A Pattern of Blood

by Rosemary Rowe

  Maximilian struggled out of his grasp, and Sollers, with a swift movement, whipped up his other hand and seized the knife. I ducked aside as he brought it down and the blade brushed my cheek. I felt the rush of it, and saw blood on the blade, but there was no pain.

  He raised the knife again. The soldiers were now storming down the bank, but I knew with a terrible certainty that they would be too late for me. And there was no hope from Maximilian. He was sitting on the grass, whimpering like a child.

  Sollers had seized my toga now, and his grip was like an iron band. I felt, rather than saw, the blade flash down and rip apart the cloth under my arm. Again, if I had not moved in time I would have been a dead man. But I am old, and he was strong. I could not keep this up much longer.

  Something small and determined caught him round the legs. Junio has not much weight but his teeth are sharp, and he had the advantage of surprise. Sollers stepped backwards in alarm, and his foot found the hole in the culvert. His leg crumpled under him, and he toppled into the stream with a cry.

  By the time the soldiers had marched him back to Corinium his foot was swollen like a pig’s bladder.

  They locked him in the attics. No blankets or bread and cheese for him. The soldiers had bound his hands and wrists, and they threw him down on the mattress and left him there, while they sent out to find Marcus who was still wandering aimlessly in his litter somewhere, since he had no idea of what direction we had taken.

  Myself, I went to Maximilian’s apartment. It did not take me long to find what I sought, roughly concealed under the floorboards. A small drawstring pouch of leather, slashed around the neck. I took it up and put it in my toga. I would show it to Marcus when they brought him home.

  In fact, he arrived shortly afterwards of his own accord, cold and cross but sober. One of the watch had told him of our return. He arrayed himself for the funeral and sent for me at once in the study.

  It was strange, being there again as the lamps were lit, while outside in the courtyard the funeral procession was gathering. We stood at the door and watched the first part of the procession assemble: Quintus, resplendent on his bier, with the torch-bearers each holding his flaming fax, and the professional mourners forming up behind.

  Marcus looked at me. ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you going to explain this to me? I assume you must be right to accuse Sollers, or he would not have tried to abduct Maximilian and kill you, but I confess I do not understand it at all. And what is that you have in your hand?’

  I put it on the table. ‘It is the purse that was stolen from Quintus, Excellence. I found it just now, in Maximilian’s room.’

  He looked at me coldly. ‘Is that important? I suppose Maximilian hid it there, after the robbery.’

  ‘On the contrary, Excellence. Maximilian had no idea it was there. He didn’t care who searched his room. I’m convinced that Sollers put it there, and invited me to find it. It is the final piece of evidence against him.’

  ‘Where did Sollers get it from?’

  ‘From the soothsayer, I imagine. Maximilian gave it to her to get rid of it. You should have seen how he blanched when Sollers threw him a similar one, earlier.’

  Marcus looked stony. ‘Pavement-maker,’ he said, ‘are you going to explain this to me? And quickly? I am supposed to attend a funeral. In an official capacity. Julia has asked me – as her sponsor – to make an oration. The musicians are already tuning up their instruments.’ He sounded both pompous and impatient. My patron was not easy to talk to in this mood. ‘So tell me, why should a doctor, who has every chance to kill a man discreetly, suddenly plunge a vulgar dagger into his victim’s back? I should have expected Sollers, of all people, to be subtle.’

  I said humbly, ‘Exactly, Excellence. And that of course is the answer. Sollers relied on anyone of intelligence to think the same. And he could always point it out himself. Because he had such perfect opportunities to kill his patient in other ways, it was absurd that he should stab Quintus so crudely. That was exactly what Sollers intended us to think. It probably was the most subtle way of all.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He hoped, of course, that blame would fall on Maximilian. He had discovered that Maximilian arranged the first attack. We were supposed to find the “proof”, and if we made enquiries we would learn the truth – Maximilian could hardly disprove that, since it was true. And then, of course, it would seem that Maximilian did the second stabbing too. Sollers did all he could to have Maximilian accused, and he might have succeeded, too, except that foolish Lupus wandered into the reception room and got Quintus’s blood on his sleeve.’

  We were interrupted by a howling wail. The front gates opened and the pall-bearers took up the litter on their shoulders. The instruments struck up dolefully. The procession had begun.

  ‘You had better go, Excellence.’

  ‘In a moment,’ Marcus said. ‘They can’t start without me. I want to understand. When did you begin to suspect?’

  ‘Sollers suggested the solution himself. Sollers said that perhaps Maximilian’s crassness was a bluff. Maximilian did not have the intellect to bluff like that, but Sollers did. Who was more obvious than Sollers, when you consider it? He was in the ante-room. He arranged that the daggers should be placed on the table – where of course he could easily obtain them. Who suggested that the last two clients should be sent away so that Quintus could “rest”? Sollers. Who sent away the servants from the room? Sollers. Who had blood upon his clothes even before he examined the corpse? Sollers. I even mentioned it to him. But he had bled Quintus earlier, so he had an answer.’

  ‘When he bled Quintus, he had him alone in the room. Why didn’t he kill him then?’

  ‘Because then it would have been clear who’d done it. But he was preparing for the murder, even then. By bleeding Quintus he drew off a lot of blood, so that there was much less spurting later. It is a well-known medical trick. He described it to us himself. In fact, I think Quintus was being bled when he died.’

  ‘Again?’ Marcus was surprised.

  ‘Think. Quintus had his tunic disarranged. His shoulder and his arm were bare and his back exposed. Why would an attacker do that? Yet why would Quintus do it for himself? Then yesterday, when Julia was being cupped, I understood. He had bared his arm to have his doctor cup him. I saw Julia do the same.’

  ‘If Sollers was applying the bleeding-cup, how could he stab Quintus at the same time?’

  ‘With his other hand. We knew the blow was dealt left-handedly. Sollers is perfectly capable of that. He tried to do it to me. Again, I should have seen it earlier. Surgeons are ambidextrous – Julia pointed that out. He used the direction of the thrust to point to Maximilian. I almost fell for it.’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘When did he do all this? Sollers started giving Julia her treatment when Maximilian was still with his father. By the time the treatment was over, Quintus was dead. Julia told us that. You do not mean to suggest that she was lying?’

  ‘Oh, yes, she was. And that deflected me, although it was not you and I she set out to deceive. She left us, heard the quarrel and went back to her room, you will remember. Someone – she thought that it was Flavius or his messenger – came to her door and asked if she was there. She told her maids to say that she was not.’

  ‘Yes?’ Marcus was impatient.

  ‘But the message was not from Flavius. We know that he was in the front courtyard at the time. It was Maximilian who went to look for Julia – Rollo saw him do it. But her maids informed him that she wasn’t there. So Maximilian believed it. He went back to his apartments to search for something else to pay the bath attendant with, and then came to speak to us. While he was doing that, Sollers murdered Quintus Ulpius.’

  ‘But when Julia came out of her room, the quarrel was still in progress.’

  ‘Who said so? Sollers, again. Sollers, who had just come from Quintus’s bedchamber carrying a bowl of blood – the same blood he had been letting when Quintus died. He must have been appal
led to meet with Julia – he thought that she was safely engaged in receiving us. But he is a clever man. He turned the thing to his advantage. A medicus is the one man who can carry bowls of blood without suspicion. Imagine the cool composure of a man who can persuade a wife to offer as a sacrifice the blood he has just spilled in killing her husband.’

  Marcus gulped. ‘Great Mercury!’

  ‘Or Great Minerva, in this case,’ I said grimly. ‘Sollers even persuades Julia to wash the bowl, as part of the ceremony – thus destroying the evidence – and manages to splash her clothes with blood. Of course, once it is known that Quintus is dead, she is terrified that someone will see the stains and make a connection. She actually begs Sollers to keep silence. Even then he is clever. He appears to give her an alibi, by telling us about the treatment – which incidentally gives him an alibi, too.’

  Marcus shook his head disbelievingly. ‘And then she uses the bowl for funeral decorations?’

  ‘I think that might have been her own idea. Sollers was only concerned to move it from the reception room. He was in too much haste and did not strike quite true. He knew that Quintus was only dying, and was not yet dead, but he dared not stay to strike again. So he took the bowl away. If Quintus found some dying strength – as in fact he did, since he crawled as far as the door – without the bowl he could not summon help. I should have spotted that at once.’

  There was a silence while Marcus digested this. In the courtyard the dancers were performing their ritual gyrations, while the mourners, with garlands on their brows, formed up to take their place in the procession. Maximilian was there: I saw him in the torchlight, his toga still stained with his own blood. Julia, in a litter, looking pale. It had been decided not to tell her about Sollers until after the ceremony. Others were appearing in the courtyard. I saw Flavius follow the procession, with Mutuus at his side. Lupus came to join them, but Mutuus turned pointedly away. Poor Lupus.

  Marcus was watching them too. He turned to me again. ‘When did you know that things had not happened in the order we were told?’

  ‘When I heard about that bowl of blood. Sollers told Julia that he had just finished bleeding Quintus when Maximilian came. Yet Mutuus told us that Quintus had already called his slaves back and was ready to resume work when Maximilian interrupted him. Sollers would hardly have left blood and cupping bells in the room while Quintus was entertaining clientes. That was when I began to wonder if he could have cupped him twice. And then, of course, things fell into place.’

  Marcus looked at me approvingly. ‘Little escapes you, old friend.’

  ‘In fact, Excellence, I am ashamed to recognise how many things I did miss. Sollers knew that Quintus was threatening to disinherit his son. No one else knew that. He must have been listening, in the ante-room. He was there when Maximilian pushed past him, the slaves told us so. Yet later, there he was in the rear courtyard. How did he get there? He did not pass us in the atrium, and there is no other route from the front garden except through the room where Quintus was. Besides, Quintus himself told us. When he was crawling, dying, to the door, he was not calling Sollers, he was naming him. I should have seen that long ago.’

  Marcus dropped his head into his hands. ‘And Rollo?’ was all he said.

  ‘That was an accident,’ I said. ‘Sollers meant to poison me. I suspected another hand in it, at the time. I reasoned, as Sollers said, that murderers often follow a pattern. But of course, being Sollers, he took good care that no pattern could be seen. His pattern was doing the unexpected.’

  ‘So having stabbed Quintus, he tried to poison you?’

  ‘He chose a subtle route, all the same. He gave me a sleeping draught – but that was not poisoned. That could have been traced to him. Instead, he put the poison in the food, which anyone might have handled. I saw him today, walking around the kitchens tasting and prodding – if that was his habit, it would not be hard for him to introduce poison onto my plate. He slipped it into the fish pickle, is my guess, where it would not be tasted.’

  ‘But you do not care for it.’

  ‘Fortunately for me, Excellence, Sollers did not know that. My dislike of fish pickle saved my life. And poisoned poor Rollo, I’m afraid. I gave him the contents of the tray, and he went to the latrine feeling sick – as you suggested, Excellence – moments after he left me, I should think. Someone found him there and hid him in the drain. Sollers, I believe, but it may have been Flavius – we can discover that when the funeral party returns.’

  ‘I should join it now,’ Marcus said, but he did not go. In the courtyard, Lupus joined the procession, forlornly alone, and then members of the curia were carried out in litters, one by one. The front of the cortege, surrounded by lights and laments, had already made its way into the street and had disappeared from sight.

  Marcus went to the door, and then turned back. ‘And the blow to Rollo’s neck and stomach?’ he asked.

  ‘There was no blow, Excellence. I understood that tonight, as we stood by that kiln with the body of the soothsayer. Sollers wanted us to concentrate on when she died, not how. He talked about the marking on her body where the weight had been – it looked like bruising, he said. And then I knew for sure. The marks on Rollo’s body were similar. We would never have thought of violence if Sollers had not suggested it. Everything suggested poisoning. But because he was a medicus, we accepted his opinion. Of course, he agreed it could be poison. Naturally, since he administered it himself.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why he wanted to poison you.’

  I smiled. ‘You told Julia that I was skilled at solving mysteries, and she told Sollers. He was afraid of my powers of deduction. Sollers and I are in many ways alike. He feared that I had found him out, I think – although at the time, I had no suspicion.’

  Again he turned away, and again turned back. ‘And the soothsayer? How did you know that she was dead?’

  ‘I fear, Excellence, that I knew no such thing. I thought I could reach her before Sollers did. She would have testified for Maximilian, of course, and then all Sollers’s careful calculations would have failed. But I was too late. He had been there already.’

  ‘But she died of a fever, surely?’

  ‘I doubt it, Excellence. She had a fever, certainly – she was too ill to prophesy for Maximilian last time he went to her – but I imagine Sollers helped her on her way. Gave her poison, probably, pretending it was a cure. I saw a broken phial at the kiln. Poor woman, she does not seem to have foreseen her fate. Her predictions were wrong on every count. Flavius was to be reunited with Julia, Julia was to remarry happily, Sollers was to find another woman and Maximilian and Quintus reconcile. Not an impressive catalogue.’

  The slaves from the courtyard, and their lights, were swelling the numbers now. We could still hear the front of the procession, the percussion driving away evil spirits, right out to the gates of the town.

  Marcus looked at me sharply. ‘Who was this soothsayer?’

  ‘Beyond that she was a beggar who lived in a kiln? I don’t know.’

  ‘I wondered why Maximilian consulted her. She seems an odd choice for a decurion’s son. You do not think there was a reason for it?’

  ‘Because she had lost her looks to warts and to the pox? Her story may have reminded him of his mother. There seems little else to recommend her.’

  ‘You do not think she was his mother?’

  ‘He was too old for that. In any case, Quintus kept his ex-wife in fair comfort, even after he put her away. Maximilian seems to have known his mother a little – he and Quintus quarrelled when she died. Besides, don’t you think Lupus might have told us that? She was the mother of his son. I do not think he would leave her in a kiln to starve.’

  ‘No.’ Marcus looked at his hands. ‘Well, if I am to make this funeral oration, I had better go. Julia has arranged a litter for me. It will be waiting. I have made my ritual ablutions already. Are you coming with me?’

  I shook my head. ‘I have a scratched face and a
torn toga. It would be disrespectful now. Besides, I never did know Quintus alive. No, I shall follow Rollo’s bier. They will be coming for him shortly. But I have need of money, Excellence. I spent my last as buying information this morning.’

  ‘Dear Mercury, why did you not say so earlier?’ He fished in his purse and tossed me two silver coins. ‘You had better buy yourself a meal, in case the slaves’ guild doesn’t provide one. You can hardly present yourself at Quintus’s feast if you did not attend the burial. Well, I shall see you later.’

  I watched him go. Two denarii, that was generous. Enough to have my toga cleaned and mended. Not tonight; the fuller’s would be closed. I should have to attend Rollo’s funeral as I was.

  But Marcus was right about one thing. Junio was being fed at this moment, together with the slaves who were to serve the feast – audible hunger from the servants is frowned on at a celebration. I, on the other hand, had not eaten since this morning. I would go to Rollo’s funeral, but first I was going into the town to buy myself a plate of steaming stew – tripes, turnips, antlers, eyeballs and all.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Rollo’s was a simple funeral. The guild had provided mourners and a drum player, and Julia had given permission for the two slaves who had worked with the page most closely to attend this ritual, instead of joining the procession for Quintus or staying home to prepare the funeral feast. And Junio came with me, so the page was not altogether unlamented.

  There were four bodies altogether. In a town the size of Corinium there are always some deaths among the slave population. We were the third house, so by the time we entered the street there must have been a dozen followers altogether. The bodies were carried out on stretchers and placed on wooden biers – clumsily carved and heavy, but more gilded and ornate than Quintus’s own. It had come on to drizzle again.

  The guild had built a pyre, a long way outside the town – necessarily, since proximity to the gates is a sign of status. The bodies were laid upon it, with decent reverence, and the grave gifts offered to the gods, though I noted that the litters were carefully retained. There was a flowery speech by one of the guild members, about the qualities of a good servant, and then the priest – an old man, inclined to ramble and probably cheap – but a genuine priest all the same – made the offerings and lit the pyre. They had put fat on it to make it burn, and it did so fiercely.