by Ruth Downie
“All the business arrangements are running smoothly, sir.”
Something about the way Publius said, “Excellent,” reminded Ruso of a much older man. As if the lad was trying to imitate the dead father. An idea began to form, but already Publius was moving away as if the meeting was over.
Ruso said, “Your father and mine were good friends, sir, so if there’s anything I can do to help at this difficult time—”
I’ll let you know. It was good of you to call.”
“I know when my own father died the administration seemed endless.” Especially when the debts had come to light, but he had no intention of dwelling on that. “And that was before I realized it was my job to find suitable husbands for my sisters.”
Suddenly the young man was paying attention. “What?”
“While I’m here, sir, there’s a private matter that I’d like to discuss with you.”
Publius’s expression was somewhere between annoyance and alarm. “I hope you aren’t intending to mention my sister.”
“Absolutely not, sir.” Too late, it occurred to Ruso that it sounded as if he had come here to propose. “It’s my own sister I’m concerned about.”
“I see.”
“Not Marcia,” he added. “She’s already married. Flora.”
Publius did not look mollified. “Are you suggesting that I might want to marry one of your sisters?”
“No!” This was getting worse by the moment. “No, sir. I’d like to talk about the young man Flora was hoping to marry. He was here the other night.”
The young heir glanced at his man, who shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“He was Titus’s driver, sir.”
The effect was like jabbing a needle into an inflated bladder. Ruso watched as the outraged defender of his sister’s honour sank into a man with the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
“A terrible thing,” Publius said. “Terrible. And in this house!”
“Ghastly,” Ruso agreed. No wonder Publius was thinking of making a fresh start in Rome. “I realize it’s out of both our hands, sir, but—well to be honest, Flora is heartbroken. I promised her I’d do what I could.”
“I’m not sure how I can help. You need to talk to Sabinus.”
“I’ve spoken to him, sir, and I gather you were having your staff questioned.” If Publius wanted to conclude—wrongly—that Ruso had the old man’s blessing to interfere, that was fine. “I’ve been hoping there might be some innocent explanation. That you might have discovered something that suggests Titus’s death was an accident.”
“And Sabinus knows about this?”
“He does, sir.”
Publius sighed. “I’d like to think it was an accident. Poor old Titus had had rather a skinful, to be honest. None of us was entirely sober. If my kitchen maid hadn’t seen the driver there, we might have thought he’d just fallen over and knocked his head. But I had her questioned last night—which wasn’t pleasant for any of us, by the way—and she’s sticking to her story. Actually, why don’t I call her?” Publius glanced at his slave, who nodded and slipped away. “You can ask her yourself.”
While the maid was being fetched, Publius led Ruso through double doors into a corridor where glassless windows opened onto sunlit rose beds beyond. “I hope this won’t take too long,” he said, leading Ruso outside. “Obviously it’s painful for everyone.”
Almost immediately, a thin girl with mousy hair appeared. She stopped on the far side of the nearest flower bed with her gaze fixed on her master’s feet, and bowed. Her hands were clutched together in a futile attempt to stop them shaking. Her tunic was spattered with stains in places where an apron had failed to reach. Slightly to one side of her, Ruso noticed that the stone Bacchus on a plinth had an arm missing and what seemed to be a fresh break where his nose should have been.
Publius said, “This man is here to find out what happened to my friend Titus.”
The girl clasped her hands tighter and nodded a little too eagerly.
“He’s not going to hurt you.” Publius cast a glance at Ruso as if seeking his agreement.
“Certainly not,” Ruso told her.
“No-one will hurt you any more as long as you tell the truth. I want you to tell him exactly what you saw.”
The girl shuffled her feet and said nothing.
“Well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Speak up, girl!”
She gulped. “I—I—” A tear slid to the end of her nose and dripped down her tunic. Then another one.
“Stop crying!” ordered Publius.
Ruso, who had never known this order to achieve the desired result, said, “May I ask her some questions?”
Publius gave a “be my guest” gesture. “If you don’t know the answer,” he told the girl, “just say so. Don’t make anything up, and don’t leave anything out.”
The girl’s account was interrupted by sniffing and it was not fluent, but it was consistent. She had come out of the kitchen, looked across the courtyard and seen a pair of feet sticking out of the carriage door. She had gone to see if it was a guest who needed help. When she got there she had seen young master Titus’s slave standing over him with something in his hand.
“Like this.” She demonstrated by raising one fist above her head while bending over an imaginary victim. “And the young master was lying all…” She unclasped her hands just enough to move them in parallel as if they were trying to straighten something. “All wrong, sir.”
“What was his man holding?”
“A wine jug, sir.”
“And then?”
“The man shouted at me. And then everyone came.”
“What did he shout?”
“It wasn’t me.”
Ruso nodded. “What were you doing out in the courtyard with the guests?”
The girl gave a double sniff.
“Tell him,” sighed Publius. “And blow your nose. That sniffing is disgusting.”
The girl glanced around as if wondering how to obey, then resorted to hauling up the neckline of her tunic. “Cook said to come. There was a—a—”
“A commotion,” supplied Publius.
“In case the master needed help seeing the guests out.”
“And you came through that door you just used?”
She indicated the service door that was almost hidden behind the ruined Bacchus. “Yes, sir.”
“So Titus’s carriage was where?”
“Over there, sir.” She pointed to a broad paved area beyond the flower beds, accessible by a tall pair of gates in the back wall.
“Facing which way?”
She pointed at the gates.
“Towards the street,” explained Publius.
“Then what happened?”
The girl risked a glance at her master, who said, “Answer the question.”
“I don’t know, sir. Cook said to find the kitchen boy to fetch the doctor.”
Ruso nodded. “I see. You’ve been very helpful. Thank you. Just one last question. Did you actually see anyone strike Titus?”
“Tell the truth,” urged her master.
She shook her head. “No, sir.”
Dismissed, the girl almost blundered into Bacchus in her haste to get back to the safety of the kitchen.
Ruso turned to Publius. “What happened to the driver after that?”
“My people locked him in a storeroom,” Publius explained. “Then we sent for Sabinus’s people, as I’m sure you know.” He scratched his head. “It was dreadful, frankly. I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. And my first thought was, I’ll ask Pa. He’ll know what to do.”
“I’m sure you did everything you could,” said Ruso, unable to recall a time when he would have sought his father’s advice about anything.
“Between you and me,” Publius murmured, “the staff were very shaken. Some of them were refusing to come out here again. I had to have priests around yesterday to purify the p
lace.”
Ruso said, “It would help to speak to anyone else who was at the party.”
Publius frowned. “There were some hired girls.”
“I was thinking of the other guests. If you could tell me—”
“I’ve already asked them. The kitchen maid is the only one who saw anything.”
“They may have seen something that they didn’t think was important at the time,” Ruso explained. “Something that might be useful.”
Publius still looked doubtful. “It was a private party, you know. I’m not sure my friends would want—”
“It’s a tragic business for old Sabinus,” Ruso reminded him. “The whole family must have had high hopes for the boy. Especially since he’s related to the senator.”
The relationship to the senator was not close, but the mere mention of it was like oiling a lock. “I suppose I could introduce you,” Publius conceded. “Most of them are probably at the baths.” He turned back to the house. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
13
The marbled splashiness of Nemausus’s town baths was a sharp contrast with the dank, abandoned facilities at home. Even when the late bath boy had been doing his best, the family had regularly complained that he didn’t change the water often enough. It was easier to blame the slave than to admit that the whole scheme (another of Ruso’s stepmother’s ideas) had been over-ambitious: that if there wasn’t enough water to run a fountain, there certainly wasn’t enough for a bathhouse. Whereas here, fresh water flowing from distant hills was piped into the town day and night. It fed an abundance of gleaming pools and tumbling water features, including the sparkling fountain beneath which three young men sat cooling their feet.
All three were fashionably bearded and although Publius introduced them by name, Ruso could not help thinking of them as Bushy, Wispy and Patchy.
When Publius told them that Ruso had come to ask about the party, each young man in turn offered his own version of “Poor old Titus.” On learning that Ruso’s sister had been hoping to marry Titus’s driver, Patchy said, “Ouch,” and the others winced.
“Exactly.” Ruso chose a place next to the heavy figure of Bushy, and bent to untie his sandals.
“Poor old Titus,” repeated Patchy as Publius settled beside him.
Wispy said, “Anything we can do to help. Just ask.”
“I’m not sure we can do very much, really,” put in Patchy as Ruso submerged his feet in the welcome chill. “By the time poor old Titus was found, we’d all left. I had no idea anything was wrong until the message arrived the next day.”
“Nor me,” agreed Wispy. “We were all a bit the worse for wear at the time.”
Publius said, “I never invited any of you in the first place.”
“That was why we came,” Patchy told him. “We heard you were stuck at home all by yourself feeling miserable. We came to cheer you up.”
“So it was a good evening?” asked Ruso, whose idea of a good party was one he didn’t have to go to.
“Till old Publius here threw us out,” said Patchy, sounding almost proud of it.
“And Titus enjoyed himself, as far as you know?”
“Absolutely,” Patchy assured him. He turned to his friends. “Wasn’t it him who suggested the hunt? With that girl—what was her name?”
“Xanthe,” put in Wispy.
“That’s the one. Wearing that—whatever she was wearing.”
“Not very much.”
“I had the one with the tits, you had her friend and Titus had Xanthe.”
Ruso said, “Hunt?”
Patchy indicated the stolid form of Bushy, who had not said a word since expressing his regrets about the death. “And he had the—what was it?”
“A very expensive antique silver cup,” put in Publius.
“Really? It didn’t look expensive. Anyway, whoever has the cup, or whatever, is the stag. So he has to run, and everyone else counts to twenty and grabs a girl and the girls ride around—on us, obviously—and try to find him and snatch the cup off him. Then whoever’s girl gets the cup is the next stag.”
“I see,” said Ruso.
“It’s a game,” explained Wispy. “It’s fun.”
“Yes,” said Ruso, feeling very old.
“Until things get broken,” said Publius.
“Yes, well…” conceded Patchy. But if Publius was expecting an apology, he was disappointed. The nearest he got was, “It did get a bit out of hand. But we only wanted to cheer you up. If you don’t mind me saying, brother, you’ve become very serious lately. I’m worried about you.”
“We’ve all noticed,” agreed Wispy.
“I’m busy,” Publius told them. “Now Pa’s gone I have masses of business to get through every day. People come visiting at ridiculous hours of the morning. I can’t be up half the night like you lot.”
“That’s why we left early when you asked,” Patchy told him.
“After about the fifth time of asking,” Publius growled.
“You did get a bit agitated,” Patchy agreed. “But it wasn’t just us. It was Titus as well. You know what he’s—well, what he was like.”
Ruso said, “What was he like?”
Titus, it seemed, had always gone a bit too far, and a recent spell as some sort of junior official in Rome had not improved things. “I heard he got sent back early,” Patchy admitted. “Of course when he got back he was a bit everything’s-better-in-Rome, you know? But he never said much about what he actually did there. I heard his pa was trying to find a legion that would take him so he couldn’t get into any more trouble.”
It was clear to Ruso that neither Sabinus nor Patchy had ever served in a legion.
“He wasn’t always as funny as he thought he was,” agreed Wispy. “But that’s no reason for his driver to kill him. It just goes to show, you can’t trust slaves. Not deep down. They’re different from us.”
“They are,” agreed Patchy. “My grandfather had a man who was brought up on the farm and they’d known him all his life and always been fair with him. Then they found out he’d been stealing from them for years, and when my grandfather confronted him the fellow went for him with a kitchen knife.”
Ruso restrained the urge to point out that this was irrelevant since Verax wasn’t a slave. Or at least, not any more. But they would probably explain that you couldn’t trust freedmen either. So instead he said, “Did you all have your own people there, waiting to take you home?”
“All the visiting staff were out in the courtyard.” Publius glanced at his friends. “We ought to have them questioned.”
Ruso said, “Or I could just ask them—”
“Oh, it’s no good you talking to them,” Patchy insisted. “They’ll all be sympathetic to the driver. They won’t tell you anything. It needs to be somebody who isn’t involved.”
“Or somebody who knows them well enough to tell when they’re lying,” said Wispy. He turned to Ruso. “We could ask them for you and tell Publius what they say.”
It was frustrating, but not unexpected, and Ruso moved on. “Has anybody spoken to the hired girls?”
This time Publius said, “Perhaps you should try.”
“I’ve just thought of something!” declared Patchy suddenly. He looked around the group, waiting until he had everyone’s attention. “Listen. Did anybody see Titus after the hunt went into the garden?”
He was met with a row of blank faces.
“Publius?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Because I think I saw him getting into his carriage again with the girl. I took no notice at the time. But I don’t remember seeing him after that.”
There was a pause, then it was agreed that nobody else had seen them after that either.
“I think I saw them by the carriage too,” Wispy put in. “Just after me and what’s-her-name got there.” He frowned. “Wasn’t Titus waving a wine jug about on the hunt?”
“It would be just like him,” said Patchy.
“If there was something left in it.”
There was a murmur of agreement, then a silence broken only by the trickle of the fountain and the shouts of youths playing a ball game over in the exercise area.
Ruso said, “When did the girls leave?”
“They were hanging about afterwards,” Publius told him, a hard edge in his voice. “They hadn’t been paid.”
“Really?” put in Wispy. “That’s a bit rich. Asking for money when poor old Titus is lying there with his brains bashed in.”
“They didn’t know that at the time,” Publius pointed out. “As soon as we found him they went away.”
“Without their money?” Patchy’s eyebrows rose. “So it was a cheap evening.”
“No it wasn’t,” Publius snapped. “I don’t want my name all over town as a host who doesn’t pay his bills. I sent my man out the next morning to settle up, and now you three owe me.”
Evidently humbled by his tone, the bearded trio all immediately assured him that they would pay up, although only Bushy seemed to be carrying any money. He was prevailed upon to reimburse Publius, since that was only fair, and the other two promised to pay him back just as soon as they had the cash.
“Maybe it wasn’t the driver after all.” Bushy’s sole contribution to the interview was the one Ruso had wanted to hear.
“You know,” put in Patchy, “I think it could have been the girl.”
“Even so,” Wispy pointed out, “the driver should have protected him.”
His friend ignored the interruption. “Maybe Titus took her in there for another go, and she didn’t want to.”
“It’s possible,” Wispy agreed. “Women are temperamental. And like I said, you can’t trust slaves. They don’t—”
Whatever he might have said was interrupted by the approach of a bath attendant, presumably one of the class of people who were not to be trusted. He came close enough not to draw attention from the other bathers and said, “Sirs, no feet in the fountain, please.”
Wispy lunged down into the water and splashed it over his friends. “Feet out of the fountain, boys!”
“You get yours out!” cried Patchy, splashing him back. “What are you? A barbarian?”
