Fulvia’s face, which was looking pale and strained, lighted with a small, triumphant smile. ‘Filius is scarcely more than a child — he is only just old enough to wear an adult toga. He may close the eyes, if he wishes, but the duty of opening the lament will fall to me. As for the funeral arrangers, I have already sent for them. Some of them arrived before you did, citizen’ — of course they had: I had noted the funerary wreath at the entrance — ‘and by now they will be bathing the body.’ She glanced victoriously at Annia, who was crimson with fury. ‘But I will instruct them to suspend their ministrations a little. I am in any case going to my room. I shall be there if you need me, citizen, and you no doubt wish to speak to me — in private? After all, I was the only witness of what took place last night.’
Annia spluttered something, incoherent with rage.
Fulvia ignored her. ‘I will retire, then.’ She closed her eyes suddenly. She did indeed look faint and faltering, I thought. ‘My servants will attend me. Enjoy your refreshment, citizen.’
Annia glowered after her. ‘Making the arrangements, just like that — and his mother not even consulted!’
Beside her, Lydia began to sob, hiccoughing and snivelling wretchedly. ‘Poor, poor Monnius. To think that he should come to this. And if that woman is arranging it, they will not even let Filius lead the mourners.’
Annia put an arm round her, and with a final glare in my direction led her from the room.
I sat back on the stool and permitted myself to be served with some refreshment. By this time I was quite glad of my beaker of watered wine.
Chapter Five
Junio arrived just as I was finishing the fruit (slices of apple, at last!), and he stationed himself beside my chair with a cheerful grin.
‘I hear you wish to view the body, master? I have been given instructions to lead you there.’
I got to my feet, holding out my hands to be rinsed and dried by the house-slaves who had been standing by with ewer, bowl and towel for the purpose. I dashed a few drops of water on my head, too, as a sort of purification, and took the time to go and pour the dregs of wine on to the altar of the Vestal shrine. I am not usually a superstitious man, especially in regard to Roman rituals, preferring my own ancient gods of tree and stone, but this household worried me. If I was to be visiting Roman corpses, I felt, I could do with all the supernatural support that I could get.
I nodded to Junio. ‘You know the way? Then lead me to him.’
The interlinking rooms and passages we passed through were as grand, and as lavishly decorated, as the atrium we had left, and everywhere there was the same disregard both for cost and for artistic restraint. Everything was bigger, heavier, more jewel-encrusted, and more ostentatious than its counterpart in any household I had ever seen. Even a simple gong-stick, hanging on a wall in a short corridor, appeared to be made of ivory, inlaid with gold.
Junio led the way into this corridor. It was a spacious passageway, almost a little lobby, from which three gilded folding doors led off into the rooms beyond and a stout wooden staircase gave access to the floor above.
‘Servants’ quarters,’ Junio said, following my gaze and nodding upwards. ‘And a few store-rooms up there for linen and candles. Nothing much else.’
‘In spite of that grand stairway?’
He grinned. ‘In spite of that grand stairway. That’s where they took me to wait. I contrived to have a peek behind a few doors on my way back to you.’ He gestured towards the nearest entrance. ‘I think Caius Monnius is awaiting you in there.’
I nodded, though I might almost have found my way unassisted, from the pungent smells of funeral oil and herbs already eddying in the smoky air.
I pushed open the door. I found not only Caius Monnius awaiting me, but also half a dozen of the undertaker’s men and women, engaged in preparing the body for its last procession. They had drawn back the folding window shutters while they worked (although they later would be discreetly closed again in deference to the dead) and muted daylight illuminated the room. It was an incongruous place for death, with a painted frieze of grinning satyrs round the walls, and a large bronze statue of a well-endowed Priapus standing in the corner by the door.
The undertakers, however, seemed oblivious. Evidence of their work was everywhere — the water with which the dead man had been ritually washed, the aromatic oils, the first of the sacred herbs and candles already pungently burning in pottery containers at each corner of the bed. A fine funeral bier was being readied, too, to carry the body to lie in state in the atrium when the preliminary rituals were finished. At our arrival, the funeral workers abandoned their tasks and stood obediently aside. Fulvia had evidently been as good as her word.
But it was already too late. I exchanged glances with Junio, who shook his head sympathetically. There was little point in my lingering here. Monnius had been stripped, cleansed and covered with a clean white cloth. His banqueting robes had been carefully folded and laid on one side, with the wilted festive garland on top of the pile. The fresh linen and new boots in which the corpse would be dressed for its final journey were already set out and waiting on the bier. I sighed. Any information that I might have gleaned from examining the body or clothing had long since disappeared under the ministrations of the undertakers.
I made a show of it, however. I inspected the fat neck, where the cruel marks of the silver chain were still clearly visible. Pertinax’s account had clearly been correct.
Someone had twisted the chain tightly from the rear, and the face was horribly contorted. There were bruises around the shoulders, too, as if someone had knelt on him to hold him down, although I could see no other marks on the body.
I walked over to the window-space. It was large — effectively a door — and looked out into the garden: a paved peristyle colonnade, protected by high walls, with a little formal enclosure of plants and flowers in the centre and a painted shrine at the further end, with a ladder still leaning drunkenly against it. The left-hand wall was clearly formed by the back of the famous annexe, but there was no access to the garden from there or even any window overlooking it. This was a private space for Monnius and his wife, though if Annia was excluded there was nothing much to see.
I turned away and was about to leave the bedchamber when one of the undertaker’s slaves sidled up to me. ‘You want to see the chain that did it, citizen?’
I gaped at him. Of course I wanted to see it — I had merely assumed that the murderer, whoever he was, had taken it with him.
‘Still round his neck when we found him, citizen. And quite a trial we had to get it off, without damaging him further. But his wife insisted. Said it wouldn’t be fitting to send him to the Afterworld in that. So here it is.’ He picked up a small roll of cloth, lying among the oils and unguents on the large iron-bound chest in the corner.
‘Show me.’
He did so, unrolling the cloth with a flourish. ‘Only be careful, citizen. We have not cleaned it yet.’
It was a triple strand of silver, set with tiny gems at intervals, the metal hammer-worked so that the links were doubly strong, and the whole supple chain would lie neatly flat against the wearer’s neck. There were fragments of its latest wearer still adhering to it.
The undertaker’s slave smiled grimly. ‘You see what the lady means, citizen? Hardly a fitting thing for a senior civic official to be wearing for his journey across the Styx.’
I did see what she meant. It was an element of the killing which had not been clear to me. At the mention of a ‘necklace’ I had half imagined a heavy Roman torc, or some stout ornamental chain designed to hold seals or keys. This was a feminine necklace, the sort of personal jewellery that only women, or effete and handsome slave-boys, ever wear. To discover such a thing on Caius Monnius was as startling as if he had been found wearing a stola, or with ochre on his cheeks and lamp-black darkening his eyelashes.