The Germanicus Mosaic

Chapter Twenty-two

We did set out early. It was a damp, cold morning and I was glad of my woollen cloak and hood to keep me warm. I had opted to leave my toga at home this time. Pavements, I decided, were a professional affair. With Junio beside me, very similarly clad, we looked like a pair of local peasants heading to market to buy cows.

Perhaps that was why a galloping imperial messenger ordered us curtly off the main roadway, and we were obliged to trudge for several miles on the miry track at the side. By the time we came to the back road to Crassus’ villa, we were both heartily glad to take it.

There was little on the road at this hour. A flock of sheep and goats impeded our progress for a while; an old man, bent double under a stack of firewood, shuffled out of our way, and two men struggled past us with a wooden barrow laden with watercress — to sell in the stalls of Glevum, I assumed. Apart from that the countryside was empty; only the drip of the trees and the occasional scuffle of an animal broke the silence. Even the birds were hushed.

The deserted roundhouse seemed more melancholy than ever. I kept a wary eye out for wolves and I noticed that Junio, too, kept one hand on his knife hilt.

As we descended the hill, though, we caught the sounds of man. Somewhere, there was the rhythmic thud of an axe, an unseen cart rattled noisily over the stony track, and a distant labourer grunted as he worked. We reached the gravel farm track with relief and made our way along to the gate of the villa.

Already there was a different air abroad. Marcus had left a guard, a pair of armed soldiers who stood, pikes at the ready, flanking the doorway. Aulus, peering through his aperture, seemed almost friendly in comparison. The guards, though, scarcely afforded us a glance. They were not there to prevent people entering the villa, they were there to prevent people leaving it. Without a master some slave might be tempted to run away — and that would be a serious loss of revenue.

Aulus swaggered out to meet us, squaring his shoulders and trying to look suitably belligerent. He seemed to fill the whole gateway. When I pushed back my hood, however, and he saw who it was, he almost fell over his cudgel in his anxiety to let us in.

‘I did not recognise you, citizen. I shall send for Andretha at once.’ He motioned to a slave who was crossing the courtyard, and sent him scuttling, then bent towards me confidentially. ‘You have heard the news? Paulus is still missing, and Marcus has sent us those’ — he nodded towards the armoured guards — ‘to make sure no one follows his example.’ He smiled, leaning close to my face and exposing his discoloured teeth. He had been eating boiled cabbage again. There were times when I felt that I preferred Aulus in less friendly mood.

I murmured something.

‘It was uncalled for,’ Aulus complained, gesturing towards the guards. ‘I could have done the job just as well.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘Marcus was afraid you would escape yourself.’

Aulus gave me a reproachful glance, and moved away. I had insulted him, but at least it removed the cabbage fragments from my immediate vicinity.

There was no time to say more. The little slave appeared again, with Andretha at his heels.

‘Citizen!’ Andretha looked at my tunic and cloak in dismay. ‘What brings you here? I thought your business at the villa was concluded. We are hardly in a condition to receive you. Rufus has been taken to Glevum in chains and the furniture is being prepared for removal and loaded onto the cart. Marcus sent us word last evening, and the slaves have worked all night.’

‘Rufus has been moved?’ I said, trying to adopt a businesslike tone. ‘Excellent, in that case I can work in the librarium. I wish to remove the pavement. I shall need help.’

‘Remove the pavement?’ He sounded incredulous. Then he added, piteously, ‘Oh, great Minerva! Does Marcus know of this?’

I did not dare to answer him. Aulus was listening, for one thing, and I have always been a clumsy liar. Instead I favoured him with a pitying look. ‘Really, Andretha, do you need to ask? You know that I am working on Marcus’ behalf.’

He was not convinced, I saw it, but he was in a quandary. If he guessed wrong, whichever choice he made, there was likely to be trouble. And Andretha was in enough trouble already. Even if Rufus was thrown to the bears, it was not certain that Andretha would escape execution. There was still that question of household negligence. To say nothing of shortfalls in the accounts.

In the end he chose the lesser of two evils. ‘I suppose, since you come from Marcus, you must be allowed to do as you please. But let it be on your own head if Marcus is displeased.’ His hands fluttered like butterflies.

I nodded. It would be on my own head, with a vengeance, I thought, if we dug up the pavement and found nothing there. However, this was not a time to vacillate.

‘Let me have Aulus,’ I said, briskly. ‘He is strong. And two or three of the garden slaves. I need men who are handy with a spade.’

Andretha rounded up the slaves and followed me to the librarium, the lump in his thin throat moving up and down so nervously that he reminded me of a gulping frog. Though if anyone had cause to be nervous, I reflected, it was me. Marcus was buying the villa, and he would be less than delighted to find his librarium mosaic dug up and spoiled before he had even taken possession.

The door had been left unlocked after Rufus’ departure, and as I walked into the gloomy little room, my confidence returned. Why had it not occurred to me before? Without the door open, there was hardly enough light to see the mosaic, and with the door ajar the room was surely too chilly to sit in. No one, surely, would choose to have a pavement laid in a poky back room like this.

I gave the sign to Aulus, and he lifted his adze. I saw Junio flinch.

‘First we spend a day digging the floor over to make it even, and then another bringing in barrows of earth to lay a good foundation for the pavement, and no sooner is it finished than we start digging it all up again,’ one of the land-slaves grumbled, under his breath. ‘What does he hope to find?’

I did not answer him. If I was right, he would discover soon enough,

In fact, the mosaic was easier to lift than I had feared. It had been laid on smooth cement-plaster, stuck to a piece of coarse linen, and because it had been in place only a few weeks, once the plaster was lifted it came away in large pieces, instead of our having to move it tile by tile. After an hour or two the waiting barrows in the courtyard were full of jagged sections of pavement, and the trodden earth floor was once again revealed.

Even then we managed to start at the wrong end of the room. It was not until we had dug it over more than halfway, and I was beginning to fear that I had been mistaken, that Aulus’ spade suddenly hit something solid, but soft.

He bent forward casually to see what he had struck, turned pale and rushed out into the courtyard, where I could see him making a sudden and unintentional libation before the little god by the sundial. A very personal oblation, with cabbage in it, I fancy.

What he had glimpsed was not a pleasant sight, admittedly, even to those well acquainted with death. It had been a woman, we found when we disinterred it further. A tallish woman in a russet gown, that much was still clear, with her hands bound and her throat slit, almost severing her head from her body. She had been dead for weeks.

It was Andretha who first recognised the ring. We slid it off the decomposing finger and I took it to the women’s quarters. Faustina, red-eyed and pale, glanced at it without interest.

‘I don’t know,’ she said dully, when I asked her whose it was. ‘I think it was Regina’s. Where did you find it?’

‘She was wearing it,’ I said softly. ‘We have found her, I think, under the librarium pavement.’ I was afraid I would distress her further, but Faustina had no tears left to shed for Crassus’ unhappy wife.

‘Have you seen Rufus?’ she implored.

I shook my head.

‘What will become of him?’

She did not really expect me to reply. She knew the answer better than I did. In her dreams she had witnessed him being fed to the wild animals a dozen times already.

‘Is there any hope?’

‘Only,’ I said gently, ‘if I can find some connection with this earlier murder. Rufus has not confessed to that.’

She dropped her head into her hands. ‘Then we are back where we began. We are all under suspicion. We shall all die.’

‘Not if I can find the killer. Are you willing to come and look? Tell me if this was Regina? You knew her better than anyone in the villa. I warn you, it will be an ordeal — especially if you were attached to the lady.’

She looked up. ‘I was attached to her. Regina was kind to me.’

‘She has been dead a long time.’

Faustina swallowed hard. ‘Poisoned?’

I shook my head. ‘Her throat is cut.’

She gulped. ‘Poor lady. That is a brutal death. I hope she did not suffer long. Aconite is quick, at least. She used to say it was the way to die. “A feeling of giddiness and heat, a dryness in the mouth, slurred speech — almost like being drunk. If you are unlucky, vomiting and bleeding from the mouth. But often, little time for pain. There are worse deaths.” Poor, poor Regina. She found a worse one, certainly.’

‘And a worse one to see,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘I will come, all the same, for Rufus’ sake. At least you gave me a choice.’ She got to her feet and gave me a wan smile. ‘Willing or not, I would have had to come, if Crassus ordered me.’ She followed me resolutely out of the building, and back into the courtyard.

They had moved the body by this time. I will spare you unnecessary horrors — the maggots, the smell, the decomposing flesh. Faustina, however, was spared none of them. I led her around to windward and she looked down at the corpse.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a shudder. ‘It might be Regina. Might have been Regina. It is hard to tell. That is rather like her hair. Yes, look — there is a comb, I put it into her hair myself. I do not recognise the veil, it seems to have been russet — like a bride’s.’ And then at last, she began to weep, and Andretha led her away.

‘“She went away triumphant”,’ I quoted softly. ‘“We have not seen her since.” But you did see her, Aulus. That night when you looked out of the gatehouse, and saw her in a man’s arms. Only he was not embracing her. She was already dead. He was carrying her here, to bury her secretly, where the slaves would cover her with earth and she would be safely hidden by the pavement. While you were opening the gate, he carried her up the other path, to the nymphaeum, and brought her in through the back of the house. It was a risk, but he had to take it. Hard work, but he was strong.’

‘Daedalus killed her?’ Junio said. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Perhaps he tired of her,’ Aulus suggested, ‘and she threatened to betray their courtship to Germanicus. She could be persistent, as we know, in seeking a husband. If Daedalus was seeing her without his master’s permission, there would be an end of his manumission. A free woman, and his master’s lady once! So, you think he killed her?’

‘If it was Daedalus you saw that night. You are sure it was?’

‘I am sure it was Daedalus who went out earlier, and he took her food and gifts at other times. I am sure of that.’

‘And now Daedalus himself is dead,’ Andretha said. ‘We buried him in the slave pit two days ago.’ He gave a helpless sob, raising his arms like a praying priest. ‘I thought this business was over when Rufus confessed. I even thought I might have been reprieved. But now we have another murder here. Only a woman, but she was freeborn. I have lost Crassus’ treasure. .’ He saw the startled faces. ‘Yes — that has disappeared. And now I’ve lost Paulus. It goes from bad to worse. I will be put to the sword, I know it.’

‘To the sword at least!’ Aulus said, with gloomy satisfaction. I remembered that Andretha had often been responsible for punishing him.

I said, ‘I think Marcus should know what we have discovered here. And we must find Paulus, before it is too late.’

‘It may already be too late,’ Andretha wailed. ‘He has been gone for days. He could have travelled miles in that time. Marcus set a watch for him, but he has not been found.’

‘Where would he go?’ Junio said. His face was still the colour of marble from what he had seen. He made a feeble attempt at levity. ‘I hope he isn’t going to turn up under another pavement.’

Aulus sidled close to me, and whispered in my ear. There are smells which are even worse than cabbage. ‘As to that, citizen,’ he hissed, ‘I might have something to tell you. If I might have a word, in private.’