I found myself pacing up and down the room, not knowing how on earth to answer this. I stopped before the household altar in the wall, seeing the simple sacrifices that had been offered there to the household spirits and the goddess of the hearth. I felt a sudden fury with these Roman deities. Why had they not ensured that I had left the house before Modesta and the other slaves arrived?
I turned to Paulinus. ‘I have decided that I need not tell anyone about Lavinia,’ I said.
To my surprise this did not seem to comfort him.
It was Secunda who broke the awkward silence first. ‘Husband, the citizen deserves more courtesy. I have told him the whole truth about Lavinia’s parentage — he had very largely worked it out in any case. Don’t you think that we should thank him for not betraying her?’ Her voice was entirely serene, but I thought I detected a warning tone in it.
Paulinus seemed to sense it too. He raised his head again. ‘Of course, but what about the rest of it? I couldn’t bear to be without you, after all we’ve been through and everything we’ve planned.’ He looked from her to me and his face took on that faintly puzzled air. ‘Or hasn’t he discovered the whole truth of it?’
She put an arm around his shoulder, gently, rather as a mother might console a child. ‘Not until this moment, husband, I don’t think. And none of it from me.’
I was frankly baffled for a moment, though I should not have been. Of course there was still a mystery to solve. Publius had employed me to try to find his bride, but then we had found her body in the box and I’d come on to Corinium to investigate. I still had no idea how that had come about. But I had been so occupied with the discovery of the truth about Lavinia that I had not turned my mind to the other matter recently.
Now though, as a result of what Paulinus said, I was forced to think again. It was becoming obvious that these two were involved in that grisly business with the corpse. My heart rebelled against the notion, but my brain refused to let the matter rest.
I turned to Paulinus, who was on his feet by now and staring at his wife with a look of dawning horror on his face. ‘You were involved in putting that body in the box?’
He looked at Secunda as if for some support, but she shook her head at him. ‘Tell him, Paulinus. There’s no help for it. If he asked the question, we shall have to tell the truth. But since he’s shown compassion for Lavinia, perhaps we can persuade him to do the same for us.’
I was about to insist upon his answering but he was too quick for me. He spoke before I had time to formulate my thoughts. ‘Will you promise, citizen? Can we rely on that? You will not betray us either?’ He reached out and slowly interlaced his fingers with his wife’s — or rather…?
I must have been baffled by her loveliness, or the obvious solution would have dawned on me before.
‘Great Mars!’ I said, hardly able to believe the words myself. ‘You are not his wife at all!’
TWENTY-SIX
The ferocity of her reaction startled me. ‘What makes you say that, citizen? Of course I am his wife.’ She squeezed his hand and looked affectionately at him. ‘True we did not have an expensive wedding feast, or a conferratus ceremony with witnesses and cakes, but when we reached here yesterday we summoned all the slaves and in front of everyone we lit the household shrine and made the proper vows before the gods.’
‘Where you are Gaius I am Gaia,’ Paulinus put in. ‘And I swore the same.’
‘But she isn’t Gaia. She is Audelia.’ Why had I not seen the possibility before?
‘All the same I am as much his wife as anyone could be. I even had a bridal costume, more or less — although I lacked the proper shoes and veil — and my hair was plaited in the proper way. In fact — ’ she shook her faded golden ringlets with a laugh — ‘it has been plaited in that way so long that even when — at last — I let it out, the tight curls still remain. My hair was absolutely straight when I first went to the shrine!’ She laughed again, then said with dignity, ‘Many people, citizen, are much less wed than that. And then, last evening, my husband came to me. I have become, in every sense, his wife. Even Lavinius’s famous law courts would agree to that.’
‘So what happened to the real Secunda?’ I enquired, struck by a dreadful thought. ‘Was it her body that we discovered in the box?’
‘Of course not, citizen,’ she said. ‘I am the only Secunda that there ever was. And it really is my name. Audelia Secunda my father called me, at my naming day, because an earlier daughter called Audelia did not live for long. Another affliction for my family, though my sister died of fever, as many children do, not of that dreadful curse that carried off the boys.’
‘The father was called Audelius and both girls were named for him,’ her husband said. ‘I knew the family slightly when I was a boy — they were relatives, of course. I grew fond of Secunda, as we called her, even then.’
The woman nodded. ‘To my mother I was always Secunda till the day I went away, though of course they called me Audelia at the shrine. But now I have retired. Besides — ’ she looked up at Paulinus lovingly — ‘I am a second wife. It seemed appropriate to use the name again.’
‘So who was the beheaded person in the box?’ I broke off as the realization dawned. ‘Oh, of course! It wasn’t murder as we all supposed. It was a suicide. That was the wet nurse who was rescued from the beasts?’
‘The body was released to Paulinus. It seemed the simple way. If my uncle found a body they would not look for me.’
‘So you cut the head and hands off?’ I saw Paulinus flinch.
‘It was the vilest thing that I have ever done. But it was not done with malice. Druids attach extreme importance to the head — they think that it is where the spirit dwells. I gave it to her family for proper burial, in the sacred grove or whatever place they chose.’
‘Besides,’ I said, heartlessly, ‘without a face, no one could be sure that the body was not Audelia?’
He nodded, with a kind of dignity. ‘That’s also true, of course. Don’t suppose I didn’t think of that. Otherwise I do not think I could have done the task.’ He swallowed hard, his voice-box bobbing visibly up and down. ‘But the woman’s family agreed to take the head and asked no questions about the rest of her. They were actually grateful, that was the dreadful thing.’
‘And what about the hands? I wondered at the time if they were calloused and would give the game away. I saw that the legs were strong and muscular.’
‘Much worse than work-worn, citizen.’ This time it was Secunda who replied. ‘The woman had a birthmark right across her hand and two of her fingers had been joined since birth. Defects like that would have prevented anyone from being accepted as a Vestal at the shrine. When Paulinus realized, he removed them too. It was not intended as an act of violence, citizen. The poor woman was already dead, and it was simply to allow me to escape.’
‘So you, Paulinus, cut off the missing portions before you left this house and put her in the box that you were travelling with — though, of course, the corpse was wearing her own garments at the time?’ I had understood this now. A coarse plaid cloak and tunic with a drawstring purse. ‘And when you reached Corinium you dressed her as a bride — or a Vestal Virgin, which is largely the same thing?’
Secunda — I could not think of her by any other name — laughed softly. ‘Exactly citizen, except I kept my cloak. Fortunately the girl was very much my size. Except for my white slippers which did not really fit. Then we put her in the box. Along with the wedding veil that I did not intend to wear.’
‘And the wedding slippers? You left them behind on purpose, I assume? To be rid of Ascus for an hour or two?’