Deadly Election (30 page)

We had foolishly eaten there. A cauldron of vegetable water had had a lamb knuckle waved over it, with results that caused my still-weak insides to protest. Faustus said even he had indigestion. Once he realised I was feeling ill, which had made me anxious, he pushed his bed up against mine. I was curled up. Despite the suffocating heat, I was shivering. He wrapped himself round me, holding me still, sharing his warmth. ‘Don’t start anything!’

Only he could have said that. Only I could have found myself the last chaste man in Rome. Why, then, did I think he was close to giggling?

After a time, I demanded quietly, ‘Why not?’ Silence. ‘Why don’t you want me?’

On the back of my neck I felt hot breath as Tiberius muttered his reply. Somewhat intense, it seemed to be, ‘I don’t want a precious memory to be tied for ever to a sordid inn in a tiresome town that I meant never to come back to on, an errand that makes me uneasy, with three hairy nail-sellers from Noricum listening in.’

They were certainly nail-sellers: they had spent the whole evening discussing among themselves the best way to sell Norican nails. My companion had politely gone over for a few words, in the course of which he somehow obtained a bag clinking with samples. I queried this. He seemed very pleased with his free gift and said good nails always come in. I mused to myself on how, unknown to me before, the aedile Faustus was a typical man.

Now, despite the Norican presence, Tiberius whispered, ‘Never, ever believe I do not want you, Albia.’

Accepting the situation, I relaxed in his grip. With nothing else worth doing, we both fell fast asleep.

The Norican nailers must have left and hit the road again before dawn. I think of them quite kindly now.

When a trickle of light finally forced its way through the tiny window, we awoke. During the night we must have adjusted position, maybe more than once. Faustus was now lying on his back, with me against his side. He still had an arm round me. It felt natural and familiar, as if we had been sleeping together in one bed for years.

‘Stop thinking.’

‘What?’

‘Every time a busy little thought wafts through your brain, your eyes move about and your lashes tickle.’

Everything seemed to tickle him. He was as ticklish as a baby. Hair, eyelashes … His responses to me seemed ridiculously acute.

The room was quiet. We were the only people left. I fidgeted, scratching a forearm. Creatures who lived in mattress straw had emerged during the darkness and eaten me. Tiberius stilled my wild scraping with a light hand on my wrist, stopping me drawing blood. He spat on a finger and applied it to my weals, so the drying spittle cooled the irritation.

I needed to stretch and must have edged closer against his hip. More of a squeeze than a movement. I never started anything. It was him, all his fault, all his choice.

He turned. Now he was lying over me, extremely close. In the dim light, his familiar face seemed soft and boyish after sleep. I had seen him absorbed yesterday, but nowhere near as single-minded as he was now. He sighed, but if it was resignation, he had given in and welcomed his decision.

‘Tiberius—’

‘Don’t talk.’

I know people who would think this demanded half a scroll of comic dialogue as in a Greek drama. I, however, did not talk.

Tiberius dropped his head and began kissing me. We had kissed once before, pretending it was for disguise, once when on surveillance. The taste of him was just the same, but this was deliberate, him choosing me, me openly showing my response to him.

Whatever he had intended, or had not intended, neither of us could help ourselves any longer. We hardly changed position. We never undressed. The Cow with No Tail was not a place for nakedness. We made necessary adjustments, then held our breath for what would happen very fast and with profound intensity.

My waiting was over. Tiberius Manlius Faustus was making his move.

O
ur driver had chosen to remain at the Vibius estate last night. He had viewed the mansio stabling and guessed the rest. The stalls were not good enough for the wonderful mules of Tullius; the facilities for humans, where they existed, would disgust him. He came back for us early enough. If he thought us strangely silent, he made no comment.

He had delivered her husband’s letter for Julia Optata last night, though had not personally seen her. That remained for us. She was a contained, dark-haired woman, still youthful, although she must be closer in age to Sextus than wives tended to be. She was the oldest of Julia Verecunda’s children, the first daughter to have been subjected to the mother’s hateful régime. She was plainly dressed, perhaps because she was in the country, though since we were coming she had put on earrings and a single-strand silver necklace.

People had called her quiet, and also sweet. I saw nothing of that. I found her guarded, and generally a blank.

There was a physical likeness to the sister I had met, Julia Laurentina. For reasons I could not explain, I liked the wife of Firmus better, even though she had been so aggressive: Julia Laurentina had seemed more honest. This secretive sister greeted Tiberius with a cool nod, then viewed the pair of us suspiciously.

It may not be tactful to visit a woman with marital difficulties when you are dreamy with new-found sexual fulfilment. We could not help that.

The way Julia played it was that she had come to the country because of her anxious sister, who never appeared. I did believe she existed: she had had her baby; we could hear it crying. I worked out what was going on: ‘Your sister has problems with her husband? She has left her marital home and she does not want her man to find her?’

Julia Optata nervously confirmed this, begging us not to reveal to anyone that her sister was there.

Quarrels can happen during pregnancies. I don’t mean, as male doctors have it, that women are full of turbulent emotions as their poor hysterical wombs expand. My work had taught me that impending children make
men
think hard about their lives. Not always for good reasons.

If the new mother’s husband had reacted to fatherhood badly, it would explain all the mystery surrounding Julia Optata’s exodus. They did not want him to know where his wife was. It would explain why the pregnant sister had fled to the Vibius estate. If the husband had behaved really badly, Julia and Sextus were giving her a safe and secret refuge.

Questioned by Faustus, Julia Optata said her sister’s name was Julia Pomponia and the husband was Aspicius. Faustus did not know the man. Julia Optata lowered her voice and confided that, some years before, this sister had abandoned an approved first marriage, and shocked everyone by running away with somebody of a very much lower social status. What Laia Gratiana would snobbishly call ‘a bit of rough’, I supposed.

He turned out to be too rough. The couple never had enough money and Aspicius was a villain. Julia Pomponia’s relatives had tended to gloat, though one or two were helpful – but not her mother.

I asked, was this why Julia Verecunda had no idea she was to gain a grandchild? ‘Presumably she was not best pleased when one of her daughters went, let us say, down-market?’ Optata agreed. Pomponia was estranged from their mother. ‘What is her rough husband – a soldier? Don’t tell me she fell for that terrible cliché, a gladiator?’

Julia Optata looked shocked. ‘No, he works in decorative crafts!’ She came clean: ‘Actually I’m afraid Aspicius is a hod-carrier on building sites.’

I managed not to snort at her snobbery. ‘What’s wrong with an honest job?’ One thing that might be wrong was that the couple could not afford a child on a hod-carrier’s wages. It’s poorly paid, fitful work, depending on who gets hired for the day. ‘I guess your brick-toting brother-in-law is good-looking?’ Julia blushed and said yes, you could say that. But he toted not brick, but plaster, for frescos.

I wondered if Julia Optata had ogled her hunky, handsome brother-in-law too obviously and it had caused squabbling with Sextus. Not that Sextus seemed the jealous type.

That was just me. I had sex on my mind that morning.

Julia Optata addressed the subject of our visit. She had read the letter we had brought from her husband. Now her sister’s baby had been safely born, Optata agreed to come back to Rome with us, accepting that the journey should be made that day. She would bring a maid. However, her sister would not be coming.

‘She is preparing herself to go abroad, as soon as she is fit to travel.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Isn’t that rather extreme?’ Then I backed down. ‘Of course, it depends how anxious she is about her husband. I understand.’

‘Someone we know has offered her a secure place at an estate where she can live,’ Julia explained. ‘The baby can romp among the Baetican olive groves, and if Pomponia should fall for another handsome piece of manhood out there, it won’t matter.’

Inadvertently, perhaps, Julia Optata had revealed where her sister was going. Luckily, Faustus and I could keep a confidence. He glanced at me, but we made no comment.

The sister, Julia Pomponia, genuinely was no phantom. After Sextus’s wife left us, saying she must supervise preparing her luggage, I made an excuse to use the facilities. Wandering about ‘lost’ afterwards, I saw the two women together. They were in a side room that opened onto a small courtyard. From my position, I could not see either sister properly or they would have noticed me. But this was another dark-haired woman of the same build, similar also to the third sister, Julia Laurentina, at the Callistus house. I suppose the three of them had some resemblance to their mother, though they were all much more modern in style. Pomponia sounded younger than the other two.

Heads together, Optata and Pomponia were discussing in low voices whether Julia Optata really should return to Sextus. It sounded like a conversation they had been having last night when she received his letter, and possibly on previous occasions.

‘I cannot keep arguing about this. It will be easier if I go home now. I have already told that couple I will, so it’s settled. Nothing will happen.’

‘Promise?’ asked her sister, sounding unconvinced.

‘I promise.’

‘And if I stay here, no one will find out where I am?’ The sister sounded petrified.

‘If you must. My going home should draw off attention anyway. I still don’t see why you should be in hiding, when you have done nothing.’

‘I will never go back to him! After what he did … And I shall never see or speak to her again.’

‘She will work out why. You know I think that’s dangerous.’

‘I have the child to think about now.’

‘Yes,’ said Julia Optata, in a hollow-sounding voice. ‘You will find that changes many things – although other things never change at all. Well, I want to see my children too; you understand that.’

‘Go. Go to them,’ urged the fugitive, Julia Pomponia. Then she added, still in a frightened voice, ‘But please think about what I have said. Try not to see your eldest until everything calms down. Don’t insist. Darling, if you go to their house, there is too much chance that family will see you know something.’

‘Oh, not from me!’ For once Julia Optata spoke up with real spirit. ‘Have no fear, Pomponia. Nobody can keep things hidden quite as well as your big sister!’

They were parting from one another, standing up and embracing. I scampered back to sit on a long chair where Julia had left us, looking innocent, while I wondered when and how on the journey I would find an opportunity to report their cryptic interchange to Faustus.

N
ot much was said on our return journey. We took our time setting out and did not hurry: there was no point in arriving back in Rome before the wheeled-vehicle curfew ended. For me, this trip could have been a delightful country idyll. However, it was overcast by a constant sense of strain.

When we first went to the carpentum, Julia Optata asked about the woodwork lashed to its roof. We told her it came from the litter of Callistus Valens, who had been set upon, and she looked as frightened as her sister had just sounded.

She wanted little to do with Tiberius and me. Although she had come with us, she still behaved as if she was travelling on sufferance. Sometimes I caught her chewing her lip as she brooded. Was she worried how things would turn out once she was back with Sextus?

For part of the way I sat in the rear of the carriage with her and her maid, hoping I might glean something useful. But Julia Optata had not exaggerated when she boasted to her sister of being tight-lipped: she never conversed with staff and had placed me in the same excluded category. I knew better than to expect the maid to gossip in front of her mistress, and no opportunities materialised to get her on her own at rest-stops. Julia kept her close, probably on purpose. I gave up on both of them, to allow myself the luxury of travelling up front, next to Manlius Faustus.

He was not a man who smooched or even held hands in front of his uncle’s driver. That hardly surprised me. Since I knew him, I was not disappointed either.

Other travellers were fascinated by the pieces of wrecked bodywork lashed to the roof of our own vehicle. People in carts coming the other way actually said hello. At one point a raffish young man overtook us, staring heavily, in a boy-racer chariot that must have cost his father much heartache; he turned round, came back for a second look, then asked Faustus if he would accept anything for the parts. He pressed but Faustus courteously declined.

It takes a real conniver to flog off evidence. My grandfather, for instance: he would have let it all go, for the right price. ‘Looks like you have a knack. If you want a career,’ I chortled to Faustus, ‘you could well become a scrap-dealer.’

He thanked me for this careers advice but wondered if it might put off women. I said the kind of women he liked would love it. He then claimed that doing up the house in Lesser Laurel Street had made him think. Instead of closing down the builders’ yard, he might keep it and go into business. I pointed out the previous owners renovated bars. He said, to a plebeian anything was acceptable, so long as it was lucrative. At least he had an insider view now of how much to bribe the district aedile.