‘But none of them saw or heard anything last night?’
He shook his head. ‘They were all sleeping like Morpheus until the screaming woke them — they had been working hard clearing away the banquet. And the slaves on duty downstairs were all asleep. That seemed to be unnatural in itself, with so many spies about — the staff seem to think that someone must have given them a sleeping potion. That is one piece of information that they gave me, by the way. Lydia has a way with herbs, did you know that? Apparently Annia Augusta taught her. Other people swore it couldn’t have been Lydia who drugged the slaves, because she never left the annexe all day yesterday. There was quite an argument about it.’
I nodded. ‘I think the servants’ wine was drugged,’ I said, and told him about my conversation with Fulvia. ‘I even wondered if Monnius himself had been affected, but why would he be drinking the servants’ dregs?’
‘He hardly needed a sleeping draught last night, by all accounts,’ Junio said. ‘He had drunk enough to fell a giant. He was rather given to that, it seems — harsh when he was sober and bestial when he was drunk — though he could be surprisingly generous to his favourites at times. His mother is just as difficult in her own way, they tell me — demanding and hard to please. She is the same with everyone, even with Monnius, refusing to take his advice over her estates and declining to use his drying houses. One of the maidservants called her a human elephant, making a loud noise and trampling everything in her path.’
I have never seen an elephant, but I grinned at the description. From the tales I have heard, they are larger than life, with big noses, and have been known to stampede out of control in the amphitheatre and terrify the bystanders. The comparison with Annia Augusta seemed peculiarly apt. (Although one can never believe everything one hears. Some of the legends say that elephants wear their teeth outside, upside down on either side of their mouths.)
‘And the lady Lydia?’ I asked.
‘Apart from her herbal skills, they think of her as a joke. She says, thinks and does whatever Annia Augusta tells her to, except where her child is concerned — she can be determined then, by all accounts. Apparently she was always the same. Completely indecisive. Some of the slaves can remember when Monnius married her — they did not live in this house then, of course. He built his career and fortune on her marriage portion. She could not find a husband, and her father gave her a rich dowry.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Monnius would have had the usufruct of that.’
‘Exactly — but he had to give her back her estates when he divorced her. The servants say he tried to claim that there was a question over her fidelity, so he could keep the estates, but Lydia was so plain she was always above suspicion.’ He grinned. ‘The whisper is that when her father died, Monnius hoped to get control of her lands again, and that is why he let Annia Augusta bring her here, but Lydia’s brother had been managing the money in the meantime, and most of it was lost in legal wrangles over the will.’
I nodded. ‘Then. .’ I began, but I got no further.
From Monnius’ bedchamber came the eerie sound of someone calling the dead man’s name three times. Then a low tuneless wailing began, followed a moment later by the moaning of funereal pipes, and the dreadful keening of professional weepers. I looked at Junio. The lamentations had begun.
We scrambled to our feet like a pair of guilty schoolboys. It would hardly be acceptable to be found here, gossiping like a pair of equals. We went out into the lobby.
The moaning was louder there, and I glanced at Junio in surprise. The voice that was doing the wailing did not sound like Fulvia’s.
Chapter Nine
We had come out into the lobby not a moment too soon. An instant later there was a disturbance in the death chamber. A door slammed, there was the sound of raised voices — during which the wailing faltered — and finally one long last ululation before the tuneless moaning stopped abruptly, and a woman’s voice took up the lamentation.
Junio and I stood back as the door to Monnius’ chamber opened and the bier was carried out, borne high by some of the funeral attendants, and accompanied by others: some carrying the sacrificial herbs, some banging gongs and playing pipes, some simply wailing and beating their breasts. Behind them walked Fulvia, her brow now covered in ashes, her eyes lowered and her hands clasped, lamenting in a sweet, low, melancholy voice.
She did not glance towards us as she passed, and the noisy little procession moved away into the house. Monnius’ bier would be laid down in the public space at the back of the atrium, where no doubt other civic officials and dignitaries would soon be calling to pay their respects, to leave their funeral gifts or even — if they had worked closely with him — to take their turn at the dirge.
A moment later the door to Monnius’ chamber opened again and a sulky-looking young man in a black-edged toga came out, shepherded by a white-faced Lydia. She had been all in black before, but she had now added a shapeless long mourning cape to her attire, not unlike the one that Fulvia had worn. Where Fulvia had looked a picture of elegance and grace, however, on Lydia the garment bunched in awkward folds, making her look scrawnier than ever — an impression she did nothing to dispel by clutching the garment to her with one arm, like a wounded bat. As soon as the door was shut behind them she began to talk to the boy, in a piercing undertone, with all the righteous outrage of an insulted Vestal virgin.
‘Well Imagine that! Brushing you aside and following the corpse herself. Jove only knows what your father would have said. Still, never mind. You began the lament, that is all that matters. You closed his eyes and put the coin in his mouth, and so you should have done. You are his son — and you are legally a man, if only by a week or two.’ She hitched her cloak a little closer round herself. ‘And if that woman tries to contest the will, we’ll see what the courts say about that!’
The young man pouted. From the set of his features that seemed to be his habitual expression. He looked a little younger than his fourteen years, although he must have been that age to have lost the childhood bulla round his neck and be wearing the plain white toga virilis which was the mark of legal manhood, and to which the mourning stripe had been hastily attached. His hair was short and curly, slightly reddish under the ashes with which he had adorned himself, and his plump, pale face was petulant.
‘Oh, do not fuss so much, Mother. I don’t know why you insisted on making such a spectacle of me in front of the undertakers. With Father’s body lying there, too. His spirit won’t even have left the house by this time. He’ll think we have shown him disrespect, and then we shall be lucky if he doesn’t come back to haunt us.’ His lower jaw jutted defiantly. ‘Don’t blame me if the milk curdles and the slaves start dying. What else can you expect, making a scene in the funeral chamber?’
‘I didn’t make a scene!’ his mother said, with more animation than I had thought she possessed. ‘Monnius knows I would never offend his spirit. It was that woman, coming in and wanting to interrupt. Well, she can lament now all she wants. She didn’t begin the ritual, you did, and nothing can ever alter that.’
Filius — this had to be the famous Filius — brightened slightly. ‘There is one good thing about it, I suppose. I have done my duty now. I won’t have to go in and do any more lamenting till the funeral.’