He was back in the chair looking meek when Lucilla returned, bringing heated wine with honey and a hint of spice. Vinius cradled the cup in both hands. He gulped, then shuddered, but it hit the spot. ‘You’re wonderful!’
With a sniff at his cliche, she took the second wicker chair, pushing a cushion into the small of her back. She was wearing the same blue dress as last time, but with casual slippers. Her hair was different, looped in a heavy plait behind her head; Vinius thought it too severe but guessed the style was temporary. She positioned her feet on a footstool, pair to one Vinius had kicked aside, then laced her fingers together, leaning her chin on them. ‘I think you ought to tell me what happened.’
‘Can’t do that.’
‘I am a hairdresser, Vinius. We see everything and say nothing.’
Vinius remained stubbornly silent to begin with. He gazed around Lucilla’s room, as he had done while she was brewing his hot drink. To delay answering her question, he indicated a large divided basket in which were laid hanks of human hair in different colours.
‘Imported,’ Lucilla explained, matter-of-factly. She kept talking to settle him: ‘The blonde comes from Germania, the blue-black from India. Don’t worry; I pick it all over and give it a wash before I bring a bundle into the house. Expensive stuff, but I get access to the importers and special rates because of who I work for… Sometimes I wonder about the story behind it. For a woman in abject poverty, selling your hair beats selling your body — and, unlike a virginity, you can grow it back and sell it more than once.’
Vinius at last smiled faintly. He did not remark that, as he knew from the vigiles, in the sex trade repeat virginities were two a quadrans.
Next, he cocked his head at a stone bust of a male head, stylised yet familiar, alongside which lay a hairpiece on which Lucilla had been working after her client left. It was not one of her fanciful fondant crests for her ladies, but a flat band of cloth onto which she was slowly knotting a dense row of identical formal curls. ‘Is that-?’
‘If it is, you’ll see him wearing it, won’t you, Praetorian?’
She rose, and planted the hairpiece on the model’s smooth crown; she made a mock obeisance, then snorted. She put away the bust in a cupboard, where she must normally hide it out of sight.
They were connected closely through their work, with its demands of confidentiality. Anyway, the death of Paris was public. Vinius made his decision. ‘I killed a man today — at least, helped somebody do it.’
Lucilla took his empty beaker, lest it slip from his fingers and shatter. She resumed her chair, sitting very still. Oddly, she felt no fear at all at the fact he said he had killed someone. ‘Who’s dead?’
‘Paris,’ said Gaius Vinius in a drab voice. ‘Paris, the actor-dancer. Paris who may have been the Empress’s lover.’
‘Or not!’ commented Lucilla. ‘Paris who was merely suspected by her husband, the maniac.’
We live in dark times.
We have seen nothing yet.
Gaius told her what had happened and his part in it. Lucilla merely asked, ‘What was your thinking, when you involved yourself?’
‘Paris was going to die anyway. No need to prolong his agony. He was terrified, but he meant to resist, and whatever you think of theatrical types, he was extremely fit and athletic — which Domitian is not. I didn’t want to let the public see Paris being mangled. There would have been screaming. And scrabbling around on the ground. It would have lasted a long time. Blood everywhere. Maybe the Emperor himself wounded.’
‘I see,’ said Lucilla.
Words were coming freely now. ‘We bundled Domitian off the scene as fast as possible. My centurion told me to lie low — a good man, old school. We work very closely… He is scared I may have to take the blame.’
Lucilla considered. ‘No. No, it won’t happen. The Emperor will want to see himself as a hero.’
‘He killed an unarmed man!’
‘A soldier’s viewpoint, Vinius. Anyway, you will be deleted from his version.’
‘He may want me deleted permanently.’
‘Then your centurion is right. Disappearing will help Domitian misremember how things happened. Soon you won’t count.’
‘I just did my job.’
‘Oh how conventional.’ Lucilla’s jibe was gentle and Gaius smiled at it.
He finished his drink, feeling it reheat his body-core as intended. He was at ease with the girl now, any predatory interest in her neutralised. All it took, apparently, was just one kindly brew to reposition Flavia Lucilla among his grandmother, aunts and the mother he could not remember. Or he viewed her, perhaps, as a man might think of an elderly prostitute who was content to listen, or some friendly landlady, detached from his real life but with a warm heart.
She saw him just as before: a typical man, a menace, a potential lecher, an idiot.
Vinius remained at the apartment for the next three days, but Lucilla rearranged her appointments so she saw her customers in their own homes — as a favour to him, as she saw it — and she spent a lot of time elsewhere with Lara. She and Vinius barely saw each other.
After the Praetorian returned to the camp, the apartment seemed somehow less empty to her. She had accepted that they shared the place. He would be coming back and, on the whole, Lucilla no longer minded.
11
Themison of Miletus had his lunch on a tray. Bad for digestion, any doctor knew, but he had convinced himself the demands of his private patients left no alternative. It had worthy ingredients: lettuce, radishes, celery, hard-boiled eggs, olives, capers, sliced onion, curls of hard cheese, squares of soft sheep’s cheese, pine nuts, anchovies… In truth, there was rather a lot of it.
Still, he only drank cold water. Well, he did today. His home appointments were over-running and just when he planned to finish for the morning, two new patients had wormed themselves onto his list. He had no idea how they managed to persuade his usher to slot them in. Themison harboured growing suspicions that the usher had started to disobey instructions deliberately. He also suspected the man accepted bribes.
He wanted to be brooding about his festering feud with his rival, Pharoun of Naxos, who was trying to do down Themison with all the obnoxiousness and deceit of an islander. He could dwell on Pharoun’s wiles while he was eating, even though he should not be torturing himself during the digestion process. He had been looking forward to an hour of seething about Pharoun as much as he looked forward to the bliss of regular bowel movements.
Irritably he agreed that the two men could come in.
They were soldiers. Although they were not in uniform, interpretation of body language was a professional skill. Also, they were carrying swords and when he asked, they immediately owned up to being Praetorians.
Themison observed they were both anxious. While they were in his waiting room they must have seen a young woman totter out, needing the support of two attendants. (‘Speculum examination,’ one man had guessed in a hollow voice to his companion. Growing up among many aunts, he knew about gynaecological torment.) Next, a waiting child had screamed so much he had to be taken home without seeing the doctor; the painfully thin lad’s grey complexion indicated that there was no hope anyway. Finally, a man they recognised as a top gladiator hopped through, muttering curses and with bloody bandages on his bunions.