I gave a heavy sigh. I have never become accustomed to watching a poison-taster at work. There was nothing to do now but wait to see if the draught had killed him.
Chapter Eight
To my relief — and certainly to his — whatever the pageboy had swallowed appeared to have done him no harm. After a few moments Fulvia gestured to him and, the colour returning slowly to his cheeks, he set down the cup again and returned to his station by the window.
Fulvia said, uneasily, ‘It seems you were right, citizen. No wonder my slumbers were not very deep last night. Luckily the liquid was not poisoned. Perhaps I should be careful what I eat and drink — if someone tampered in the kitchens once, they might do it again. I must use a servant as taster. Although it seems our unknown visitor did me an unwitting service — if I had been as soundly drugged as my slaves last night, perhaps I would have suffered far more than a gashed arm.’
I nodded. ‘So whoever did this must have known you had the sleeping draught. He steals it from your room, pours it into the servants’ wine, and replaces the liquid with water from — where?’
She shrugged. ‘There is always water in the kitchens, citizen. Barrels of it. We bought this house because it was convenient for the corn office but it is not connected to the city water supply. Monnius is. . was. . always talking of it. He made many other alterations, like building the annexe, but he decided it would be too expensive to bring water on to the property. I think Fortunatus put him off. He has bought himself a large house in the city for when he retires and is having it rebuilt, but the price of joining it to the town supply has been enormous. He has even had to delay the building work while they lift the pavement and extend the pipes. Monnius could not live with such disruption. It is very little problem for the slaves to fetch water for us, and somehow it has never seemed worth the cost of laying the channels and paying the water charges.’
‘Do you have a private well?’
‘Of course. It fails sometimes, but even so we are close to the Wall Brook and the public cistern. There is even a rain barrel in the garden to catch the water off the roof gutter. Monnius used to say that if a property has piped water, it also has to have a drain, and that would cost us, too. We are a large household and he had arranged quite a lucrative contract with the local toga-weavers for the contents of the chamber pots.’
I understood that. Fine wool and leather is often softened and bleached by being soaked in urine — it improves the texture and the colour of the finished garment — and owners of the workshops often leave hopeful pots in public places on market day, or contract for collection of the commodity from private and communal sources. There is a tannery right next door to my little workshop in Glevum, and I have a similar arrangement with them — though it has never occurred to me to ask for money for my services.
‘So,’ I said, ‘replacing the sleeping draught with water would present no difficulty at all — provided of course that our intruder was sure that the kitchen would be empty, and that you were not in your room?’
She flushed like a child. ‘You are quite right, of course, citizen. I had not thought of that. It does rather suggest a knowledge of the household — or a close surveillance of our movements, at least.’ She shifted on her pillows, making her long robes rustle. ‘Though perhaps it might not have been so difficult, last night. Monnius held a banquet. Most of the servants were occupied with that, and for much of the time I was with him, playing the cithara and singing for the guests. My father’s education again, you see. It would have been easy for anyone to slip into my room, open the chest and substitute one flagon for another.’
There seemed to me to be some objections to that, but I did not express them to Fulvia.
She noted my silence. ‘You look thoughtful, citizen.’
I smiled. ‘I was wondering why, in that case, this intruder did not steal your silver chain at the same time? I presume you do keep it in this room?’
Fulvia sat herself a little more upright and gestured to the page again. ‘Bring me my casket, here.’
He took down a small gilded box from the shelf and gave it to Fulvia. She opened the clasp and passed it to me wordlessly. Inside were a number of fine jewelled pins and necklaces, including a triple-stranded silver chain exactly like the one I was carrying in the roll of cloth hidden in my belt.
‘This casket was not locked?’
‘No. There is a key, but it is cumbersome, and I do not often use it.’
‘And yet your intruder did not steal your chain. I wonder why?’ I said again.
‘Simple, citizen. It was not here. I was wearing it last evening at the feast.’
I frowned. ‘Then why not steal another of your necklets? You have a number here, equally strong and pliable. I still do not understand it. Why go to the trouble of finding another chain, of precisely the same pattern as yours, to strangle Caius Monnius with? It makes no sense unless the murderer wished to implicate you. That similarity of design is no coincidence.’
She laughed aloud. ‘It is even less of a coincidence than you suppose, citizen. A second chain of that pattern would not be hard to find. You can thank Annia Augusta for that. When Monnius first gave the ornament to me — a gift for Janus’ feast last year — his mother first pretended to admire it, and then persuaded him that she must have one exactly like it made for her.’
One of Jove’s thunderbolts could not have surprised me more. ‘Great Jupiter! Monnius was murdered with his mother’s chain?’
‘Not necessarily. Annia, in turn, presented one to Lydia — so that she would not feel “excluded” from the family. It was done as an insult to me, of course. Monnius was a fool to agree to her demands in the first place.’ A small flush of anger rose to her cheeks as she spoke, making her look more beautiful than ever. ‘I was so furious that I almost insisted he bought one for the servant-girls — he had made the pattern so commonplace. I would not have Lydia and Annia Augusta preening themselves in copies of his presents to me, as if they stood equally in his esteem. I told him so. He blustered and squirmed, as he always did, but he admitted he was wrong in the end. He bought me a very pretty ring as an apology.’
Between his wife and Annia Augusta, I thought, Monnius sometimes had as little freedom as I did, for all his riches. I, at least, had only one patron to please. ‘Then there were at least two other necklaces in the household exactly like your own?’
‘They are not as fine as this one, but they are all of the same pattern.’ With the help of one of the pages, she swung herself round so that she was sitting on the side of the bed facing away from me. She passed the casket to the slave, who put it on the shelf, while the other boy put down his fan and came hurrying over with a pair of embroidered slippers. ‘That is one reason why I rarely wear my own version of the ornament.’
‘But you were wearing it last night?’
‘I was.’ She extended one slim stockinged foot, and the page knelt down and reverently fitted a slipper on to it. Fulvia extended the other leg, and went on addressing me. ‘The silversmith who made it was present at the banquet and Monnius felt it would be a compliment to him. If I was entertaining at his table, he always liked to choose the things I wore.’
I tore my mind away from the picture this created. ‘The other women did not wear their necklaces?’
She waved the page away and got to her feet. ‘If they did, citizen, then no one saw them do it. They were not invited to the feast. They had their meal in private, in Annia’s annexe.’ She smoothed down the folds of her stola and arranged the veil more neatly over her hair as she spoke, then took up the silken girdle and tied it deftly with her undamaged hand. ‘Annia has a small triclinium of her own, there, where she can recline in comfort and take her meals — with Lydia if she wishes. Monnius prefers male company when he dines — or did prefer it, perhaps I should say. Though he was never averse to a little feminine entertainment.’