I squatted on my haunches and surveyed her. Philomela remained silent as if she wanted to extract maximum suspense. She only achieved aggravation. I tried to spur her on. 'I hope this is about what befell either Valeria Ventidia or Marcella Caesia. I suppose your trade makes you likely to have seen Caesia?'
"My trade!' She laughed briefly."I live humbly, as you see -" she gestured behind her, to the hut, which was tiny and no doubt extremely crude inside. I preferred not to know. I hate country cabins; they smell of smoke and chicken-shit."I sell water to earn a pittance, simply to survive.'
"No family to assist you?'
"Relatives by marriage. They are unaware that I have returned to Greece. They believe I am travelling in another province. That suits me. I wanted to lose myself
I could not bring myself to indulge her romantic attitude."People who "lose" themselves are either failures or frauds with guilty secrets.'
"You are a sad man.'
"I am an informer. I was a merry gadfly once, but informing makes you brutal. Philomela, tell me the truth. Were you in Olympia when Marcella Caesia went up the Hill of Cronus and then disappeared?'
"I was.'
"Were you actually on the Hill of Cronus that day?'
"Yes; I was there.'
"You saw her go up? Was anybody with her?'
"Two people went up the hill together.'
"One was a man?'
"No. One was Marcella Caesia; the other was a woman, Falco.'
That gave me pause.
"Do you know what happened to Caesia?'
"I do.'
At this dramatic moment we were interrupted. A familiar voice
hailed me. Helena must have tethered the pony and followed me up the hill after all. Nux ran to greet her."So you do have a wife!' commented the so-called Philomela.
"I said so.' I made introductions."Helena Justina, daughter of the noble Decimus Camillus Verus, gracious wife to me; Helena, this is a lady from Tusculum who now calls herself Philomela.'
Helena regarded the wide-eyed wonder. I had warned her previously that I thought Philomela was not all there."I believe I know who you are,' Helena asserted cheerfully.
Philomela lifted off the peculiar straw hat as if unveiling her true personality. Helena herself tidied her fine hair back behind her ears, pulling out a bone pin which she replaced with an unconscious gesture. They were like two friends settling down to mint tea at an all-women afternoon gathering.
"Tell me. are you Marcella Naevia?'
"Your wife is extraordinary, Falco!' warbled Marcella Caesia's aunt.
Caesius Secundus had assured us this woman was travelling in Egypt. All the time, she was loitering in Greece, under an assumed name.
I never supposed that the death of her niece at Olympia was what turned her into a moonstruck nymph. Marcella Naevia must always have had a tendency to be wide-eyed and wistful in the face of real life. It put a dark gloss on the tragedy. Entrusting a young girl to her sole care on a long-distance journey had been very unwise. Not that we would ever say that to Caesius Secundus. He would have enough to bear, without blaming himself for trusting the unsatisfactory aunt.
She was worse than unsatisfactory, as we were about to find out. I was glad that Helena had joined us. I needed a witness. Helena would back me up when I had to report the story. Now at last Caesius Secundus could stop wondering, although when he knew what had really happened to his daughter, it would increase his agitation. At least he could finally reconcile himself, bury those bones that I had seen in the lead coffin, apportion blame if he wanted to.
"My niece and I wanted to experience peace and solitude.' That fitted all I had seen in Marcella Naevia. And already I was viewing her apprehensively. I wondered if the girl had been another dreamer; maybe not.
The aunt's vague manner had hidden steel. I could imagine her being insidiously persuasive with her much younger companion, luring Caesia into her weird attitudes. Isolated with her aunt for weeks, a perfectly normal teenager might have lost her sense of reality.
"We walked up the Hill of Cronus to communicate with the gods. While we were there, there was a dramatic lightning storm. We felt close to Zeus, the All-Thunderer.'
"That's hardly peaceful!' I muttered. We had seen for ourselves how storms raged around Olympia.
"We were in another dimension of the world. We had taken ourselves far away from other people,' Marcella Naevia rhapsodised."We had escaped…' She paused.
"Escaped from whom?' snapped Helena."Your niece was young, a lively character,' she supplied."Her father described her to us as curious about the world – but she was – how old? – eighteen, I think. Was she immature for her age? I mean socially?'
Marcella Naevia nodded.
"Let us suppose,' Helena pressed on,"there was a man among the group you travelled with, a man who took advantage of women, a man who groped and harassed them. Marcella Caesia would have hated it.'
"I see you understand!' The aunt gushed with gratitude.
"Well, I would feel the same as she did. I can imagine your role too. You tried to protect the girl. You and she kept to yourselves. Eventually you went up the Hill of Cronus to get away from him.'
"Did he follow you?' I interrupted.
"He did not.'
"So he did not kill her?' So much for theories.
"No!' The aunt looked almost shocked that I'd suggested it.
Slowly I spelled out the situation to this ridiculous woman. Her father thinks that Marcella Caesia fell victim to a sexual predator. Caesius Secundus is tormented by that thought. If you know otherwise…
"It rained heavily.' Marcella Naevia abruptly resumed her story. She took on the trance-like demeanour which I found so annoying."I knew that sheltering was dangerous, but my niece would not heed my warnings. She hated being wet; she squealed and tried to take cover under a tree. The tree was struck by lightning. She was killed instantly.'
"For heavens' sake!' I could not believe what I was hearing."If you knew this, why not tell people?'
Helena too was outraged."You went back to the group; you said nothing that evening – but in the morning you raised a huge outcry. You held up the planned journey and made them all search – yet you never once said that you knew what had happened to Caesia? Then
you let Caesius Secundus fret his heart out for a year before he himself came to Greece and found the body! Even then, he told us, you pretended to be devastated… One word from you could have saved all that. Whatever can you have been thinking about?'
The woman's voice was cold."I decided that Zeus had taken her. That was why,' stressed Caesia's aunt, as if anybody rational would see this,"I left her there.'
I was used to unnatural deaths, deaths that had to be hidden because of the cruel ways they were brought about. Simply abandoning a body after an accident shocked me much more."You just left Marcella Caesia lying on the Hill of Cronus, under the burnt-out tree?'
Marcella Naevia sounded dreamy again."I laid her straight. I folded her hands gently upon her breast. I covered her with pine cones and needles. I kissed her and prayed over her. Then I let the gods, who so obviously loved her, keep her with them at that holy place.'
LVIII
There had been no crime. Since Camillus Aelianus was associated with a jurisprudence expert, we would check that point, but I felt sure of the outcome. Minas of Karystos would confirm that in law Caesia's death was natural. We could not prosecute Zeus.
Of course, in life, what happened afterwards was reprehensible. In life, no one sane, no one humane would refuse a father proper knowledge of his child's fate. Prevent him giving her a funeral and monument. Condemn him to years of obsession and unending mental torture.