Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

The other business was altogether different.

It was Thursday, the day it rained. He had been in Sullium on a private commission, checking on the lead beater’s daughter who had swellings in her neck. During his absence his room had been searched.

The minute he returned home, he knew he’d had a visitor. The rain had cleared the air outside, sharpening his sense of smell, and the instant he opened the door his nostrils picked out the recent burning of lamp oil over and above the usual and familiar medicinal scents. The eye-drop thief called only during the daytime but it was possible an exception had been made, so Diomedes had weighed the little copper container on his balances-and found no change. Immediately on his guard, he checked his drugs and poisons before moving on to his instruments, but these were where he had left them, neatly facing outwards or upwards to suit his requirements.

It was only when he opened the box in the corner that he made his discovery. His old (and indeed blunt) double-ended scalpel, the one with the bronze handle, was lying upside down. It could not have been a mistake on his part-he always laid his instruments in a precise manner and since this was a dissection scalpel, never used, its position never varied. The handle end doubled as a spatula, and as such faced up. The person who had gone through the box was a layman and would be unaware of this when he replaced it…spatula down.

No, there was no mistake. The question was, what should he do about it?

As he paused to catch his breath, Diomedes realized he was almost upon the exact spot where Sabina had been killed. The flattened grass, parched and yellow, had sprung up again after the rain, there was absolutely nothing to suggest anything sinister had taken place, yet in spite of himself and his profession, he shivered.

Claudia was of the opinion that the family were not touched by their kinswoman’s death, but she didn’t know them the way he knew them. Sabina had been away for thirty years, they had practically forgotten her existence and when she did return they neither liked nor understood her. They might not be driven by grief, but they had been undermined by another emotion. Fear.

Fear of what, he didn’t know. Fear that because Sabina’s sanity had left her, the same might happen to them? Fear of a monster on the loose? Perhaps just fear of the unknown? Even as their doctor he was unable to plumb those intimate depths, but the Collatinus clan did what many families do in times of crisis.

They pretended nothing had happened.

To his right, a small bird warbled from the top of a thorn bush. He ought to be getting back, he thought. One of the weavers was calling about his infected toe, Dexippus had promised to repay those two denarii, and the Penates ceremony was scheduled for dusk. But the Greek’s eyes remained fixed to the place where Sabina had died.

Many people had seen the corpse in its raw and shocking state, not only himself and Claudia, but when the news was out, the entire family clambered up here to gawk.

Yet there was something very wrong about Sabina’s corpse.

Diomedes wondered who else had noticed the discrepancy.

The ceremony of the Penates was an annual event, a sacrifice to the gods of the household store-cupboards who watch over and protect the stocks for the winter. In Rome this took the form of a morning ceremony up on the Velia, after which families gathered for private celebrations. A quick check of the kitchen, a generous toast; on to the grain stocks, a generous toast; down to the cellar, a generous toast. By the time it came to making the actual sacrifice, everyone was pretty well oiled and it ended up a wonderfully festive occasion hugely enjoyed by one and all, if the hangovers were anything to go by.

Claudia had no idea why, in the Collatinus house, it should be celebrated at dusk. If celebrated was the word, and she had her doubts here.

She tapped her foot impatiently. There was still a half-hour to kill, and she categorically refused to spend more time with these people than was necessary. Dear Diana, a girl daren’t set foot outside her own room these days for fear of tripping over hovering physicians. Then there was Portius poncing on about ‘his’ poetry, Matidia banging on about those bloody cushions for the banqueting hall or else it was a summons to Eugenius.

Eugenius! Any more stories about that damned war and she’d scream. All right, so the island had been in decline for the last quarter century and maybe its towns and villages had decayed into nothingness, but you couldn’t blame Sextus for every crumbling ruin or every bankrupt landowner.

‘He incited the slaves to rise up,’ Eugenius had argued. ‘Without that, we’d all have remained prosperous.’

Whinge, whinge, whinge. Good life in Illyria, the man was as rich as Midas, what more did he want? He’d come through the war unscathed, which is more than many could boast. Penalties for supporting the wrong side were harsh-in many cases, whole towns were razed-and as for the slaves, could you blame them for fighting for freedom? They had prayed to Feronia, goddess of liberty, and believing she’d sent divine help in the form of Sextus’s rebellion, they flocked in their droves to Sicily. But, Juno, how wrong could you be? When Augustus clawed his province back, some thirty thousand fugitives from the mainland were rounded up and returned to their owners, leaving a staggering six thousand unclaimed. Six thousand souls on whom Feronia turned her back.

They had been impaled, every last one of them.

And Eugenius Collatinus had watched.

In fact, he’d turned it into a right bloody picnic and taken the whole damned family along.

A gong clanged in the atrium outside her door, frightening the kittens and alarming their mother. Claudia spent twice as long soothing them as was necessary, indeed anything to postpone the time when she would have to stand among these ghouls and smile and be polite and witty and charming. When, finally, she could no longer put off the evil moment, she found the whole family assembled on the far side of the pool. Lamps flickered, bringing the farming friezes to life. Lambs gambolled, bees swarmed, corn was threshed. Rich unguents scented the room, herbs were strewn on the floor.

There was Linus, his distinctive forehead shining in the artificial light, looking bored. Portius, weighed down with jewels, nibbled a broken nail. Matidia, in yellow wig and crimson stola, looked like a candle and you could hardly see Corinna for cloth-it was draped up her neck, down her arms, over her head, presumably to hide the bruises from children who showed no interest in her whatsoever. Paulus amused himself by pulling Popillia’s hair out of its clips. Marius stood proudly to attention beside his uncle Fabius, who today wore a scowl to match Popillia’s.

Eugenius was apparently unwell and couldn’t attend, so it was Aulus who clapped his hands, took one majestic step forward-and stumbled. His eyes were glazed, his jaw loose. Claudia reckoned he must have been drinking solidly since daybreak.

Behind him, the slaves, factory as well as household, hung back in the shadows. They stood stiffly, exchanging the occasional glance, biting the occasional lip. Considering Sabina had been murdered on Tuesday and buried on Wednesday, it was hardly surprising they were still jittery on Saturday. Gossip was rife enough-a maniac lurking in mountainous crevices, waiting to pounce on helpless women-without Marius pitching in with tales dear old Uncle Fabius had told him. Like how in one battle the centurion had thrust his sword deep into a barbarian’s throat, up through the top of his skull and blood had gushed out of his eyes…dear me, who wouldn’t have dropped the sacrifice?