Rosemary Rowe - The vestal vanishes

I shook my head. ‘If I set off at once, I’ll be there before dark. I think I know the way.’ It was not difficult in fact, if I kept to the track and did not deviate to either side, I would eventually meet up with the proper Roman road. A long, demanding walk, but not impossible. The prospect made me sigh. If only I had kept the donkey-boy with me!

It was my own fault, I told myself. I had been so convinced that the solution to the mystery was somehow in this house — yet everything had proved to be exactly what it seemed. ‘Thank you for the food and drink,’ I said, and meant it, too. Another outcome of my stubbornness. It was unlikely that I’d get another meal before tonight. I smiled at Paulinus. ‘And for allowing me to meet your family.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘I will escort you to the gate. I’ll have to get back to checking fodder for the beasts. We don’t have many land-slaves, as you can observe, and there is much to see to if we’re to go to Gaul. Thank you for coming all this way to bring us news.’

And there I would have left it, almost certainly, had the maidservant, Muta, not come back into the room and started beckoning her master urgently.

Paulinus turned his attention to the slave. ‘What is it?’ he enquired.

She mimed at him, pretending to be a driver of a carriage urging on the horse. Even I could understand the message she was trying to convey.

‘I do believe there’s someone at the gate,’ I said, wondering whether the raeda had been sent to fetch me after all. If so there must be news. Perhaps Lavinia had turned up again? I was about to voice this happy possibility but my words were interrupted by a loud imperious rapping at the door.

I saw the look which flashed between the owner and his wife — a look of total apprehension and surprise. Paulinus closed his eyes. ‘I forgot to let the guard-dog loose again,’ he muttered, in evident distress. ‘Somebody’s managed to come directly up the path.’

Secunda had turned even paler than she’d been before but she said calmly, ‘Then we’d better answer it. Go yourself, Paulinus. It isn’t fair to Muta otherwise. Strangers ask her questions and she can’t explain. Much better if she goes back and looks after Paulina.’

He nodded and went out into the little passageway towards the outer door, from whence the hammering was getting louder all the time. Muta disappeared to tend her charge again, while Secunda and I stood — as if by mutual consent — in silence, listening.

We heard Paulinus saying, ‘I am the householder. Can I be of help?’ And then his startled, sharp intake of breath. ‘Dear Mars! To what do we owe this?’

‘I am looking for a citizen named Libertus,’ said a voice I recognized. ‘I understand he may be calling at the house. I am sent here to inform him that — since Audelia is dead — he is to discontinue his enquiries and return to Glevum with us instantly. The gig is waiting for him at the gate.’

I was already in the passage by this time. I did not need to see the scarlet tunic and the fur-edged cape, to know the visitor’s identity. ‘Fiscus!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

He looked at me with that expression of disdain. ‘I am sent here to inform you that…’ he began again, with elaborate patience, but I cut him off.

‘I heard that! What I mean is, how did you find me at this farm? And how do you come to be here at this time of day? You must have left Glevum shortly after dawn.’

‘We did!’ The eyes took in the two Roman togas with contempt: mine, which was even more dishevelled and travel-stained by now and the old (though cleaner) one which Paulinus wore. Fiscus’s own attire was immaculate. ‘Publius was for sending us after you last night, as soon as Audelia’s body was brought home, but Cyra and Lavinius said it was too late to travel then and we would never get to Corinium safely before dark. So, instead, they sent us at first light. We called at the lodging-house and they told us where you were. We would have been here rather sooner, in fact, but earlier in the day the sky was overcast and we had no sun and shadows to judge direction from. Several times we had to stop and ask the way.’

Paulinus had been listening to all this with interest. ‘You are Lavinius’s servant?’ he asked, and then — aside to me — ‘I did not think my kinsman kept menservants like this! But evidently you two have met before?’

‘This slave belonged to Publius, originally,’ I explained. ‘He made a gift of him to my patron, who then lent him to me, just for a few hours when I had no servant of my own to travel with.’

‘I imagine that’s why I was selected for this task,’ Fiscus said, with evident distaste. ‘Riding and jolting all this way in a gig. And jammed in with a slave-girl all the way!’

‘A slave-girl?’ I was mystified. ‘Whatever did they send a slave-girl with you for?’

‘To ride back in the raeda and guard the nurse, of course — though naturally the prisoner would have ridden back in chains. Lavinius was going to send her to the torturers, to see if something could be extorted out of her about the disappearance of his daughter. Obviously at that time we did not know the nurse was dead.’

‘They told you about that at the lodging-house, I suppose?’

It was a rather fatuous question and he treated it with the disdain that it deserved. ‘They could hardly hope to keep it a secret, citizen!’ he said, with a facade of politeness that was more humiliating than open rudeness would have been. ‘But in fact we met that horseman on the way. That giant fellow. He recognized the gig and waved us down. He warned us what had happened, so by the time we reached the lodging-house we knew what we would find. Obviously, in the circumstances, we didn’t linger there.’

‘But I want to go back there before I leave Corinium,’ I said. ‘I need to speak to the landlady again. There are some clothes I want to look at, and something that her slaves were going to try to find for me.’

He looked at me coldly. ‘That will not be necessary now. Your involvement in the matter is to cease at once. I am instructed to make that absolutely clear. Audelia is dead, and being cremated as we speak. Since there is no question of a Vestal marriage now, Publius has no further interest in the case. Clearly feels the match was ill-omened from the start. As for Lavinia, since she has run away, her father has formally washed his hands of her in front of witnesses and her parents would disown her if she ever did return. Certainly they do not wish to waste more money seeking her.’

‘I would still like to call in at the lodging-house,’ I said stubbornly, wondering whether Trullius would ever now be paid.

He raised a supercilious brow at me. ‘In that case, citizen, you are fortunate. We will have to stop there on the journey back. The undertaker’s women hadn’t finished with the nurse and the slave-girl didn’t want to stay in the same house with the dead, so we brought her here with us. It seems she’s superstitious about accompanying the corpse and wants to appeal to you about the necessity of riding back with it.’

He seemed so irritated by this appeal to my authority that I was instinctively in favour of the plaintive in the case. I peered towards the gig. A skinny figure in the back seat waved a timid hand at me. ‘Is that Modesta?’ I said, incredulous.

Fiscus made his self-important face. ‘It may be, citizen. I didn’t ask her name. Anyway, we shall take her back as soon as possible and she will have to do her duty and ride home with the corpse — on the front seat of the raeda, if she must, since there won’t be room inside. I don’t suppose she’ll like it very much but those are my instructions, so perhaps you will be good enough to see that she obeys? She’s a slave-girl after all and her master put me in charge of her today. I wasn’t consulted about bringing her out here — that was the landlord’s doing, I believe, or I would never have agreed to that. It’s the sort of concession to the foibles of a slave that may be frequent here, but would not for a moment be condoned in Rome.’