‘Can I assist you, citizen?’
Mentally I consigned him to Pluto. Any information was likely to cost me a great deal more than a few asses now. Unless I could somehow persuade him of my importance.
I put on my best formal manner. ‘I am a guest in the house of Quintus Ulpius the decurion,’ I said. ‘I believe there were some clothes left here for cleaning yesterday.’ He was looking at me suspiciously, so I invented an excuse for my visit. ‘I suppose they are not ready for collection yet?’
It seemed to work. The youth flushed with consternation. ‘I regret, citizen, they are far from ready. It takes days, you know, to get these things done properly. The young man’s toga is still bleaching on the frames, and the other garments have not yet been laundered at all.’
‘How far have they progressed?’ I said, imitating Marcus’s peremptory manner as best I could. ‘Where are they?’
‘Why, here, citizen, I will lead the way,’ he said, his manner all abject apology. He could not, however, quite disguise his alarm and impatience. He turned to the treaders. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? The return of Hadrian? Get on with your work.’
I felt a twinge of regret. My enquiry was unreasonable — no one could fuller garments in a day — but the poor fellows would feel the lash of his tongue when I had gone, if not a lashing of a more tangible kind. However, I followed him into the adjoining cell where the wicker bleaching frames stood. A number of garments were already set out to whiten in the lime fumes.
Maximilian’s toga was indeed among them — instantly recognisable among the spotless white of its neighbours. However, the treatment was already having its effect on the stained cloth. There were the traces of one or two dark marks visible upon it, but nothing more.
‘You have almost removed the stains?’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘What were they this time? Wine again, I imagine?’
The youth was already ahead of me. ‘I wish I could tell you, citizen, but when the slave brought it in we paid no particular attention. Maximilian is always sending wine-stained togas to be cleaned. We simply washed and bleached it as usual. We did not know then that the decurion was dead. I was shocked when I heard about the stabbing — the household has sent its linen here for years.’ He looked at me with ghoulish relish. ‘You think the stains might have been blood, citizen?’
‘It is possible,’ I said. ‘Maximilian went in to see his father’s body.’
‘Ah.’ Once the suggestion of scandal was removed, the youth’s interest was deader than Quintus. ‘If we had noticed that, we would have soaked it in salt to remove the stain. As we are doing with the lady’s gown.’
I could not have been more surprised if Jupiter himself had suddenly appeared in a clap of thunder.
‘The lady’s gown?’ That was a false move. If I was supposed to be here officially, I should have known what laundry had been sent.
The youth, however, misinterpreted. ‘Do not concern yourself, citizen. Everything is accounted for. There were two garments sent here, naturally: the amethyst-coloured stola and a lilac shift. What I meant to say was that only the stola had blood on it.’
My mind was still reeling from the implications of this — there had been no stains on that stola when Julia greeted us yesterday — and I could think of nothing to say. I must have looked so startled that I was in danger of making the youth suspicious of my authority, but Junio came to my rescue. ‘You are soaking it, you say? I thought you said that you had not yet begun to launder the lady’s garments?’
I sent up mental thanks to my private gods. Junio had avoided the danger of non-cooperation neatly by diverting the fellow’s attention to an inconsistency in his own account of things. I caught my servant’s eye and gave him an approving wink.
The fuller’s son was tripping over his tunic hems in his desire to propitiate. ‘Indeed, citizen,’ he said, addressing himself to me alone, ‘I did not make myself clear. We have only just begun to soak it, so it has not been put into the tubs. I am sorry, citizen, perhaps we should have made a start on it before, but we were busy and these were not the. .’ he hesitated, ‘the kind of stains we sometimes see on female dress, and which we always deal with at once. There were only small splashes of blood, on the front of the garment, and only on the stola, as I say. There was nothing on the under-tunic at all.’
It is a long time since I was a married man, and even then my Gwellia was discreet. It took me some moments to perceive what he meant. When I did understand, I felt myself colour with confusion. Junio, who must have received a biological education from somewhere, had turned the colour of carmine, but the youth himself looked comparatively unembarrassed. Presumably such considerations are commonplace if one works in a fuller’s shop.
‘Come and see for yourself, citizen.’ He led the way back into the main workshop. One of the workers, I noticed, was now taking garments from the rinsing tubs and hanging them on wooden slats to dry, while the other two struggled with the screws on the heavy flattening press, to drive out creases from the previously dried items from the rack. The exhortation to work faster had obviously been taken to heart.
The youth stopped before a pottery basin containing a thick salty solution. The top part of a garment was half submerged in it. ‘Here is the over-gown I spoke of,’ he said, lifting it out, dripping, with a pair of wooden tongs.
I recognised it, without surprise, as the stola which Julia had been wearing the day before. It had been rubbed with salt to remove the stains, but the tell-tale splash marks were still evident. One, indeed, on the underside of the wide sleeve had so far escaped the fuller’s attentions. There was no doubt about it: it was blood.
I caught Junio’s eye, and he gave me a significant look. I knew what he was thinking. Lupus had been detained in the attics for less. And there had been no stains on this stola when Julia met us yesterday.
The young man saw the stain that I was looking at and immediately began to apologise again. That mark would be dealt with presently, he protested; with such fine cloth it was better to soak a little at a time. I noticed the poisonous look which he aimed at his assistants, however. Free-men labourers or slaves, I wondered? The former, probably: they wore no brands or fetters, and no slave tags round their necks. Whatever they were, they must have hated me. I was heartily glad I was not one of them.
‘And the lilac shift?’ I demanded, with a return to my peremptory manner.
The youth nodded. ‘That, citizen, was hardly dirty; it cannot have been worn more than a dozen times. I wonder the lady thought to have it laundered at all, and did not merely have her maids sponge it with vinegar and milk and lay it on the grass. But I suppose she felt the need to clean it thoroughly, since I presume she was wearing it when she first saw her husband dead. I have known such things happen before, as if we could wash away memories.’ He favoured me with an understanding smile.
I nodded grimly. The youth, in fact, spoke more truly than he knew. If that was Quintus’s blood on her bodice, and I believed it was, Julia would have wanted the shift sent to the fuller’s at all costs. For when, exactly, had she managed to get herself spattered so?
I might have pressed him further, but our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a fat, florid man in a spotless tunic and a bad temper. It was the owner, clearly, and judging by the way he was scowling suspiciously at us, he was more likely to demand answers than offer them.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there is nothing to be gained by staying here, we have other business in the town. I will bid you good day.’
‘But citizen,’ the youth said plaintively. ‘The household account! Quintus Ulpius has not paid us since the Ides, and his son has had several garments cleaned since then.’ He gestured to a space on the wall where various accounts had been roughly scratched in chalk. Maximilian, I noted, had run up a sizeable sum in Quintus’s name.