Lindsey Davis - The Ides of April

"Must you?" Andronicus was pleading in his most winning way. My heart fluttered. He knew how to make his attentions fervent. He knew, too, how to seduce and disorientate a woman who thought she had decided she wanted to be left alone. "Since when have you been a pedagogue, dragging little pupils through the streets?"

"Afraid I must."

"But what about me?"

"Andronicus, he is eleven. It's getting dark; he cannot be out on his own on the Aventine. He would frighten the muggers. Either he stays the night with me here-" I could see that would not fit whatever plans my friend had "-or I have to take him."

There was no reason why Andronicus should not have walked down the hill with us, then come back with me. Nobody suggested that.

Instead he demanded abruptly, "What was so urgent, to send you chasing after Venusia?"

Oh Juno. Not here, not now. "I had to ask if she saw something."

"Any luck?" challenged Andronicus. I was conscious of Postumus assessing my friend like a scientific experiment put in front of him by his tutor (a cheap academic, but sincere and whom, you guessed, Postumus derided).

"No, none."

"So where is she?"

"Some place in the country. Do you need to know?"

"Of course not," Andronicus replied, so immediately and so reasonably I felt chastened. "We seem to be having an argument, Albia."

Though he spoke lightly, and wore his open-eyed innocent expression, Andronicus was tense. The people I knew called this kind of talk a discussion. Arguments were when you threw dinner bowls, first making sure they were full. Mostly we had those with bad-tempered toddlers. There had been many with Postumus.

"So your trip was pointless?" Andronicus asked, when I failed to respond to the argument comment. I wasn't ready for discord tonight.

"No, but it made me sure I need to see Faustus."

"I told you not to." While I was taking that in, Andronicus insisted, "You should do what I say!"

He should have known better. Anyone could see I was tired and tetchy, but in any case that was a bad move. "Because you are the man?

"I am not your head of household," he conceded, as if making a belated attempt to cool the tension. I let the moment pass. Or so it seemed. When men start handing out orders to me, I can be a good actress.

Postumus slipped one hand into mine. That was unusual. I saw what he was up to. He loved a stand-off. He loved to stir one. My brother spoke up with his eerie self-assurance: "Flavia Albia's head of household is our father, Marcus Didius Falco."

With what seemed a single breath, Andronicus became all silki-ness again. "Of course he is, little man, and we must certainly get you home to him! You go, Albia."

"If our father dies," Postumus announced, as if he had been working this out, "Albia's head of household will be me!"

That was too much. With a wince at me, Andronicus went off, swinging down the alley, after saying significantly, "Well, I may come along again later!"

I made no comment.

"You ought to stay with us tonight," my potential head of household instructed me. As a go-between in a love affair, Postumus made an efficient hatchet-man.

I left the luggage with Rodan and set off with the boy. I started at a fast march, but slowed down. We had to watch our step. In our absence, the Cerialia ceremonies must have continued on a daily basis; wherever a procession had snaked around the Aventine, remains of the nuts thrown at bystanders-Ceres' bounty-still lurked on the sidewalks, ready to make the unwary twist an ankle. I was wearing the wrong shoes. Even my brother was so tired, his feet were all over the place and I had to steady him when he stumbled. The last thing I wanted was for him to drop the ferret, and for us to have to persuade the slinky beggar to come out of a drain.

When we arrived home, my brother broke away from me, and scampered ahead into the house shouting cheerily, "Guess what! Ferret killed Diddle and he's eaten her!" He knew my sisters would start wailing.

He was eleven. Just a child. He seemed wise beyond his years, yet sometimes we overestimated him. Half the time he did not understand the significance of things he said and did. Never try to reason with a boy; it's pointless. We, who knew and tried to love him, accepted his eccentricities and even his rudeness. But other people could take him badly amiss.

I wished I did not at that moment remember the oyster-shucker, Lupus. It reminded me that what a boy says or does too casually to the wrong person may have terrible results.

I was grateful that my own little brother lived a sheltered life, kept in at home. He was never out on the streets where mysterious attackers prowled.

I could have stayed the night with my folks, as Postumus had slyly suggested, but I was not in the mood for company-theirs or anyone else's.

Andronicus did return to Fountain Court. It was almost as if he knew I preferred not to see him. I felt he was trying to impose his will, never a good trick for a man who wanted to impress me. I was in my apartment, the one on the second floor. I had not even undressed, but was lying on my bed as if I expected more to happen that night.

In Rome there would be other women lying in the centres of beds alone while men in separate rooms cursed them for it. One of the rites of the Cerialia required that as a gesture to chastity, women should preserve themselves from any male touch; to make sure, men had to sleep elsewhere. Of course this was a rite for the rich. The poor did not own enough beds.

I had heard that ladies who stayed celibate for Ceres drank a concoction of barley and pennyroyal to suppress their sexual appetite. Rumour had it, drugs were incorporated too, since grains and simple hedgerow herbs were not enough, supposedly, to overcome female lust. I needed neither herbs nor drugs. Nothing beats seeing a man in a new light to kill your passion.

Did you know, even in low doses, the oil of pennyroyal is poisonous? People happily cook with it, or make infusions, yet midwives are said to use it to bring about abortions. And it can kill. Was the mystery killer using some similar, readily available household poison? Or was he in a position to access something more specialised?

So, true to his promise, Andronicus returned. I wasn't surprised.

How many times do women lie awake, longing for a lover to appear, only to be disappointed? I had done it. This requires a degree of excitement about a relationship that I knew I had abruptly lost. Somewhere on the road out to Aricia, or returning home today, the Via Appia had claimed all my joy in the archivist. Tonight, I genuinely wanted to be chaste. It had nothing to do with religious observance, but reflected a cold drench of sense. I had lost the urge. Our rift was permanent. I would never again want Andronicus to touch me.

Did he know? Would he accept it? Was he a man who would let a disaffected lover go?

I heard him banging and shouting to be admitted, then Rodan growled in answer. I crept to the door, opening it quietly and not making my presence known. If the archivist gained entrance to the building, I was ready to press the door closed quickly and bolt it, then tremble on the inside, hiding from him.

It is odd how it happens: that subtle slither from being entirely wrapped up with a man, into not wanting him.

"Orders is orders," Rodan was maintaining, like some officious clerk. That was a change, and utter hypocrisy. With him, orders were for forgetting or ignoring. "The owners of this building are very particular. Once I lock up the grille, I can't let anybody in."

"What if I lived here?"

"But you don't, do you?" Sometimes I forgot how Rodan had spent many years as a landlord's enforcer. He knew how to remain unmoved, and indeed do it with a low-level threat of violence that would drain anyone's courage.