I tried to envisage how my adopted son would feel if he was forced to sell his own beloved child to keep the rest of the family alive, but my imagination failed me. I shook my head. ‘Then I will try to find Paulinus at his farm and see if he can tell what I want to know. You have been most helpful. Thank you very much.’
He gave me that sideways look again. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell your patron if I have been of use? But you look as if my information was not quite what you had hoped.’
I gave a rueful smile. ‘It seems to disprove a theory that I had, that’s all. There is a mystery surrounding his family yesterday and now I’ll have to find another explanation of events.’
‘Is this about that Vestal Virgin who was here? She was some relation, wasn’t she?’ He caught sight of my face. ‘It is no “mystery” how I came to know that, citizen — he was so proud of it, he told me she was coming the last time that we met.’
So there was yet another way in which the Druids could have learned the news! I sighed. ‘Well, there’s nothing else to do but go out to the farm and try and talk to Paulinus himself. He and his family might have noticed something, I suppose.’ I glanced up and saw Priscilla striding through the square, accompanied by an urchin with a donkey on a string. ‘And here, I hope, is someone who is going to guide me there.’
The slave trader flashed his pointed teeth at me. ‘Well, remember, citizen, I’m here three days each moon. If you ever need a slave-girl or a manservant — indoors or outdoors — I always have a range.’ He winked. ‘And — in future — since you’re the protege of His Excellence, I’m sure I can manage a special rate for you.’
I thanked him and turned away to greet Priscilla and the boy.
TWENTY-ONE
Priscilla came breathlessly up to me at once. ‘Did you discover anything?’
I shook my head. This was not the time or place to tell her that the information I’d received only served to make me more bemused. ‘Only that I need to go out to the farm and speak to Paulinus as soon as possible.’
She smirked triumphantly. ‘That won’t be difficult. I’ve found the donkey-boy for you. He remembers exactly where he took the writing-block and he will take you there, although it’s quite a walk, he says — several miles at least.’
I nodded, though not without an inward sigh. I am quite used to walking from my roundhouse into Glevum town, and that is a walk of several miles as well, but this was different. I couldn’t take my time. Two females were already dead and another one was missing without trace: I wanted to ask more questions as soon as possible.
The urchin tugged my toga. ‘You could come up on my donkey, citizen, if you don’t mind sitting at the back and hanging on. Long Ears is used to carrying panniers so he’ll bear you easily, though he can be a stubborn old creature when he tries. I may have to give you a branch-switch to help to urge him on.’ His grimy face split in a mocking grin. ‘Might not be very dignified, but it would get you there — a little bit quicker than walking anyway, there are a lot of hills and valleys between here and the farm. Or I could lead Long Ears and walk along beside, though that would obviously be slower and cost a little more.’
I was about to protest my complete lack of ready cash, but Priscilla said at once, ‘I’ve told him, citizen, that we will put it on your bill, and pay him what is owed when Publius pays us.’ She saw my look and added urgently, ‘I had to promise something or he wouldn’t have agreed. The boy has to make a living, after all — and he can’t be doing other errands if he’s guiding you.’
I was obliged to see the force of this and I agreed the terms, wondering what Publius was going to say to this. No one had mentioned hiring donkey-boys.
Priscilla smiled. ‘I will leave you to it, then, and go back to the house and see if the undertakers’ women have finished dealing with the nurse’s corpse. If so the raedarius can take it back to Lavinius again, as you sensibly suggested, citizen.’
‘You will send news back with them, and warn the family what has happened, I suppose?’
She looked pityingly at me, as though I were foolish to have asked. ‘I’ll do more than that. I’ll send the horseman off at once to tell them to expect her body later in the day, then they can make arrangements for a pyre. No doubt they’ll know if she was a member of the funeral-guild.’
I nodded. It was probable. Most slaves in wealthy families belonged to such a guild, which — for a small subscription — ensured a decent send-off after death. Some masters, like Marcus, paid the fee themselves, it saved them having to arrange a private pyre.
I said, ‘If not, I suppose Cyra and Lavinius will do something for their slave.’
‘Then, with your permission,’ Priscilla said, ‘I’ll send that flask back too, since clearly at one time it belonged to them. The household would expect to have it back, I’m sure. It is still a valuable object and if it can’t be repaired, at least the metal could be used again. Though whether Cyra will want to use it in any form at all, when she hears that it was used to murder that poor nurse, only Juno knows. Perhaps they’ll use it as a grave-offering for the corpse.’ She looked from left to right as though we might be overheard, then added in a whisper, ‘Should I get Ascus to tell her that we think it was tampered with by Druids?’
I remembered the courtyard and the finding of the flask. What was it about the scene that still faintly troubled me? The little jug had been exactly where it would have bounced if it had been thrown out of the window-space above… Of course! I was a threefold idiot! I took a sharp breath and turned to Trullius’s wife. ‘Better perhaps, for Ascus just to say that the nursemaid drank a poisoned sleeping draught. It’s-’
She was sharp-witted enough to see the point of this at once. She looked from left to right, then held me by the arm and tugged me to one side. ‘You don’t think it was the rebels, after all? Then who…?’ She looked into my face. ‘You’re not suggesting that she drank it knowingly?’
I said slowly, feeling for the truth, ‘It occurs to me that it is possible. That flask may be the so-called “sign” that she was looking for. It would explain why she begged us to let her back into the room, and why she wanted to have her two hands free, although she seemed perfectly happy to be chained.’
Priscilla took a moment to consider this. ‘I said that we should never have allowed her back upstairs!’ She sidestepped a ribbon-vendor who was proffering his tray and dropped her voice again. ‘But surely it’s more likely that a murderer exchanged the poison for her sleeping draught and she drank it by accident? The same person who kidnapped Lavinia earlier — and perhaps, who then climbed out of the room down that knotted cloth-rope which we thought the child had made?’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘why throw the flask away?’ Now that I had realized the unlikelihood of that, I wondered why it had taken me so long to question it. ‘Yet she must have done. No one else could have got into the room last night: there was a slave outside the door, and Trullius and I watched with our own eyes as she pulled up the cloth-rope and undid the knots — making a pretence of examining each one — so there was no chance of anyone gaining access from the court. Besides, if a murderer had got into the room and forced the nurse to drink the poison he had brought, he wouldn’t have thrown a valuable jug away — especially where it was possible that it would be found, Surely he would have taken it with him when he went?’
The ribbon-man bobbed up beside us, offering his wares, but she waved him off as though he were a flea. She turned to me. ‘I see your reasoning. Rebels are always robbing people on the road to get hold of valuable things that they can sell.’ She frowned. ‘But what about the nurse?’