The Chariots of Calyx

Chapter Five

Junio arrived just as I was finishing the fruit (slices of apple, at last!), and he stationed himself beside my chair with a cheerful grin.

‘I hear you wish to view the body, master? I have been given instructions to lead you there.’

I got to my feet, holding out my hands to be rinsed and dried by the house-slaves who had been standing by with ewer, bowl and towel for the purpose. I dashed a few drops of water on my head, too, as a sort of purification, and took the time to go and pour the dregs of wine on to the altar of the Vestal shrine. I am not usually a superstitious man, especially in regard to Roman rituals, preferring my own ancient gods of tree and stone, but this household worried me. If I was to be visiting Roman corpses, I felt, I could do with all the supernatural support that I could get.

I nodded to Junio. ‘You know the way? Then lead me to him.’

The interlinking rooms and passages we passed through were as grand, and as lavishly decorated, as the atrium we had left, and everywhere there was the same disregard both for cost and for artistic restraint. Everything was bigger, heavier, more jewel-encrusted, and more ostentatious than its counterpart in any household I had ever seen. Even a simple gong-stick, hanging on a wall in a short corridor, appeared to be made of ivory, inlaid with gold.

Junio led the way into this corridor. It was a spacious passageway, almost a little lobby, from which three gilded folding doors led off into the rooms beyond and a stout wooden staircase gave access to the floor above.

‘Servants’ quarters,’ Junio said, following my gaze and nodding upwards. ‘And a few store-rooms up there for linen and candles. Nothing much else.’

‘In spite of that grand stairway?’

He grinned. ‘In spite of that grand stairway. That’s where they took me to wait. I contrived to have a peek behind a few doors on my way back to you.’ He gestured towards the nearest entrance. ‘I think Caius Monnius is awaiting you in there.’

I nodded, though I might almost have found my way unassisted, from the pungent smells of funeral oil and herbs already eddying in the smoky air.

I pushed open the door. I found not only Caius Monnius awaiting me, but also half a dozen of the undertaker’s men and women, engaged in preparing the body for its last procession. They had drawn back the folding window shutters while they worked (although they later would be discreetly closed again in deference to the dead) and muted daylight illuminated the room. It was an incongruous place for death, with a painted frieze of grinning satyrs round the walls, and a large bronze statue of a well-endowed Priapus standing in the corner by the door.

The undertakers, however, seemed oblivious. Evidence of their work was everywhere — the water with which the dead man had been ritually washed, the aromatic oils, the first of the sacred herbs and candles already pungently burning in pottery containers at each corner of the bed. A fine funeral bier was being readied, too, to carry the body to lie in state in the atrium when the preliminary rituals were finished. At our arrival, the funeral workers abandoned their tasks and stood obediently aside. Fulvia had evidently been as good as her word.

But it was already too late. I exchanged glances with Junio, who shook his head sympathetically. There was little point in my lingering here. Monnius had been stripped, cleansed and covered with a clean white cloth. His banqueting robes had been carefully folded and laid on one side, with the wilted festive garland on top of the pile. The fresh linen and new boots in which the corpse would be dressed for its final journey were already set out and waiting on the bier. I sighed. Any information that I might have gleaned from examining the body or clothing had long since disappeared under the ministrations of the undertakers.

I made a show of it, however. I inspected the fat neck, where the cruel marks of the silver chain were still clearly visible. Pertinax’s account had clearly been correct.

Someone had twisted the chain tightly from the rear, and the face was horribly contorted. There were bruises around the shoulders, too, as if someone had knelt on him to hold him down, although I could see no other marks on the body.

I walked over to the window-space. It was large — effectively a door — and looked out into the garden: a paved peristyle colonnade, protected by high walls, with a little formal enclosure of plants and flowers in the centre and a painted shrine at the further end, with a ladder still leaning drunkenly against it. The left-hand wall was clearly formed by the back of the famous annexe, but there was no access to the garden from there or even any window overlooking it. This was a private space for Monnius and his wife, though if Annia was excluded there was nothing much to see.

I turned away and was about to leave the bedchamber when one of the undertaker’s slaves sidled up to me. ‘You want to see the chain that did it, citizen?’

I gaped at him. Of course I wanted to see it — I had merely assumed that the murderer, whoever he was, had taken it with him.

‘Still round his neck when we found him, citizen. And quite a trial we had to get it off, without damaging him further. But his wife insisted. Said it wouldn’t be fitting to send him to the Afterworld in that. So here it is.’ He picked up a small roll of cloth, lying among the oils and unguents on the large iron-bound chest in the corner.

‘Show me.’

He did so, unrolling the cloth with a flourish. ‘Only be careful, citizen. We have not cleaned it yet.’

It was a triple strand of silver, set with tiny gems at intervals, the metal hammer-worked so that the links were doubly strong, and the whole supple chain would lie neatly flat against the wearer’s neck. There were fragments of its latest wearer still adhering to it.

The undertaker’s slave smiled grimly. ‘You see what the lady means, citizen? Hardly a fitting thing for a senior civic official to be wearing for his journey across the Styx.’

I did see what she meant. It was an element of the killing which had not been clear to me. At the mention of a ‘necklace’ I had half imagined a heavy Roman torc, or some stout ornamental chain designed to hold seals or keys. This was a feminine necklace, the sort of personal jewellery that only women, or effete and handsome slave-boys, ever wear. To discover such a thing on Caius Monnius was as startling as if he had been found wearing a stola, or with ochre on his cheeks and lamp-black darkening his eyelashes.

‘Don’t ask me whose it is,’ the man said, anticipating my question. ‘His wife has got one very like it, it seems, but this one isn’t hers. She’s got that safe and sound in a casket in her room — first thing she did when she saw him was go and look for it. And there’s another funny thing. You see those feathers?’ He pointed to a handful of them, lying in an open wooden bowl nearby. ‘Found those when we came to wash the body. There’s the pillow, there. It had been pushed down so firmly over him that the silk split at the stitching. We didn’t know what to do with it all exactly, so we’ve put the things here to burn them with the funeral offerings later.’

‘I will take the necklace with me. It may help in my enquiries,’ I said, rolling it up again and slipping it into the folds of my toga. The undertaker did not protest. If anything, I think he was glad to be relieved of the responsibility. I nodded in what I hoped was a suitably thoughtful manner. ‘And the knife?’

‘That was apparently Caius Monnius’ own, citizen.’ He showed me where they had placed it, carefully, with the rest of the dead man’s personal belongings. It was a fine knife: a sharp blade set in an elaborately carved horn handle — the kind that wealthy people often carry at their belts, especially at large banquets where there are rarely enough knives for all the guests. I carry a knife myself, though mine is a more humble article: if you rely on the scissor — the slave who cuts up the meat — you often have a long wait for his services.

I examined the knife. ‘I see you have cleaned the blade,’ I said.

‘It did not seem respectful, citizen, to leave it as it was. It will be offered as one of the grave-goods to be cremated with him. He left instructions with us long ago, when he ordered his memorial stone. His knife, that household statue of himself, and a mobius, the official corn-measure, as a symbol of his office.’ He peered anxiously at my face. ‘I hope we have not done wrong, there, citizen? After all, the knife was actually not used to kill anyone, and it was not like the necklace. It just required wiping, sharpening and polishing with red earth.’

So there was nothing to be learned from the knife either, except that it was Monnius’ own, and had presumably been in his room the night before. That explained how the killer had picked it up — I had wondered earlier why Fulvia’s attacker had not simply used the chain again. But my inspection of the body had answered that question at least. The necklace had bitten so deeply into Monnius’ fleshy neck that it would have been well-nigh impossible to remove it again, in darkness and in a hurry.

I nodded. ‘Very well, your people may carry on here. I have seen all that it is possible to see.’ I turned to go.

The chief undertaker came after me, smiling ingratiatingly. ‘I hope we have been of some assistance, citizen? They tell me you were sent here by the governor?’

The man wanted a tip, I realised. I fished into my purse again and parted with another five as coin. It was a large sum to me, but he did not look any more delighted with my bounty than Superbus had done. I began to hope that I would not have occasion to reward many more servants in Londinium. I have only a modest income, and giving gratuities in this city was clearly a very expensive business.

I summoned Junio, who had been waiting in the corridor, and was about to make a dignified exit when we were all interrupted by a disturbance in the street. Somebody was shouting.

I abandoned all pretence at restraint and went to the window-space to listen.

‘What means these words, Caius Monnius is dead? I do not believe this telling. He was yesterday perfectly well. This is some plotting of his to avoid to see me.’ The angry man — whoever he was — had hesitant Latin. His meaning, however, was abundantly clear to anyone for half a mile around. I longed to climb the ladder in the courtyard and peer over the wall into the street, but dignity forbade it.

Someone, clearly, was trying to calm the outburst. There were muffled voices for a moment, and then the tirade began again.

‘Well, you listen me, my friend. You tell your master, is he alive or dead, that Eppaticus Tertius is arrived to see him. And if Eppaticus does not see somebody very soon, then Eppaticus will take his matters to the court. Twenty thousand sesterces, he owes to me, and he promised me today.’

More apologetic muttering. The doorkeeper evidently.

‘No, I will not make less loud my voice. All Londinium can know these things. And the other things will I tell, that Caius Monnius wishes I should hide — those things I will shout from the steps of the forum, if I do not have my money in my hand today. Now, stand back and let me see him, or by all the gods of the river, you will be the one which is dead.’

There was a scuffle, a shout, a bang and a groan. I glanced at Junio, and a moment later the two of us were hastening back towards the atrium the way we had come. Eppaticus, however, was too quick for us.

We met him coming towards us, in one of the interconnecting rooms. He was a huge man in a plaid cape, with shoulders like an ox and a red bull face under a thatch of light brown hair. In one great hand he had hoisted the unfortunate doorkeeper by the neck of his tunic, and was half carrying, half pushing him along; while with the other (which seemed the size of a fire-flail) he brushed aside the two burly household slaves who tried to detain him, as though they were no more than a pair of troublesome sheep.

He was still bellowing. ‘Dead, you say he is? Then you will show me him. Dead or alive, I will see Caius Monnius.’

‘Ask this citizen,’ the doorkeeper squawked, his toes scarcely touching the ground as he was thrust along. ‘He is an emissary from the governor.’

Eppaticus stopped, looking me over from haircut to toga hem. ‘So? Another Roman? What the governor wishes in this house? What things that cheating Caius Monnius had told against me?’ He was working himself up into a rage again, and for a moment it looked as if he might forget himself, and lay violent hands on me.

‘I am a Celt, like yourself,’ I said, speaking in my native tongue. ‘And they are telling you the truth, Eppaticus. The man is dead. They are even now preparing him for his funeral.’

He put down the doorkeeper, and stared consideringly at me. As he turned his head I saw with surprise that he wore his hair in an old-fashioned Celtic pigtail at the back, although his forehead was not shaved as it would have been in my own tribe, and he lacked the long waxed moustache that would have suggested noble descent. His dress, too, was a mixture of traditions. He wore a Roman-style tunic, rather than trousers, under his Celtic plaid.

He was gazing at me with suspicion, but he replied in the same language. ‘You are not from these parts, citizen? Your dialect is strange to me.’

‘As yours to me,’ I said. It was true. It was almost as difficult for me to comprehend his barbarous Celtic accent as to follow his fractured Latin. Nevertheless, the discovery that I was a fellow countryman had some effect. It had stopped the furious bull in his stampede and I hoped it forged a kind of fragile bond between us, though he was obviously still extremely wary of me. The tribes of Britain have often nurtured worse enmities between themselves than were ever felt for our conquerors.

I said to reassure him, ‘I am from the farthest south-west corner of Britannia.’ That, I hoped, was safe. Tribal tension is always greatest between immediate neighbours.

Eppaticus nodded his huge head slowly. ‘And I am Trinovantine.’

I had heard of them. One of the most warlike and quarrelsome tribes in the country: at one time, they had even joined forces with the Iceni to revolt against Roman rule. Of course, that was more than a century ago, and old scores had been officially forgotten — at least in public — but men still spoke in whispers of the terrible revenge which the Romans had inflicted on the warrior queen Boudicca and her daughters, and the razing of the cities (including Londinium) which had supported the rebels. I imagine that the Trinovantes have little love for a toga.

No surprise, then, to find Eppaticus clinging to Celtic ways — in fact it was more surprising to see the extent of his Romanisation. And he could hardly welcome an emissary from the governor. Indeed, he was staring suspiciously at me.

‘Ah, yes! A Trinovantine. The barley ear,’ I said, to cover my frantic thoughts.

I meant nothing particular by that — any trader in the island might have said the same. The original coinage of the Trinovantes was marked with an ear of barley, and therefore everyone in the province associated the name with the symbol, but the effect on Eppaticus was startling.

He let out a roar that rattled the wall-hangings. ‘What has Caius Monnius been telling you? It was an arrangement — he was as much to blame as I was. It was a private matter, between ourselves, and now he tries to incriminate me! I’ll kill him!’

I looked around the corridor. The slaves were watching the exchange with expressions which ranged from horrified amusement to blank incomprehension.

‘Eppaticus,’ I said, ‘be careful what you say. Many of the servants here speak Celtic.’

He gave a snort of contempt. ‘I care not which hears me,’ he bellowed in Latin. ‘He betrays me to the governor. I said before and I say again, I kill him. I throttle him. I wring his dirty Roman neck!’

‘Eppaticus,’ I said gently, ‘you are too late. I told you. Caius Monnius is dead. Someone has throttled him already. That is why the governor has sent me here.’

He seemed to understand the message for the first time. He stared at me a moment. ‘Murdered?’

Then, surprisingly swiftly for a man of his stature, he pushed the slaves savagely aside, and — still roaring like a bull — before anyone could stop him he fled headlong from the house.