As he examined it, he let out an exclamation of astonishment.
‘It’s a broken base from a golden chalice. I recognise it. This was the chalice which Cenewealh of the West Saxons gave to Wighard to have blessed by His Holiness. See the inscription on the base?’
‘
“Spero meliora”
’, read Fidelma. ‘“I hope for better things.” ’
‘Cenewealh asked Wighard to choose a suitable motto to engrave on his chalice. The top part has become broken off by ill use but I recognise it.’
Licinius was looking more perplexed.
‘So the valuables of Wighard were kept in this room? Were Osimo and Ronan partners in this crime?’
Fidelma chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. She was falling into this unconscious habit and it annoyed her every time she realised she was doing it. She stopped and compressed her lips for a moment.
‘Ronan and Osimo certainly had access to the stolen treasure of Wighard,’ she admitted.
‘So they must have been party to the killing,’ exclaimed Eadulf, leaping to a conclusion.
‘There is something strange …’ Fidelma seemed still lost in thought. Then she drew herself up. ‘We can do no more here. Licinius, bring those books with you. And, Eadulf, take care
of that metal base. There is much to be thought over.’
Eadulf exchanged a puzzled look with Licinius and then shrugged.
Downstairs the woman accosted them again.
‘When am I able to offer these rooms again to pilgrims? It is not my fault that these guests have died. Am I to be penalised?’
‘Another day or two, woman,’ Furius Licinius assured her.
The woman grunted in disgust. Then said: ‘I see that you are removing belongings that rightfully should come to me in distraint.’
Fidelma stared at the woman’s unexpected use of the Latin law term
bonorum veditio.
‘Have you had many guests whose goods you have had to seize for non payment of their rent?’ she asked.
The woman strained to understand her carefully articulated but foreigner’s Latin.
She pursed her thin lips and shook her head.
‘Never. My guests have always paid.’
‘So where did you learn this phrase …
bonorum veditio
?’
The slatternly woman frowned.
‘What’s that to do with you? I know my rights in law.’
Licinius scowled. ‘You have only the rights that I say you have,’ he said threateningly. ‘Speak civilly, and answer the question. How did you learn such a technical phrase?’
The woman cowered fearfully before his angry tone.
‘It is true,’ she whined. ‘The Greek said those are my rights and at least he gave me a coin when he removed the sack from the dead brother’s room.’
She had Fidelma’s full attention now.
‘A Greek? Whose room did he remove a sack from?’
The woman blinked realising that she had said more than she should have.
‘Out with it, woman,’ snapped Licinius. ‘Otherwise it will be the cells for you and it will be a long while before you will be able to discuss your rights again.’
The woman trembled slightly.
‘Why … why, he searched Osimo Lando’s room and left with a sack.’
‘A Greek, you say?’ pressed Licinius. ‘The owner of this hostel, you mean? The Greek deacon Bieda? Did you not tell him of the order not to remove anything until he has our permission?’
‘No, no,’ the woman replied rapidly with a shake of her head. ‘I do not mean that bastard Bieda. I mean the Greek physician from the Lateran. Everyone knows him.’
Fidelma felt her body pushed back in involuntary surprise.
‘The Greek physician from the Lateran? Do you mean Cornelius? Cornelius of Alexandria?’
‘The same,’ affirmed the woman with a defensive scowl. ‘He told me of my rights.’
‘When did he come and search Osimo Lando’s room?’ Fidelma demanded.
‘Scarcely an hour ago.’
‘As soon as he heard of Osimo’s suicide, I’ll warrant,’ Eadulf offered.
‘And when he left the room, he was carrying a sack?’
The woman nodded unhappily.
‘What size sack? Large or small?’
‘A medium-sized sack. I’d say there was metal in it, for it clanked as he walked,’ offered the woman, anxious now to restore herself to grace in their eyes. ‘He told me that he
would give me five
sesterius
if I would go to Osimo Lando’s room and take the five books that I would find and hide them in my room until he was able to return for them. I had removed three of them when you arrived. You have the other two.’
‘Why would he do that?’ asked Fidelma.
‘Because he could not carry the books as well as the sack,’ replied the woman, misunderstanding her question.
Fidelma was about to open her mouth to explain her question when Eadulf broke in triumphantly: ‘So Cornelius was part of this murder and theft all along?’
‘We shall see,’ Fidelma replied. ‘Fetch the three books which you took from Osimo Lando’s room, woman.’
Reluctantly the woman did as she was bid. They were old books. Greek books. And they were, as Fidelma suspected, easily identifiable as medical texts. She shook her head in bewilderment. The path to Wighard’s murderer seemed strewn with ancient Greek medical texts.
‘Do you know where Cornelius lives?’ Fidelma asked Licinius.
‘Yes. He has a small villa near the Arch of Dolabella and Silanus. Shall I alert the
custodes
?’
‘No. We are a long way from unravelling this mystery yet, Licinius. After we have stored our finds in a place of safety in our
officium
, we will go to Cornelius’ villa and see what he has to say about this matter.’
The woman was gazing from one to the other, trying to follow the meaning of their exchange.
‘What of me?’ she demanded, a little more assertively now that she knew she was not immediately being marched off to prison as Licinius had asserted.
‘You mind your tongue,’ Licinius snapped. ‘And if I come
back and find anything else disturbed in the rooms of Ronan and Osimo, even so much as a hair missing from a blanket or a cockroach from the wall, I will ensure that you will not have to worry about collecting your rents ever again. You will be living rent free from the rest of your life in the worst prison I can find for you. Is that understood?’
The woman muttered something inaudible and withdrew into her own room.
Outside Fidelma rebuked him gently: ‘You were unduly harsh on her.’
Licinius scowled.
‘It is the only way to treat such as she. All they want, these peasants, is to get as much money as they can in life.’
‘It is surely the only way they can escape from their poverty,’ Fidelma pointed out. ‘Their rulers have shown them that salvation comes only by the acquisition of wealth. Why criticise them for following this example until a better example is provided?’
Licinius was disapproving.
‘I have heard that you Irish hold to such radical notions. Was this the teaching of the heretic Pelagius?’
‘I thought we held only to the teachings of our Lord Christ. “And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” That is the word of our Lord, according to Luke.’
Licinius flushed and Eadulf, sensing his awkwardness, pushed forward.
‘Let us hurry and get these books to the
officium
, then we can go in search of Cornelius.’
‘Yes. We must keep them safe,’ agreed Fidelma, ‘for I have
a feeling that they are a considerable part of this mystery.’
They both stared at her for a moment but she did not make any amplification.
The villa of Cornelius of Alexandria was not very far away on the Hill of Caelius where the emperor Nero had once converted the single ancient arch dedicated to Dolabella and Silanus to build an aqueduct to the neighbouring Palatine Hill. The northern slopes of the hill overlooked the spectacular Colosseum and Cornelius’s villa looked out across a small valley to the Palatine Hill with all its ancient and spectacular buildings. Eadulf had told Fidelma that this four-sided Palatine hill was where the first city of Rome had arisen. Here was where all the prominent citizens of the republic had lived and, later, where the despotic Caesars had built their gaudy palaces; where the Ostrogoth kings had ruled and where now Christian churches were replacing their pagan temples.
‘How do you propose to approach Cornelius?’ demanded Eadulf as Furius Licinius, still a little surly, pointed out the villa.
Fidelma hesitated. In truth she had no idea. In fact, secretly she was regretting her impulse to rush upon Cornelius’ villa without a
decuria
of the palace guards as suggested by Licinius. Dusk was creeping westward over the city. She should have simply sent the
custodes
to bring Cornelius to her at the
officium
for questioning. But there were still many things which she could not understand. Each step forward seemed to raise half-a-dozen new questions.
‘Well?’ prompted Eadulf.
The matter resolved itself even before she opened her mouth in response.
They were standing at a corner on the opposite side of the
street to the villa walls. About ten metres beyond them were the wooden gates leading into the villa’s gardens. Clearly, Cornelius of Alexandria lived well. Now these were suddenly thrown open and two bearers carrying a
lecticula
trotted through. Fidelma, Eadulf and Licinius automatically pressed back into the shadows. Cornelius himself was reclining in the chair and, conspicuously on his lap, there was a sack.
The bearers trotted westward from the villa down the hill towards a beautifully built church standing at its foot.
‘He’s taking the sack somewhere,’ Fidelma observed unnecessarily. ‘We will follow.’
They had to walk rapidly to keep up with the trotting
lecticula
bearers. Now and again they even had to break into an undignified trot themselves in order to keep up. For all the hair-raising manoeuvring of the carriage, Fidelma wished they still had the single horse cart to pursue their quarry. They crossed the small square in front of the church and came to the bottom of the Palatine Hill.
Cornelius’ bearers were now moving rapidly along the roadway running along the valley floor which went on the eastern side of a spectacular building which seemed to go on forever.
‘What is this place?’ demanded Fidelma, as they breathlessly sought to keep pace.
‘The Circus Maximus,’ grunted Licinius. ‘A site of much martyrdom in the days of the imperial Caesars.’
They confined their breath now to keeping up with the
lecticula
ahead. It moved along the apparently endless wall, skirted the disused circus and headed north towards the River Tiber. Then it made an abrupt turn, round the bottom of the Hill of Aventinus and turning south-west. Fidelma could not believe that two men carrying a third man in a weighty wooden
vehicle, however strong, could move so rapidly and with such ease. It was exhausting to keep up with the trained chair bearers. Fidelma observed that they would walk rapidly for a while and then, at the instruction of the man at the rear of the chair, they would begin to trot. In such a manner they followed the bank of the river with its shanty houses, quays and store houses.
Furius Licinius suddenly stumbled in the darkness and swore.
Eadulf reached forward to help the young
tesserarius
back to his feet.
‘You may halt a moment,’ gasped Fidelma. ‘Look, the
lecticula
has stopped.’
Licinius bit his lip and looked around in the gloom. He eased his sword in its scabbard.
‘And in the worst place. We’ve come back to Marmorata.’
Fidelma had seen enough to realise that Cornelius’ journey had indeed returned them to the same area of the city to which they had followed Puttoc only a few hours before. Dusk was rapidly spreading itself over the slum area.
Fidelma sucked in a disgusted breath as the loathsome smells of the slum and its festering sewerage assailed her nostrils. They were in a dark and threatening area of decaying buildings. Dogs and cats were roaming the streets searching for food in the form of offal and other discarded matter.
Cornelius’
lecticula
had halted outside what seemed to be an ancient storehouse backing on to the rough wooden quays that ran alongside the river. The bearers had put down the chair and were lounging against it, though Fidelma noticed that they were not so oblivious to their surroundings to remove their hands from the knives they wore in their belts.
Fidelma, Eadulf and Licinius were watching them for many minutes before Fidelma suddenly exclaimed softly. Cornelius had already left the
lecticula
and disappeared.