by Jane Finnis
I assured him that I was having a splendid time, and complimented him on his arrangements.
“I can’t find Jovina,” he said. “I suppose you don’t know where she is?”
That’s clever, I thought, it must mean he’s been with her. Otherwise he wouldn’t need to tell me and anyone within earshot that he hadn’t.
“No, I haven’t seen her for a while. She’ll be coming up here to shelter, I expect.”
“I hope she hurries. Here comes the rain.” Indeed a few big drops were splashing down and bouncing off the dry ground. “I’d better go and look for her, I think.”
That wasn’t so clever, announcing he wanted to see her. Or perhaps it was…Or was he being honest, indicating he hadn’t seen her at all? In which case, who had she been going to meet when she left the clearing? I would only need one guess.
By the time I reached the biggest tent the rain was heavier and I was glad to get inside. As I entered, I heard Statius coming up behind me as fast as his limp would allow. supported by his servant and panting from unaccustomed exertion. “Shocking weather,” he grumbled. “I told Marcus it was over-ambitious holding an outdoor party.”
He stopped short just inside the entrance as he realised that Eurytus and Chloe were sitting side by side on a couch, too close together. I knew my cousin wouldn’t like to see the way she preened herself, pleased to be the centre of his attention, nor the smile he wore, like a cat that’s playing with a mouse. They both glanced up, and Chloe moved away from him, but only slightly.
Statius advanced towards Eurytus, and they glared at one another, plainly spoiling for a fight. For all his frailty of body, Statius exuded anger like a furnace radiating heat.
Luckily the arrival of two servants caused a distraction. One came in with lighted lamps, which dispelled the gloom inside the tent, and the other was carrying a tray of steaming beakers of mulsum.
“Who’d like a nice hot drink, ladies and gentlemen?” he asked cheerfully. “Guaranteed to keep the damp out. My lord…Miss Chloe?”
They each took a mug, and so did I. The hot, sweet liquid was welcome. But Statius shook his head. ”Nothing for me. I’m going to order a carriage to take me back to the house. The damp’s getting into my bones. I need a hot bath. I’ll see you there later, Chloe.” He left, almost colliding with Vitellia as she hurried in.
I was relieved to see she was without Philippus, until she said, “Has anyone seen Philo? He was with me down by the river, but now he’s disappeared. I’ve looked in the trees, but he’s nowhere to be found. He’ll get soaked when the storm really starts.”
“He’ll have found shelter somewhere, I expect,” I said.
A couple of the young officers came in, followed by Congrio wearing one of his own fawn cloaks over his smart party tunic. I wondered if he ever stopped being a salesman, even in bed. I half listened as they argued cheerfully about how to improve duck racing as a sport, and came to the conclusion that it was a hopeless task and they should stick to competing with chariots.
My mind wandered back to what was for me the matter in hand. Where had Jovina got to? For that matter, where was Quintus? I must find him, storm or no storm.
My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion outside. I couldn’t tell the direction, but it was growing louder, and I heard a woman scream, and a couple of men shouting. Then Quintus’ voice called my name, and Quintus himself appeared at the entrance and beckoned me urgently to join him outside. One look at his grim face was all I needed to make me hurry out after him.
“Quintus, I wondered where you’d gone. What’s happened?”
“Where’s Mallius? Have you seen him?”
“I’ve no idea. Sleeping under a bush somewhere, probably.”
“And Trebonius? Is he in there with the others?”
“No, not in this tent. Why?”
“Something serious has happened, I’m afraid. Jovina…”
My heart sank inside me. “Jovina? Tell me!”
“I’m sorry, Aurelia. She’s dead.”
Chapter XVIII
My body turned to stone, my mind felt frozen. I saw again Jovina’s pale face as I’d seen it yesterday when she said, “The nearer this so-called celebration comes, the more I’m dreading it.”
And I’d told her it would be fine. I was supposed to be looking after her.
Eventually I said, “How?”
“Her body was floating in the river. Titch spotted it and pulled her out.”
“You mean she fell in and drowned?”
He answered grimly, “She fell in…or she was pushed.”
Again her words echoed in my head. “Some things are worth a little danger.”
“I must go to her,” I said. “Where is she?”
“I’ll show you. But I’d better talk to Eurytus first.” He opened his belt-pouch and took out his Imperial pass as he hurried into the tent.
Eurytus must have sensed trouble, for he had released Chloe and was sitting upright on the couch, his body relaxed but his eyes alert. “Is something wrong, Quintus Antonius?”
“I’m afraid so, yes. There’s been an accident by the river—someone’s drowned. I can’t find either the fort commander or his deputy, which makes me the senior army officer here.”
“Really?” The freedman’s tone was only just short of insolence. “You’re the bridge builder, aren’t you?”
Quintus held out his Imperial pass so the freedman could read it. “I presume you have no objection to my taking charge of proceedings?”
“I see.” Eurytus sat up straighter still, almost to attention, and looked at Quintus with a modicum of respect. “I didn’t know you were so much in Caesar’s confidence. I’ve no objection at all to your handling this. I’ve got enough to do with my tax work. The last thing I want is to be involved in the death of some drunk at a party. So carry on, Antonius, by all means.”
He nodded to one of his guards. “Fetch my carriage, will you. It’s time I went back to somewhere more civilised. If that’s a term you can use to describe anything this far north.” He laughed as he turned back to Chloe. “I’ll see you again, my dear. I’ll send for you tomorrow. You’ll come, won’t you?”
I wondered how Chloe would deal with this, and was prepared to intervene, but she kept her head. “Mother doesn’t let me go out of the house alone with gentlemen, my lord. Even very important gentlemen.” She smiled. “But please do call on me any time. Mama will be delighted to see you.”
“I shall. Thank you, Antonius, that will be all.”
“Bastard,” I muttered as Quintus and I walked down to the river. “He never even asked who was dead, or what had happened. Just assumed it was ‘some drunk’.”
“Be thankful. Do you want him breathing down our necks while we investigate this?”
We strode on in silence to the river, then turned upstream and walked perhaps thirty paces till we came to Jovina’s body. Titch was standing a short distance away.
“I’m so sorry, Aurelia,” he said. “A rotten business, this.”
“Yes, it is. You’re sure she was dead when you got her out?”
“Aye, certain sure.”
“Off you go then, Titch,” Quintus said. “Two men and a stretcher, and somewhere private we can leave her. Quick as you can.”
Jovina lay on the grassy bank, water running from her hair and her bright party clothes, her cheeks puffy and her eyes staring. Death is never beautiful, I know, but it seems especially savage when it turns a once-pretty face into an ugly mask.
“I’m sorry, Jovina,” I whispered. I stood for a few heartbeats, looking down into her still face. I sent a prayer to the gods of the Underworld and to Diana, my guardian goddess, asking her to look after my cousin.
I felt a sudden wave of anger, not only with her murderer but with myself. Hadn’t I come here to help her? And what had I achieved? Nothing. “By the gods, Jovina, whoever’s done this, I swear I’ll find them, and I’ll see you are avenged.”
Quintus
touched my hand briefly. “And so will I. Let’s start with the body. We’ve got to establish whether she died because she fell into the river and drowned, or whether she was killed on land and then thrown into the water.”
“She was a strong swimmer.” I remembered some of our childhood adventures. “And the river’s deep, but not exactly a raging torrent. My guess is she was either pushed in and held under, or killed on the bank.”
“There are no obvious signs of a struggle on her face or the front of her body. Help me turn her over, will you? Wait now…watch where you step, or kneel down. There’s broken glass scattered in the grass.”
“Glass? Merda, it’s everywhere.” I bent down to pick up a shining shard, and was shocked to recognise it. “Gods, Quintus, she had a pair of lovely goblets given for her birthday. She and I even drank wine out of them. It looks as if one or both of them is broken.”
“So perhaps there was a struggle of some kind. Let’s turn her over.”
I hesitated, feeling slightly squeamish, and Quintus was all concern. “I’m sorry, Aurelia, I’m forgetting she’s your cousin. If you want to go back to the tents, I can get one of the soldiers to give me a hand here.”
“It’s all right. I can manage.”
We gently turned Jovina onto her front so we could see her from the back. There was a large gash in her head, splitting her skull open. Her hair all round the wound was matted with blood, though there wasn’t as much as I’d have expected, given the size of it. The water had presumably rinsed most of it off.
“Brutal,” I said. “As savage as an animal.”
“At least it must have been quick. A sudden blow on her head, and she can’t have been conscious by the time someone pushed her into the water. Better than drowning.”
“Better than drowning? What difference does it make? She’s dead just the same. And I was meant to be protecting her.”
“You aren’t to blame for this, Aurelia.”
“I should have taken more care of her.” My anger was still there, but mixed with guilt, and also with a feeling of nausea. I stood up and deliberately turned my back. I took several deep breaths, until I heard Quintus exclaim, “Ah, good, here’s Titch.”
With him were two soldiers carrying an army stretcher. They moved towards Jovina’s body, but Quintus stopped them.
“Wait, we’ll do this properly.” He said a brief prayer for Jovina’s shade, then signalled to the men, who gently lifted her onto the stretcher and covered her with a blanket.
“Have you found a place for her?” Quintus asked Titch.
He nodded. “We’ll take her up to the clearing. There’s several empty tents now the cooks have all gone. We’ll put her in the smallest one. There’s another small tent next door that we can use ourselves. We’ll want somewhere we can talk to people without an audience.”
“Good work. We’ll follow you very soon.”
Titch led his men away from the river. I started to follow them, but Quintus said, “Before we go inside, let’s have a look round this area. See if anything else has been dropped or left here, apart from this broken glass.”
“I suppose so, if we must. What are you expecting to find?”
“I don’t know, really. I’d like to see the spot where she was pushed into the river.” He began to pace about, eyes fixed on the ground, circling the spot where Jovina’s body had been, then moving slowly towards the river’s edge and turning upstream. I walked beside him till we paused by a clump of thorn bushes that grew close to the bank. One of them stood out because some of its small branches were bent or broken, as if a heavy animal had forced its way through…or a heavy weight had been dragged. I knelt down to peer underneath it, cursing as the prickly branches caught in my hair.
“We could do with Hawk for a hunt like this…Gods, Quintus, look.”
In the grass under the bush lay a small bronze brooch, a plain disc bearing the initials VVV. It was identical with the one in Terentius’ box, and the one Jovina had showed me yesterday. Perhaps it was even that same one…but no, she’d intended to throw it into the river, and she’d had plenty of time to dispose of it. This one must be yet another example.
“By the gods,” Quintus said. “Well done. Now how did that get here?” H picked it up. “The pin’s quite badly bent, see? It won’t fasten properly. It’s been torn roughly from a tunic or whatever it was attached to, without the pin being undone first.”
“Look!” There was a tiny shred of cloth caught on the pin, the peach-coloured material of her tunic. Another larger scrap was impaled on a nearby branch. “That’s the colour she was wearing.” Somehow it upset me as much as seeing Jovina’s body. I wanted to cry.
He put his arm round me. “I’m sorry, Aurelia. I was fairly sure one of her family was involved with this Venutius conspiracy. I didn’t expect it to be Jovina. But it explains why she wrote and asked for your help. She couldn’t tell anyone at the fort.”
I pulled myself together. Tears wouldn’t avenge Jovina. “I don’t think she was involved. I can believe she’d got into a mess over her love affairs, she told me as much. But I can’t accept she was conspiring with barbarian rebels. Does it seem likely to you?”
“It seems unlikely, but anything’s possible. And if not, why was she wearing this brooch?”
“But she wasn’t. She wore a pair of gold brooches at the party. She made a point of it; they were a present from Statius.”
He stood upright, pushing a strand of wet hair out of his eyes. “You’re right, and now I think of it, she’s still wearing them.” He helped me to get to my feet.
“I’m convinced she wasn’t involved with the rebels, Quintus. From what I know of her and from the conversations I’ve had with her, I’d stake my life on it. There must be another explanation. Suppose whoever killed her deliberately pinned this disk onto her tunic, so if her body was found it would look as if she’d been murdered because of the conspiracy.”
“It’s possible.”
“And then he dragged her down to the river and threw her in, but the brooch caught in the bush and came off. Why choose this spot, though? Further along the bank there aren’t any thorns, it would have been much easier.”
“He must have been interrupted, and had to get her into the water in a hurry. This was the nearest place. Then he ran for it along the bank.”
“I wonder if whoever he saw spotted him, too? We’ll have to question everyone, I suppose.”
Quintus wiped the rain off his face with his sleeve. “There were thirty-some guests at that party, and at least the same number of servants, and then the guards. Interviewing that lot will take us half a month.”
“Then we’d better make a start. At least let’s get out of the rain.”
“One thing though, let’s keep this find a secret for now.” He slipped the brooch into his belt-pouch. “We can’t disguise the fact that she was murdered, but the less we reveal about what we know, or think we know, the better. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
We walked back along the bank in silence. As we turned to head up to the shelter of the tents we heard a shout and the sound of running feet coming towards us. A cloaked figure hurtled down the path, shouting as he ran.
“Hello! Is the commander there? I need Trebonius urgently.”
“No,” Quintus called back, “he’s not here. What’s happened?”
The man was swathed in a heavy cloak and hood against the rain. A small separate corner of my mind recognised the garment as one of Congrio’s. It wasn’t till he was almost on top of us that we recognised the man inside it as Philippus.
He skidded to a halt beside us. “Aurelia! Antonius! What in the gods’ name are you doing out in the storm?” Without waiting for an answer he hurried on. “When I saw someone down here, I thought it was bound to be Trebonius. Something awful has happened. I need to find him.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Philippus,” Quintus said. “Something truly awful has happened. But how did you know about it
?”
“How did I know? Because I’ve just heard him with my own ears, that’s how. I must find the commander. We need a senior officer to deal with this. Father’s gone quite mad.”
“We’ll find him. Meanwhile I have authority to look into what’s happened,” Quintus said. “So tell me what your father’s done.”
“I don’t understand this. You said you knew something awful…”
“But not about your father. What’s he done?”
“He’s raging and crying and telling everyone he’s murdered my mother.”
I felt a shock, almost like a blow. I couldn’t get any words out.
Quintus said levelly, “Do you believe what he says?”
“Of course not. It’s some kind of madness, probably too much to drink, or…I don’t know. Mother went home ages ago. She had a headache and left a message that we were to carry on with the party, but she needed to lie down for a while. Then the rain started and everyone began to leave anyway. I heard one of the young tribunes saying there’d been an accident down by the river, and I couldn’t find Trebonius, so I went to tell Father. He burst into tears and said that Mother was dead and he’d killed her.”
“You say your mother left a message? Who brought it?” Quintus interrupted.
“Who brought it? How should I know, and what does it matter anyway?” He must have read something in our expressions, because he grew pale. “That’s right, isn’t it? Mother’s safe at home?”
“I’m afraid not.” Quintus looked at me, then back at the young man. “I’m sorry, Philippus, but she isn’t at home.”
“Then where…gods, you’re not telling me it’s true?”
“No, not that exactly. But I’m sorry to say your mother’s dead.”
We told him what we’d found and showed him the place where she’d been pushed into the river. At first he was incredulous, then he became deadly calm. His face turned into a mask, empty of all emotion. It was sadder and more frightening than weeping or passionate anger.
