‘Now is your chance,’ I said to Junio. ‘You can be assured it’s quite acceptable, now he has led the way. I will come with you if you like.’ He flashed me a queasy, thankful smile, and we went out into the little room which Marcus ordered his servants to prepare when he held feasts, where Junio made use of the large brass bowl and one of the goose feathers from the nearby pot, provided for the purpose by our thoughtful host.
When he stood up, gasping, he looked more himself. ‘If these are the privileges of citizenship,’ he said unsteadily, ‘perhaps it is safer to remain a slave. Though I enjoyed the bath!’ He gave a wobbly grin. ‘Even the mighty Lucius deigned to speak to me, once he was stripped of his fancy toga-stripes — though only about that wretched corpse, of course. He seemed to think I might know who it was.’
I waited for him to rinse his face in the jug of water, and for the slave who brought it to retire again, before I took him gently by the arm. ‘You told him what we had discovered, I suppose? The mark round the neck, and everything?’
‘Yes, of course.’ He frowned. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I thought if you’d told Marcus. .’
I waved his fears aside. ‘Lucius had no theories about the body, then?’
He made a face. ‘I don’t imagine that he would have told me if he did. I’m not much better than a slave to him — he would not have spoken to me at all, if he’d not been so keen to know what I had seen.’
I nodded. ‘It would be bad form to show his host that he was curious about anything so vulgar as a corpse.’
‘And he did not really converse with me at all. He just asked questions — at least till Marcus came, and then he talked exclusively to him — mostly about things in Rome I didn’t understand.’
‘Which is what I imagine we shall find him doing now,’ I said. ‘If you feel well enough to go back to the feast? We’ve been out here long enough.’
I was right. When we returned it was to find Lucius — lubricated perhaps by all the mulsum he had drunk — holding forth about politics and literature in Rome. He was gesturing with a choice portion of lark’s leg as he spoke, while Marcus chipped in with witty epigrams, which clearly were quotations from some famous poet — though of course I couldn’t tell you who it was. My son caught my eye as he regained his seat, and winked.
I frowned a warning at him. A banquet is always seen as an opportunity for this sort of clever talk, which is regarded as a kind of social art. However, I am not particularly interested in such debates myself, and would have much preferred to watch the entertainment now on offer — a hapless conjuror who had just appeared, and was performing to no one in particular. He was a skinny old man in a tattered silver robe, who was making little coloured balls appear and disappear, though nobody was watching except me. Julia and Gwellia, who were reclining very close, were deep in some female conversation of their own, while Junio was doing what I ought to be doing myself — pretending to follow what Lucius had to say, with an expression of rapt attention on his face.
I composed myself into a similar position, and tried to assume an interested look while Marcus’s cousin boasted of his senatorial friends and the lavish banquets that he’d attended at the court.
‘Of course the Emperor is famous for the brilliance of his feasts,’ Lucius observed. ‘You know he had a pair of hunchback dwarves smeared with mustard and served up on a plate?’
‘Not to eat them, surely?’ Marcus asked, appalled.
His cousin smiled — contriving to look pitying and disdainful both at once. ‘Of course not. Simply to display them as an amusement for his guests. At court it is often the spectacle that counts — something unusual to catch the eye.’ His scathing glance and lofty tone of voice suggested his contempt for conjurors. ‘Caesar is always hungry for variety.’
‘That is why you were so interested in those people who were here the other day?’ Julia enquired, with the sweetest of smiles but clearly stung by Lucius’s none-too-veiled disparagement. ‘The ones that you engaged? I admit the mimic was a clever turn and very funny, but I should have thought there were a thousand snake-charmers in Rome? Or perhaps you don’t have vipers of that kind over there?’ It was not usual for women to join in men’s talk at a feast, unless by invitation — especially when the subject is at all political — and Marcus looked rather disapprovingly at her. She covered the moment by adding instantly, with every show of a hostess’s concern, ‘But I see your glass is empty, cousin.’
She gestured to the little serving boy who was carrying the wine — in a silver crater half as big as he was — to go round and offer more refreshments to the guests (beginning with Lucius, of course) then turned back to her murmured conversation with my wife.
The wine was delicately watered, best Falernian. No doubt it had been carefully selected, warmed and mixed, but all Roman wine tastes much the same to me. I can only judge the quality by the speed with which it dulls my wits, and this one was doing that quite rapidly. I knew that at any moment the repartee would cease, and we should be obliged to rise while Marcus went over to the altar niche and made oblations to the household gods. He had chosen the old-fashioned Roman timing of the ritual in deference to his guest (these days people tended to make their sacrifices before the feast began), and I did not want to create a spectacle by tripping over my toga in the course of it. I was a little wary, therefore, when the serving boy approached and offered to fill my goblet to the brim again.
‘More wine, citizen?’
I nodded. I almost wished that I could drink the weaker, more watered version that the ladies were served. However, it might be considered rude if I refused. ‘A very little, then.’
I was so concerned with preventing him from pouring more than a thumb’s-width or two that I was paying little attention to the table talk, which was now about the acts which Lucius had singled out to send to Rome. I did, however, realise that Marcus was amused.
‘I hope for your sake, cousin, that they divert the Emperor, and you are properly rewarded. Though your choice would not have been mine. That snake-charmer had clearly painted the viper markings on his snakes. I suspect that really they were harmless ones, though what he did with them was quite amusing, in its way.’
A red flush suffused Lucius’s thin, patrician cheeks. ‘I think he will serve the purpose,’ he observed, in a tone of voice so prim that it made me wonder what lewdness the act contained. ‘Of course, if the fellow fails to please, he will be taken out and flogged.’ He picked the last morsels from his lark, and tossed the bones away. ‘Now, if we are ready? I have finished here, I think.’
It was a kind of signal. Everybody stood. The conjuror, who had moved on to doing something with a piece of cloth — miraculously changing it from red to blue somehow — was unceremoniously hustled off, still without having at any point enjoyed the attention of his so-called audience. An uncomfortable silence fell across the room.
Marcus pulled his toga up to form a hood and clapped his hands three times, whereupon a senior slave appeared, bearing a salver laid with salt and wheat, and a little jug of what I knew was wine. There was a hush while the offering was made. Marcus muttered the necessary words and then resumed his place, and after a little embarrassed shuffling we all lay down again.
It was time for the grand finale of the meal — the ‘second tables’ as the saying goes. With the religious business over, the mood was lighter now. The cymbal clashed, the singer with the lyre came in again, and so did Cilla, looking flushed and proud. Marcus stretched out a hand in welcome, and even Lucius gave a frosty smile, but in the circumstances it was up to me to speak. I rose to greet her.