Ovid

'Did they look for him?' I said. 'The emperor's men?'

She nodded. 'But he hadn't told no one he was going, sir. Not even me. I didn't know where he was till months after when we met in the vegetable market. And he made me swear not to say nothing about him, even to the other slaves.' She started to cry; not holding her hands over her face, but openly, the tears running down her cheeks like the slow sap trickling down runnels in a tree trunk. 'Then the mistress was sent away and I came to the Lady Marcia's. We didn't see each other often because he said it wasn't safe. Just now and again in the Velabrum market, or maybe at a festival when we were both free. He was working for Paquius by then, unloading grain and working the mill. I asked him to let me find him a better job but he wouldn't let me. He said it might be harder work than what he was used to but at least it was safe. And then when they got the master, of course, I knew he was right.'

There was something wrong somewhere. I looked at Perilla, but her hand was stroking the old woman's hair.

'What do you mean, “they got the master”, Harpale?' I said. 'Sure they got Paullus. You told us he was arrested the day Davus ran.'

Maybe she'd just mixed the times up, I thought. Maybe it was the slip of an overwrought old woman's memory.

Her next words pulled the ground out from under my feet.

'Oh, no, sir,' she said; and her eyes, even through the tears, were bright and guileless. 'I didn't mean Master Paullus. I meant my new master, Lady Marcia's husband. The Lord Fabius.'

Time seemed to stop. Perilla's hand lay frozen against the old woman's forehead, and she stared at me in shock. The hairs lifted at the back of my neck.

When they got the master…

Oh, shit. Not another corpse. We'd got enough and to spare without any more bodies scattered around this case.

'But Fabius wasn't arrested.' I tried to keep my voice calm and reasonable. 'And he wasn't accused of any crime, let alone executed. Fabius was an old man, and he died a natural death.'

Harpale's eyes went blank.

'Yes, sir,' she said. 'You're right. Of course you are. I made a mistake. I meant the Lord Paullus.'

Yeah, I thought, like hell you did. But Perilla got in first.

'Harpale.' I could hear the iron in her voice. 'How did my Uncle Fabius die? Let me have the truth, please.'

The old woman looked at her for a long time. Then, in a voice so low I could hardly make the words out, she said:

'He killed himself, madam.'

'He did what?'

'Killed himself. Slit his wrists.'

'Why?'

'I don't know. You'll have to ask the Lady Marcia.'

'You mean my aunt knows?'

'Yes, madam. Of course she knows.'

'And she never told me?'

The old woman's lips tightened and she said nothing.

'You said "they", Harpale.' My head still hadn't stopped spinning. 'Who were they? The emperor's men?' I meant Tiberius's: Fabius had died barely a month after Augustus, just after the Wart had come to power. 'Why should the emperor want a harmless old guy like Fabius dead?'

Harmless old guy. Yeah. I thought of Davus. He'd been a harmless old guy too.

Harpale's lips were still set firm. She refused to look at me. Her eyes were on Perilla.

'I'm sorry, madam. I shouldn't've said anything. I'm only a silly slave. Don't listen to anything I say.'

'Harpale, please!' Perilla had got over her shock. Now she was kneeling beside the old woman's chair. 'You want us to find who killed your brother, don't you?'

The lips trembled.

'So this is important. We can't go any further. If my uncle's death is important in any way then we have to know. And we won't know unless you tell us about it.'

The old slave was quiet for a long time. Then she said:

'You weren't at the master's funeral, were you, madam?'

Perilla frowned. 'No, I was too young. What does that have to do with-?'

'Please, madam. Let me speak, please. I was there with the mistress. The Lady Marcia. She was in a terrible state. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep. Wouldn't even speak most of the time.'

'But that's quite natural. After all, they'd been married for-'

'Please, madam!' The old woman's bird-claw fingers clutched at Perilla's arm. She was trembling. 'Listen, please! We go to the funeral, the mistress and me. When the torch is thrown on the mistress suddenly runs forwards like she's going to fling herself in after it shouting that she's killed him. Killed your uncle.'

Shit. This didn't make sense.

'You said the guy commited suicide,' I said. 'Why the hell should Marcia think she'd killed him?'

Harpale hesitated. 'He did kill himself, sir. I'm not quite sure what the Lady Marcia meant.'

'Be quiet, Marcus.' Perilla was glaring at me.

'Thank you, madam.' Harpale paused. 'Anyway, half a dozen of the mourners pulled her back and I took her to the coach. She talked to me on the way home. At least, she didn't really talk. It was more of a ramble, like. As if I wasn't there. You understand, madam?'

Perilla nodded. 'Yes, I understand. What did she say?'

'Mostly it was about a trip that the master had made with the old emperor. The Divine Augustus I should say. A trip that no one was to know about, to some island or other…'

'Trimerus?' I couldn't stop myself. My scalp prickled. The old woman frowned.

'No, not Trimerus, sir. That's where the Lady Julia is. This place was different. Plan- something.'

Shit! Oh, Jupiter! Oh, Jupiter Best and Greatest! There was only one Plan- island that I knew of. And that was where Augustus had exiled his grandson, Julia's brother, for gross immorality…

'Planasia?'

'That was it, sir. To see the Exile, the mistress said.'

'Augustus went to see Postumus?'

'I don't know, sir. To see the Exile on Planasia, that's all she said. And she'd given away the secret. That's what was upsetting her.'

I sat back in my chair, waiting for the world to right itself again and let me think. Postumus had been Julia's younger brother, exiled the year before Julia's own disgrace. He'd been executed — supposedly on Augustus's orders — immediately after the old emperor's death. But if Augustus had gone to see Postumus only a few months before, and secretly, then…

'Who did she tell?' I whispered. The old woman stared at me. 'For Jupiter's sake, Harpale, you must know that! Who did Marcia tell?'

The thin lips parted. Quietly, matter-of-factly, she said:

'Of course I know, sir. She told her friend the empress.'

Marcia had told Tiberius's mother!

Varus to Himself

Let me tell you now (yes! At long last!) about Arminius; dread leader of the Cheruscan tribe, flaming spearhead of German resistance, Rome's arch-enemy and, of course, my current employer.

I first met him three years ago in Rome, at one of my nephew Lucius's dinner parties. It was an all-male, all-military affair: myself, Lucius, Marcus Vinicius, the ex-governor of Germany, Fabius Maximus. And, of course, Arminius.

I had known that Lucius had invited him, and I expected…what? A barbarian, certainly; someone with a veneer of civilisation, a performing bear in a mantle, dense of wit, halting of speech; a clod of German earth with the manners of a slave and the arrogance of a savage. I should have known better. Arminius's father had sent him to Augustus in childhood, and he had been reared as a Roman gentleman.

Lucius introduced us. The young man — he can have been no more than twenty — rose politely from his couch. He was slim, his blond hair cut short in the Roman manner, and he wore his mantle with more grace than I did my own.

We shook hands, and I said in German (I was with Tiberius when he reduced the Sugambri) 'I'm delighted to meet you, Prince Hermann.'