Murder in the Forum (10 page)

I glanced at him sharply. An interesting choice of words, I thought. I said, slowly and firmly, ‘Octavius, I understand that you come from Rome. That it is a big city, and no doubt they do things differently there. But this is Glevum. Here, everyone of importance knows everybody else, and everything unusual is a wonder. Your arrival – as a visitor from Rome – will have been noted, and commented upon, by every pie-seller, amulet-maker and horse-dealer in the city. Just take a look around you.’

Octavius glanced nervously up and down the street, where at this very moment a dozen urchins were ogling us, while a fat peasant woman with a basket of turnips on her back was whispering to a man with a loaded donkey, openly nudging him and nodding in our direction.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Shall I send for the
aediles,
or will you settle for the oatcakes? Before they are completely cold?’

Octavius looked at me sorrowfully. ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that I have little choice.’ He allowed me to steer him round the partition and into the inner workroom, and looked round him in dismay at the tile chips and the half-finished mosaic ‘pattern piece’ which covered half the table. I do not normally receive visitors in those dusty recesses – in fact I do not normally receive visitors at all – but these were special circumstances. Octavius, as I now knew, had a careless tongue and I wanted to get him inside the shop before he got us both arrested.

‘Now then,’ I said, when he was comfortably settled and furnished with a cold oatcake. ‘Perhaps you can tell me what it was that really brought you to Glevum? And don’t tell me that it was merely to visit the tile factories. You followed Perennis Felix, did you not?’

The youth turned as scarlet as his complexion allowed. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

I sighed. Evidently extracting information was going to be hard work. I wished, fleetingly, that I had Marcus with me. One look at those wide purple stripes and aristocratic features, and people are falling over their sandal-straps to furnish information, before he calls on unpleasant official means of whetting their memories for them. It is a system that has worked well for us in the past. Today, however, I was on my own.

Or almost. Junio stepped forward with a beaker of water for me and our best drinking cup full of watered wine for the Roman. As he handed me mine, he murmured deferentially, ‘Forgive me, master, that there are no honey-cakes for you this morning.’

I looked at him in astonishment. I rarely buy honey-cakes, though the oatcake-baker sells them.

Junio shot me a warning glance, and continued smoothly, ‘The vendor told me she had sold them all. A Roman lady arrived last night, after the city gates were shut. She was obliged to stay at a lodging house just outside the walls.’

I nodded. There are a number of these, some official, some private and none of them very salubrious, making a living from unfortunate travellers who find themselves benighted outside the walls. ‘And?’ I enquired.

‘The establishment does not offer food, but the owner recommended these honey-cakes and the lady sent out this morning and bought half a score of them. By the time I got there, there were none left. I am afraid you lost your honey-cakes to the daughter of Perennis Felix.’

Old gods of tree and stone, rain blessings on the boy! He had found a way to alert me to his news without transgressing the social code which forbids a slave to interrupt his master. It was significant news, too. One glance at Octavius’s face was enough to tell me that. He had turned pinker than a skinned swan on a skillet. A little taper lighted in my brain.

‘This would be Phyllidia, I presume?’

The skinned swan turned pinker than ever.

‘So she was the reason you fled from the banquet – no, don’t deny it, you muttered her name as you left.’

Octavius flushed deeper yet, but his answer was spirited enough. ‘What matter if I did? I was breaking no law. Phyllidia hoped to arrive yesterday, but she was so late that I had given her up. As it seems that Felix had done too: he said at the banquet that she was on her way.’

I remembered Marcus’s description of the girl. ‘A face like a cavalry horse and a whine like a donkey.’ Yet something in the way in which Octavius spoke her name gave me the distinct impression that he had a much more flattering picture of her.

I made a stab at the truth. ‘So you had arranged to meet Phyllidia?’ He did not deny it, so I pressed my advantage. ‘Did her father know?’

‘Her father? By Hercules . . .’ It was as if I had lifted the boards from a sluice-gate. Octavius had previously said little, but now the words poured out in such a torrent that I found myself leaning backwards. He swore by all the gods of heaven and earth – and a few from the underworld as well – that her father was a tyrant, a monster in human form, heartless, unfeeling, merciless. ‘If he is dead, so be it,’ he finished angrily. ‘It was no more than he deserved.’ He bit savagely into his oatcake.

In general I received the feeling that young Octavius did not altogether care for Perennis Felix. ‘I think, citizen,’ I said slowly, ‘that you had better tell me this story from the beginning. How did you come to meet Phyllidia?’ It was a reasonable question. The daughters of Roman dignitaries do not normally consort with plebeian tile-makers.

Octavius shrugged. ‘There was work to be done on the roof of one of Felix’s villas. It is a few miles from Rome, not far from where I have my factory. I brought some tiles. Felix was not there, though I had devoted half a day to travelling at his request, but his daughter was. She received me kindly – very kindly. I think that she was glad to talk to someone. Do you know, citizen, the poor girl was almost a prisoner in that house. Felix dragged her away from the city, where she had at least acquaintances and diversions.’

‘After the fall of her relative the Prefect?’

If he was surprised at my deduction he did not betray it. ‘So he claimed. But I do not think Felix was ever in danger. He is too much a private favourite with the Emperor, and more interested in money than politics. Commodus would not willingly have lost him. He supplied too many boys and wines, and trinkets for that concubine of his.’

I nodded. Marcus had said the same. Felix would have enjoyed finding the boys, I thought. ‘Phyllidia did not like the country?’

Octavius’s face darkened. ‘If she had a life like any other young woman, she might have liked it well enough. But her father prevented it. After her mother died she had no companions, no diversions, not even proper attendants, only an old crone of a handmaiden who reported her every move. Felix would not even permit her an amanuensis to write letters to her friends, and she could not do it herself. She never had an education – though the old monster could well have afforded it, even for a daughter.’

‘So, you and she became friends?’

‘Much more than friends. If she had been a commoner, or a slave, I would have married her. I almost had hopes that Felix would countenance a match. He has tried for years to find a husband for her, without success, and she is no longer young. Even a marriage to me would have been something. I made an approach to him.’

‘But he would not agree?’

‘Agree? He beat her when he heard of it, threw me out and used his influence almost to ruin me. And yet I could not see what more he hoped for. Phyllidia is a good-natured girl, but she is no beauty and she lacks the sparkle and education necessary for patrician society. Thanks to her father, she cannot even play an instrument or recite the poets. She might have married once, when she was younger, but the suitor wanted a huge dowry, and her father was too miserly to meet it. I would have taken her with none.’

He said it with such simplicity that I was touched. I too, had once loved a woman in that way, although my Gwellia had been skilled, and such a beauty that a dozen men would have offered for her hand, whether she brought them land or horses or not. Besides, I reminded myself, this interest was not wholly selfless. Dowry or no dowry, Phyllidia would presumably inherit a sizeable fortune one day.

In fact, she was probably about to do so. I looked at Octavius with interest, but he was still grumbling about Felix.

‘Some
auspex
had told him that Phyllidia would one day be wealthy and wed, and for once her father decided to believe the auguries. He tried to make a match for her with a dozen men, all rich and in their dotage – all seeking favour with the Perennis family, of course. But Phyllidia learned to be so stupid and sullen that even they refused her in the end. It was the only way she could protect herself. And then there was this plot to marry her to Marcus. The Emperor had approved it himself, Phyllidia said, and though she wept and pleaded, Felix was implacable.’

This was a new view of Phyllidia. Marcus would hardly be flattered either, I thought.

‘Felix arranged a coach and a chaperon and paid an armed
custos
to accompany them. There was nothing Phyllidia could do. She was just another consignment of goods, she said, being delivered to the buyer. Felix was to go ahead to Britain – he had some private business in Eboracum – and she was to follow and meet up with him in Glevum.’

At the mention of the northern
colonia
my spine prickled. I had learned, not long ago, of a Celtic slave called Gwellia living in Eboracum. I said, ‘So you followed her on horseback?’ I could understand the impulse. Given the faintest opportunity, I would make the long and dangerous journey to Eboracum – and I could not even be sure that this Gwellia was my wife.

Octavius nodded. ‘We were to make one more appeal to Felix, and if that failed, we had agreed . . . we threatened . . . But it is of no importance now. Her father is dead. And nobody poisoned him. So I must find Phyllidia and tell her the news. She has probably jumped to conclusions and is worrying about me.’

‘Octavius,’ I said, ‘you are a freeman and a citizen, and I cannot detain you. But I will give you a warning. Be careful that tongue of yours does not betray you. There are sharp minds in Glevum, and Commodus will not be happy at this death. The authorities would gladly find a culprit. I do not know how you planned to poison Felix, though I can well see why. I sincerely hope for your sake that you did not succeed.’

Octavius stared at me. ‘But . . . you said that Felix had merely choked.’

‘I said that he appeared to choke, and for the moment I am prepared to let the public believe it. But there are some indications, citizen, that it may not be true.’

His stare widened ‘You mean, he may have been poisoned after all? Dear gods!’ Octavius put down his drinking vessel, and before either of us could stop him he had bolted for a second time out of the door.

Junio made to go after him, but I restrained him. ‘Let him go, Junio. He has caused enough speculation in the street by calling here already. He will not get far.’

Junio picked up the drinking cup. ‘You think he murdered Felix?’

I sipped at my water. ‘I do not know. I think he fears he may have done. Either that, or he thinks he knows who did. But it is fruitless to call him back. He will tell us no more for the moment, and anyway, this way I can finish his oatcake and’ – I gestured towards the drinking cup – ‘you may drink the rest of that if you wish.’

Junio was raised as a slave in a Roman household, and he actually likes watered wine in the morning.

‘Master,’ Junio ventured, putting down the drinking vessel, ‘it is not for me to suggest it, but Marcus . . .’

I got to my feet. ‘I had not forgotten,’ I said. ‘I am to attend on him this morning. If you had awakened me earlier I would have done so by now. And then the arrival of Octavius delayed me further. So you can fetch me my toga, and help me to get ready. Marcus will be impatient as it is.’

It was unfair, of course. It was hardly Junio’s fault that I had slept long after sun-up, and I regretted my rebuke. But he was grinning cheerfully as he brought in my toga and began to shake it vigorously to expel the dust. ‘I have done my best with this, master, brushed it and hung it from the window to freshen it in the air, but I fear this toga really needs a visit to the fuller’s.’

I stood up and he began the laborious business of folding me into it.

‘Will you go directly to Marcus, or will you try to find Phyllidia first?’

He was reading my mind. I had been asking myself the same question. ‘I must wait upon my patron. Though, since his orders are to meet him at Gaius’s house, I suppose it is possible that I may do both things at the same time. It would be natural for her to come to the house where her father is.’

‘Even,’ Junio said impudently, ‘when he is “already” dead. That was an interesting remark, did you not think?’ He grinned at me. This was a game we sometimes played in my efforts to train Junio in other skills than mosaic-making.

I adjusted my clasp. ‘You noticed that?’

‘I noticed that you noticed. And that you were suspicious of his early morning visit to the stables. And that made me think. He didn’t go to hire a horse, or he would have had one now. So he must have had some other reason for going there. To meet someone, perhaps, or to find out what horses had been liveried there overnight. He did not go to interfere with the animals – he spoke to the stable-boy.’

I nodded my approval.

‘Then I remembered what the cake-seller had said, and it seemed to make sense. He was expecting Phyllidia and went to see if her horses had arrived. He may even have arranged to meet her there, though I do not suppose he would confess as much to us.’ Junio had been straightening my toga as he spoke, and now tucked the folded ends neatly into my belt. ‘There, now I think you will pass muster with your patron. Unless you wish me to trim your chin? Your beard is reappearing.’

‘There is not time this morning, I am late already. Fetch me my cloak.’

This time when he brought both cloaks I did not dissuade him, and when I set off a few moments later, scurrying as fast as my toga would allow, Junio was with me, following at my heels.

The town was already abuzz with the news. The words ‘banquet’, ‘Perennis’ and ‘dead’ seemed to issue from every street stall and soup kitchen. Huddles of citizens whispered together in doorways, while an enterprising street vendor was doing a brisk trade in selling long strips of dark cloth which could be tacked around the toga as mourning bands. Even a skinny peasant, touting his pathetic bundles of firewood, who had probably never seen a banquet nor heard of the late Prefect of Rome, offered to tell us ‘the latest tidings’ in the hope of earning a
quadrans.