"Petronius." Maia simply spoke his name. It was more to let him hear she was there than anything.
There was a faint light from an oil lamp that must be over by his bed. I could see Petro, stripped to bare feet and an unbleached undertunic; he was standing in front of a window, leaning on the sill, letting the night air fall on him. He did not turn around.
"This is no good," Maia advised him. "Sleep. You need to rest."
"I can't."
"What are you doing, then?"
"Nothing." He did turn. He showed her empty hands. But he had a
full heart. "Nothing at all. Remembering Silvana and Tadia. Waiting for the pain to end."
"Some of it will pass," my sister said.
Petronius swore coarsely.
"Well, that ends the comforting part of the evening in good masculine style!" quipped Maia.
"I don't want people being bloody kind-I get upset." He stepped toward her then, so in the small room they were standing close. "I don't want pitying or chivvying-and I don't want your sniping wit. Either go, Maia-or damn well stay!"
"Which do you choose?" asked Maia, but the question was rhetorical for they had moved into each other's arms.
When they kissed it was neither young love blossoming nor established [love reasserting itself. This was something much darker. They were both joyless and desperate. The way they had come together was deliberate and carnal; it struck me that nothing good would come of it for either of them.
Freed by their self-absorption, I walked past unnoticed. I even managed to hook the door. I went on to my room, depressed.
Helena twined herself around me when I came into bed, her head falling on my shoulder in its accustomed place. I held her affectionately and stayed quiet so she fell asleep. I did not tell her what I had just seen.
XXXVII
It was barely light when hectic knocking awoke me. Running footsteps sounded outside in the corridor. There were cries of alarm; then I heard a brief order and all the noises were cut off.
Rousing myself, I flung open the bedroom door. Helena murmured behind me sleepily as light from the corridor lamps came in. A scared slave was waiting. He told me anxiously that the soldiers who were guarding our prisoners thought something had gone wrong.
Hilaris appeared. Hair ruffled, and pulling on a long-sleeved robe like some barbaric Eastern potentate, he confirmed the worst: Pyro had been found dead.
An hour of frantic activity later we had worked out something of what had happened. Perusal of the body told us beyond question that it was an unnatural death. Pyro was the bristle-chinned enforcer, not heavily built and yet a muscular, tough-looking specimen. He was about thirty-five or forty, an age when many die, but he had been well nourished in his lifetime and was suffering from no obvious disease. He had not been told that the torturer was coming to work on him, but even if he guessed, none of us believed this hardened brute had died of fear or killed himself.
His lips and mouth showed faint indications of corrosion burn: poison. The soldiers admitted they had found him collapsed, though he was still living at that stage. When they tried to revive him, he suffered fits. [He was unable to speak and appeared to be paralyzed. Afraid of being disciplined for not watching him more closely, they had worked on him themselves-well, soldiers always believe they know better than doctors. He died. They then wasted what must have been a couple more hours debating what to do.
This was a private house. The only reason prisoners had been kept at the residence was to be closer to the governor when he put them through his magistrate's interview. They had been locked in windowless rooms that were normally stores. The soldiers were billeted in an improvised guardroom on the same corridor, but they admitted they had closed the door, probably so they could play illicit board games unobserved. This corridor was informally closed off with a rope but it was situated in the service area of the house. That put it near to the kitchen, essentially a public wing. Adjacent to the kitchen, as in many homes, was a lavatory.
Members of the procurator's private household mainly used the other facilities in the bath complex, but visitors would automatically seek out the kitchen, knowing there was bound to be a sit-down closet alongside. It had happened last night. All sorts of people had used that lavatory, in fact, including the soldiers and a carrier bringing in late-night deliveries of food for the dinner. Any of these could have noticed that the cook had prepared trays with basic meals for all the prisoners, and that two trays had remained on a side table after word went down that Pyro and Splice were to be deprived of sleep and food on the orders of the torturer.
Those two trays had stayed for hours, just outside the kitchen. Then somebody removed them. The cook, fully preoccupied with serving up a banquet, thought nothing of their disappearance. The soldiers told us they came across the trays in the prisoners' corridor; they supposed Amicus had changed his orders so they delivered the food. Pyro ate his.
The waiters and barber, who had been fed earlier, were all fine. Splice had refused to eat: he was frightened the governor would have him poisoned-not that the rest of us blamed Frontinus for what had befallen Pyro. But thanks to his fears, Splice remained alive. His foodbowl was now taken to be tested on some stray animal. It would die; I did not need to see the results.
Everyone in the kitchen had been working flat out last evening. Guests had come and gone. Beyond muttering, "It's that door there, sir!" several times, the staff had taken no notice.
Aelia Camilla swore by the probity of her cook. He was a big Trino-vantian with a thick mustache, who looked more like a seaman than a gourmet chef, though someone had trained him well. He cannot have had traditional knowledge of rabbit richly stuffed with calves' brain and chicken, or even simple Roman custard or roasted dates Alexandrian. I suspect Aelia Camilla had taught him herself; she certainly rounded on her husband when angry questioning from Hilaris reduced the big cook to tears.
The governor turned up, naturally furious. Frontinus gave orders to have Splice transferred to the greater security of the fort. He was forgetting one important fact: Londinium did not have a secure fort. I pointed it out. Splice was sent to the military anyway.
There was nothing more to learn. I went to find Petronius. He needed to know that Pyro had been eliminated, presumably by an accomplice from the gang. I needed to discuss the implications.
I rapped on his bedroom door, intending to hover outside in the corridor to avoid embarrassment. The secretive Petronius had known since our army days how to keep his women to himself.
When there was no answer, I forced myself to open the door. As I had guessed by then, the room was deserted, its bed neatly made with smoothed pillow and covers. He had gone back on watch already.
Anxious, I decided I would pack in some breakfast; today was likely to be busy. I had forgotten that the cook was hysterical. So far there were only a couple of roughly chopped loaves and some rubbery eggs that must have sat in the pan on a racing boil for at least an hour. Even more annoying, I was joined for my grim repast by my sister.
I expect the worst from women, but in contrast to our siblings (who were a bunch of hussies), I had always believed that my sister Maia was a virgin schoolgirl, a decent young woman, and a chaste wife. While it's true Famia had gotten her pregnant, she had then married him. And they had stayed married.
Now I had seen her embarking on a night of savage physicality-yet she appeared the next morning looking the same as usual. She gave a grunt when she saw me and was soon eating a light breakfast in her accustomed grumpy silence. I found this troublesome. What was the point of any man expending himself on white-hot lovemaking, in the arms of a woman he had eyed up yearningly for years, if the experience only left her irritably picking stale crumbs from her teeth?