I nodded my approval and we hurried on, past the forum and the basilica (where the repairs which Lupus had resented so bitterly were still in progress), through the bleating, lowing, squealing chaos of the meat market and the accompanying fruit and vegetable carts, and so down to the fuller’s shop, next door to the baths.
I wanted to visit the baths, too, as part of my enquiries, but it was still too early: at this hour only women were admitted. That visit would have to wait until we had been to the laundry shop. I thrust back the entrance curtain and strode in.
The owner was out when we arrived, and the work floor was manned by three scrawny, underfed individuals in tattered tunics and bare feet, trampling garments in the cleaning tanks.
I went over to them and they stopped at my approach. Supporting one’s weight on a pair of stout handles while one treads wet clothes into fuller’s clay for hours is a backbreaking business, and they were obviously glad of a moment to rest their weary arms and legs. They looked at me curiously, their pale faces damp with sweat and their overdeveloped thighs glistening with moisture.
‘You had a customer, yesterday,’ I began. ‘From the house of Quintus Ulpius?’
They looked at each other nervously. I took out a purse and began fingering a five-as coin in an ostentatious manner.
One of the treaders gave me a grim, knowing smile. ‘Two customers,’ he began, but he was interrupted by the appearance of a languid youth in an elegant coloured robe. The owner’s son, clearly.
‘Can I assist you, citizen?’
Mentally I consigned him to Pluto. Any information was likely to cost me a great deal more than a few asses now. Unless I could somehow persuade him of my importance.
I put on my best formal manner. ‘I am a guest in the house of Quintus Ulpius the decurion,’ I said. ‘I believe there were some clothes left here for cleaning yesterday.’ He was looking at me suspiciously, so I invented an excuse for my visit. ‘I suppose they are not ready for collection yet?’
It seemed to work. The youth flushed with consternation. ‘I regret, citizen, they are far from ready. It takes days, you know, to get these things done properly. The young man’s toga is still bleaching on the frames, and the other garments have not yet been laundered at all.’
‘How far have they progressed?’ I said, imitating Marcus’s peremptory manner as best I could. ‘Where are they?’
‘Why, here, citizen, I will lead the way,’ he said, his manner all abject apology. He could not, however, quite disguise his alarm and impatience. He turned to the treaders. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? The return of Hadrian? Get on with your work.’
I felt a twinge of regret. My enquiry was unreasonable – no one could fuller garments in a day – but the poor fellows would feel the lash of his tongue when I had gone, if not a lashing of a more tangible kind. However, I followed him into the adjoining cell where the wicker bleaching frames stood. A number of garments were already set out to whiten in the lime fumes.
Maximilian’s toga was indeed among them – instantly recognisable among the spotless white of its neighbours. However, the treatment was already having its effect on the stained cloth. There were the traces of one or two dark marks visible upon it, but nothing more.
‘You have almost removed the stains?’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘What were they this time? Wine again, I imagine?’
The youth was already ahead of me. ‘I wish I could tell you, citizen, but when the slave brought it in we paid no particular attention. Maximilian is always sending wine-stained togas to be cleaned. We simply washed and bleached it as usual. We did not know then that the decurion was dead. I was shocked when I heard about the stabbing – the household has sent its linen here for years.’ He looked at me with ghoulish relish. ‘You think the stains might have been blood, citizen?’
‘It is possible,’ I said. ‘Maximilian went in to see his father’s body.’
‘Ah.’ Once the suggestion of scandal was removed, the youth’s interest was deader than Quintus. ‘If we had noticed that, we would have soaked it in salt to remove the stain. As we are doing with the lady’s gown.’
I could not have been more surprised if Jupiter himself had suddenly appeared in a clap of thunder.
‘The lady’s gown?’ That was a false move. If I was supposed to be here officially, I should have known what laundry had been sent.
The youth, however, misinterpreted. ‘Do not concern yourself, citizen. Everything is accounted for. There were two garments sent here, naturally: the amethyst-coloured stola and a lilac shift. What I meant to say was that only the stola had blood on it.’
My mind was still reeling from the implications of this – there had been no stains on that stola when Julia greeted us yesterday – and I could think of nothing to say. I must have looked so startled that I was in danger of making the youth suspicious of my authority, but Junio came to my rescue. ‘You are soaking it, you say? I thought you said that you had not yet begun to launder the lady’s garments?’
I sent up mental thanks to my private gods. Junio had avoided the danger of non-cooperation neatly by diverting the fellow’s attention to an inconsistency in his own account of things. I caught my servant’s eye and gave him an approving wink.
The fuller’s son was tripping over his tunic hems in his desire to propitiate. ‘Indeed, citizen,’ he said, addressing himself to me alone, ‘I did not make myself clear. We have only just begun to soak it, so it has not been put into the tubs. I am sorry, citizen, perhaps we should have made a start on it before, but we were busy and these were not the . . .’ he hesitated, ‘the kind of stains we sometimes see on female dress, and which we always deal with at once. There were only small splashes of blood, on the front of the garment, and only on the stola, as I say. There was nothing on the under-tunic at all.’
It is a long time since I was a married man, and even then my Gwellia was discreet. It took me some moments to perceive what he meant. When I did understand, I felt myself colour with confusion. Junio, who must have received a biological education from somewhere, had turned the colour of carmine, but the youth himself looked comparatively unembarrassed. Presumably such considerations are commonplace if one works in a fuller’s shop.
‘Come and see for yourself, citizen.’ He led the way back into the main workshop. One of the workers, I noticed, was now taking garments from the rinsing tubs and hanging them on wooden slats to dry, while the other two struggled with the screws on the heavy flattening press, to drive out creases from the previously dried items from the rack. The exhortation to work faster had obviously been taken to heart.
The youth stopped before a pottery basin containing a thick salty solution. The top part of a garment was half submerged in it. ‘Here is the over-gown I spoke of,’ he said, lifting it out, dripping, with a pair of wooden tongs.
I recognised it, without surprise, as the stola which Julia had been wearing the day before. It had been rubbed with salt to remove the stains, but the tell-tale splash marks were still evident. One, indeed, on the underside of the wide sleeve had so far escaped the fuller’s attentions. There was no doubt about it: it was blood.
I caught Junio’s eye, and he gave me a significant look. I knew what he was thinking. Lupus had been detained in the attics for less. And there had been no stains on this stola when Julia met us yesterday.
The young man saw the stain that I was looking at and immediately began to apologise again. That mark would be dealt with presently, he protested; with such fine cloth it was better to soak a little at a time. I noticed the poisonous look which he aimed at his assistants, however. Free-men labourers or slaves, I wondered? The former, probably: they wore no brands or fetters, and no slave tags round their necks. Whatever they were, they must have hated me. I was heartily glad I was not one of them.
‘And the lilac shift?’ I demanded, with a return to my peremptory manner.
The youth nodded. ‘That, citizen, was hardly dirty; it cannot have been worn more t
han a dozen times. I wonder the lady thought to have it laundered at all, and did not merely have her maids sponge it with vinegar and milk and lay it on the grass. But I suppose she felt the need to clean it thoroughly, since I presume she was wearing it when she first saw her husband dead. I have known such things happen before, as if we could wash away memories.’ He favoured me with an understanding smile.
I nodded grimly. The youth, in fact, spoke more truly than he knew. If that was Quintus’s blood on her bodice, and I believed it was, Julia would have wanted the shift sent to the fuller’s at all costs. For when, exactly, had she managed to get herself spattered so?
I might have pressed him further, but our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a fat, florid man in a spotless tunic and a bad temper. It was the owner, clearly, and judging by the way he was scowling suspiciously at us, he was more likely to demand answers than offer them.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there is nothing to be gained by staying here, we have other business in the town. I will bid you good day.’
‘But citizen,’ the youth said plaintively. ‘The household account! Quintus Ulpius has not paid us since the Ides, and his son has had several garments cleaned since then.’ He gestured to a space on the wall where various accounts had been roughly scratched in chalk. Maximilian, I noted, had run up a sizeable sum in Quintus’s name.
And now I was expected to pay it, and I had no money in my purse. I thought quickly, and found a solution. ‘The testament will be read this afternoon in the forum. Present yourself among his debtors then.’
The young man nodded, and even the older man’s scowl lifted. ‘Ah yes, of course! And even if we get no payment then, no doubt Maximilian will be able to meet his own bills in future. Thank you for having the courtesy to call and tell us, citizen.’ The fuller looked at my toga thoughtfully. ‘And if you should ever require our services yourself, you will find our rates as cheap as anyone’s. We could bring that toga up nicely, with a little care.’
I went out of the shop feeling peculiarly humbled.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Well, master,’ Junio said, as soon as we were in the street again, ‘that was an interesting visit. What, if anything, do you deduce from that?’
We were dodging between the wheels of ox carts and I stood aside, under the portico of the baths, to answer his question.
‘What do you think I deduce?’ I said wryly. ‘Julia has been lying to us, obviously. Marcus will take that badly.’ In fact, I was ashamed to find how badly I was taking it myself. Julia was a beautiful and wealthy lady, and however much I admired her independent spirit – and her more obvious charms – it was not up to me to be swayed by that and decide that she was automatically innocent. Those bloodstains were certainly suspicious. ‘Pluto take her, and the whole affair!’ I said savagely. I must have sounded harsher than I meant. Junio looked dismayed, and a passing bather, going into the building with his slaves, looked at me in surprise. I regretted my outburst instantly. ‘So, what do you deduce yourself?’
Junio gave me a doubtful look, but he answered the question soberly. It was the game we sometimes played, having him predict my conclusions, but it had a purpose: it not only taught him to reason clearly, but it often helped me to see things in a new light. ‘Certainly the lady did not get those stains from putting powder on her cheeks. Could they be from Sollers’s treatment, do you think? Did he bleed her, for instance?’
I shook my head dubiously. ‘I do not think so. The treatment he described to me did not involve bleeding the patient, and I think he would have mentioned it if it had. In any case, he is practised in the art. If he did bleed her, he would not have splashed her over-tunic in that way. And it cannot be accidental bleeding. Sollers favours gentle methods. My owner’s first wife was treated for childlessness, and during her treatment her cries used to petrify the household. They gave her fearsome fumigation, till she sobbed with inner scalding from the vapours, but even then I do not recall hearing that the treatment drew blood.’
‘Of course,’ Junio said suddenly, ‘Julia may not have been wearing the stola when she went to see Sollers. We know she went to her room to beautify herself. Perhaps she changed there into the Grecian coat you tell me she was wearing later. It might have made the treatment easier.’
It was an obvious possibility once he had suggested it, and I rewarded him with a smile. ‘Well reasoned, Junio.’ I refused to admit, even to myself, how much my pleasure was due to the fact that I could now find an explanation which left Julia innocent. I also refused to contemplate what I already knew – that she had been in the kitchens the night before, and could easily have tampered with the food. Julia would never have tried to poison me, I reasoned. If anything, she seemed to be drawn to intellect, and to find me flatteringly attractive.
(Foolish, I told myself. However warm and intimate her smiles, Julia would never have time for a humble pavement-maker – she belonged to men of substance and standing. And to Mutuus, some inner voice prompted hopefully – but I quelled it at once.)
All the same, Junio had a point. If Julia had taken off her robe, and left it unattended while she went to consult Sollers, then anyone could have taken it from her room. It was unlikely, but possible all the same. Maximilian, for example, had visited her room by his own admission. Perhaps he tried to implicate her by staining the stola with blood.
I was so pleased with this hypothetical solution that I felt positively benign. ‘I must find a moment to ask Sollers what she was wearing at the consultation,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, I see the baths are opening for male customers. I think I can afford a quadrans to go in.’
Junio gave me an impudent grin. ‘Going to indulge yourself, then, master? Do you wish me to go and fetch a towel and strigil for you, so that you can bathe?’
I thought about that for a moment. Allowing Junio to leave me unattended would cost me an extra as or two. Without him I should have to pay one of the attendants to oil my back, and another to watch my garments in the changing room. There is a merry little trick which is often played upon unwary bathers in Glevum: itinerant fraudsters come to the baths in old tunics, and leave wearing someone else’s new one. I did not imagine Corinium was any different, and my wardrobe was not so great that I could afford to take the risk.
On the other hand, I wanted to discover, if I could, exactly what Maximilian had been up to the day before. He had come here, I was fairly sure of that, because he had been attended by four of his father’s slaves. But the public baths are places for meeting people as much as for performing ablutions. I was particularly interested to know if Maximilian had spoken to anyone, and if so, what he had said about the day’s events.
‘Towel, strigil and oil, if you can find some,’ I said to Junio. ‘When you return, look for me on the stone benches outside the warm pool. Tell the attendant you have come for me and then he should not charge you to enter, but here is a quadrans for you, just in case. You can take the wine and bread back to the house for Rollo when you go.’
‘And I will inform the funeral guild for slaves,’ Junio suggested. ‘The chief slave told me where to find the house.’
I nodded. ‘And . . . Junio?’
‘Master?’
I took out a little money and gave him my purse. ‘Look after this for me.’ I dropped a coin in his palm. ‘And here is the money for a honey cake for yourself. I think that you have earned it this last hour.’
He gave me a huge grin and disappeared into the crowd before I could change my mind. I watched him until he was out of sight, then paid my quadrans and went inside.
I love the public baths. Like underfloor heating, they are one of the best things the Romans ever brought with them. Of course, I am rarely in a position to enjoy them – not because of the entry price; baths rarely cost more than a tenth of an as even in the most expensive towns – but because in the ordinary way I have business to attend to. People like Quintus may attend to their affairs while sitting in the hot room with thei
r friends, but a man who lays pavements cannot do it at a distance. My ablutions normally consist of the kind of minimal rinse and oiling I had received this morning.
It was with some anticipation, then, that I took off my toga and tunic and left them on the stone shelf in one of the little alcoves in the changing room, under the eye of a disreputable-looking attendant, who looked at my as coin with disdain. A man in a toga, his demeanour seemed to say, should be more generous with his tips. I had intended to ask the fellow about Maximilian, but it was clear that any gossip from this source would have to be bought, so I left my precious clothes with him, together with a veiled promise that there would be a further tip if I returned to find them intact.
That brought a sullen smile to his face, and I left him to it and went into the warm pool where I was soon soaking myself luxuriously. The room was disappointingly empty, however, since it was just past noon and few of the male customers had yet arrived. I would have to gain my information, if any, on my way back from the hotter sections. If necessary, I would have to bribe the youth guarding the tunics, although somehow I didn’t trust him. Cloakroom attendants are often casual opportunists, like the boys who offer to hold your horses in the street, rather than sober servants of the baths, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that I had seen this one somewhere before. Remembering the problems with missing tunics at Glevum, I even got up and gazed at him through the intervening arch. However, he was sitting on a stone bench looking bored, and my clothes were still clearly visible where I had left them, so I went back to my bathe.
I stayed for a little in the warm steam of the tepidarium, and then, as there was still no sign of Junio, paid the attendant for a phial of oil and went – perfumed but still dripping – into the dry heat of the laconicum.
It is not, in general, my preferred routine, insofar as I can be said to have a routine at all in a public bathhouse. When I go, I usually prefer the hot steam room, but if Quintus was to bequeath a new caldarium to the populace, it followed that the present one was less than satisfactory, so I chose the drier alternative. I sat for a few moments, feeling the heat opening my pores and making the oil run in little rivulets on my skin, but I am no Roman, and I cannot sustain those temperatures for long. I was about to return to conditions where I was less likely to sizzle, when the inner door opened and the man who had passed us on the entrance steps came in. He splashed a little oil on himself, as I have seen cooks baste a chicken, and sat down with care on the marble seat.
A Pattern of Blood Page 15
