‘I have heard something.’
‘Faustina did her hair and helped her bathe and dress when she was here. Regina had her own slave and a custos — a travelling companion — but she preferred Faustina. She sent her own maid away. She really wished, I think, to marry Crassus. For his money, perhaps. Faustina could not understand it. All the money in the world would not tempt her to his bed, if she had the choice.’
But of course, as his slave, she had no choice at all. ‘Did Germanicus know,’ I said carefully, ‘about your feelings?’ I had heard Aulus’ account of this, but I wondered what Rufus would say.
He surprised me. ‘Yes. He must have done. He never spoke of it. But it gave him pleasure, I think, to make me witness what he did to her. If he made her dance for him at entertainments — he had a costume for her, a skirt only and a necklace of hazelnuts — he would make me play while she danced. She would have to dance closer and closer, half naked, right over him, and he would snap at the nuts with his teeth. Sometimes he bit the nuts, sometimes her breasts — savage bites — while the other guests laughed and cheered. She would be weeping sometimes, with pain and shame, while I was forced to watch it. And then he would send her off, to wait his pleasure, and when the guests were gone he would call for me, to play the lute outside the door, and listen to him with her on the bed within.’
Suddenly, I could imagine that. Crassus was like a cruel cat with his victims, not striking them outright but teasing them with careful tortures.
There were tears of anger in the boy’s eyes again. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘Crassus knew.’
‘Did you kill him, Rufus?’ I could almost have understood it if he had.
‘I never touched him,’ Rufus said. He got up. ‘And now, excuse me, I am wanted at the lament. I risk a beating already.’ He moved towards the door.
I called after him. ‘Rufus, how well did you know Daedalus?’
He stopped, surprised. ‘Better than most. We shared a love of music. He was a clever man. I liked him, although many didn’t.’
‘Then why,’ I said, ‘do you speak of him like everyone else in the villa, in the past tense? As if he were dead?’
Rufus paused at the doorway to look at me for a moment. ‘Well, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Daedalus was an honourable man. If he was alive, he would have come back.’ And then he was gone himself.
I sat for a moment gazing after him. One thing I was now completely certain of. Crassus had possessed at least one mortal enemy in his household. Two, if you counted Faustina. I have moved, with Marcus, in some exalted circles but I have rarely seen more concentrated hatred than I had just seen on Rufus’ face. Whoever had done the murder, Rufus had wished Germanicus dead. ‘I never touched him,’ he had said, but he hadn’t denied the killing.
And he had been last actually to come out of the villa and he had missed much of the procession. I noticed, too, that he had evaded my question about where he had actually been.
I got up and looked around the sleeping space.
Slaves do not have many possessions. What they do have is usually hidden somewhere away from the buildings, in some hollow tree or buried in a spot which the hider devoutly hopes is secret — there is little privacy in the slaves’ quarters. Nevertheless, there are one or two places where it is always sensible to look. I knew them. I was once a slave myself.
I knelt down and buried my hand under the bed covering, among the pile of straw and reeds which was Rufus’ bed. At first I could feel nothing, and I was almost about to give up, when my fingers closed on something smooth and soft, wrapped with a leather thong. I drew it out.
A woven pouch. My fingers probed the cloth, but there were no coins in it. Rufus had spoken the truth about that. That was surprising. A lute player like Rufus might expect a few small coins at least, after playing at a banquet — from the guests, if not from his master. But there was no money here. I untied the thong, and opened the pouch.
There were two packets inside it, each wrapped in a small folded piece of cloth. One held a lock of reddish hair — long, curled, and dyed. Perfumed, too. Faustina’s almost certainly. The other was a surprise. There was a wisp of hair in that, too: short, dark, coarse and curly. Not more than a hair or two, and no longer than my thumbnail, but carefully wrapped as though each single strand was precious.
I squatted back on my heels and looked at it. Not a second girl, surely? Rufus was too much in love for that. A sister or mother, perhaps? No, it didn’t look like a woman’s hair. His father’s then? But what was he doing with his father’s hair hidden in his mattress? It made no sense at all.
There was a movement at the doorway, and I wrapped the pouch quickly together again and stuffed it back where I had found it. But no one came in.
I waited. Still nothing happened. I felt that prickling sensation on my scalp again.
I went to the door and looked out. Nothing. Only the distant slaves still loading the last of the logs onto the farm cart. It was unnerving.
I glanced back up the sleeping room. No, I told myself, I was imagining things. I must do the second thing I had come for — glance into Andretha’s room while I was here. ‘A hoarder’ Aulus had called him. It would be interesting to see what he was hoarding.
I walked slowly down the room. On the way, though, my eye was caught by a small chest-cupboard beside one of the beds. It belonged to Paulus, obviously: there was the strigil and the oil still on the carrying-tray on top. I paused.
A noise. I whirled around, but too late. All I saw was the flutter of a tunic at the doorway, and the room was still again. But there was no doubt of it. I was being watched.
Well, if they came again I would be ready. I went over deliberately and opened the cupboard. It was not fastened. There was nothing of interest there, simply the tools of his trade.
I glanced behind me. The room was still empty. I knelt down quickly, intending to rummage in the bed straw, as I had done earlier further down the room.
Then something hit me hard on the back of the head. I had a confused sensation of pitching forwards, and that was that.
Chapter Eight
The next hours are a blur to me. I do dimly remember shouts and voices, being carried uncomfortably over a strong shoulder to the accompaniment of a strong smell of onions while my head ached and throbbed, and then being lowered gratefully onto a soft, welcoming bed. I seemed to spend a long time then halfway between waking and sleeping, but I preferred sleep. It hurt less. When I did awake at last, and opened an experimental eye, I found Junio bending over me with a goblet of something aromatic and steaming.
For a moment, I fancied that I was at home. I blinked myself awake, cautiously. Window-glass, a raised bed, fine coverings, spiced mead, Junio at my side and half a cohort of anxious slaves (including a pair of pretty girls) waiting at my feet — I had either been kidnapped by Bacchus or I was still in Crassus’ villa.
I struggled to sit up, but a blinding pain in my head made me grimace. Not heaven, then.
‘What are you doing here-?’ I began, but my voice wouldn’t answer my command. Junio pressed the goblet to my lips.
‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Marcus had me sent for as soon as he saw you.’
‘Marcus?’ I said stupidly, trying to assemble my scattered wits. ‘Is he here too?’
Junio waited for me to sip the reviving mixture again, before he answered. ‘Andretha sent for him, immediately Aulus found you. And Marcus sent for me. He will be exceedingly glad to find you recovered.’
He meant Marcus, I realised after a fleeting confusion. For a moment I thought he was still talking about the chief slave. Poor Andretha, I thought indistinctly. Another culpable lack of security. First his master’s body found and now an official guest attacked. The man must be flapping like a bat. I managed a faint grin, but the pain in my head immediately reminded me that this was no smiling matter.