‘This morning, when I went to see her, I told Maecia everything – about Numerius and me, about the baby. We wept together. She says I mustn’t get rid of it. She says it’s all that’s left of her little boy, her son. But it’s not her choice to make. It’s not my choice, either. Mother says I must get rid of it.’
My mouth was dry. ‘It’s not your mother but your father who has legal power over you and the baby inside you.’
‘If Father knew, he could put me to death! That would be legal and proper, wouldn’t it?’
‘Surely he’d never do that! What if he’s gone for a year and comes back to find you and the child –’
‘He might still get rid of the baby – expose it on a hill outside the city to let it starve or be eaten by jackals. Then he’d put me away somewhere, the way you hide a cracked vessel at the back of a cabinet.’ She swallowed hard. ‘No, Mother is right. If Father were here, he’d demand that I get rid of the baby while I can. They may yet be able to find a husband for me, don’t you see? Mother says it wouldn’t be right, anyway, to bring a child without a father into such a world . . .’
She began to weep.
I resisted the urge to comfort her. I stiffened my arms and clenched my fists. I glanced over my shoulder, and it seemed to me that Minerva regarded me with a mocking smile. ‘Aemilia, why have you come to me?’
‘I don’t know . . . except that Maecia said you were the last to see him . . . and that everything depends on you now.’
‘But Aemilia, there’s nothing I can do to help you.’
‘You can at least find out who killed him – who killed . . . my baby.’ She saw the confusion on my face. ‘Don’t you see? If Numerius hadn’t been murdered, he would have found a way to marry me. I’m certain of it. I could have had our child! Then, even if Numerius was taken from me, killed in battle or lost at sea, I would have had the baby, and the baby would have had his name. But now . . . now there’ll be no baby. Don’t you see? Whoever murdered Numerius might as well have stuck a knife in my womb!’
Her grief erupted in a long, keening wail that carried all the way to the front of the house. I heard banging noises and a scuffle, and a few heartbeats later her three bodyguards rushed into the garden one by one, their swords drawn. Cicatrix followed after them, bellowing furiously, brandishing his own sword. The scar across his face was livid, like a fresh brand. He circled the bodyguards and ran to my side, where he assumed a defensive crouch, his arms extended and his knees bent to spring. The three armed men approached us with wild looks in their eyes.
Aemilia spun about, dazed, and realized what was happening. She stifled her sobs and held up her arms, calling her bodyguards to heel. They drew back and surrounded her. One of them exchanged whispers with her, then with his companions. The threat of bloodshed lingered in the air, like a raw, pungent smell.
Aemilia stepped towards me, her face lowered. Her bodyguards advanced with her, swords drawn, eyeing me warily.
‘Forgive me,’ she whispered. ‘I never meant . . .’
I nodded.
‘I’ll go now. I don’t know why I came. I only thought . . . I hoped you might . . . I don’t know.’ She turned away. Her bodyguards withdrew with her, the hindmost walking backwards and keeping his eyes on Cicatrix and me.
‘Wait!’ I said.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. I stepped towards her, getting as close as I dared. It was too close for Cicatrix, who gripped my arm to hold me back.
‘Aemilia, you said something about a secret meeting place.’
Her face, already flushed, grew even redder. ‘Yes.’
‘Did this place belong to Numerius?’
‘It belonged to his family. They own a lot of property in the Carinae district.’
‘And this place – where is it?’
She stepped towards me and motioned for her bodyguards to stand back. I gestured for Cicatrix to move away.
‘It was a tenement building,’ said Aemilia, keeping her voice low. ‘An awful, smelly place. But there was a vacant apartment on the uppermost floor. From the window you could see a bit of the Capitoline Hill . . .’ She gazed into space, her eyes glittering with tears.
‘And only you and Numerius knew about this meeting place?’
‘I don’t know. I think he inherited the building from his father, but his uncle Maecius had a say in running it.’
‘But the room – it was Numerius’s secret place?’
‘Yes. He kept a few things there. A lamp, some clothing . . . some poems I gave him.’
‘Poems?’
‘Greek love poems I copied out for him. We used to read them to one another . . .’
I nodded. ‘So this was a place where he might have kept . . . other secret things?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you ask?’
‘Some documents may be there.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. There was no scroll cabinet. Not even a chest for keeping papers. He had to keep my poems beneath the bed.’
‘Even so, I need to see this place.’
She bit her lip, then shook her head.
‘Please, Aemilia. It may be very important. I may find the documents that were responsible for Numerius’s death.’
She looked at Minerva, then at me. Her gaze was steady. ‘The building is at the corner of the Street of the Basketmakers and a little alley that runs off it to the north. It’s covered in a red wash, but the red is starting to wear off to show a yellow wash beneath. The room is on the fourth floor, in the south-west corner. The door has a lock, but the key is under a loose floorboard with a deep scratch across it, three paces up the hall.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll find it.’
She touched my arm. ‘If you go there, you’ll find the love poems. I’d be grateful if you could –’
‘Of course. I’ll find some way to return them to you.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I could never have them in the house. But I can’t bear to think of anyone else reading them. Burn them.’ She turned and rejoined her bodyguards.
I followed them through the house. Just before we reached the foyer, little Aulus appeared from nowhere and went stamping across the atrium, laughing and clapping his hands, directly in front of Aemilia. Mopsus and Androcles came running after him, but not before Aemilia gave a shudder and fled weeping through the foyer and out of the house, her guards trailing after her.
That night I tossed and turned. At last Bethesda rolled towards me. ‘Can’t you sleep, husband?’
The moonlight picked out glints of silver in her undone hair but left her eyes in shadow. ‘I’m thinking about the girl who came to visit me today.’ I had told her Aemilia’s story over dinner.
‘Very sad,’ said Bethesda.
‘Yes. I was wondering . . . I don’t know much about how it’s done.’
‘What?’
‘How a baby is got rid of.’
Bethesda sighed in the darkness. ‘It’s one of those things most men don’t care to know much about. There are several ways. Sometimes a willow wand . . .’
‘Willow?’
‘With the bark stripped off. It needs to be thin and flexible to reach into the uterus.’
I nodded.
‘Or the girl may take poison.’
‘Poison?’
‘Something strong enough to kill the child and expel it from her body. You brew a strong tea, using roots and herbs and fungi. Rue, nightshade, ergot . . .’
‘But isn’t that likely to kill the mother as well?’
‘Sometimes that happens. I saw the girl on her way out. She looked rather frail to me.’ Bethesda sighed wearily and rolled away.
I stared at the ceiling. Aemilia believed that the killer of Numerius was equally responsible for the destruction of her unborn child. If Aemilia died, aborting the baby, would Numerius’s killer then be responsible for three deaths?
I wondered, did men like Caesar in the cold, dark hours of the night ever ponder such chains of responsibility
? To kill a man on the battlefield Caesar would consider an honourable act. But what of the man’s widow and child left to starve, or the parents who die of grief, or the lover who kills himself in despair, or the whole villages that perish to famine and disease in the wake of war? How many such chains of suffering and death radiated from every battlefield in Gaul? How many such casualties would there be in Italy now that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon?
I tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
X
The next day, taking Mopsus and Androcles with me, I made my way to the Carinae district. I had forgotten exactly where the Street of the Basketmakers was located. Mopsus thought he knew. So did Androcles. To the right, said Mopsus. To the left, said Androcles. While they squabbled, I asked directions of a slave who passed by carrying an armload of baskets. He pointed straight ahead. I followed and was nearly around a bend when the boys noticed and came running after me.
The narrow, curving street was lined with shops, all with doors flung open and wares on display. Baskets spilled out onto little tripod tables. More baskets hung suspended from ropes that crisscrossed overhead. Many were local products, but the best and most expensive came from Egypt, made of Nile reeds, with dyed strands woven into the fabric to make intricate patterns and repeating pictures. I made the mistake of pausing to look at a curious specimen decorated with a circular band of Nile river-horses. The shop owner descended on me at once.
‘Those are called hippopotami,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know. I lived in Egypt for a while when I was young.’
‘Then you’ll want the basket as a souvenir. It was made for you!’
I smiled, shook my head and hurried on. The man followed me down the street, badgering me and waving the basket. When I refused to bargain, he threw down the basket with a curse. Times were hard on the Street of the Basketmakers.
It was not hard to locate the mottled red and yellow tenement Aemilia had described. It had a seedy, run-down appearance, with chipped plaster and broken shutters hanging from the windows. Someone was stewing cabbage inside. A baby was crying. The sound made me think of Aemilia.
Some tenement landlords post a slave at the front door to keep out thieves and troublemakers, but there was no slave at the entrance, and when I tested the door I found it had no lock, either. It was hard to imagine anything inside such a building to tempt a burglar.
‘Mopsus,’ I said, ‘I want you to stand across the street while Androcles and I go inside. Try not to look like a runaway slave up to no good.’
‘I’ll stand watch!’ said Mopsus eagerly. ‘If anybody dangerous-looking goes in after you, I’ll run up and tell you.’
I shook my head. ‘No, Mopsus. I imagine any number of dangerous-looking men, and women for that matter, are likely to live in this building; this is a dangerous neighbourhood. But tenement dwellers must come and go. How could you possibly know who has legitimate business in this building and who does not?’
Mopsus scratched his head.
‘And if some assassin were to enter this building, intending to do me harm, how could you get past him to warn me?’
Mopsus frowned. Androcles covered his mouth, laughing at his older brother’s consternation. I put my hands on their shoulders and walked them both across the street.
‘Mopsus, I want you to stand precisely here. Now, do you see that corner window up on the fourth floor? The one with the shutters intact? I want you to watch that window. In a moment, if all goes well, I’ll open those shutters and give you a wave. Don’t wave back. But keep watching the window. If something should go wrong, you’ll see me or Androcles at that window again. If we scream for help, I want you to run to Eco’s house and tell him. Do you think you could find your way to Eco’s house from here? It’s just up the Esquiline Hill.’
Mopsus nodded mutely, his eyes wide at the gravity of his post.
‘Good. Now keep your eyes on that window!’
I crossed the street with Androcles and entered the tenement. The narrow hallway was deserted and, except for the crying baby, quiet. The tenants, like most people in Rome, were out in the markets searching for the necessities of life, which became harder to find each day.
A stairway at one end of the hall led to the upper floors. I ascended and Androcles followed. ‘We shall be visiting a secret room, Androcles, where we have no business being. I shall need you to keep watch in the hall outside.’
He mimicked his brother’s grave nod.
‘And I may need you for something even more important.’
‘What, Master?’
‘I shall be searching for something. It may be well hidden and hard to reach. A pair of tiny hands could turn out to be very useful.’
‘My hands are smaller than Mopsus’s,’ he boasted, holding them up for me to see.
‘So they are.’
We reached the landing of the third floor. The sound of the crying baby receded. The smell of cabbage grew stronger, mingled now with other smells – onions, perfume, lamp oil, stale urine. What had the daughter of Titus Aemilius thought of such a place?
We came to the top floor. The hallway was empty and dim. I motioned to Androcles to tread quietly.
I located the loose floorboard, just where Aemilia had described it. Wedged in a narrow space beneath was the key. It was not one of those stout keys with notches, to be inserted into a lock and given a strong turn, but a thin bronze rod which curved eccentrically this way and that, as if it might have been accidentally bent beneath a wagon wheel. At one end there was a tiny hook.
Finding such a key is only half the trick in using it. The eccentric shape allows it to slip through the equally eccentric passage inside the keyhole. Once through, the hook at the end needs to find the eye it was fashioned for, which, unless the user has used that particular lock before, can require a considerable amount of trial and error.
I replaced the floorboard and stepped to the door. The lock was a bronze box bolted to the wood from inside. In such a neglected, insecure building, the elaborate mechanism seemed conspicuously out of place.
I slipped the key in, twisted it this way and that to negotiate the hole, then tried to imagine in my mind’s eye what the hook needed to catch against. Up or down? Farther in or farther out? A jiggle or a twist? I tried various motions, then finally removed the key and started over. Again, I had no luck. My patience nearing an end, I pulled out and tried once more. This time, I seemed to locate a divergent keyhole. The key entered in a different direction. The hook caught on something. I held my breath, turned the key and pulled towards me. The lock gave a satisfying click. The door opened.
Behind me, I heard Androcles release a pent-up breath. I looked over my shoulder and nodded towards the stairs. ‘Stand watch on the landing,’ I whispered. ‘If anyone starts up, come quietly and let me know. Can you do that?’
He nodded and tiptoed towards the stairs.
I stepped inside and pulled the door not quite shut behind me. The room was even darker than the hallway. I found my way to the window at the south-west corner, which was covered with heavy winter drapes, made of a fabric far superior, I wagered, to anything to be found in the other apartments. I pulled them apart and opened the shutters. Above the rooftops, as Aemilia had said, I could see the sacred temples atop the Capitoline Hill. Mopsus stood across the street, leaning against a wall, his arms crossed, idly kicking his heels against the ground. He looked up at the sound of the shutters opening. I waved. He uncrossed his arms and started to wave back, then caught himself. He peered up and down the street, hardening his posture and trying to look formidable. I shook my head. If I had specifically asked him to look like an errant slave bent on getting into mischief, he could not have delivered a better performance.
I turned around and surveyed the room. It was sparsely furnished with a low sleeping couch and a little trunk against one wall. Perhaps it was nothing more than a love nest, after all. Lovers’ needs were simple.
Atop the trunk there was a simple oil
lamp, a vessel containing spare oil, and a small round mirror. I peered inside the lamp and the vessel and poured oil back and forth between them until I was satisfied that they contained nothing else. The mirror was of solid silver and had no secret parts. I glanced at my reflection. I saw a bearded man with furrowed brow but clear eyes, not yet entirely grey and youthful-looking for his years, a sign of the gods’ favour. The fact that it was Aemilia’s mirror made me uneasy. I put it aside.
The trunk was not locked. Inside I found a few pieces of clothing – a man’s loincloth and tunic, a cloak that might have been worn by either sex. There was also a spare coverlet for the bed. At the very bottom, there was a small dagger. That was all.
The trunk appeared to contain nothing of significance. But remembering that Numerius Pompeius had carried confidential reports in his shoe, I looked at each item again. Satisfied that the dagger had no secret compartments, I used it to cut open the stitches of each garment. I had brought my own knife for the purpose, but this one looked sharper. I found nothing.
I examined the empty trunk. I used the dagger to undo the hinges and cut into the leather. I turned it over and rapped on the bottom, listening for the hollow echo of a hidden compartment. The trunk was nothing more than an ordinary trunk.
I turned my attention to the bed.
It was a fine piece of furniture – like the drapes, surely finer than anything to be found in the humble apartments down the hall or on the floors below. The frame was made entirely of ebony with ornately carved legs. Against the wall, an ebony sideboard inlaid with ivory ran the length of the frame from head to foot. Aemilia would have lain on the inner side, next to the board and the wall; Numerius would have lain on the outside, as men typically do. I once explained to Bethesda that this arrangement was so because the man protects the woman in sleep. She laughed and said it was because men needed to get up and pass water more often during the night.
But I imagined the lovers had done little sleeping in this bed. They would have met here in the day; it seemed doubtful that Aemilia could have escaped her parents’ vigilance after dark. It was a bed for the waking hours, a bed for loving, not sleeping. The bed where their baby was made.
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