Rosemary Rowe - The Chariots of Calyx

He looked almost as startled as Annia Augusta did. She clasped her hands and cried, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Dear Mercury, I hope not. Did you think she might?’

‘She’s locked herself into her room,’ I said. ‘Or appears to have done. I wondered if in fact she’d run to you.’

He shook his head. ‘Not that I know of, citizen. I was not expecting her. No, she can’t have done. She’d have come to the house, and these soldiers would have found her there. She wouldn’t go to the headquarters, she knew that was forbidden, and she doesn’t know the inn exists. You’re sure she isn’t in her room?’

‘On the contrary,’ I said, getting to my feet urgently, ‘I’m beginning to believe that’s exactly where she is. And her serving-woman was poisoned yesterday.’ One of the soldier escort stepped forward to assist me, but I brushed him aside. ‘I’m starting to be alarmed about her. Her own door is blocked, and so is Monnius’.’

‘You think she’s drugged herself to sleep?’ Annia said. ‘She should be here by now — it is time for all of us to purify ourselves. The mourners will be congregating at the door.’

I looked at Fortunatus. ‘The window to the garden? Is it possible?’

He nodded. ‘There is a stone shrine built into the further wall. The niche has a projecting canopy — if you are very determined you can scale the wall and let yourself down by standing on the arch.’

‘As you have often done,’ I said, and it was not a question. ‘Could Fulvia have got out the same way?’

He shook his head. ‘You need a ladder to reach the roof of the niche from the inside. I do not believe that Fulvia could do it, citizen — it is an energetic climb, even if one is not wearing a stola! It makes demands on me, and I am a fit man.’

‘Then she is still there,’ I said.

He looked at me. ‘You want me to scale the wall and get her out? She would listen to me, I think, if no one else.’

‘Especially as she has no idea about Pulchrissima?’

He coloured. ‘That may be so, citizen, but it is to our advantage now. If you will call your soldiers off. .’

I nodded. ‘Escort him to the wall.’

‘The people in the street!’ Annia Augusta cried.

‘See that the crowd is moved round the corner,’ I instructed. ‘Then Fortunatus can climb up, and if necessary force the shutters for us. Unless you have sufficient strength to force the door? Annia Augusta couldn’t do it.’

‘I could try,’ he said, and everyone fell back to let him pass. He went to Fulvia’s door, with the confidence born of familiarity, and hammered on it.

‘Fulvia! It’s Fortunatus! I’m here. Let me in.’ He rattled the panels of the door but there was no answer at all from within. He put his shoulder against one of the hinged folds and the door gave slightly, but he shook his head. ‘There is something heavy just behind the door. Annia Augusta is right — it’s impossible to move. I’d have to smash the wood.’

Annia frowned. ‘That seems unnecessary.’

He shrugged. ‘Then I’ll try the window route. Wait here.’

He led the way, followed by both the soldiers, although they had sheathed their daggers by this time. We waited in the passageway for what seemed a long time — long enough, in any event, to remind me that I was still weak from my recent ordeal. I put my ear against the door, but there was nothing to be heard.

At last there came a heavy scraping from within, as if someone was dragging something across the floor. The door opened back, and there was the charioteer. He looked shaken and pale.

‘You had better come in, citizen,’ he said. ‘She’s dead. Someone has stabbed her through the heart.’

The scene that met my eyes will haunt my dreams for ever. Fulvia’s beautiful room, furnished with such restraint, looked like a butcher’s shop. The floor was covered with the splintered fragments of the phials and vases from the shelves, their precious oils and unguents staining the tiles: a half-full goblet had been shattered into a thousand pieces by the bed, and splashes of blood bespattered everything.

Fulvia was stretched out on her pillows, the centre of a dreadful spreading stain. It had soaked the dark stuff of her mourning clothes, seeped across the blankets of the bed and was making an obscene stain on the white bandage round the outstretched arm. A pitcher of whatever she had been drinking still stood on the small chest beside the bed, but the hilt of a dagger protruded from her ribs, under the swell of her once lovely breast. Her neck, too, had been savagely slashed.

Annia Augusta had followed me into the room. She sat down heavily on the wooden chest, which stood now in the middle of the room, where the charioteer had dragged it away from the door. She looked old, suddenly, and defeated. ‘This is my fault, citizen,’ she said. ‘I should have listened to my daughter-in-law. She said she was in danger, but I did not believe it — even after the death of the old nurse. I was so sure that Fortunatus. .’ She buried her head in her hands. ‘Dear Jupiter, what an awful scene. And I did nothing to protect her. Perhaps I am the old fool that you take me for.’

Fortunatus spoke with difficulty. ‘Do you think, citizen, she might have killed herself? Suppose she had heard about Pulchrissima, after all. She barricaded the doors herself, we know. Perhaps took one of her potions to give herself courage, and then rammed home the knife with all her force?’ His voice shook and he kept his back turned to that awful figure on the bed.

Annia Augusta raised her head and spoke with something of her old spirit. ‘You overestimate your charms, I think, charioteer. Fulvia was not the sort of woman who would die for love. She might kill herself, but only if it would avoid more dreadful pain, like being thrown to the beasts. And she would choose an easy way, poison perhaps, and put it in a sleeping potion first. Not this — it is a dreadful way to kill yourself. Supposing that the wound had not been fatal? That might mean hours of dreadful agony!’

I could not have put it more cogently myself. As a solver of mysteries, however, I felt I should add something to her words. ‘Besides, look at her hands — they are spread out, not clasped against the knife.’

Fortunatus shifted uncomfortably. ‘It was just an idea, citizen. So there was someone from outside after all. It was simply that I could not think who it might be. Who would want to murder Fulvia? I suppose it is possible. The killer could have escaped through the garden — the shutter in Monnius’ room was slightly open.’

‘Open?’ I said sharply. It should have been closed, by custom, in a dead man’s room.

‘That was how I got in. I couldn’t open this one, it was bolted from inside. And the doors to the corridor were barricaded too. You don’t suppose. .’ he dropped his voice and looked around uneasily, ‘that we have something supernatural here? That Monnius. .?’

I looked around the blood-splattered room. Parvus, the little page, had insinuated himself into the room and was sitting by the bedside, holding Fulvia’s hand and weeping helplessly. ‘I think this was a human being at work,’ I said grimly. ‘Supernatural retribution is generally more inventive. But you are right, chariot-driver. The question of the barricades is interesting. How were the doors wedged shut?’

‘That wooden chest in this room,’ he replied, ‘and in the other someone has blocked the door with a statue. See for yourself.’

I walked to the interconnecting door. It was open, and with the shutters pulled back I could see the situation for myself. It was Priapus, of course, still on his marble plinth but now lying on his back beside the door. Bizarrely there appeared to be a silken cord tied around his most outstanding feature, and the wooden bowl — without its feathers now — was lying in the corner where the statue had once stood. The painted satyrs leered down from the walls.