‘Sabina Collatinus lived with you, didn’t she?’
Aristaeus blinked rapidly. ‘I thought that was why you were here?’
‘One of the reasons,’ she said carefully. ‘Care to tell me how it came about?’
The story was astonishing. Wilder than any theories she’d tried stringing together herself, yet coming from this rough, tough mountain man, it seemed as normal as clipping your toenails or putting the cat out. The sort of thing any decent chap would do, placed in the same position.
Thirty years ago, said Aristaeus, a man called Faustulus was hired by Eugenius Collatinus to escort his six-year-old daughter to Rome where she was to be ordained as a Vestal Virgin. At the time, Collatinus was a prosperous wheat farmer working lands to the east and Faustulus a hunter in the hills above, renowned for his integrity and dependability.
‘It was the father what was supposed to hand the daughter over,’ Aristaeus explained, ‘but we was at war with Rome. Sextus agreed to Sabina’s ordination but he wouldn’t agree to Eugenius leaving, whereas Faustulus, being Sicilian born and bred, knew ways.’ He tapped the side of his nose knowingly.
‘Faustulus handed her over to the Vestals, then the next thing he knew, she’d run away. He found her at the wharf, hysterical and desperate to find a passage to Sicily, saying the Holy Sisters wanted to bury her alive.’ Claudia was fully aware of the tale of the recalcitrant Vestal who had forsaken her vow of chastity. Her lover had been whipped to death in the Forum, but she, poor cow, had been interred alive.
‘So the young novice had nightmares?’
Aristaeus toyed with his plate, tapping his knife against the wood. ‘You must understand,’ he said eventually, ‘that Sabina was only six, and what she told Faustulus he believed.’ He threw down the knife. ‘She said she couldn’t go back to the temple, because she was…unchaste.’
‘Surely he-’
Aristaeus cut in firmly. ‘Sabina told him her daddy had done to Sabina what her daddy had done to her mummy. Do you understand?’
Claudia gulped, and nodded.
‘Right. Faustulus believed that, six years old or no, they’d bury her alive because Vestals have to be pure. Not just free of bodily defects, pure right through.’
‘Rubbish! They simply wouldn’t have admitted her!’ The huntsman held up a restraining hand. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But Faustulus didn’t understand, he thought she’d been ordained and that if he took her back, that’s what would happen. So he told the Sisters she’d been killed in a traffic accident and that, for them, was the end of it.’
She knew Orbilio had tried tracing Sabina’s chaperone, but after three decades the leads were too cold. ‘What happened next?’ She was almost scared to ask.
‘Faustulus brought her back to Sicily and raised her as his own. What else could he do? Couldn’t hand her back to Aulus, not after that. So we pretended she was ordained. Who’s to know? Not that lot, they’re too busy looking after Number One.’
Claudia slowly shook her head. Aulus. Old Conky. Assaulting his own daughter…
Not long after, Aristaeus said, Sextus began stripping the hills for his warships and Eugenius was having financial problems from not being able to offload his wheat stocks. When Collatinus moved west, Faustulus followed. Sabina could keep tabs on her family, and in any case the pickings were good above Sullium.
‘Faustulus was your father?’
‘Yep.’ He swung out his arm and lifted another jug of beer on to the table. ‘On his deathbed, he made me swear to look after Sabina for the rest of her life.’
Claudia made rapid calculations. ‘How old were you?’
‘Fifteen.’ The word was almost obscured by a gulp. ‘Both sisters long married and my mother two years in the ground.’
‘It doesn’t sound like Faustulus,’ she protested. ‘It was unfair. I mean, why for life?’
‘Oh, Sabina always had clouds in her mind,’ he said, as though half the population were batty. ‘From the outset we knew she was…’
‘Mad?’
‘Special.’
‘Because of what Aulus had done?’
He didn’t reply, but set cheese and radishes on the table. Claudia watched him slice off a fist-sized piece of bread and chew on it.
‘You loved her?’ she ventured.
His eyes rose and bored into hers. ‘I cared for her,’ he replied, wiping the crumbs from his beard. ‘But I told her straight. We’ll keep up the pretence, but when your thirty years is up, you go home. When the Senior Vestal retired, I sent her back.’
Claudia thought back over the things Sabina had told her. About seeing mountains split asunder, spilling rivers of blood. Etna, erupting nineteen years ago. So obvious. Just like Varius. Why couldn’t she see the things that were under her nose?
‘Last year I built this hut. There’s no room for two, she knew I meant business.’
‘Did you sleep with her?’ After what had been aired today, the question didn’t seem impertinent.
Aristaeus took a deep breath. ‘A man has to relieve his frustrations, don’t he?’
Claudia hoped her expression was suitably ambivalent.
His fist thumped down on the table. ‘Croesus, she just lay there. I was eighteen years old, red blood coursing through my veins, and it’s not as though I didn’t ask if…I could…you know. But she just lay there, staring up at the roof. Then I saw it-the blood-and that’s when I knew…I knew…’
‘She’d been lying.’ Claudia finished it for him.
The huntsman’s face was distorted with pain. ‘I asked her. I said, why didn’t you tell me you was a virgin? Why say them terrible things about your father-and you know what she said? She said, “But he did. Daddy kissed me.”’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I sacrificed twenty years on account of a kiss.’
There followed the sort of silence that seems endless and yet, at the same time, seems no time at all. The sort of silence you feel sacrilegious about breaking.
Finally, Aristaeus picked up the ring. ‘This was my mother’s, it was all she had. I wanted to give it to Minerva, to atone for my shame.’
‘There is no shame, Aristaeus.’ Only irony. Bitter, bitter irony. But he needed, desperately, to assuage his guilt. ‘Why don’t you give it to Diana?’
He used his hunting knife to slice through the wooden hand to create a finger and solemnly slipped the ring on to it. Again, the sense of unreality was aroused. He patted the statue reverentially and stared deep into its carved eyes.
‘It wasn’t just that once, either.’
Claudia heard the wind whispering in the leaves, a distant woodpecker drumming. There was a faint mushroomy smell in the air, mingled with sawdust and wood smoke. She could sense the searing pain inside him, even though she struggled to catch the words.
‘I beseech you, Diana of the Forests, not to judge me harshly.’
She won’t. ‘Sabina was a selfish woman, Aristaeus. She came from a selfish family.’
‘Said she didn’t mind me doing it, because she was invisible.’
Sweet Jupiter, no man deserved this on his conscience. ‘If it’s any consolation, they’ve got the man who killed her.’
Pained eyes left Diana’s. ‘Who?’
‘Fabius.’
He shook his head in wonderment. ‘By Apollo, they’re an evil family.’
I’ll drink to that, Claudia thought.
‘How did you find out she lived here?’
Claudia explained about the blue glass flagon. How she was in Sullium on market day and noticed a barber mopping a cut with a spider’s web which he drew from the bottle. Preoccupied with other matters, it didn’t sink in at the time and only later, when the memory returned, Claudia realized that the chances of two such flagons appearing in one town were remote, to say the least. She sent Junius to track down the barber, who confirmed he bought his webs from Aristaeus, and the Syrian glassblower, who confirmed he had indeed supplied a stock for the huntsman.