Chapter Twenty-four
The medicus was waiting at the gate, wrapped in an impressive coloured cape which put my own to shame. He was accompanied by a pair of household slaves, equipped with torch-sticks, ready dipped in pitch, while a third slave carried burning coals in a metal pot, so he could light them when necessary. Flavius was also there, looking resentful, and flanked by two burly servants with staves.
‘This is intolerable,’ he grumbled, as soon as he saw me. ‘I have business, clients to attend to. Every moment I am kept here is costing me contracts. I am not a peasant to be kept here at your whim.’
‘Not my whim, citizen,’ I assured him cheerfully. ‘You are here at the express command of Marcus Aurelius Septimus, acting in the name of the governor.’ That was rather craven of me, since I had encouraged Marcus to send him, and I added, ‘Marcus is going to come with us himself. He has already sent us an escort — look, here they come now with Maximilian.’
Maximilian was not under arrest, but he was clearly an unwilling conscript, and the two guards that Marcus had sent me did not look pleased to be there either. It was comic, I thought. The people I had asked to accompany me were reluctant to come, while others, like Marcus and Sollers, had volunteered their presence on the outing.
We went out into the streets. The town was quieter now, although most stalls were still open, and the hot food stalls were already doing a roaring trade among those town dwellers who had no kitchens in their homes. The better ones served up spiced beef for the affluent, while from the less salubrious establishments women draggled by with buckets of hot ‘stew’. I didn’t envy them their meal. I had tasted that stew before. It is made of remnants from the market and I would have to be very hungry before I had an appetite for half-rotten turnips and floating eyeballs again. Though there were townsfolk, I was aware, who would have sold their souls to Pluto for less.
We turned left at the forum and out towards the Verulamium Gate.
It was as well we were carrying an escort. The watch at the gate were surly and suspicious — a group of Roman citizens, on foot, leaving the town gates just before dusk is calculated to arouse suspicion, even if one of them is a narrow-striper. We were not even going in the direction of the cemetery or the amphitheatre. The sight of the two soldiers, however, allayed their fears and we passed under one of the portals and crossed the fine stone bridge without further hindrance.
Only Maximilian, it seemed, had any clear idea of where exactly we were going. Flavius, as he protested constantly, had only consulted the woman within the gates, and as we left the town behind he was increasingly jumpy. One could not blame him. There was the usual straggle of buildings beyond the bridge, but after that, signs of habitation soon died out and we found ourselves in open countryside.
Not that there was any real danger here. The land around was cultivated, in parts, and there were open spaces where sheep and goats grazed dismally on the winter grass. And there was traffic on the road — men with carts and boys with sledges, peasants dragging home hoes and handcarts, stout women with donkeys, thin ones with firewood, bright-eyed girls carrying water from the stream — and all of them dashing for the verges when a scarlet-cloaked horseman came galloping by, carrying messages for some imperial post.
But we were not on the road for long. Our way led along a marshy track into a valley, hemmed in by bushes on either side. Sollers was looking definitely uneasy, and even Flavius, who had kept up an incessant grumble all the way, ceased his complaining and drew a little closer to his armed companions. I was glad we had brought our escort.
Maximilian, though, was leading the way as if an evening stroll through the wilderness was an everyday event. I waited until the path had widened a little, then went up to walk at his side.
‘Marcus told you, I presume, that we know you planned the robbery?’
He scowled at me. ‘Why else do you suppose I agreed to come on this miserable errand? If we find the woman, at least she can testify that I didn’t intend the stabbing.’
‘Marcus may search your apartments while you’re out.’
‘Let him,’ Maximilian said sullenly. ‘I don’t know what he hopes to find. Anything of any value has been sold long ago, to pay that wretched bath attendant. Not that I ever had much in the first place. If I had, I wouldn’t have needed to rob Quintus. I wanted money, that was all, and he refused to give me any.’
I walked beside him for a moment, and then murmured, ‘It was you, of course, who wrote “Remember Pertinax” on that tablet?’
His scowl deepened, and he quickened his pace without answering.
‘It had to be you,’ I said, matching my stride to his. ‘You wanted to divert suspicion from yourself, and suggest a different motive for the stabbing. No one else had anything to gain from it. But how did you know about Pertinax? Did Rollo tell you? I know he attended Quintus to the baths, when the council members met. I’m sure he listened to the political gossip, and he was something of a friend of yours.’
‘If you know so much, citizen, you hardly need to ask,’ Maximilian muttered sourly.
I took that for assent, and we walked for a little way in silence. ‘You have consulted this soothsayer often?’ I said, at last.
He glared at me truculently. He was showing us the way, his manner said, but he did not have to make conversation as well.
‘I am interested to know what she said to you,’ I ventured cheerfully. ‘She doesn’t seem to have been very reliable. Her prophecies for Flavius have proved untrue.’ An invitation to complain will often persuade a man to talk when cruder methods fail.
It worked now. Maximilian snorted. ‘Untrue! Untrue is an understatement. Everything she told me was a pack of lies. She promised me reconciliation with my father. The shape of some stupid storm clouds predicted it, she said. Well, it didn’t happen. Instead, he was threatening to disinherit me.’
I nodded. ‘If he had not so conveniently died.’
Maximilian threw me a venomous glance and quickened his pace still further.
‘You must have known that she could not be trusted,’ I said, picking my way carefully over a muddy patch, and hurrying to catch him up again. ‘You bribed her to tell Sollers what you wanted him to hear.’
He tried to walk away from me again, but I trotted after him, and at last he said, reluctantly, ‘I only asked her to repeat to him what she had said to me. I thought it would persuade him to go away.’
‘What she said to you? She spoke to you about Sollers?’
‘About Sollers and Julia. I paid her extra to read the signs for them. They were turning my father against me. I wanted to know what the future held. And when I heard, I was delighted. She was happy to repeat the prophecy to him.’
‘Giving you the opportunity to have your father robbed?’
He did not answer that.
‘And what did she say? What was this prophecy?’
‘That Sollers would meet another woman and that she would be his destiny. He would only be happy if he left my father’s house and Julia would only bring him doom. It could not have been more direct.’
‘It couldn’t,’ I agreed. It was unusual for diviners to be so unambiguous. Usually they gave the kind of veiled message which Junio had suggested. ‘She is no ordinary soothsayer?’
He shook his head. ‘No, she isn’t. I think she had education once, but life has been hard to her. I wondered sometimes if she told me, not what she saw, but what she wanted me to hear.’
‘But you came to her often?’
‘Several times. She encouraged me to do so. I do not know why I came. She was ugly, pock-marked, and she smelled. But I suppose I wanted to believe.’
‘I see.’ I turned to see if we were overheard, but Maximilian’s little spurts of speed had left the others far behind. Only Junio was in sight, and he was several yards back down the track. Maximilian, however, was still striding onwards.