Lindsey Davis - Enemies at Home

‘Slim,’ I said honestly. ‘A judge is likely to say all of you should have rushed to help your master and mistress. I shall conduct experiments, but any prosecutor will claim you should have heard their cries.’

Amaranta had been giving this thought. ‘What if they never called for help? — I don’t believe they did.’

‘We would need to explain why not — though, without being indelicate, it could be they were so involved with each other they were slow to realise intruders had come into their room. Do you know — were they passionate?’

‘They liked it,’ replied Amaranta matter-of-factly. I waited. ‘Quite a lot, from what she told me. After the wedding, she was a happy woman next morning, looking forward to more.’

‘Had they been to bed together before?’

‘A few squeezes and fumbles. Not the full thing. So it was only their second bout of proper play. And they would not have been expecting anyone to interrupt. We were all told to keep away.’

‘I imagine they had the bedroom doors closed too — or didn’t they care who heard them?’

‘My mistress was modest. I shut the doors for them. If the room became too airless, they could always be opened afterwards.’

Slave-owners barely climbed out of bed to pee in the pot. Their attendants put them to bed, where they generally stayed until the attendants got them up next morning. ‘Your master or mistress would call out for someone, if they wanted the doors to be opened?’

Amaranta had nodded before she saw the implication. ‘Libycus!’ She cheerily landed the master’s attendant in trouble. ‘He was supposed to stay within earshot, in case anything was wanted during the night.’

I dismissed her, and called in Libycus.

His black skin said he had been named for his country of origin, though he must have come here as a child or been born here because, like all the Aviola slaves, he was thoroughly Romanised.

Libycus had been as close to his master as Amaranta to her mistress, turning out Aviola smartly each day, having first listened to the man’s mental anxieties and washed his bodily crevices. He chose clothes. He acted as barber. He wielded the ear-wax scoop and toothpick, and applied pile ointment between the buttocks.

Yes, he was supposed to remain close, always on call. He, more than anybody else, should have been in a position to intervene when Aviola was attacked. He did not want to tell me why he had not done so. In the end, I squeezed it out of him.

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘Not nearby?’

‘Not in the house.’

‘ What? Are you allowed to leave the house during the night?’

‘No.’

He hung his head while I absorbed this. Then Libycus mumbled his confession: thinking Aviola was unlikely to want anything, he had gone to one of the shops on the apartment’s street-side, where he sometimes met with friends. It was his last chance to socialise before he was taken to Campania for an indefinite period. He and two other men spent some time drinking, chatting and playing dice. When he came back, everything was over.

‘Did Nicostratus open the door for you to go out?’

‘Yes, he let me out, then he or Phaedrus was going to let me back in.’ Libycus pleaded, ‘I don’t suppose being somewhere else will get me off?’

‘You know the answer. Quite the opposite, Libycus. You had abandoned your master, against orders.’

I felt sorry for him. But the fact was, he was even more likely to be convicted than the others.

When I emerged into the courtyard, stiff limbed and boggle-eyed, I noticed that the slaves were being fettered and taken indoors, to stop them running away in the night.

Faustus was talking to Dromo. (No chance he might abscond.) I was so tired I lost my discretion and snapped, ‘Do you have a serious sinus condition, Manlius Faustus, so you can’t notice smells? Why don’t you send your messenger for a bath sometimes?’

Dromo looked shifty. Faustus sniffed and winced, then looked guilty too. ‘As far as I know, Flavia Albia, all our household receive bath house money.’ He fixed Dromo. ‘What do you have to say for yourself, boy?’ Slaves are called ‘boy’ even if they are seventy years old. I had never heard Faustus do it before, but he wanted to indicate annoyance.

Squirming, the messenger admitted he was regularly given the necessary quadrans . I asked what he did with it. Dromo whimpered that he saved up until he had enough money for a cake.

Faustus looked angry, though I think he was also trying not to laugh. ‘Let’s not be harsh,’ I intervened. ‘While you are working for me, Dromo, use the money properly, then each time you clean off, I will buy you a cake myself.’ Some baths have their own pastry shops, or at least a hawker with a sweetmeat tray.

Dromo had no idea when to keep quiet. ‘Can I choose my own?’

Faustus rolled his eyes, but I agreed.

Faustus and I sat down for a review of the evidence.

‘You’re going soft,’ he said as we arranged ourselves, nodding towards Dromo who loafed at a distance.

‘Not as soft as you, putting up with him. I have a brother and cohorts of cousins. I know boys.’ It was men who got the better of me − sometimes. I shuffled my note tablets, so Faustus would not read that thought.

My report took time. Halfway through, one of the aediles’ public slaves appeared, bringing a tripod table and a supper that Faustus must have pre-ordered. A change of scene would have been welcome to me after such a long set of interviews, but if we had walked out to eat in a public place we might have been overheard.

It was pleasant enough in the courtyard. As part of a magistrates’ office, it was there for display; in order to show the benefits of well-run government under our benign and wondrous emperor, its garden was better kept than that at the Aviola apartment. With food, drink and a sympathetic listener, I relaxed. For me, coming from a very different climate, one great joy of Rome was how you could sit with friends and family out of doors late into the evening.

Once I had reported, I was happy to sit quiet. Manlius Faustus was famously taciturn; he seemed in no hurry to be off home, so he sat on with me. The slave who had served our food came to take away empty bowls, bringing us a beaker of wine each and a jug to water it to taste.

Faustus raised his cup in a good-mannered salute, to which I responded.

‘I suppose time is still of the essence, Tiberius?’

‘Take all the time you need. Let’s get it right.’

Faustus was capable of fending off the authorities. That was good, because today’s interviews had given me some unease about this case. ‘Don’t book the arena lions quite yet — but you may have to.’

Faustus turned to me, on the alert. ‘Something bothering you, Albia?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Talk it through.’

‘Well … interviews need absorbing. You tend to take people’s first answers literally; you concentrate on whether their stories are probable … To be honest, I am not used to talking to slaves, except a few I know well at home.’ My parents were liberal owners; their staff were outspoken to a fault. ‘I’m sure I have not been told the whole story by these suspects. But they are slaves and I’m a stranger. They are bound to hold things back.’

‘Being under threat of death would make anyone anxious,’ Faustus mused.

‘They need me to help them — so why be quite so wary?’ I mentioned something I found particularly odd. ‘Start with this − did you see Nicostratus, the porter who died? I agree with the doctor: the beating he took was excessive. I’d like to show you, if you haven’t seen.’

‘No longer here. The rules say any dead slave must be removed within two hours.’