Rosemary Rowe - The Chariots of Calyx

It did not take long. I was not as hungry as I thought I was, but I ate most of the egg and I was as ready as I’d ever be to face the formidable Annia.

Formidable she was. She swept into the room like a black barge under full sail, towing a laden maidservant in her wake. Annia was veiled and cloaked, but hardly had the courtesies been fulfilled when she bundled off her constricting outer garment and thrust it unceremoniously at the slave. Then she folded her arms grimly and stood looking down at me.

‘Hmm,’ she said (I was reminded of the chicken-buying cook again), ‘you’re looking very pale. They told me you were hurt.’ She strode over to the bed where I was sitting. ‘Get rid of some of these slaves and let’s have a look at you. The governor has given his permission. All very well on a battlefield, these army medici , but when it comes to domestic injury you want a woman’s touch.’

I thought, rather sourly, that deliberate torture hardly came into the category of ‘domestic injury’ and if the woman in question was Annia Augusta her touch was likely to be — at best — robust. But I had no chance to argue. Most of the waiting slaves had already disappeared, and her maidservant, having disencumbered herself of the cloak, was juggling a variety of bottles, phials and bowls out of the woven basket she was carrying.

‘Take off that tunic and lie back,’ Annia said, and I found myself obeying — to the evident amusement of Junio who was grinning widely as he assisted me. I was glad that, in putting me to bed, the medicus had left my underbritches on.

The grin faded, however, as Annia peeled back the bandages. The linen strips had stuck in parts and I heard her tut to herself impatiently, but there was nothing impatient about the way she soaked the cloth (‘cooled boiled water, brought a flagon with me, much the best’) and eased it gently away with surprisingly expert, reassuring hands. It was like being under the care of my grandmother again.

‘Just as I thought,’ she muttered. ‘Those cuts are healing well. But the burns — no idea, some of these military men. Lavender and true aloe, that’s what we want here. Bring me that purple salve, girl, and the drops in that tall phial on the end.’

She might be poisoning me, for all I knew, I thought: but there were too many witnesses for that. Besides, the salve that she applied was blissfully soothing, and by the time she had bound my wounds I was feeling more comfortable than I had done all day. Even then Annia Augusta was not satisfied.

‘Sit up and drink this,’ she said, pouring a thick vile-looking yellow liquid into the goblet I had used earlier.

It smelt almost as evil as it looked, and tasted even worse, but — as I realised afterwards — it was effective, too. At the time, however, my only sensation was of a revolting taste and a consistency almost impossible to swallow. Not until I had signalled furiously to Junio and gulped down another half-pitcher of water did I feel able to look up and meet Annia Augusta’s eyes.

She was looking at me complacently, her ample hands clasped at her ample chest. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘How are you feeling now?’

I muttered somewhat ungraciously that I was still alive. In fact, I realised with surprise, I was beginning to feel a little better.

She nodded. ‘Very well, young man. You’ll do for now — especially if I keep an eye on you. Get on your clothes and come with me. You can’t walk anywhere, of course — I’ve got a litter waiting. We’ve got all sorts of problems at the house, and I think you should come and talk to Fulvia yourself.’

It was so unexpected that my mouth dropped open and for a moment I was speechless. Not merely that she had called me ‘young man’ (no one had done that for twenty years) but the calm assumption that I was now at her disposal, and could simply rise up from my bed of pain and accompany her as if nothing had happened.

Annia Augusta, though, seemed unaware of my amazement. She had turned away and was packing up her potion basket again: flapping away the efforts of the slave to help, as though she trusted the job to no one but herself. ‘I sent a message to you the other day,’ she was saying, ‘but you didn’t come, only that silly stuck-up palace-slave. I told him then — I thought you’d want to know. Filius heard it somewhere — you know what he is like about chariots. Fortunatus was supposed to be at some big race meeting somewhere the night of the murder, but he wasn’t. He was here in Londinium all the time, claiming to be seriously injured, though Mars alone knows if it is as bad as he pretends. Of course, Fulvia heard of this and insisted on talking to the messenger, so the goddess knows what garbled version of the tale you heard.’

I managed to mutter that the story had reached me much as she had told it. If I had stayed in Londinium, I thought, this amazing woman would have brought me the information which I had travelled so far and worked so hard to find.

‘Of course,’ Annia went on, putting down the basket and holding out her arms to have her cloak put on, ‘I don’t believe a word of it myself. I know what Fortunatus was up to that night, if you don’t. Only of course, Fulvia refuses to admit it. Goes on insisting that it was some stranger who broke in. And that’s the problem, citizen. She claims that somebody is still trying to kill her.’ She plonked herself down on the stool so that her servant could adjust the heavy veil over her face.

‘Has there been another attempt to knife her?’ I asked.

Annia snorted. ‘Not that, citizen. But she has insisted for days that someone is trying to poison her — she even started to use that old slave of hers, Prisca or whatever her name is, as a poison-taster. Just the sort of thing that you might expect from Fulvia — my poor Monnius lying there dead, and she begins upsetting the house and making herself the centre of attention. Of course we are not eating prepared meals until the funeral feast, just dry bread and fruit, but she is still insisting on having hers brought specially, won’t drink water from a jug and all that sort of nonsense. The priest had to have a word with her — you know how mourning rituals have to be observed, just so, in the right order, or the whole thing is invalid and you have to start again. Monnius had a perfect fear of bad omens at a funeral, and she seems determined to bring it about. Well, you can see for yourself.’ She got to her feet. ‘Put on a warm cloak, citizen. You’ll find it cold outside after what you’ve been through, and you can hardly travel through the streets, like that, dressed as a palace-slave.’

While she was talking I had permitted Junio to ease me painfully back into my borrowed tunic. I could see what she meant, but I had no intention of going with Annia in any case. For one thing, I was still unsteady on my feet, and for another I was sure that Glaucus had known Monnius, and I didn’t wish to encounter him again except in the safety of an imperial courtroom.

‘Madam citizen,’ I began, in my most formal apologetic manner, ‘I am flattered by your confidence in my powers, but I fail to see what I can do to help. Fulvia is taking every precaution, and unless something further untoward occurs it seems my presence would only interrupt the rituals still further.’

Annia Augusta stared at me. She was veiled, so I could not see her face, but I could feel the contempt through several layers of net.

‘Untoward?’ she said. ‘Of course it’s untoward. That’s what I have come here to tell you. I don’t know how it can have happened — I was sure that the whole thing was nonsense — but it seems there might have been something in it, after all. Prisca was found last evening outside the study, dead. She seems to have been poisoned tasting Fulvia’s food. Now, are you coming, citizen, or not?’