The Chariots of Calyx (6 page)

‘Of course . . .’ Annia began, but Fulvia ignored her.

‘An uncomfortable situation, do you not think, citizen? For all of us? I do not think even Lydia was keen, but of course she does everything my mother-in-law tells her, and where else did she have to go? Annia Augusta can be hard to resist when she puts her mind to something. Even Monnius gave way in the end, otherwise she would have made his life unbearable.’

Her voice was composed, and she was still smiling, although she was beginning to look strained, and she moved her hand to her arm as if her wound was troubling her. She was still dignified.

The wretched Lydia, however, had clapped her skinny hands to her skinny face and was rocking to and fro in misery, muttering, ‘Fulvia, no! By sweet Mercury, you must not say these things!’ Annia had gone red, and was puffing herself up like an outraged turkey, and even the servants – although not daring to move another muscle – were exchanging horrified looks from the corners of their eyes.

And I? I did the only thing a man could do, in the circumstances. I gestured to the slave with the inlaid stool, as imperiously as I could. He hastened to set it down by the table and I installed myself upon it, importantly, signalling to the boy to pour some wine.

It had the desired effect. At this demonstration of masculine authority, the women seemed to recollect themselves and stood back.

‘Thank you for this hospitality,’ I said, with what I hoped was a dignified smile. ‘Now I am sure there are a hundred preparations to be made in this household, as there always are after a death. I do not wish to keep you from your unhappy tasks. If, perhaps, you could send my own slave to attend me, and continue to lend me one of your own? I am sure with the body to attend to, and the funeral meats to prepare . . .?’

I saw the women glance at one another. They were about to begin bickering again, I realised with alarm. Probably about whose responsibility it was to organise the rites. I went on, hurriedly, ‘Otherwise, please ignore me. Call the funeral arrangers by all means. I will try to intrude as little as possible. Expect that I should like to see the body before the anointers begin, and I shall want to speak to everyone, one at a time. Starting with you, perhaps, Fulvia, since as his widow you must begin the lament. Unless his son is old enough . . .?’

Fulvia’s face, which was looking pale and strained, lighted with a small, triumphant smile. ‘Filius is scarcely more than a child – he is only just old enough to wear an adult toga. He may close the eyes, if he wishes, but the duty of opening the lament will fall to me. As for the funeral arrangers, I have already sent for them. Some of them arrived before you did, citizen’ – of course they had: I had noted the funerary wreath at the entrance – ‘and by now they will be bathing the body.’ She glanced victoriously at Annia, who was crimson with fury. ‘But I will instruct them to suspend their ministrations a little. I am in any case going to my room. I shall be there if you need me, citizen, and you no doubt wish to speak to me – in private? After all, I was the only witness of what took place last night.’

Annia spluttered something, incoherent with rage.

Fulvia ignored her. ‘I will retire, then.’ She closed her eyes suddenly. She did indeed look faint and faltering, I thought. ‘My servants will attend me. Enjoy your refreshment, citizen.’

Annia glowered after her. ‘Making the arrangements, just like that – and his mother not even consulted!’

Beside her, Lydia began to sob, hiccoughing and snivelling wretchedly. ‘Poor, poor Monnius. To think that he should come to this. And if that woman is arranging it, they will not even let Filius lead the mourners.’

Annia put an arm round her, and with a final glare in my direction led her from the room.

I sat back on the stool and permitted myself to be served with some refreshment. By this time I was quite glad of my beaker of watered wine.

Junio arrived just as I was finishing the fruit (slices of apple, at last!), and he stationed himself beside my chair with a cheerful grin.

‘I hear you wish to view the body, master? I have been given instructions to lead you there.’

I got to my feet, holding out my hands to be rinsed and dried by the house-slaves who had been standing by with ewer, bowl and towel for the purpose. I dashed a few drops of water on my head, too, as a sort of purification, and took the time to go and pour the dregs of wine on to the altar of the Vestal shrine. I am not usually a superstitious man, especially in regard to Roman rituals, preferring my own ancient gods of tree and stone, but this household worried me. If I was to be visiting Roman corpses, I felt, I could do with all the supernatural support that I could get.

I nodded to Junio. ‘You know the way? Then lead me to him.’

The interlinking rooms and passages we passed through were as grand, and as lavishly decorated, as the atrium we had left, and everywhere there was the same disregard both for cost and for artistic restraint. Everything was bigger, heavier, more jewel-encrusted, and more ostentatious than its counterpart in any household I had ever seen. Even a simple gong-stick, hanging on a wall in a short corridor, appeared to be made of ivory, inlaid with gold.

Junio led the way into this corridor. It was a spacious passageway, almost a little lobby, from which three gilded folding doors led off into the rooms beyond and a stout wooden staircase gave access to the floor above.

‘Servants’ quarters,’ Junio said, following my gaze and nodding upwards. ‘And a few store-rooms up there for linen and candles. Nothing much else.’

‘In spite of that grand stairway?’

He grinned. ‘In spite of that grand stairway. That’s where they took me to wait. I contrived to have a peek behind a few doors on my way back to you.’ He gestured towards the nearest entrance. ‘I think Caius Monnius is awaiting you in there.’

I nodded, though I might almost have found my way unassisted, from the pungent smells of funeral oil and herbs already eddying in the smoky air.

I pushed open the door. I found not only Caius Monnius awaiting me, but also half a dozen of the undertaker’s men and women, engaged in preparing the body for its last procession. They had drawn back the folding window shutters while they worked (although they later would be discreetly closed again in deference to the dead) and muted daylight illuminated the room. It was an incongruous place for death, with a painted frieze of grinning satyrs round the walls, and a large bronze statue of a well-endowed Priapus standing in the corner by the door.

The undertakers, however, seemed oblivious. Evidence of their work was everywhere – the water with which the dead man had been ritually washed, the aromatic oils, the first of the sacred herbs and candles already pungently burning in pottery containers at each corner of the bed. A fine funeral bier was being readied, too, to carry the body to lie in state in the atrium when the preliminary rituals were finished. At our arrival, the funeral workers abandoned their tasks and stood obediently aside. Fulvia had evidently been as good as her word.

But it was already too late. I exchanged glances with Junio, who shook his head sympathetically. There was little point in my lingering here. Monnius had been stripped, cleansed and covered with a clean white cloth. His banqueting robes had been carefully folded and laid on one side, with the wilted festive garland on top of the pile. The fresh linen and new boots in which the corpse would be dressed for its final journey were already set out and waiting on the bier. I sighed. Any information that I might have gleaned from examining the body or clothing had long since disappeared under the ministrations of the undertakers.

I made a show of it, however. I inspected the fat neck, where the cruel marks of the silver chain were still clearly visible. Pertinax’s account had clearly been correct.

Someone had twisted the chain tightly from the rear, and the face was horribly contorted. There were bruises around the shoulders, too, as if someone had knelt on him to hold him down, although I could see no other marks on the body.

I walked over to the window-space. It was large – effectively a door – and looked out into the garden: a paved peristyle colonnade, protected by high walls, with a little formal enclosure of plants and flowers in the centre and a painted shrine at the further end, with a ladder still leaning drunkenly against it. The left-hand wall was clearly formed by the back of the famous annexe, but there was no access to the garden from there or even any window overlooking it. This was a private space for Monnius and his wife, though if Annia
was
excluded there was nothing much to see.

I turned away and was about to leave the bedchamber when one of the undertaker’s slaves sidled up to me. ‘You want to see the chain that did it, citizen?’

I gaped at him. Of course I wanted to see it – I had merely assumed that the murderer, whoever he was, had taken it with him.

‘Still round his neck when we found him, citizen. And quite a trial we had to get it off, without damaging him further. But his wife insisted. Said it wouldn’t be fitting to send him to the Afterworld in that. So here it is.’ He picked up a small roll of cloth, lying among the oils and unguents on the large iron-bound chest in the corner.

‘Show me.’

He did so, unrolling the cloth with a flourish. ‘Only be careful, citizen. We have not cleaned it yet.’

It was a triple strand of silver, set with tiny gems at intervals, the metal hammer-worked so that the links were doubly strong, and the whole supple chain would lie neatly flat against the wearer’s neck. There were fragments of its latest wearer still adhering to it.

The undertaker’s slave smiled grimly. ‘You see what the lady means, citizen? Hardly a fitting thing for a senior civic official to be wearing for his journey across the Styx.’

I did see what she meant. It was an element of the killing which had not been clear to me. At the mention of a ‘necklace’ I had half imagined a heavy Roman torc, or some stout ornamental chain designed to hold seals or keys. This was a feminine necklace, the sort of personal jewellery that only women, or effete and handsome slave-boys, ever wear. To discover such a thing on Caius Monnius was as startling as if he had been found wearing a stola, or with ochre on his cheeks and lamp-black darkening his eyelashes.

‘Don’t ask me whose it is,’ the man said, anticipating my question. ‘His wife has got one very like it, it seems, but this one isn’t hers. She’s got that safe and sound in a casket in her room – first thing she did when she saw him was go and look for it. And there’s another funny thing. You see those feathers?’ He pointed to a handful of them, lying in an open wooden bowl nearby. ‘Found those when we came to wash the body. There’s the pillow, there. It had been pushed down so firmly over him that the silk split at the stitching. We didn’t know what to do with it all exactly, so we’ve put the things here to burn them with the funeral offerings later.’

‘I will take the necklace with me. It may help in my enquiries,’ I said, rolling it up again and slipping it into the folds of my toga. The undertaker did not protest. If anything, I think he was glad to be relieved of the responsibility. I nodded in what I hoped was a suitably thoughtful manner. ‘And the knife?’

‘That was apparently Caius Monnius’ own, citizen.’ He showed me where they had placed it, carefully, with the rest of the dead man’s personal belongings. It was a fine knife: a sharp blade set in an elaborately carved horn handle – the kind that wealthy people often carry at their belts, especially at large banquets where there are rarely enough knives for all the guests. I carry a knife myself, though mine is a more humble article: if you rely on the
scissor
– the slave who cuts up the meat – you often have a long wait for his services.

I examined the knife. ‘I see you have cleaned the blade,’ I said.

‘It did not seem respectful, citizen, to leave it as it was. It will be offered as one of the grave-goods to be cremated with him. He left instructions with us long ago, when he ordered his memorial stone. His knife, that household statue of himself, and a
mobius
, the official corn-measure, as a symbol of his office.’ He peered anxiously at my face. ‘I hope we have not done wrong, there, citizen? After all, the knife was actually not used to kill anyone, and it was not like the necklace. It just required wiping, sharpening and polishing with red earth.’

So there was nothing to be learned from the knife either, except that it was Monnius’ own, and had presumably been in his room the night before. That explained how the killer had picked it up – I had wondered earlier why Fulvia’s attacker had not simply used the chain again. But my inspection of the body had answered that question at least. The necklace had bitten so deeply into Monnius’ fleshy neck that it would have been well-nigh impossible to remove it again, in darkness and in a hurry.

I nodded. ‘Very well, your people may carry on here. I have seen all that it is possible to see.’ I turned to go.

The chief undertaker came after me, smiling ingratiatingly. ‘I hope we have been of some assistance, citizen? They tell me you were sent here by the governor?’

The man wanted a tip, I realised. I fished into my purse again and parted with another five
as
coin. It was a large sum to me, but he did not look any more delighted with my bounty than Superbus had done. I began to hope that I would not have occasion to reward many more servants in Londinium. I have only a modest income, and giving gratuities in this city was clearly a very expensive business.

I summoned Junio, who had been waiting in the corridor, and was about to make a dignified exit when we were all interrupted by a disturbance in the street. Somebody was shouting.

I abandoned all pretence at restraint and went to the window-space to listen.

‘What means these words, Caius Monnius is dead? I do not believe this telling. He was yesterday perfectly well. This is some plotting of his to avoid to see me.’ The angry man – whoever he was – had hesitant Latin. His meaning, however, was abundantly clear to anyone for half a mile around. I longed to climb the ladder in the courtyard and peer over the wall into the street, but dignity forbade it.