The Vestal Vanishes

SEVENTEEN

I followed Priscilla through a musty painted passage, out into a sort of courtyard where — by the smell — the kitchen and the stables were. But the kitchen fire was evidently doused again by now and it was cold and dark out there, so that even with the oil-lamp it was hard to see. A quiet whinnying from a building close nearby suggested where the horses and the horsemen had been housed. There was no light from there either — even the slaves were clearly all abed, as I was beginning to wish I was, myself.

I stumbled on a cobblestone, bruising my big toe. ‘You’ve got her in the stable?’ I said, as my mishap brought the party to a halt.

Priscilla laughed. ‘We’ve got her over there.’ She gestured to a squat little circular building on the right, which I had not noticed up till now. It was hardly taller than my shoulder and an arms-width round, with a low entrance at the front and a sort of open chimney at the top. ‘It used to be the kiln, though the roof’s part-ruined now. But it’s got solid walls, apart from the fire-hole in front, and we block that up at night. We use this now as a punishment-cell for disobedient slaves.’ She bent down to roll a large stone from the entrance as she spoke, and I found myself peering into a tiny clay-lined space, cold and damp and disagreeable.

There was a woman in there, blinking in the light. She was no longer young. Her plump flesh was sagging and her reddish hair — pulled back from her face into a coiled plait — was streaked with grey. She was huddled in the centre, knees pulled to her chin, and shivering in the draught from the chimney-space. In the glow of the oil-lamp I could see that her hands and feet were loosely bound with rope, and her thin tunic was the orange-colour of the livery worn by the servants in Lavinius’s country house.

She squinted up at us. ‘What do you want now? You’ve no right to keep me here. I’ve told you all I know. I’ll answer to my mistress, if to anyone. She knows I would have guarded Lavinia with my life! Send me back to her.’ Her voice was harsh, almost defiant, but she spoke Latin well. Then she noticed me. ‘Who is the citizen in the toga?’ she enquired. ‘Has he come to harry me as well?’

‘He will ask the questions!’ Priscilla snapped, but she answered anyway. ‘His name’s Libertus, and he’s been sent here by Lavinia’s family to find out what happened and what you know of it.’

It was not quite the truth and I was on the point of setting matters straight but the prisoner forestalled me. Something that might have been a spark of hope flashed into her eyes. ‘Cyra sent you?’ she said, eagerly.

‘She knew that I was coming,’ I agreed. ‘But really I am here at Publius’s behest to find news of his bride. But then I learned that Lavinia had disappeared as well, and I am bound to investigate that matter too, of course.’

The hope — if that was what it was — had died. She looked away and stared dully at the floor. ‘Then I really cannot help you, citizen. As I told these householders, I can’t imagine what would make Lavinia run away. She seemed so happy with her cousin yesterday.’

Her voice had softened, and she spoke with such concern that I was moved to murmur, ‘You were fond of your young charge?’

She raised her eyes. They sparkled in the darkness like a wolf’s. ‘It is no secret, citizen. I adored that little girl. Loved her like I would have loved my own, if it had lived. I swear to you, citizen, I would lay down my life rather than have any harm come to that child. So can you imagine what a shock it was, when I went into the room and found she wasn’t there? When I’d been on guard outside the door all day, as well? I was asked, you know, to fetch a tray for her and when I went back, it was to find she wasn’t there — almost as if I’d been sent deliberately away. It almost breaks my heart — just ask that woman there!’

It was clear that she was speaking with completely sincerity. Yet something was stirring in the cobwebs of my brain. There was something about this account that did not quite make sense, but I could not for the life of me work out what it was. I searched my memory. Surely this version of events tallied exactly with what I’d heard before? Yet I still felt that some important detail was eluding me. I was still puzzling over it when Trullius spoke up.

‘Well, slave, it seems that Lavinia did not run away at all.’

‘What?’ the nursemaid queried sharply.

Trullius raised his hand. ‘It seems more likely, now, that Druids captured her and simply made it look as if she’d made her own escape. What do you say to that?’

‘Druids?’ The nursemaid looked incredulous. ‘How could Druids get into the house? Or get out again? Someone would have seen. I would have seen myself! I was on guard all day outside the door.’

My hostess thrust the lamp in to look more closely at her captive’s face. ‘Not if they climbed up the cloth-rope to the window, when no one was about. That must be what it was! And you must have helped them plan it. I’ll wager you sent a signal that you had come downstairs and the room was unguarded while you fetched the tray and kept me busy in the kitchen area! Come to think of it, I saw you at the time, carrying something out into the alleyway beside the house. I thought it was a chamber pot for the midden-pile. But it was a signal, wasn’t it? Admit it now, and make it quicker for us all.’

Trullius was right about her having theories, I thought — this one almost sounded plausible. I was about to say so, when she spoke again.

‘Though Minerva knows why you’d agree to help them in that way, if you are as fond of Lavinia as you seem to be. More magic, I suppose. If the Druids put a spell on you so that you couldn’t help yourself, then say so straight away. It might go easier for you when it comes to punishment.’

She was offering the slave-woman a convenient excuse, and one which might have stood up at a legal trial, but the nurse disdained it. ‘I’ve never knowingly spoken to a Druid in my life. Why should you think they’d want to…?’ She broke off suddenly, and looked at me again. ‘Is this to do with Audelia, citizen?’

I nodded. ‘We think the Druids murdered her, as well.’

‘As well?’ The voice was sharp with shock, but I quickly realized it was not concern for poor Audelia’s fate. Her only interest was in Lavinia. ‘You mean the child is dead?’ She strained forward and would have struggled to her feet, but her bonds prevented her. Bright tears were glistening in her eyes. ‘Dear Juno! Not Lavinia! Tell me it isn’t true.’

I shook my head. ‘We haven’t found Lavinia, alive or dead,’ I said. ‘But if the Druid rebels have her, I worry for her fate. They are not noted for their mercy, even for small girls.’

She sank back, forlornly, but obviously relieved. ‘You are right, of course. We can only pray she’s safe.’ She nodded towards the owners of the house. ‘Make them let me out of here tomorrow, citizen, and I will help you search. I know the sort of places she would go to hide.’

Trullius’s wife, who had been stooping forward with the lamp, made an exasperated little noise. ‘What? Let her out, when she has been so clearly negligent? She must think me simple, citizen.’

I motioned her to silence and took the lamp myself. I wanted co-operation, not defiance from the nurse. Besides I had identified what had been troubling me. ‘You don’t think she’s dead, do you?’ I murmured to the prisoner in the kiln. ‘You are not grieving, you are talking about places she might hide. What makes you think that she is still alive?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t explain it, citizen. I’m foolish, I suppose. But… if she were dead, I’m sure I would have known — felt it somehow in my blood and bones.’ The tears were brimming over now, and coursing down her face unchecked. She could not move her hands to wipe her cheeks. ‘I can believe she might have run away, if she thought she was in danger — especially if she could not find me when she looked for me. But when you mentioned Druids and said they’d murdered her “as well”…’ She broke off, shuddering. ‘What did you mean, if not that she was dead?’

‘I meant it seems possible they are involved in this, as well as playing a part in poor Audelia’s death. And — before you ask — we’re fairly sure of that. They deliberately left symbolic tokens with the corpse.’

‘Poor creature,’ the nurse said, soberly. ‘She will be greatly mourned.’ She tried to wipe her wet cheek on her tunic-shoulder, but it would not reach.

‘You knew Audelia?’

‘Not well. I met her for the first time yesterday. I liked her very much. I thought her very kind and beautiful. And surprisingly clever and intelligent, as well, quite capable of signing contracts and understanding them. Just like her young cousin would have been, I suppose, if Lavinia had ever had the opportunity of training at the shrine.’ She gave a bitter smile. ‘But now she never will. And poor Audelia’s dead, you say, and on her wedding day. I hope they build a fitting tomb for her.’

‘This is getting nowhere,’ Trullius’s wife exclaimed. She nudged me in the side. ‘Do you wish me to wake the stable-slaves and have her flogged a bit? That might persuade her to tell us what she knows. My husband would do it for us but he only has one arm these days, and he finds it hard to hold the victim down.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think it would help. If this slave cares for Lavinia as much as it appears, she’ll help us all she can without the use of whips. I’m interested in her assessment of the child.’ I turned back to the nurse. ‘Can you think of any way she might be bribed to leave — tempted by an offer, or lured to run away?’

A stubborn shake of the head. ‘Nothing like that, citizen. Lavinia was obedient to a fault.’

That wasn’t altogether the picture I had gleaned, but the nurse could clearly see no defects in her beloved charge. I leaned closer still, and murmured, in a gentler tone, ‘I am not suggesting this is Lavinia’s fault. If someone gave her orders which she could not ignore — purporting to be from her family, perhaps, or from the Vestal shrine — wouldn’t she obey them, if she is as dutiful as you say?’

There was a longish silence while the nurse considered this, staring at a creeping damp patch on the wall. Then she turned an ashen face to me — even in the dim light I could see that she’d turned pale. ‘Now that you say that, citizen, there is one possibility that occurs to me…’

‘Well, tell him, for Mars sake!’ Priscilla, behind me, was exasperated now. ‘And then perhaps we can all get to our beds. Don’t contradict me, Trullius,’ she went on, as her husband made a noise as though he would protest. ‘You said yourself, it’s too late to do anything tonight.’

I turned back to the nursemaid. ‘You were going to say…?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s only an idea, and I’m not quite sure of it. I need time to think it out. It will make no difference for an hour or two — even my captors both agree we can’t do anything further tonight. I’ll tell you in the morning, supposing I’m alive.’ She gave me a wan smile. ‘I have had nothing to eat or drink all day, and a damp kiln is not kind to aging bones. But, citizen, to find out if I am right in what I think, I’ll need to see the things that Lavinia left behind — the clothes that were made into a shape inside the bed. Provided that nobody has moved them up to now?’

Trullius stepped forward. ‘We haven’t moved a thing. We wanted to have proof of how we found the room — something to show the family and the authorities. But if you want the garments that were left inside the bed, that’s easily arranged. I’ll have them brought to you.’

She shook her head again, more violently. ‘It’s most important that they are not touched!’ She looked at me. ‘I’m sorry, citizen, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before — only at that stage there was no talk of Druids. It simply looked as if she’d run away. But now…’ Her voice was cracked with tears, and it was a moment before she gained control. ‘We had a secret, Lavinia and I. A private way of doing things her father didn’t know. He was very prone to punish — and severely, too — if he thought that she’d done the slightest thing amiss, though sometimes I could talk him out of blaming her. So we had a little game. If there was any chance of trouble she would leave certain things arranged…’ She trailed off again.

‘You mean she may have left a message? In the way she piled the clothes?’ I was incredulous.

‘It sounds ridiculous, I know. But she’s too young to read and write, and it isn’t always possible to talk when there are slaves about — at least without it reaching the master in the end. I always told her…’ She turned to me again. ‘Citizen, there may be nothing there to find. Certainly there won’t be anything to tell us where she’s gone. But if she thought she was in danger, she would try to let me know. I don’t suppose…?’

Trullius’s woman made that snorting sound again. ‘Surely she’s not proposing that I should let her go and look?’

I looked at Trullius. He shrugged. ‘Why not? Her hands and feet are bound. We could loosen them a bit and take her upstairs to the room. She couldn’t get away. In fact, I think we could leave her there to sleep. If she’s tied up, she can’t climb out of the window-space — especially in the dark.’

‘And you were offering a slave on guard, I think.’ I said. I saw him hesitate. ‘If there is an extra charge for this,’ I added, ‘I’m sure Publius will pay.’

I wasn’t sure of this at all, in fact, but the suggestion did the trick. ‘I’ll go and wake a stable-slave, then,’ he muttered in my ear, and we heard him scuffling to the stable in the dark, and — a minute later — rapping loudly on the door.

His wife was clearly furious with me. ‘You will be asking me to feed this wretched slave, next, I suppose?’ Then, when she saw my nod, she added, ‘Are you sure that you don’t want me to give up my bed for her?’

The nursemaid turned her head to look at me. ‘I beg you, citizen. Take me to the room. Starve me if you like. But let me spend this night there, where my darling was. Bind my feet by all means, or chain me to the bed. Though I have to warn you, I may need my hands, if I am to find what I am looking for. It may not be obvious to the casual glance…’

‘Tell us what it is, and we will search for it.’ The voice was sharp, but Priscilla had seized the woman by her two bound arms and was jerking her forward and out into the night.

‘You wouldn’t know what you were looking for. I hardly know myself. But I’ll know it when I see it.’ The nurse was on her feet now, and stood there tottering. ‘I may have to wait for daylight to find it, anyway. Though, even then — you understand — I make no promises. If she was abducted, it is a different thing. If anyone but Lavinia made the model in the bed or knotted the cloths to make the rope, then obviously there will be nothing there to find.’ She managed half a shrug. ‘Our best hope, in that case, is that she managed to throw some garment down, in a way that did not alert her kidnappers.’

She was surprisingly tiny now she was upright, no higher than my chest-clasp as she looked up at me, but there was nothing little about the anguish in her eyes. ‘Believe me, citizen. I am as anxious for her safety as you are yourselves. I swear by all the gods — on my own life and Lavinia’s if you wish — that I won’t try to run away.’

‘You will not have the chance. You’ll be guarded anyway.’ There was a muffled commotion in the stable, as I spoke. The door creaked open and a shadowy form appeared, a blacker shape against the darkness of the night. Trullius said something and the figure disappeared again, to return a moment later with a sleeping-mat and what proved to be an unlit taper in its hand.

When Trullius brought the stable-slave over to the light, I got a look at him. He was a young man, tousled and more than half-asleep, but from the look of the brawny muscles in his arms — as he straightened the outer tunic which he’d hurriedly pulled on — he was more than a match for the tiny aging nurse. Even a Druid might think twice before attacking him, I thought, as he pulled out a knife and cut the ropes around the nurse’s legs.

I surrendered the oil-lamp to the lady of the house. She allowed her husband to light the taper from the flame, and she set off towards the kitchen-block, while we filed back through the painted passage and the dining-space into the entrance-way where I’d first been received. This time, however, I was ushered up the stairs.

‘This was Lavinia’s bedroom,’ Trullius said, stopping at the first door on the landing, and hustling the nursemaid roughly into the room beyond. I followed them and had a look around.

There were two beds in there. I should not have been surprised — I’d heard that Audelia and her cousin had shared the room — but I somehow had supposed that they had shared a bed, as people in a guest house generally do. But these were individual, proper sleeping frames, with goatskin mattresses and woven blankets too — though on the bed beside the window-space these had been thrown back to reveal a pile of clothing carefully arranged to look at first glance like a sleeping form. A travelling box, in which the clothes had evidently been packed, was standing empty by the window-space.

The nursemaid saw my glance. ‘That was Lavinia’s, of course. It held her dowry too — though it seems that it has disappeared as well. Through there, do you suppose?’

She nodded to the window-space. The covers from the other bed had been deftly knotted into a sort of rope, secured firmly around the bed-frame at one end, the rest of it still snaking downward towards the inner court.

I walked across to get a better look. The knotted rope extended almost to the ground, but it was not strong enough to take a lot of weight. A supple climber, or a child, might manage to descend. I shook my head and glanced around the room. I wondered anyone would want to run away from here.

There was a handmade carpet on the floor and a wooden chair nearby, with a large pot under it, complete with lid and fresh water in a jug, Whatever the dining arrangements downstairs, this was luxury. No wonder that Cyra and Lavinius had thought it suitable.

Trullius had joined me at the window-space and seemed about to pull the rope inside, but the nursemaid stopped him. ‘Tie my feet again — do anything you like — but let me pull the rope in, so I can see the knots.’

He looked at me. I nodded and we two stepped aside. The slave-boy set the taper down and drew the knife again, cutting the rope-bonds which still bound her wrists. She flexed her hands a moment, and then came across and pulled in the twisted cloth, lingering over every knot as it appeared. As she undid the last of them she shook her head at me. ‘Nothing of interest in that, citizen. I’ll have to look elsewhere. But I’ll see better when the daylight comes.’ She turned to Trullius. ‘If I may use the far bed, you can tie my legs again and seal the shutters if you wish. Not that I could climb out of the window in the dark.’

‘I’ll tie you up all right!’ It was Trullius’s wife appearing in the doorway with the lighted lamp, a hunk of dry bread and a heavy length of chain. ‘You think I’m going to leave you virtually free, after what has happened in this house?’ She thumped the bread down on the chair-seat as she spoke. She turned towards the slave and motioned to the chain. ‘The nursemaid wears a slave-collar with her name on it. Attach this to the back of it and chain her to the bed. Make sure that the screw-link at the end is out of reach. Give her enough slack to reach the pot, of course — I don’t want staining on my mattresses — and she can eat and drink this if she can find it in the dark. If that arrangement meets with your approval, citizen?’ she added in my direction with a sneer.

It was hardly what I would have chosen, but I did not object. Far better to be chained up in a comfortable dry room, with food and drink — however minimal — than to spend a freezing night starving in a draughty ruined kiln. ‘I’ll come back in the morning, then,’ I murmured to the nurse. ‘And hope that you have something to report.’

The slave-woman, who was submitting to the chain, gave me a rueful smile. ‘If I have nothing to tell you in the morning, citizen, do as you wish with me. I will have nothing left to live for, anyway, if my darling’s lost. But I swear by all the gods that I’ll do all I can.’

I nodded. ‘Goodnight then.’ I followed Trullius. He led me into the other attic-room, as the stable-slave spread out his sleeping-mat outside the nursemaid’s door.

I looked around my attic. So this was where Secunda and her husband slept. Priscilla had said that this was her room as a rule, and certainly the accommodation was much less lavish than next door. There was no chair or table, no covering on the floor, and only a crude bolt to latch the door. The bed provided was far more primitive, simple wooden slats and a stuffed straw palliasse, but it was still much more luxurious than my pile of reeds at home. Besides, I was so tired I would have slept on cobblestones. I paused just long enough to unwind my travel-stained toga and pull my sandals off, then — without even waiting to crawl beneath the woven covers on the bed — I lay down on the pillows and was instantly asleep.