly. There had been no sign that his heart was diseased, no warning that his body was liable to fail him. He had never lived foolishly. Yet plenty of people leave the world at his age or younger.

Stress could have caused a heart attack. If he had been in an argument prior to his death, it was not with Graecina; I myself saw her arrive on the scene. Watching her discover the body, I had witnessed true shock.

Her grief was real too. ‘Why?’ she asked, fixatedly. People do ask that, and generally there is nothing you can say in reply.

I knew that heart failure alone did not kill the steward. The doctor saw nothing amiss, but I had noticed immediately: Polycarpus had been attacked.

It was probably quick and simple. There were no self-defence bruises, no rope around the steward’s neck and no rope burns. But I could see tell-tale fingermarks.

I answered the wife’s question. She had the right to know. ‘Look at his throat here, Graecina. Somebody strangled him.’