It was still unclear why his wife rarely saw her eldest child, though bad feeling between Primus and her might be the explanation. It did add colour to the elusive conversation I overheard at Fidenae between Optata and her sister Pomponia. In that, Julia Optata was hankering for maternal contact with her daughter yet, for some reason, Pomponia had warned her not to press for it just now.
‘I gather there is coolness since the divorce, but do you see anything of Julia Optata?’
Laurentina, who lost no opportunity to be unpleasant, was enjoying my unease with the new information. ‘Sometimes she is allowed to visit our house. Primus gives her a regulated meeting with her daughter. The two have lunch together in the garden, or something on those lines. She claims Primus makes it difficult, though I think he has been extremely gracious. We don’t encourage such meetings but they are by no means forbidden. Valentina is always upset afterwards and takes days to settle.’
‘And what of her mother’s feelings?’
‘Oh, Julia Optata doesn’t speak to me! She still blames me for taking her baby.’
I chewed another wheat cake, catching crumbs in my cupped hand. ‘And why did that happen?’
‘After Valentina was born, Julia Optata was weak and in a sorry state, very low in spirits, lethargic and weepy. With the birth safely over, I was free to return to my husband. Most people thought I helped Primus to ensure a quiet life here. But no. I judged my sister incapable of looking after a child. While Julia Optata was sleeping, I simply picked up Valentina from her crib and carried her home with me. We organised a wet nurse and she has thrived ever since.’
‘A hard decision for you, though?’ I wondered whether the new mother’s convenient sleep had been assisted by potions.
‘No. I shall never apologise for it.’
I considered their wider family. ‘What does your mother say about all this?’
Laurentina laughed softly. Under white veiling, complicated gold earrings tinkled at some movement. ‘She gave me all Hades for interfering. Julia Optata was her eldest and in those days she could do no wrong. Well, not until our father married her again, into the Vibii, who were old friends of his. Mother was furious he did not consult her. Father died not long after. I suspect the sustained venom helped him into the underworld. Mama was equally wrathful that my sister went along with it, so they fell out too.’
‘Vibius Marinus comes in for loathing, merely for being male?’ I asked, remembering how nastily Julia Verecunda had treated him at that encounter in the Forum. ‘I have the impression your mother does little to further her children’s marriages – even where she arranged them.’
‘Understatement!’ Laurentina chortled frankly. ‘Everyone knows how much she interferes. At the moment she’s determined that both my sister Terentia and I will leave our husbands.’ Terentia, the rich one, was now the only one of the four sisters I had not met. ‘According to Mother we should marry them, make them dependent on us, then leave them in the lurch. We’re all constantly nagged about it. At least Mother will leave Pomponia alone now she has escaped from Aspicius.’
‘So tell me about that. I gather he’s handsome but given to fights. Did she leave him because he frightens her?’
‘Oh, he does! Mind you, he’s always been the same so we can’t see what’s different this time.’
‘The baby,’ I deduced. ‘Do people realise where she has gone into hiding?’
‘It’s pretty obvious – especially since that fool Vibius made his public pronouncement and told the whole world. His wife will beat him up over that, now she is home with him.’ Laurentina saw my expression. ‘Julia Optata will be furious he was so stupid.’
‘All a sorry story of friction!’ I commented. ‘But you and Volusius Firmus have found genuine happiness?’
Laurentina groaned with relief. ‘I can’t tell you how it felt to come to a house full of peace and good feeling! I will never give that up. Vibius suits me fine.’
‘And your sister Terentia feels the same about her husband?’
‘She can do as she wants, of course. She has money. Mother never forgave her for going off and finding herself a millionaire first time round.’
‘I did hear a snide rumour that her second husband sponges off her?’
‘He’s a joke. Still, what if he does cost money? She can afford it and he is what she wants. He drinks,’ snapped Laurentina, swigging wine herself. ‘Perhaps he guzzles to obliterate the fact that our terrible mother is endlessly trying to get his dear wife to leave him while, actually, he is attached to my sister and cannot bear to lose her. Everyone is so sure he cares only about Terentia’s money that they don’t see his loyalty. He truly loves my sister and she him. Is that so unbelievable? That was why she married him. In our family some of us treasure love. We have seen what happens without it. My mother,’ Julia Laurentina announced, as formally as a trial judge, ‘is an unforgiving, brooding, vindictive, manipulative bitch. She never forgets a slight and devotes herself to working against those who offend her, stand up to her, or boldly ignore her.’
I was thoughtful. So here we had a situation in which two of Verecunda’s daughters (Laurentina and Terentia) had defied her and were sticking with their marriages while a third (Pomponia) had just given up on a man who seemed a threat. What about the fourth? ‘Does your mother want Julia Optata to leave Vibius Marinus?’
Laurentina shrugged her shoulders. Her white stole descended and she replaced it gracefully, paying more attention to it than to me.
‘That could explain some tension in their house,’ I speculated. ‘I’ve heard Julia Verecunda called the mother-in-law from Hades, excuse me saying so. Julia Optata has not been forgiven for making a happy second marriage?’
Laurentina then bestirred herself. She flashed me another of those wry glances. ‘That assumes you think she and Vibius are happy!’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I know what she’s like.’ Much as I wished it, she did not elaborate.
I sat quiet, nursing a wine cup, which I did not drink from, while my companion slumped, lulled by funeral wine. Eventually I reminded her of her secret suspicions the first time I saw her. ‘Julia Laurentina, you feared from the start that the strongbox body might be your father-in-law, didn’t you?’
‘And wasn’t I right?’ she snarled, more her previous snappy self.
‘Were you aware Valens had an enemy?’
‘Everyone loved him.’
‘Yet somebody went after him. Someone lay in wait and hauled him back to Rome. Whether they intended to kill him is uncertain, but they did, after which they stuffed him into that chest to rot. So somebody really did not love him.’
Julia Laurentina gave me a wide-eyed unpleasant stare. ‘Oh, Flavia Albia, do you say somebody hated him?’
I almost felt she was taunting me for some error on my part, even if it was simply my ignorance. ‘Do you know who? Are you protecting them?’
‘No.’
‘No idea even who it might be?’
Her answer was to stand up and leave the table, becoming impossibly high and mighty. ‘This is my father-in-law’s funeral. I suggest you stop your vile theorising right here.’
She was not sober. There could be several reasons for that: she was simply a lush; she was covering some personal unhappiness; or she did not want to face up to what had happened to Callistus Valens. I thought the latter. But she did not intend to tell me, and I would not break her resolve. She was correct: this was not an occasion for me to persist.
However, she suddenly turned back to me. ‘One thing is certain,’ she announced dramatically. ‘If we ever know who caused the death of Valens, this family will deal with them!’
I acknowledged the bravado with a cool nod. In my business, you hear things like that at funerals all the time.
53
Not long afterwards, I left discreetly. I had shown my face. I had returned the rings. There seemed little chance of shedding more light on the death of Valens or the subsequent murder of Niger.