‘Why not? The man is trying to choreograph this investigation in a very odd way. Justify his motives.’
‘We already discussed what Faustus is attempting in his role as a magistrate. Just conduct the interview, Albia, and see what you think. Then, if necessary, I will explain the rest.’
Since I had wanted to do the interview anyway, I caved in. May as well be paid for it. I could have asked for a higher fee than normal, but I kept my integrity.
Marcia Balbilla was another member of wealthy plebeian society. She and her husband lived in a big two-storey mansion on the Street of the Plane Trees. She enjoyed river views and the nearby amenity of the old grove of planes. Yesterday evening I had been turned away. Though it was now late afternoon, I thought it was worth trying again for an interview today.
The introductory letter worked, so this time I was admitted. Once in, they kept me waiting. I expected that.
The matron who had lost her maid was in her early thirties, beautifully dressed and bejewelled. Under this flash, she was ordinary. Possibly she knew it. Two surviving maids, undoubtedly part of a much larger complement, accompanied her when she saw me. They were dressed much more plainly and wore no decorations. There was no indication that Balbilla beat them, but they were too subdued for me to tell if they had any character. I was interested in them, because the dead young woman must have been a colleague.
I assumed she had been young, though in fact the two others were no longer girls. As slaves, they were probably starting to hope for their release at thirty.
Marcia Balbilla thought she was conducting the interview, but I had more practice so I managed to steer it my way. While we conversed, she lay gracefully on a couch laden with cushions, while I was stuck on a backless divan. Still, I have no problems with posture and note-taking is easier when you perch on a hard seat.
Marcia had been out with a friend, not previously mentioned in the story as I knew it. Each woman had a maid as chaperone, though they had not taken bodyguards. The party was marching along the Vicus Altus, with the maids behind, where they would not overhear what their mistresses said. All four were well shrouded in stoles to be respectable, which I came to believe was significant.
Ino had let out a scream. Marcia Balbilla and her friend spun around, probably intending to chastise her, only to see the girl floundering. She would have tumbled to the ground had not the other maid grabbed hold of her and kept her upright. Both girls thought someone had banged into Ino from behind, hard, and they were sure it was deliberate. Although there were other people in the street, it was not particularly crowded. All the women decided it must have been a malicious lower-class person’s prank.
Feeling vulnerable, they hurried home. Ino was crying and upset, but there was no reason to expect that she would then be found dead in her cubicle.
Marcia Balbilla had had a stone plaque made as a sweet memento of Ino. She insisted someone fetch it down from the wall (it was quite small) so she could show it to me. I commented on how beautiful the maid had been. Apparently not so beautiful, nor so young, as the portrait on the plaque, but Marcia Balbilla had thought it would be more pleasant to remember her looking soulful and artistic.
‘Tell me, did Ino have a male follower you are aware of?’
‘Certainly not! I never allow anything like that!’
I did persuade the mistress to let me have few quick words with the other maids, who admitted without much pressure that Ino did have a boyfriend. He was a slave in the same household, the husband’s wardrobe keeper, but he had a clear alibi; everyone was able to say he was at home when the street incident happened, and he had done nothing but sob since Ino died.
There had been much mention of Marcia Balbilla’s friend. Both women were senior members of the cult at the Temple of Ceres, Marcia told me; a much older woman was chief priestess though I could tell these two had their eyes on the position. The friend was a wonderful woman. The friend came from an important family of plebeian nobility, very wealthy; a leading figure in the ladies’ cult, she was religiously devoted, and a model of self-sacrificing service to the community. The friend was called Laia Gratiana. I had already met her, the first time I went to the Temple of Ceres. I had thought her a right menace.
I would have to visit the woman, nonetheless. Marcia Balbilla told me her dear cultured religious friend had thought at the time that she glimpsed the person who had bumped into Ino.
‘Did you report this to the vigiles?’
‘Oh no. People like us never have contact with them. Laia Gratiana said she would pass a note to the aediles’ office.’
Great.
So Manlius Faustus had already known everything about this.
I met up with Tiberius at a prearranged rendezvous next
day. I had promised to report back at the Stargazer. When I arrived, the runner was ordering a drink from Junillus. I prepared to interpret, but he seemed to be managing. I was not ready to approve of him just because he could communicate calmly with my deaf cousin.
Junillus must have seen that I was frazzled, because he gave me a hug and then brought me a bowl of pistachios. I kept them on my side of the table, so Tiberius could not reach them.
‘I’m bloody annoyed with you, Tiberius. Would it have hurt you to mention that there was a second high-and-mighty mistress and a second downtrodden maid, and that I would end up having to endure a second interview − with Laia Gratiana?’
He looked surprised. ‘You know her?’
‘We met. I am not going to enjoy this.’
‘Why?’
Although I was gobbling nuts furiously, I screwed up my mouth as if they tasted of aloes. But until I learned the situation here, I held back on too many insults. ‘Not my type.’
I spotted that the runner’s surprise changed to a faint gleam of humour. However, he said nothing.
‘Explain!’ I commanded. As his expression became positively whimsical, I kept nagging: ‘This is ridiculous. Laia Gratiana has enough connections with the aediles to notify them directly of her experience. So why not? What held her back and why doesn’t Faustus simply trot along in person to ask questions? Why involve me?’
‘It is nothing untoward.’
‘So?’
‘He prefers not to interview Laia Gratiana himself.’ Tiberius then owned up, watching my reaction: ‘They have not spoken for years. Laia Gratiana is his ex-wife.’
I admit I laughed.
23
After a pause, Tiberius asked nervously, ‘So are you going to see her?’
‘I would not miss this for the world!’ I would never have asked intimate questions of the aedile himself, but staff can be useful. Many a confidence shared by a slave or freedman has opened up a case, so I pressed Tiberius: ‘Brief me.’
He raised one eyebrow.
‘I need to know what I am walking into, Tiberius. Exactly why won’t Faustus take this statement himself?’ The runner still looked blank. ‘Something odd must have happened. People get divorced all the time, but without being estranged for years. Plebeian plutocrats are a small circle. Every time someone throws a poetry recital, keeping Faustus and Gratiana apart must be an inconvenience to the hostess. Tell me about the marriage and divorce.’
He was scowling so much, I thought he would clam up. ‘This is confidential, Albia.’
‘Do you want me to ask madame herself? What was it – did she sleep with charioteers? Or was it actors and their understudies?’
‘Don’t say that to her!’ He seemed horrified.
‘She’s too prudish to have it suggested?’
‘She is a respectable woman.’
‘Oh I see! So it was him at fault?’ Tiberius remained silent. ‘Something happened. Even my friend Andronicus, who likes to know everything, seems not to know the story. But I can tell he senses that there was a story. He wonders, so I wonder too … Do you know?’ Tiberius nodded slightly. I settled back. I wondered why he came to be favoured with the privileged information. ‘How i
s that? What’s your own background, Tiberius? Did you grow up in the uncle’s household?’
‘No.’
I took a guess. ‘You arrived there along with Faustus? From his parents’ home after they died?’ That was a difference between Tiberius and Andronicus, who seemed to have been a slave belonging to Tullius. ‘When Faustus married, did you move out with him then too?’
‘Where he goes, I go.’ Tiberius suddenly took a breath as if cutting me off from that line of enquiry, then launched into the briefing I had requested. ‘Faustus was married when he was twenty-five, the age for a man to take his place in society. His uncle arranged it, for business and social reasons—’
I chortled. ‘I know how that works: “Young man, it’s time you spawned an heir. Couple up with this woman you have never met, but we owe her father money; she’s a nice sheltered virgin, only twelve years old—” Wonderful beings, the important classes!’
‘Laia Gratiana was at least eighteen.’
‘Then I take back that detail. But the rest holds good!’ Tiberius did not deny it. ‘So Faustus and the imperious Laia were heaved into a union by the puppeteer uncle. What next?’
‘The marriage progressed for some years in a polite fashion.’
‘I note how you phrase that! Children?’
‘No.’
‘Did they share a bedroom? Or have a room each, like the stately rich?’
‘Separate,’ said Tiberius, giving me a look; I ignored the reprimand. ‘But everything that was supposed to happen happened.’
‘Not very spontaneously! When intercourse was wanted, one of them had to make an appointment. I bet I know which one expected to do it. Demanding his rights would be the man’s prerogative … So, which of them looked elsewhere for passion? Who broke the marriage?’
Having posed that critical question, I just sat and let Tiberius struggle with his conscience. He spoke, eventually, as if I had dragged it out of him using the vigiles’ torturer. ‘What happened was entirely the fault of Manlius Faustus.’
He was terse, yet he gave me all I needed. It was an unedifying story. Faustus not only had his uncle looking out for him, but in those days he had attracted the interest of a distinguished man, a decade and a half his senior, who had had a connection with Faustus’ late father and who offered him friendship and patronage. As Tiberius told it, the older man was childless and influential, the younger attractive, talented, a social asset. It was the kind of situation where formal adoption might have been considered. There was even talk of sponsoring Faustus to enter the Senate.
The patron had a much younger, very beautiful wife.
‘Voluptuous?’
‘Free-spirited.’
‘That was what I meant – spilling over the front of provocative frocks.’
‘Not shy,’ conceded Tiberius, in his dour way.
Sometimes, when his patron was away on business, Faustus was entertained at their house by the beautiful wife alone. On the surface, his relationship in his patron’s home was that of a favoured relative, a young cousin or nephew, say, who might come and go without question − though of course such freedom is dangerous. Although his own wife was always made welcome, she did not generally accompany him. Throughout their marriage, she spent much time with her own friends. Too much time, probably. ‘You can guess the rest,’ said Tiberius, his voice dry. ‘One evening when they were alone together, the atmosphere became intense. The beautiful young woman felt unsatisfied by her ageing husband. He loved and admired her—’
‘But rarely made demands in bed?’
‘Who knows? … A younger man had obvious attractions, and maybe the tempted couple even convinced themselves the older man had left them together on purpose.’
‘Who made the move, do you know?’
‘She offered. Faustus took.’
‘So they enjoyed a wild conjunction, during which these two bored, spoiled people were thrilled by the risks involved … And what happened next?’ I asked quietly.
‘Naturally, the liaison was discovered – very soon; barely a week passed from first to last. A slave reported on Faustus to Laia Gratiana. She left him and went back to her father’s house within an hour. Uncle Tullius had to rush in and salvage the situation, at some cost. This was when we had Vespasian as emperor, when affairs were regarded more indulgently than Domitian treats them now; if it happened now, the straying wife and her lover would be prosecuted, lose everything and be exiled. Even at that time, the situation was horrible. A wronged husband is compelled to divorce his wife, as you know.’
‘And once slaves start piping up about adultery, situations get ugly.’
‘As you say. Faustus had wasted his own potential, hurt people terribly, and destroyed two marriages. Worse, he had betrayed a most deserving man, who had given him great friendship.’
‘He did it for love?’
‘No.’
The runner was harsh. He swallowed water, looking as if he had bellyache.
‘I bet she had done it before,’ I mused.
Tiberius seemed intrigued. ‘Possibly … She died. She died in childbirth.’
‘Was Faustus the father?’
‘No. Absolutely not. He never saw her again. It happened a couple of years later.’
‘Some other robust lover! So, Tiberius, what then? Faustus returned to Uncle Tullius in disgrace, having to endure a barrage of blame, I’m sure – especially since the scandal had cost money. He kept his head down. Did what he was told. Knew that any promise or ambition he once possessed had been aborted by his own stupidity … If he’s an aedile he has to be thirty-six now, according to the rules. Has he ever remarried?’
Tiberius shook his head. ‘The man lives with guilt.’
I thought ten years of guilt was no use to anyone. I also realised that even if those events had hit the scandal column of the Daily Gazette, that most disreputable noticeboard in the Forum for the doings of celebrities, I would not have noticed at the time. But it sounded as if everything had been covered up successfully.
Tiberius and I had become downcast. All we had done was discuss this sordid little tale of a young man’s idiocy, a decade ago, but the effect on us was gloomy enough to bring Junillus over, anxious that some worse tragedy had affected us. I reassured him, then got up to go and take Laia Gratiana’s statement. I left Tiberius at the Stargazer; last I saw, Junillus had brought him the draughtboard.
He was not playing. I knew Junillus would have given him a game, or he could have played solitaire. Perhaps the draughtboard was his standard cover when he was on observation.
The runner had told me the address. Laia Gratiana had remarried after her furious split from Faustus, but her next husband died, then her father. She had since moved from what had no doubt been an enormous family home to a lesser, but still large, apartment owned by a brother. It too was on the Street of the Plane Trees, where her friend Marcia lived. Yet more splendid views. Yet more heavy marble tables with gilded capricorn legs. The statuettes were better than at Marcia Balbilla’s house, the frescos not so good. The same fashionable designer had sold both women their wobbly bronze hanging lamps. So that was two homes where oil got spilled on the mosaic below every time the slaves tried filling the reservoirs.
The fact that you know something about someone’s history that could make you feel sorry for them does not inevitably alter your attitude: I still thought Laia Gratiana was a snobbish bitch. For her part, she was interested enough in who I was, and why I was working for the aediles, to remember she had encountered me before. She did not say so; I just saw it in her eyes. I wondered if she knew how rude she had been to me the first time.
I did not ask her anything about her marriage or her ex-husband. I am not stupid.
All the same, this time I took a harder look at her. She appeared to be around my age (though her manner added years); she was my height (less toned); a blonde (natural); with brown eyes (painted, but very subtly). I regret to say, she was decent looking. Knowing that her
ex-husband had been lured astray by a brooch-buster (my husband’s term for big-bosomed), was it significant that Laia Gratiana was very flat-chested? Also key was that Tiberius had told me the woman with whom Faustus had his affair was ‘a free spirit’. That usually means vivacious, witty, and more likely to hang admiringly on a man’s every word than to slap him down. Gratiana was a slapper-down. She could no more curb this habit than avoid believing herself special because of her role in the cult of Ceres.
When I was taken in to see her, an old female slave quietly left the room. Laia Gratiana did not reckon she needed a chaperone or support. She was a powerful character. Everyone around her knew it.
Was she like that when she was first married at eighteen? Or did the shock of her husband’s betrayal toughen her up?
I took out my note tablet and explained my task. ‘My first question is this: Marcia Balbilla said the incident with her maid, Ino, happened in the Vicus Altus. That is some way from here; can you explain why you were there, please?’
With a trace of impatience, Gratiana said, ‘It is on the way back from the Temple of Ceres. Marcia and I regularly walk home if the weather is fine, after we have been attending to cult business. Normally we walk down the Street of the Armilustrium, but that is tediously straight and long. That day, we chose to take a detour through the quieter back streets. So,’ she finished triumphantly, ‘if someone deliberately wanted to attack Ino, he would not have known we would change our usual route. He cannot have been lying in wait – he must have followed us.’
She was sharp. And she did so enjoy pointing this out before I could say it myself.
I sat quiet, making a note of the detail. ‘Tell me about what happened.’
‘Marcia Balbilla must have described it to you.’ Gratiana was a little petulant, annoyed by being visited second.
I stayed calm. ‘She said you saw something.’
‘I think I did.’
‘Even if it happened quickly, any fleeting perception may be helpful.’
‘Well. The maid cried out. Dear Marcia and I at once turned back to see what the matter was and to assist.’ That was not the impression I had gained from dear Marcia; she implied the cult ladies had been annoyed at the girls’ public squealing. ‘My own maid was just catching Ino as she staggered off balance. If somebody pushed her, it must have been extremely hard. Before I went to comfort them, I had the impression I glimpsed a man, with his face hidden as he was turning away from me. I had a momentary sense that he had been involved, that he had just made a movement aimed at Ino.’
The Ides of April: Falco: The New Generation (Falco: The Next Generation) Page 13
