“Seize her!” Malchus shouted as we burst into Sabina’s clinic. The legionary’s inertia answered his own command as he crashed into the healer, knocking her to the floor. I slapped the spoon out of Tessa’s mouth, but she swallowed involuntarily.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Crassus shouted, grabbing the sleeve of my tunic amidst the shouts and screams of those present.
“Where are you emetics?” I demanded of Sabina, who was still pinned to the floor by red-faced Malchus.
“She’s too weak,” Sabina said with an emphasis meant only for me. “You’ll kill her.”
“Give her water. Now, master, for the love of Flora, if you want her to live. As much as she can drink.” Crassus released me and nodded to Eirene who ran to fetch a cup and pitcher. “In the old school room,” I called after her. “It’s closer.”
“For gods’ sake, man, let the woman up,” Crassus said. Malchus pulled Sabina roughly to her feet. “Gently, Malchus,” dominus commanded. “I will know what this is about before anyone is maltreated. No one is accused of anything. Yet.”
I knew the words must come but they lodged in my throat, a lump of ruined futures.
“Alexander!” Malchus urged.
“I accuse,” I shouted, as if volume were needed to regurgitate the unspeakable. Unable to look at my old friend, I stared at the floor at Crassus’ feet. “I accuse Sabina of attempting to murder this woman.”
The silence that followed was interrupted only by the rasping of Tessa’s breath. Eirene returned. I raised Tessa’s damp head and the tearful scullery girl brought the water to Tessa’s lips. The little she managed to get down made her choke.
“You’ll kill her,” Sabina repeated.
“Eirene, step away. Let no more be done. Alexander, I have no reason to doubt you, but if you have maliciously kept Sabina from administering to Tessa, so help me… Both of you, go with Malchus. He will keep you safe and separate till morning. The rest of you, except you, Betto, go to your quarters and pray to our lares domestici to preserve this woman. Betto, fetch another guard, stay by Tessa, do nothing but watch over her. We will let the gods decide if she lives or if she dies.”
Just before dawn, the gods chose death. Tessa’s shallow breath rose to a gasp, then stopped. Crassus sent a rider to Ostia to notify her parents and to pay their owners more than the man and woman’s worth for allowing them to come to Rome for a few short days to collect the body. While we waited, Crassus held court.
The day was grey but looked unlikely to rain upon us. “The accuser shall speak first,” announced Crassus from his seat in the tablinum. He had turned it to face the peristyle where the household had gathered, standing, at my request, on the gravel paths, avoiding the few decorative patches of lawn. Livia sat by Sabina. I would have given anything to have had a private moment with her, but there was no opportunity; the first words she would hear from me would be those that condemned her mother.
“ Dominus, if I am upheld in these proceedings, we must replace all the soil in our flower beds. To prove to you why we must take this extraordinary measure, I have asked Malchus to bring these three strays, bitches in fact, from the streets.” The familia murmured, and I was fairly certain I heard Nestor, scrawny and hateful, ‘there’s only one dog I see up there ought to be put down.’
“Keep them at a distance,” Crassus said to the guards holding them by short, rope leashes. “I’ll not have fleas infesting the domus.” I emptied the contents of my belt pouch onto a table just below where Crassus sat. With a tweezers, I raised the drooping purple bloom for all to see. “In Greece, we call this lykotonon, ‘wolf killer.’ Hunters rub their arrows on its petals, its leaves, its stem, but mostly on a ground up paste made from its root.”
“How is it,” Crassus asked, “that a young Athenian philosopher comes by such knowledge?”
“ Dominus, Aristotle was succeeded by Theophrastus, acknowledged even by Romans as the father of botany. I have read De Causis Plantarums, and have seen with my own eyes the carefully guarded corner of the Lyceum gardens devoted to aconitum napellus. It is beautiful, but deadly.”
I instructed the guards to force the dogs to sit on disparate patches of ground throughout the peristyle. Nothing happened. “I expected this,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Now the flower beds.” The dogs were moved. “Make sure they sit; do not let them lie down.”
“What difference can that make?” Crassus asked.
“I want to be certain their genitals come in contact with the soil. You see, lykotonon need not be ingested to be poisonous. It can be absorbed through the skin.” The dogs looked wide-eyed and terrified, but otherwise unremarkable.
“Enough, Alexander. Get to the point. We understand that you are claiming Tessa was poisoned from contact with this flower, evidence of which is dramatically and overwhelmingly non-existent. But even if you are correct, what proof do you have that Sabina had anything to do with it? Tessa was not the only one with symptoms.”
“My toes were numb,” Betto called out.
“Mine too,” cried another.
“Because you stopped to smell Tessa’s handiwork,” I said. “As you leaned in, your toes touched the soil on which Sabina had sprinkled the pulverized root of aconitum. The effect would not be lasting. But Tessa trod those beds barefoot day after day. Dominus, may I speak with Sabina?”
“You may.”
“Sabina, are you in love with Ludovicus?”
“No. Definitely not.”
Why should she help? “Let me rephrase. Is Ludovicus your lover?”
“Again, no.”
“ Was he your lover?” Silence. “Shall I ask him? He’s standing just to your left.”
“We have shared a bed, yes.”
I turned again to Crassus. “I came upon Sabina during one of my walks in the woods at the western end of the estate.” At least I could leave Livia out of this tragic narration. “She would not let me inspect the blue and purple flowers she was growing there. She intimated they preferred shade, but I know for a fact that lykotonon will thrive in full sun as long as it is irrigated well. The only reason, then, to plant it so far from the house was if she did not want anyone to know she was growing it. And when I first approached, she dropped what I at first thought was a bundle of rags, but which now I surmise must have been gloves with which to handle the lethal plant. Do you deny it?”
“I do not,” Sabina answered.
“But,” Crassus said, “you have still not established that she was growing this lykotonon.”
“If someone will ask me,” Sabina said, “I will answer.”
“Are you growing this flower in our woods?” Crassus asked.
“Yes. I was.”
“You were growing it,” I said. “But not anymore, for your purpose has been achieved. Dominus, last night, I went back into the woods, taking Drusus Malchus with me. The site which Sabina had refused to show me had been concealed. We had to dig up the entire plot to discover this solitary flower. No leaves, no roots, just this single bloom. It is clear that Sabina did not want the place found.” Malchus affirmed that I spoke truly.
“This herb,” Sabina interjected, “has many beneficial uses, dominus. It can reduce fever, excessive beating of the heart, and I have used it many times to reduce the pain of scrapes and superficial wounds. But the atriensis is correct to say that it can be highly poisonous if misused. Naturally I planted it far from the house so that no one would come in accidental contact with it. And once I had harvested an ample supply for the clinic, what else should I do but remove all trace of it? I planted it far away from the house and discarded the remains so that no one would accidentally come upon it and make themselves ill.”
The household stirred, leaves rustling in a wind that had turned against me. Crassus said, “Alexander, I don’t know what petty grievance you may have against our healer, but I am disappointed in myself to find that I may have misjudged you.”