Rosemary Rowe - A Pattern of Blood

I nodded. ‘Be quick about it then. Marcus will be pacing the study for us by now.’

But no one, not the pie sellers or the fishmongers or the tinsmiths or even the street musicians could give us any news of her, although all of them had regular selling pitches nearby. They knew her, of course, or at least they knew of her — forever accosting travellers and offering to read their palms or throw the dice for them. Obviously a woman of many talents.

It was the miller under the awning, leading his wretched horse in melancholy circles around his grinding-stone while his slave poured coarse grain into the vat above, who gave us the only real indication. He knew the woman, he said; she often stopped by the quern at nightfall to gather up the last sweepings of flour from the bottom stone. He let her have them — the leavings were too full of stone grit for ordinary sale.

I could not resist a grin. As it is there are always little particles of stone in market-milled flour, which wear down the teeth and give the baker’s bread a strange, crunchy texture. That was one reason why I generally preferred my oatcakes, with the grain ground painstakingly at someone’s home, by hand. The miller saw my smile.

‘Call me superstitious if you like, citizen, but I would never cross a soothsayer, especially that one. Halfway to sorceress she was, for all that it is forbidden by the law. If I had turned her away she’d have put a curse on my horse, more than likely, or given me the evil eye. Though there were those who came to her, all the same. I have seen purple-stripers talk to her in secret before now.’

‘In secret?’ I demanded. ‘It hardly seems secret if you knew of it.’

He smiled. ‘She makes a bed sometimes in the stable where I stall the horse — I told you, I did not like to turn her away. It is not much of a shelter, just an open space under a slanting roof, but there is enough straw and room in there for a bed and the shelter will keep the rain off, if not the wind. I have seen one of them come there.’

‘She makes her home in your stable?’

‘Not all the time, citizen. Only when there are storms. In finer weather she sleeps in a tumbledown hovel just outside the walls. She can light a fire there and cook her gritty flour, and anything else she manages to beg from the market — spoiled fruit and old meat. She has other “regulars” like me.’

I nodded. Men may scoff at the idea of ‘powers’, but they will seldom cross the woman who claims to have them. No doubt her fire, too, came from a friendly baker’s, or the superstitious owner of a takeaway cooked food stall who let her carry home a few live coals in a container. ‘Outside the walls, you say?’

‘Some way beyond the Verulamium Gate, citizen, across the bridge. There is a little valley with a dribble of a stream. The guards at the gate will indicate the way. No doubt they saw the woman come in and go out often enough. The place used, I think, to be a tiler’s kiln, but it was built in a hurry to serve the town demand, and it was poorly sited. The valley flooded every time it rained, and the tile-makers soon abandoned it.’

I looked at Junio and grimaced. There was no possibility of taking the time to make the expedition now. The Verulamium Gate was on the other side of town, and Marcus would be impatient enough already. ‘We shall have to leave our visit to another day,’ I said. ‘But thank you for your information, miller.’ I only wished I had a few asses left, so that my thanks could take a more tangible form.

I wished it even more strongly when I heard him say, quite loudly, to his bedraggled slave as we left, ‘Well, I’m disappointed. I thought he was a decent sort of fellow, but he turned out to be another typical Celtic upstart. They are all the same. So proud of their new togas and precious Roman citizenship that they cannot spare even the smallest bronze coin for one of their old countrymen, even when he’s doing his best to help. That’s the last time I ever offer information to anyone, without seeing the colour of his money first.’

I quickened my pace and hurried all the way back to the house. The lament, I noticed as soon as we approached the gates, was going on undiminished.

Marcus was not as irritated as I had feared. On the contrary, when I presented myself in the atrium, hot and flustered after scampering back from the market with most uncitizenly haste, he was looking singularly pleased with himself. He did not even seem interested in hearing the explanations I had been carefully preparing all the way.

He had been lunching lightly on bread, fruit and cheese, laid out on the same elaborate tray from which he had been served earlier, while his personal slave stood by, obviously acting as taster. The sight of the meal made my mouth water, but at my approach Marcus pushed the tray aside, motioned to the slave to remove it and then turned his attention to me.

I got as far as, ‘Serious news, master. Junio and I have discovered. .’ when he waved his hand in airy dismissal.

‘I am sure that you have been as diligent as ever, old friend,’ he said, with the kind of smile which told me that, whatever news I brought him, I had been wasting my time. ‘But since the reading of the will, matters have altered here. You have heard about my appointment as Julia’s sponsor, no doubt?’

I murmured something complimentary.

‘Quintus mentioned it to me, in his letter. Afraid something would happen to him, and didn’t want his wife left to the mercies of Flavius in the courts. He thought of appointing Sollers as her protector, at one time, but a mere citizen, even a Greek one, would find it hard to match a purple-striper if it came to persuading a court.’

I nodded. Flavius would have to be a brave man to cross a woman who had Marcus as her legal protector. ‘You will do it splendidly, Excellence.’

‘Yes, I will.’ There was no false modesty about Marcus. ‘And I was right about Lupus as well. New evidence has come to light that puts the matter beyond doubt. Send that slave of yours to fetch Mutuus: he is waiting in the study. I think you should hear this for yourself.’

I turned to speak to Junio, whom I had posted at the door, but I was too late. He had obviously been listening, because he had disappeared before I had time to utter a word.

Marcus was enjoying himself. He refused to be drawn on what this ‘new evidence’ was. ‘Wait and see,’ was all he would say. He did, however, consent to listen to my news, which he received with a kind of smug dismay. ‘Maximilian, eh? You said that there was something suspicious about him.’ He vouchsafed this consolation in the tones of a man offering a bone to a hunting dog who has lost a rabbit. ‘Plotting to have his father robbed. We could have had him sentenced for that.’

‘Could have had him sentenced? Why the past tense, Marcus?’ It was not an idle question. As the governor’s representative, he understood the finer points of law better than I did.

He gave me a forgiving smile. ‘Unfortunately, with Quintus dead, there is no chance of a civil case. There is no injured party to bring one, and there must be someone to accuse him.’

I said, doubtfully, ‘Surely you could bring a criminal case yourself? As Julia’s representative?’

‘I could, but there is a chance that I would lose on technicalities, and that would be bad for my authority. Quintus didn’t raise a search for his attackers at once, so he clearly didn’t intend to sue — and so on. Then, Maximilian would presumably bring this old woman to testify that he did not intend violence, so the punishment would only be a fine. And that, of course, would be a further complication.’

The appointment as Julia’s legal spokesman was clearly going to his head. He had adopted his best magisterial manner to deliver this pronouncement. I asked dutifully, ‘A complication? Why is that?’